Title: Just One Look

Author: Lorelai Love Spencer-Meraz

Beta: xXxJamesMaslow'sDiamondxXx

Setting: Hearst College Years.

Collection: The Sun and Moon WeeVer Chronicles

Notes: This is a somewhat future fic, in that I expand on V. Mars in college. I am running on the assumption that she doesn't choose Logan after the big "I love you!" And I don't like Piz all that much soooooo, he is not mentioned and does NOT exist in my 'verse. Please R&R and let me know what you think.

One look.

She could say everything with one look. Eli "Weevil" Navarro had figured that out a long time ago, though he couldn't figure out when. Nope, scratch that – he knew the exact moment.

Even now, it struck him as hilarious that superspy Veronica Mars hadn't realized that the PCH-ers were watching her every move. But she hadn't. He thought for sure that they had the upper hand when he and his PCH brothers rolled up, that she'd rolled down her window because she somehow understood that you just didn't mess with PCH-ers and that she'd gotten lucky at school. He should've known, should've listened to the tiny, nagging voice in the back of his head that said: "Ten cuidado – she's probably got something up her sleeve." And she did - Felix would still be bitching about the taser and the Pit days later.

As she sat there, laying out her 'deal' with him, he took a moment to size her up. She had changed in the span of eight months. No longer was she a carbon copy of Lilly, airy and breezy and perky and bubble-gum sweet. She was hard, tough. Her eyes, he noticed, were guarded and he had no doubt that it was more than just Lilly's death that had caused that. Sure, death could shake you and cripple you – he knew that first hand - but this kind of change? No – this change was far too drastic.

"Why you care so much for that skinny Negro anyway?" he'd asked.

Back then, he really wanted to know, but he didn't know why. Back then, he still thought of her as one of them (though somewhat modified), those '09ers that didn't give a fuck about anybody but themselves so he was genuinely curious. And he knew that his boys could never know that – being friendly with an '09er was like breaking every one of the commandments and committing every one of the seven deadly sins – in the same day. So, he'd followed his genuine curiosity with words that would later haunt him. He would beat himself up and spend many sleepless nights obsessing over those words long after they mattered, when their strategic alliance fell away into something that he refused to believe was anything other than friendship.

As those words poured from his mouth, she'd given him a hard glare. And that glare had said everything. It said: "Do you want my help or not?" And he did. He convinced himself that it was for his boys and not because he was intrigued by her, not at all. He'd looked back at his boys and agreed to her terms, on the condition that if she didn't, she and that skinny Negro and her little dog, too, would pay the price. Those words would haunt him later, too. Would he have followed through? Would he have been able to bring himself to harm her? Or would he have left that dirty work to Hector and drowned his shame in tequila under the guise of celebration?

"What?"

Her voice rocketed him to the present and his eyes met hers, which were now dark with confusion.

"Nothin,' V," he muttered. He leaned back against the wall. "Just wondering what the hell it was you ever saw in that gringo. Not that it's any of my business."

One look. Far different from the disgusted one she'd given Logan's back as he walked past with Parker.

As he picked himself up off the wall and walked off in the same direction that Logan and Parker had, that one look was burned in his mind, saying nothing and everything at all.

I don't believe you.