Archive: Anywhere, just ask me first.
Disclaimer: Veronica, Duncan, Lilly, Weevil, Logan, Grandma Letti, and all other characters mentioned here are the property of UPN, Rob Thomas, Stu Segall, and Silver Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended, so please don't sue, because I have no money.
Author's notes: I'm unofficially joining the LiveJournal fanfic100 challenge - unofficially because someone has already claimed Veronica/Weevil over there...and also because I hate the community mod. So, my table can be found at my website, under 'Other', but I'm going to be posting all my fics here as well. I NEVER intended for this one to be quite so long, but it developed a mind of its own about halfway through, and this is the result. I hope you enjoy.
The night after Veronica and Duncan had sex for the first time - the first real time, that was - Veronica tried to slip out quietly, knowing that her Dad would be watching the clock as if his life depended on it. The next time they had gotten enough time alone to spend the night together, they had had to rush to get ready for school the next morning. The closest they came to having breakfast together was their ritual Starbucks run before hightailing it to the Neptune High parking lot.
After Duncan fled the country with Lilly, Veronica pretty much gave up on dating. It fell upon Wallace to take care of her, to make sure she was eating right and going to class and not moping. Not that she really needed someone to take on that role, but she didn't hate it. Every morning, they met at the flagpole ten minutes before first period. She brought two thermoses of coffee, he bought a bag containing two of his mother's home-made banana nut muffins.
Two weeks before graduation, Veronica slept with Logan. She knew it was a mistake before it even started, but underneath it all Logan still loved her, and somehow that made it okay. When she woke up, she was alone in his room at the Neptune Grand. Sitting on the empty pillowcase next to her was a store-bought banana nut muffin wrapped in cellophane. It was stale and tasteless, and she tossed it out the window halfway through the drive home.
The summer before her first semester as a college student, she had a fling with Weevil. He was there and he was interested and she didn't bother trying to justify it further. They would meet on the far end of Dog Beach, under the pier that Lilly always used to like coming to late at night, hands playing idly in the sand as they tried to ignore feelings boiling just below the surface.
They could have talked about Lilly - after all, she was one of the very few things they had in common. But they didn't. They talked about movies, about music, about sports. They talked about Clemmons and Dick and Madison. They talked about cars and motorcycles, about soccer and photography, about who they once were and who they wanted to be. And when the morning came, Veronica would climb on the back of Weevil's bike and he would take her to his tiny, crowded house, where Letti would make them her special, secret-recipe omelets. They were tangy and spicy, and the first time she ate one she started coughing after three bites, downing almost half a pitcher of orange juice. After a week, when she could finish an entire plate without even making a face, Letti laughed and declared her an honorary Navarro.
It took Veronica a little over a month to realize that she was in love with Weevil, although by that time she knew him solely as Eli. It hit her sometime around five in the morning as the warm summer sun began peeking above the horizon. Eli was watching the phenomenon as if he had never seen it, though they had sat through countless sunrises and sunsets together. She watched him watching the sky, noting the look of wonderment in his eyes as it shifted from fiery red to a soft golden glow. And without being able to stop herself, she blurted out the words:
"I love you."
Eli glanced over, his lips curved into a smirk. Veronica hated that smirk. Because for all her bravado and emotional barriers, Eli knew her inside and out. He'd probably known the instant she had even considered the notion. Seeing her glare, his smirk melted into a smile, and he slung an arm around her shoulders, because he had been in love with her for as long as he could remember - he had just been waiting for her to come around.
When he dropped her off at the front gate of her apartment complex, her dad was outside talking to a neighbor, the morning paper in his hand. Disregarding this, Eli hooked his finger in her belt loop as she was taking off the helmet, pulling her up against him. And he kissed her.
Things fell into place quite nicely after that morning. Keith pretended not to notice what was going on despite what he saw, and though they had graduated mere weeks before, it felt as if they had already left Neptune far behind. They went everywhere together that summer, getting into trouble and causing it, desperate to hold onto that giddy, carefree feeling. They snuck into the apartment pool at three in the morning to skinny dip. They poured vodka into water bottles and downed them one after another in the middle of the day on a public beach, pawing at each other in full view of Lamb, Sachs, and probably dozens of their fellow graduates. When Keith had to go out of town, Eli became a permanent fixture around the apartment, keeping her company on the couch and in the shower and in her bed. And when she awoke, he would cook her his own version of Grandma Letti's omelets - cheesier and slightly less spicy, with a hint of what tasted suspiciously like oregano and ketchup.
After two months of blissfully ignoring the rest of the world, it came crashing down on them. Veronica flew halfway across the world to attend college in New York, and Eli stayed in Neptune, working at Angel's shop for a year until he could scrape together the money to attend community college. They never spoke of it - there were no tearful goodbyes, no promises of what tomorrow would hold for them. Veronica simply went down to the beach one day and he wasn't there - only a scrap of paper held down by a rock that read:
"Life goes on."
And that was when Veronica Mars, tough-ass girl detective, felt herself start to cry, because it was never supposed to turn out this way.
Nevertheless, she fully intended on seeing him again. But coming home was a rare treat - her dad had racked up plenty of frequent flier miles, but she was all the way on the other side of the country and working towards a double major. When she did come home, she didn't call. She tried to tell herself that it was because she needed to spend the time with her dad - but after pancakes at the diner, he went into the office, because they couldn't afford for him to be retired like he should be, and Veronica had the entire day free. She strolled up and down the beach, telling herself she wasn't looking for him. But still she didn't call, because it would be far too painful for them to see each other again.
It was too bad the excuse only sounded good in her head.
Five years at Ithaca flew by. By the time she graduated - magna cum laude, no less - Veronica had lost touch with all of her friends from Neptune. Jackie traveled to New York for college as well, but without Wallace there as a mediator, she and Veronica were no longer obligated to be friends. Mac predictably went to MIT. Duncan never resurfaced, and she and Logan hadn't spoken since their awkward affair senior year. She had buried the hatchet with a few '09ers like Beaver and Shelley, but they had never fully become friends again, so once they graduated, that was the end of that. Even Wallace, who had moved to Chicago to live with his dad and attend Illinois State on basketball scholarship, had stopped calling and e-mailing.
When Veronica graduated, she moved back to Neptune to take over Mars Investigations. Keith retired, though he still helped her out every once and awhile. In the mornings, she brought him the newspaper and walked Backup for him, and when she returned he had breakfast waiting for her. Cooking was one of the many hobbies he had taken up with his newfound free time, and it was also how he had met Paula, who was now sharing the apartment. On one hand, it made Veronica unspeakably happy to see her father so head-over-heels in love. On the other hand, watching them laugh and tease and finish each others' sentences over waffles or French toast or cinnamon rolls only seemed to highlight the fact that she was living in a lonely apartment, running herself into the ground single-handedly running an entire agency because she had nothing else.
One night, she stopped for a coffee break at the gas station on Burget and Sandoval only to look up and sees that the clerk was none other than Eli's cousin Chardo. She knew she should get back on the road before she possibly lost the suspect she was tailing, but instead she struck up small talk with him. She didn't know if he recognized her or not - some days she barely recognized herself. Still she asked how his cousin was doing, and he smirked and asked which one. When she said Eli's name, he shrugged.
Eli had graduated from college, taken a job up in Maine, and no one had seen him since, Veronica learned. He had cut himself off from everyone, even the people he loved.
Maybe they weren't so different after all.
After nine months of nonstop work, Veronica had met a lawyer named Scott. Scott was safe and easy and even a little boring; their courtship had consisted of several dinner dates, some picnics, walks on the beach, trips to his lake house. Scott knew budding private eyes that wanted work wherever they could get it, and suddenly Veronica found herself with a full staff and actual free time. Last week Scott proposed and she said yes. Paula and her father congratulated her, but between the two of them, their excitement probably outweighed her own.
She lives with Scott now, in his modern seaside house with a view. They have a maid that cleans for them and a cook that cooks for them. But on Sundays, the only day Scott doesn't have to go into the office at an ungodly hour, he gives them the day off and cooks Veronica breakfast as she lounges on the couch in an expensive silk robe reading the paper. He makes her omelets, one of the few things he knows how to cook. Scott eats his plain, maybe with a little salt or pepper. Veronica adds oregano and ketchup and a variety of other spices to hers, but they never quite taste right.