Title: The Plan
Author: scoob2222
Pairing/Character: Mac/Weevil
Word Count: 1,570
Rating: R (for one very quick sexual situation. It's not graphic and there's no bad language)
Summary: Mac has a plan for her first year of college and it does not include me, and it certainly does not include Eli Navarro
Spoilers: All of season 1 and 2

lj-cut Her plan had been no men for at least a year. She wanted to start college and concentrate on school, and her friends and getting back to a normal steady life where she didn't know people who raped and killed and murdered and she certainly didn't date them.

Which meant it made no sense that less than six months later she was lying half naked on her bed with the ex-leader of the PCH biker gang doing wicked things with his tongue in her ear.

No sense at all.

But once again the fault could be place squarely with Veronica Mars, her best friend, and the bane of her existence all wrapped in one.

It had started with a very short encounter. Veronica had helped get Weevil out of jail in less than two months and as a result he owed her for life, and she reminded him of it often. So, Veronica had forced him into taking her to break into a room and hack into a computer. Well, Weevil did the B&E, she did the hacking. It was a total of twenty minutes together and would have ended at that.

Except they were friends with Veronica and one favor led to another and another, with promises of ten percent of her fee and tune ups and a thousand other things leading to stakeouts, bugging dorm rooms, and threatening, again, Weevil, not her. These led to hours spent waiting in cars, or on the back of motorcycles or, even once in a broken elevator, and let's not even get started on that one.

And those hours had led to conversation, since it was talk or stare in boredom and Weevil hated to be bored and she didn't like it much either so they talked, about her classes, his job and how he hated it, about their families, about how she was really Madison Sinclair. He'd found that so funny that they'd almost gotten busted by their suspect. And eventually they talked about Thumper and how much he'd loved Felix, about how all he wanted was the graduate in front of his grandmother and he couldn't even give her that. And she talked about Cassidy, how sometimes she still couldn't understand how the sweet and shy boy she'd fallen in love with could have been a sadistic murderer.

She tells him all of this and he doesn't try to wash it away, or tell her how to feel, he holds her when she needs to cry and gives her a reality check. She responds in kind, telling him not to use the past as an excuse for never doing anything with his future.

And just like that forced hours spent together become nightly talks on the beach next to a fire, going to crappy movies late at night and throwing popcorn, and curling up in her dorm room—her studying and him drawing pictures he hopes will get him into art school eventually.

It all changed the night she went to a party with Veronica, Logan and Dick. She hadn't wanted to go, but it was Dick's birthday and he all but demanded her attendance, so she dropped by and Weevil, well by now she was calling him Eli, came by to pick her up not long after. Dick was drunk by then and not happy that she was leaving so he attempted to stop her by picking her up and carrying her back inside the house.

Eli had sent him flying back through the air, before promising to permanently injure him if he ever touched her again.

She'd never seen him as angry as he was that night and when he dropped her off at the dorm part of her thought she'd never see him again, but less than two hours later he was back, pressing her up against the door and kissing her until she couldn't think straight, couldn't think period.

That night had brought worried conversations from Dick, Veronica, and even, believe it or not Logan. Dick thought Eli was dangerous, Veronica was afraid she was still too vulnerable and Logan thought she would end up terribly hurt, as if Eli could possibly do anything that would top her ex-boyfriend. The next few weeks found Veronica, Logan, and sometimes even Dick crowding their dorm room anytime Eli was around, leading them to find the strangest places to be alone—including a make out session in her car that had led to bruises in interesting places.

Finally, she'd had enough. She'd sat her friends down and said she appreciated their concern but that she wanted them to mind their own business.

Eventually they had and amazingly enough Eli became her first real, normal relationship.

And somewhere alone the way she fell in love with him.

And that brought them to this moment, on her dorm room bed, Eli watching her intently as he slid the tank top over her head. He'd waited patiently for her to be ready, waited, but never let her forget how much he wanted her, whether it was his leering, which she'd come to find adorable, or his many innuendos, she never had any doubt of how much Eli wanted to have sex with her. No, how much he wanted to make love to her.

"Baby," he questioned as he pressed kisses along the top of her bra, "you okay?"

"Yeah," she said and was surprised by how husky her voice sounded, "I'm fine. I'm just thinking."

"Come on," he said, raising his eye brows and looking slightly affronted, "I'm doing some great work here," he emphasized by sucking a nipple into his mouth through the material of her bra and smiling as she gasped, "That's more like it."

"You have such a huge ego."

He leered and she held her hand up, "I know, I know, it's not the only thing that's huge. You really need some knew material."

"No," he said and returned his mouth to her breast, "You just need to stop talking so much."

Mac knew he felt her body tense because he pulled away, completely this time and he moved to lay next to her in the small bed, "Mac, what's wrong? We don't have to do this, ya know. We don't have to do anything your not ready for."

"I'm ready," she said, "I'm just nervous."

"So let's wait until your not."

"But I'm never not going to be nervous. I mean, I've never done this before, and you have, a lot, and considering how the last time went…"

"That's what's really bothering you," he said, his hand running through her hair, which was blue again, his favorite.

"What?"

"The other stuff, you say it's bothering you, but that's not really it," he's not looking at her accusingly, only concern in his eyes.

She has to close her eyes, because she doesn't know how to say this. She trusts Eli, really, really trusts him, in a way she never thought she'd trust someone again. She knows how important trust is to him, and she doesn't want him to think he doesn't trust her. But she's not going to lie to him anyway. So, sighing, she turns her body to face his, her head resting on his arm... He turns to his side and put his other hand on her hip to keep her body close to his.

"It's not that I don't trust you, or that I ever think you did what….what Cassidy did to me," she finishes, and even now it is hard to say out loud, "But the only experience I have that even came near to sex ended with me huddled on the floor with a shower curtain around me."

Eli's eyes close and his hands clench on her body, and she remembers the first time she told him about that night, when she'd told him the whole story, and the way he'd flipped out and told her he'd kill anyone who ever thought of hurting her again. His face had been full of rage, then kindness as he's held her. And that was the moment she knew she was in love with him.

He said nothing and instead sat up. His hand moved to his neck and he removed the silver cross he always wore. She didn't know where it came from, had never asked about it before, and although she noticed that he'd never taken it off. He gestures for her to sit up and fastens the necklace on her neck so it rests in the valley between her breasts. She looks down at it and waits for him to speak.

"That belonged to my sister, Maria. It was her favorite thing because my dad gave it to her right before he went to prison. Three months after he went to prison Maria was hit by a drunk driver. She died before she even got to the hospital."

Mac said nothing, just stared down at the cross and watched his fingers trailed over it.

His head rose and she met his eyes, "My grandmother gave me the cross and I haven't taken it off since."

"Eli…" she started, but he quickly cut her off.

"Now, you have the cross and you know that I won't take off and leave you. Ever."

And when Eli leaned forward and kissed her softly she was so sure that everything had gone exactly to plan after all. lj-cut