Title: Top of the Food Chain
Author: Clara Fox
Summary: Weevil only has enough blood to keep up one of two things, and right now that thing needs to be his end of the conversation.
Setting: Expansion of the first long Veronica/Weevil scene from 2x19, "Nevermind the Buttocks," this time from Weevil's perspective. Sequal to "Love of Roller Coasters" and "The Nod."
Rating: M for language.
Disclaimer: The italicized dialogue is transcribed directly from the show and belongs to Rob Thomas and the writers. The rest is my own extrapolation.

Veronica Mars is never hotter than when she's accusing him of something. Weevil wonders if she knows that her confrontations of him are more of a reward for bad behavior than a deterrent. She always approaches him with that little half smile that has more than once threatened to do some serious damage to Weevil's bravado, and sometimes he thinks that the intensity of her eye contact might bring him to his knees if he were any less of a badass.

But Weevil definitely is a badass, and getting more so by the day. When a tiny blonde thing like Veronica Mars is posed to make him vulnerable, he knows that the best way to meet her is usually head-on. And right now she's posed, in every sense of the word.

Wow. You know, you look exactly like this calendar in my uncle's garage.

Well, the girl in the calendar is slightly less clothed than Veronica is at the moment, but Weevil's mind can make that correction with exceedingly little effort.

Dangerously little effort, actually – Weevil only has enough blood to keep up one of two things, and right now that thing needs to be his end of the conversation. Where some guys turn to baseball, Weevil thinks of his ride.

Now hop your ass off before you scratch my paint.

That was as crude as could be expected of Weevil, but instead of bringing his thoughts back to the relatively safe topic of auto shop, it rockets them straight to images of pinning Veronica up against the driver's side door, one hand cushioning the back of her head, the other firmly on her hip, capturing that half smile with his lips and breaking that accusatory stare as both of them shut their eyes to the rest of the world.

Weevil needs to force his mind back to something else, right now. Like bandsaws or wrenches. Or juvie, or community service.

You seen Thumper lately, Weevil?

Or that. There's always that.

It's just, nobody's heard from him in weeks. If he doesn't show up soon, he's going to miss prom.

Weevil has his mind back in control, enough to know that if he ever wants to turn his little fantasies into reality, to move beyond these blazing interactions that leave him aching and leave her smugly satisfied (he assumes), he has to break Veronica Mars of her last remaining trace of naivety. She's still able to convince herself that deep down, he's just a good guy who's been misunderstood. Weevil can be gentle when he wants to be, Weevil can – if he so chooses – love you long time, but he's not nice.

Yeah, well… I'm sure he's crushed.

He certainly is sure about that much. Weevil can't keep himself from grinning a little at his own cleverness. If only he put this much subtlety into his schoolwork, he can imagine her thinking. Though there's no reasonable way she could know what happened to Thumper, unless she also followed Liam to the stadium that night. Which, come to think of it, is a possibility he can't actually rule out.

So I found this in Clemmons' office. According to the note, it was confiscated from your locker the first week of school. A particular reason you needed the Anarchist's Cookbook?

Weevil has seen Veronica in action plenty of times; he has frequently found himself at the business end of her deductive skills. So he isn't that surprised that she discovered the Cookbook, though he's vaguely impressed at her success at getting into Clemmons' office when he has failed so often to do the same. If his dark side disturbs her, she should really take a closer look in the mirror some time.

Yeah. I tried making the "Survivalist Stew." Didn't much care for it.

It must be an interrogation tactic – she's using this information to throw him off his guard, make him admit something about Thumper. Because if it isn't that, she can only be accusing him of something that he won't believe she could accuse him of.

Yeah, on top of the stew, it's also a manual for making bombs in your basement.

Yes, Weevil had wanted her to let go of the idea that he is the kind of biker who sits back and lets the law coddle lowlifes who murder his friends. Yes, he had wanted her to realize that sometimes, beating someone up is as necessary as it is invigorating. But he had never thought, hadn't even begun to start thinking, that she might believe he could blow up a bus full of innocent people. Even Weevil has lines he doesn't cross.

Wait a minute.

He had meant to play it cool, but goes too far to the other side of the sick disbelief he feels, and it starts to come out sounding saucy, or somehow amused. He switches, very quickly and frighteningly easily, to anger.

Just so we understand each other, are you accusing me of blowing up the bus?

Though, they definitely must not understand each other. That couldn't be clearer to Weevil right now.

I'm exploring a theory.

There's nothing hot about her glare right now. She actually believes that he did it, and now he wants to push her up against the car for a completely different reason.

You didn't just happen to be at that gas station out on the PCH. You were following us, Weevil. The explosion didn't kill those people – the drop into the ocean did. Who else could have timed it like that? You could have hit 'send' on your cellphone, blown up the bus without me even knowing it.

Her face is close enough for him to smell the fruity scent of her lip gloss, but Weevil is as far as he has ever been from imagining how Veronica would taste. She doesn't just think that Weevil could blow up a bus with eight people inside it – she thinks that he could blow up a bus with nine people inside it. Veronica thinks that he could have killed her.

Except why would I blow up a bus with one of my boys on it, huh?

And you on it, Veronica, he doesn't say.

You didn't mean to. You and Cervando meant to take out the limo. You, Mr. I-Sacrifice-Rats, you even put a dead one on the bus, to force the rich kids into it.

Weevil wants to point out that back at the time of the field trip, Veronica was essentially one of the rich kids herself – at least, she was fucking the richest of all of them, which should have guaranteed her a place in that limo. But she probably realizes this, maybe this is actually why she's angry – is this about Duncan? – and anyway there's no point in arguing rationally with her right now. She has a theory she wants to lay out, watch Weevil's reaction as she reveals that she knows all. She's done it before, and he's secretly loved seeing the satisfaction on her face as she confirmed that she had caught him. He doesn't know how to convince her that this time, she's entirely wrong.

And what? We got the big, yellow bus and the long, black limo confused?

Sarcasm is the only thing that came to him. It's not his greatest moment.

Nope. You put the bomb in Dick's goody bag. You didn't realize he gave his bag to Bettina.

He doesn't bother asking who Bettina is, or how he was supposed to know which goody bag Dick would get, let alone make the plant without anyone seeing. She must have been determined to believe that he was guilty, to make all of this sound plausible in her head.

You really think any of those '09ers was worth all that effort to me?

Weevil uses fists, not explosions, to make his points, especially back when he still had a gang standing behind him. Veronica knows this – Veronica has chided him for this in the past.

Logan was.

Now she's bringing Echolls into this? He wonders how Veronica really feels about Logan, now. He's heard some of their repartee in the halls, and it's at least as heated as his own confrontations with her. The other ones, at least.

He wasn't even there.

Maybe she does still want Logan, if she can go to such lengths to make the bus crash all about him. During their investigations together, Logan had tossed off enough side comments to give Weevil a fairly clear picture of how that relationship ended; it seemed that Logan hadn't reformed as much as Veronica had wanted him to, was too reckless for her. This is one reason Weevil has never let himself believe that he could have a real shot with Veronica. Even with all the heat that between them, chemistry that she can't possibly ignore and he has stopped trying to deny, Weevil will never be like Duncan. Doesn't want to be. Probably couldn't even if he tried.

He was supposed to be. Are you telling me you wouldn't off the guy who killed Felix?

And there it is. She has him, and he hadn't even seen it coming. He searches her face quickly, suppressing panic. Did she even believe everything she'd been accusing him of, or had she gotten him all worked up about the bus crash in order to blindside him into confirming her suspicions about Thumper? Could she have known that the single thing that could stop him in his tracks was thinking that she believed he could ever put her in harm's way?

On a good day, Veronica Mars was a bit more than Weevil could handle. But now the she knows he killed Thumper, and possibly (probably? she must have) realized that his one soft spot was her own safety, she in every way has the upper hand.

Well, at least you got it right with Thumper. That makes you... top of the food chain again, right, Weevil?

She sounds angry and looks angry, and it is easy to believe that angry is all she is at the moment. Or rather, it would be easy if her fingers weren't burning into his arm, pressing his tricep one by one with an insistence that isn't so much angry as it is… fiercely sensual. As overwhelming as the feeling is, Weevil still would probably chalk it up to wishful thinking, but Veronica is looking at him too steadily as she speaks, holding his gaze for too long afterward, keeping her tongue pressed lightly against the back of her teeth after saying his name, given it the tiniest of flicks before closing her mouth and finally walking away.

And so Weevil wonders as he braces himself against his car. Was that Veronica's version of an ultimatum? A thickly veiled but entirely enticing promise of the possibilities that could open to him should he reform? Weevil admires her more right now than he ever has before, but he is still a man and she still is smoking hot, and so he still does check out her ass as she stalks away.