Title: Worthy
Author: Aeneas
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Summary: It's Felix who gets Eli home.
Spoilers: Through Rashard and Wallace Go to White Castle
Pairings: Weevil/Felix if you squint
Disclaimer: Everything Veronica Mars belongs to Rob Thomas and all the wonderful people who make the show happen.
Notes: Many thanks toKurukami for a lightning fast beta. This is for SoundingSea and the Unconventional Pairings ficathon. Hope it was "pairing" enough…
It's Felix who gets Eli home.
He doesn't think about it, lying there with more broken than isn't and the rest – make that all – of the PCH club roaring off into the distance. Brain function has been reduced to trying to breathe, trying not to pass out, trying not to be scared. One arm holding tight to ribs that feel like splinters; clutching, grappling with the other to find purchase enough to drag himself to his feet.
"Didn't I tell you, man?" Felix has that silly grin on his face, standing above him with his head tipped to the side. "No way I was gonna get my ass killed by some 09er. Been tellin' you all along."
"You're," Eli chokes on blood, on the word dead, on the pain swelling up in his throat and cutting off air.
"'Specially after we got through with him, man. Weren't no way he was gonna be walking away after what he did to you." Felix shakes his head as he crouches down, elbows on his knees and resembling a misshapen grasshopper. "Not that I blame you for trusting Thumper. He was one of us boys, you know. Shoulda been able to take his word."
Finding solidity enough to lean against, Eli counts sitting up as a victory and stops moving to gasp for breath. Salt-laden sweat is oozing into his wounds like a thousand stinging scorpions too small to see crawling over his skin. He figures his vision's out of whack anyway, if he's thinking that Felix is anywhere near him and actually moving about in a non-zombie-like fashion. Which means his hearing is blitzed as well, because he's sure that's Felix's voice too.
"Shouldna ended this way, bro," Felix commiserates sadly.
Eli grits his teeth to keep from moaning as he bends his knees, slowly pulling them toward his chest. "Fuck them."
"Nah, you don't mean that. You were just lookin' out for 'em, is all. Thumper'll figure that out eventually. When the Fitzpatricks put him six feet under like Gus."
"Hope I live to see the day," he says, knowing he doesn't really mean it. If something happens to Thumper, he wants to be the one doling out justice, not the Fitzpatricks. They'll bury Thumper over a few missing dollars soaked with coke rather than Felix's murder.
"What's in it for you, man? Seeing Thumper get put down. What's that get you?"
He looks at Felix like he's lost his mind. "You're the fucking ghost, you tell me."
"Come on, man. Life don't end after high school. You gotta think of something."
"Like what? Trucking school? Think I should be like you and Molly, all cozied up and screaming at each other when you're not banging each other's brains out?" Wincing, he finds a sturdy piece of metal that's strong enough to bear his weight and drags himself up with more willpower than strength.
"You got potential, man! All those teachers kept telling you. All you gotta do--"
"Is be someone I ain't." His legs are jello wobbly, almost too unsteady to hold him upright. "Don't you think I want better than this? Come on, man. This is Neptune. Ain't nothing gonna change for me."
"Being out of the PCH ain't the end of the world, Weevil. Ain't the end of you. Hell, man, you're just gettin' started. Got the rest of your life ahead of you."
When he opens his mouth to disagree, he sees nothing but darkness to argue with. He wipes blood out of his eyes and silently prays that whatever got hit hard enough to cause him to hallucinate isn't going to be permanently broken. It takes effort to even think about how many blocks he has to cover to get home and even more effort to not think about what he's going to tell his grandmother when he stumbles through the door. She'll want to take him to the hospital.
They can't afford it.
He prods his legs into action and eventually settles into a slow, steady pace that will get him home before dawn and doesn't jar his injuries badly enough that he's ready to pass out at each step. What he wants more than anything is to lie down and close his eyes. Somewhere in his mind, he knows that's a bad idea. Fall asleep and never wake up, that's what could happen if he stops moving.
Time gets all jumbled up in his brain, leaving him feeling as though the night is going to last forever. This night is going to last forever and he'll always be the outcast, the left behind, the betrayed. At the same time, he knows how it must look to the others. Slumming with Logan Echolls isn't exactly a shining accomplishment. But what hurts the worst is that a lying, pathetic 09er was the only person he could trust to tell him the truth about that night.
Thumper will get his. One way or another. The way of the world is that the snake eats the rat, not the other way around and he knows – he knows – that Felix is right. Out of the PCH isn't the end of the world.
He stumbles on a crack in the sidewalk barely wide enough to fit his pinky finger into, but in his state of mind, it feels like the Grand Canyon. Head spinning, he stops and grabs onto anything stable as his knees buckle. Just two seconds. He just needs to close his eyes for two seconds to let the dizziness pass.
"Yo, Weevil!" Felix's voice reverberates through his aching skull. "What'd you think of the tattoo, man? Of Molly."
"Think you'll regret it, man. Don't never let a woman get under your skin like that. Told you a hundred times. That shit's permanent and you'll have to look at it forever once she's left your sorry ass." There's pain and more blood as he hits the ground, barely able to catch himself before he lands face first on the pavement. Hopes that no one sees him, hopes that no one calls the cops. He just wants to get home – please, God, let him get home – and pretend he's got the flu or something.
"That why you put Lilly's name on your back? So you wouldn't have to see it 'less you turned around. Unless you looked back…faced your past," Felix asks soberly.
"Now I know you ain't really Felix." Blinking up at the apparition or ghost or hallucination, whatever it was, he tries to loosen his hold on his ribs to see if that will ease some of the pain. "He never thought past what to put on his cereal."
"Yeah, well. Ain't much to do in the afterlife, you know. Other than think about shit and bug the hell out of the living." There's the crazy grin that always made Eli laugh, even on a bad day when he was trapped in a dead end life in a dead end town and Lilly Kane was accusing him of stalking her.
"Miss you, man," he says softly.
"Don't go soft on me now, bro. Still got plenty of years to live and more tats to get. Get up, Weevil. You can do it."
"Go to hell." But he forces himself back onto his feet, inch by agonizing inch, and Felix has once again vanished when he's standing. Right foot, left foot. He counts each step as he takes it, not bothering to add them up because he can't actually remember what number follows the last. Just one and two and four, then back to one again. He hits five once and finds comfort in being able to do that.
The promise of revenge keeps his feet moving when they feel as heavy as lead. Not for the beating, not for the betrayal, but for Felix and blood that shouldn't have been spilt. Felix was a good kid who got slit open because he fell in love. And Eli desperately wants to believe in love, believe that it matters, that it conquers, and that there will be fucking fireworks when he finally finds it again. He wants to believe that he'd be willing to lie there on the bridge, a knife in his gut, and believe that she's worth dying for.
He wants to believe that Felix died for something.
As soon as he closes his eyes, leaning against a streetlight for support, the voice – he's losing his mind – is there again. "Got it all wrong, Weevil. You do want you're thinkin' about doin' and it won't change me being dead or nothing. Just land you in jail."
"Shut up, Felix," he replies hoarsely.
"I ain't worth jail, man," Felix insists.
"You are to me," his voice breaks, snaps under the pressure of pain and hallucination. "Jesus, Felix. You are to me." There are tears in his eyes that have nothing to do with broken ribs or black eyes.
He doesn't fight it when he feels someone's arm wrap around his shoulders and lift him back to his feet – when did he fall? – and his legs clumsily manage to function. Fingers are gripping warm leather, smooth and supple from wear. He recognizes the placement of the buttons, the shape of the lapel, and the subtle scent of those damn clove cigarettes that Wanda got Felix hooked on. For the first time, he doesn't know what's real and what isn't.
"Felix?"
"I've got you, Eli, I've got you."