Title: "I Saw the Water Shimmer"
Author: monimala
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Rating/Classification: some adult language, AU/future fic, angst, sap, Veronica/Weevil.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and no profit is being made. Title is from "Water's Edge," by Cyndi Lauper.
Summary: 2591 words. Taking off from the events of 2.1, "Normal is the Watch Word." This is not an epic story.
Note: I started writing this right after watching the season 2 premiere in 2005 and finally sucked it up and finished it.
Good-bye scenes were supposed to be epic. Crushing. Laden with tears and pleading. But this was Neptune and "supposed to be" was one of those things that was ass-backward, flipped around, and nowhere near what anyone expected.
"I've gotta do this," he whispered, against her hair. And, like always, his voice was just loud enough to be audible over the sound of the surf.
"I know." She was determined not to cry. She hated to cry and he was a sucker for tears and if she gave in to the waterworks, it would make this even harder. As if it wasn't hard enough already. As if it wasn't some bastardized parody of a WB teen show, scripted and set to a Lifehouse song. "I get that."
The leather of his jacket rubbed against her bare back, the zipper catching on the tie of her halter. He untangled it, his fingers barely skimming her, and she knew that at least one other person knew how gentle, how kind, Eli Navarro could be. And it wasn't even a person she could hate.
But she could still envy, couldn't she?
Eli pressed close to her, almost as close as they had been the night before. And he tried the explanation again. The one she didn't need. "Tina's mom...she went crazy, you know?" But maybe he needed it. Maybe he needed to convince himself. "Tina's got nobody. Nobody except me."
"And the baby," she reminded. Three little words that would forever define this moment and every moment from now. Andthebaby. Andthebaby. Andthebaby.
It was the exact right thing to say to get him to step away from her. To untangle *them*. "Good-bye, Veronica Mars," he murmured, sounding so much like Lilly, despite the difference in timbre and tone, that it made the traitorous tears rush to her eyes.
"Uh-uh, vato," she corrected, tilting her head so he would only see the teasing and not the betraying signs of the sobfest she was going to have later, "not good-bye...just hasta luego."
"Count on it."
In the end, that's all it was. Nothing epic. Nothing got crushed.
Much.
***
It seems surreal, off and strange that, after all this time, the two of them are Neptune's most favored children. So much has changed. They're older, hopefully a little wiser. He has hair, longish, pulled back into a neat ponytail -- which she tugs on with some amusement while he notes that hers is the shortest it's ever been -- a butch cut that's easy to maintain on the go.
But some things...some things always stay the same. Like the fact that a chain of auto parts stores up and down the coast hasn't moved him into the 09-er zip and distanced him from his people. Instead, he poured money into the barrio and built up the houses there. They each have a pool, he tells her, with some amusement. And they're both silent for a moment as they remember that year. The Awful Year. When the community pool was burned down along with so many bridges.
"God, look at you," he marvels, pulling her into a hug. And that, too, is the same. Warm, tight, familiar, as his laugh rumbles like a revved up motorcycle. "It has been way too long, Miz CNN."
"Look at *you*," she counters, socking him in the shoulder. "I saw the commercial when I had a network meeting in L.A. 'There is no reliability without Eli.' Nice. Very nice."
His proud smile has an edge of sadness. "My wife came up with that. Man, she was so happy when we got that new store in La Jolla."
"I'm so sorry," she murmurs, taking his hands in hers. "Wallace called me about the accident. I wanted to come to the service..."
He cuts off the condolence with a gentle shake of his head, a subtle plea. *Don't say it, don't make me live through it again*. She's seen it a thousand times in the eyes of survivors. Not denial, but distance. As if walking away, standing apart, from the memory makes it hurt less. "I got your card. And your dad and Alicia showed up. Thank you. That meant a lot to me."
As news of the freak car crash that claimed the lives of local business leader Eli Navarro's wife and young son had spread through Neptune, Veronica had been reporting live from the Gulf. "I watched you when I couldn't sleep," he admits, softly. "That was practically the whole time. Every night. Every hour. Watching you out there was better than seeing their faces every time I closed my eyes." He winced, as if he'd said something terrible, something unholy. "I think she knew, you know? Every time we saw you on TV. She thought I still wanted you. That I was carrying some kind of torch. That I wasn't happy with her and the kids. But I was...I *was*," he assures, fiercely.
"Eli..." she begins, not even knowing how to finish the sentence. "We were just kids ourselves. I don't think Tina would second guess fifteen years of marriage because of a rocky start."
"Rocky? I didn't even really want to marry her, remember?" He pulls away, walks toward the water's edge. "I just did it because I thought I had to. Because I thought I was being noble. Because Felix was like my brother and I had to honor him, protect what was his. I had no idea that what was his was gonna turn out to be mine. And now...now I can't believe I'm living my life without her and Stevie in it."
"How's Ana taking it?" she wonders, dimly remembering a gap-toothed little girl seen from a distance on alternate holidays. It had always been too painful to get any closer. "Is she... okay?"
"You mean...is she a punk with a chip on her shoulder in a biker gang like her old man?" Some of the haunted look melts away into pride as he digs into his wallet for the yearbook photo of a dark-haired teen with a disarming grin. "No way, Veronica. My Anastacia's on the honor roll and mija knows that if she stays there for the next year, she gets a Harley -- *and* she's on the basketball team. Star forward on the JV squad."
She doesn't tell him that she knew that. Wallace, the boys' coach, has been praising Ana's jump shot all year. She can't blame her stepbrother for tossing salt in old wounds... she's never told him what had -- or, in this case, *hadn't* -- happened between her and Weevil. She makes the appropriate noises over the picture, noting, ruefully, "She takes after Tina, doesn't she? She's lovely."
There is no rancor, no bitterness, now. Something else that has changed.
"Lucky thing, too," Eli laughs. "Felix was an ugly son-of-a-bitch."
***
When he was named the Neptune Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year a few years before, her dad sent her the article. The write-up had remarked on the fact that Eli Navarro's youthful criminal record had given way to a record of selfless service with one pivotal act: marrying the pregnant girlfriend of his murdered best friend.
They had no idea how selfless he was capable of being.
It had been Homecoming and, despite the somber mood that still hung over the whole school, Veronica's triumphant return to full 09er status. Belle of the Ball. Queen on the arm of the king. In her heart, she'd known the honor and the dance with Duncan belonged to Meg. And maybe Duncan had known that, too.
They'd fought over something dumb: the spiked punch, the AP History mid-term. They had a lot of dumb fights that year without Lilly and Logan to mediate with one-liners. She doesn't remember most of them now. She'd stormed out to the parking lot for air, twirling the tiara and ready to throw it at the next person who looked at her cross-eyed. That next person had been Weevil.
"You wanna point that thing elsewhere, Highness?" he'd asked.
*They* had a lot of dumb fights, too. So, they'd worked out a compromise of sorts. A way they could still be friends despite the zip code-wide divide that had sprung up between them since Logan had walked. So, she hopped on the back of his bike, her demure party dress hiked up around her thighs, and they'd taken off. They rode for hours, up the coast and back down it, until the wind had started to bite into her skin and he pulled over to wrap her in his jacket.
She may not remember the fights, but she remembers every detail of that ride. Every minute, every second.
"Why do you always come to my rescue? Even now?"
"I think you know, V."
"Do I? I feel like I don't know anything anymore."
"Then let me break it down for you."
When mortar fire had trapped her in the rubble of downtown Damascus for fourteen hours, it was that kiss she relived. Not her first with Duncan. Not one of a hundred steamy ones shared with Logan in spaces more cramped. Not the one her ex-husband had planted on her after the "I do" and before the "ex."
It was barely a kiss at all. Soft. Restrained. Not something you'd expect from the boy whose name was scrawled all over the girls' bathroom as the hottest fuck in Neptune. No tongue, no pressure, feather-light against her mouth before he pulled away and started down the steep incline to the beach. She'd followed him to the ocean, kicking off her strappy sandals and curling her bare toes in the sand.
"I'm in love with you, V," he'd said, over the roar of the waves. "I can't seem to make it stop."
"Who says you have to?"
"Haven't you noticed? Pretty much everybody," he'd laughed, bitterly. "There's practically a committee -- with your two rich boys heading it up."
"But you have no complaints from *me*," she'd told him, lightly, realizing even as she joked that it was true.
And she'd had no complaints when he took her in his arms.
And, of course, Murphy's Law and Mars' Luck...the very next day, Tina's mother had kicked her out of the house.
Within a month, Eli had been standing up in church, tugging at a scratchy collar as he took vows before God to love and honor till death did they part. And with just one semester left before graduation, he dropped out to work full time at his uncle's garage.
And by the time Veronica left for UCLA, he'd been a husband and father in more than just name only.
Their one night had been filed away, locked tight in a cabinet labeled "What Might Have Been."
For fifteen years.
No, sixteen.
She's waited one year out of respect for the dead...or maybe just to work up the nerve to come back.
***
Veronica walks to the water's edge, curling her bare toes in the sand. His house is just up the shore. A beach bungalow with a gorgeous deck facing the ocean. It's practically just a few feet from the 90909 line. But it doesn't cross it. A distinction she knows he's proud of.
"Why are you back, Veronica? Why now?" he wonders, following her.
"I took a job at the paper. They offered me Editor-in-Chief," she murmurs. "I thought it was time to come home, settle down. Wallace has been after me for years. He says the kids miss their Auntie Ronnie."
She shudders and Eli laughs at her exaggerated revulsion. "They don't really call you 'Auntie Ronnie', do they?"
"Kaya and Justin are *way* too smart for that," she assures, with a measure of pride. "And I'm glad I'll get the chance to watch them grow up."
"True that," he acknowledges, joining her by the surf as it comes in for evening tide. "There's nothing more amazing in the world than watching kids figure themselves out. But that's not the only reason you quit globe-trotting...is it, V?"
"Not nearly," she breathes.
She and Duncan had dated all the way till Christmas of their freshman year of college before finally accepting that the fairy tale was over and they couldn't recapture what they'd lost in high school. And when she'd married Fox Anderson in Morocco a few years later, it was more because the cocky photojournalist had a glint in his eye and a glib tongue that reminded her of Logan than for anything else. They'd burned just as hot and crashed just as fast.
She's had lovers. She and Duncan finally got to that place, having sex that they both remembered, and did it often until they drifted apart. A few guys in grad school. Fox was ridiculously good at it...and half the female reporters in the business -- and possibly some of the male ones --could testify to that. Hence the speedy divorce.
Teenagers always thought they invented sex, that the eagerness and the fumbling and the oh-my-God-right-now was the best of passion. Making love to Eli that one time had been all of that.
But she knows that coming to him as an adult will be better than the best.
Skills exaggerated in bathroom graffiti are honed now. Patience has replaced eagerness, confidence taken the place of fumbling. She knows this.
And something she had no definition for, no label for, at eighteen, is something she knows for certain now at 34.
But it might just be too late.
"I'm in love with you," she tells him, quietly. "I can't seem to make it stop."
She hears his sharp intake of breath, watches his fists curl. "You remember that I said that?"
Shields up, Veronica. "Don't flatter yourself," she says, defensively wrapping her arms around herself. "I remember what Gadafi said to me in 2011, too. It's kind of an occupational thing."
"Jesus, V..." He curses fluidly in Spanish, and then, all of a sudden, he's turning to her, dragging her to him by the belt loops of her cargo pants. Until they're so close that she can see the gold flecks in his irises and inhale his mint-laced breath. "I have a life here," he growls, and his defenses rival hers. "I have a business and friends and a daughter. I haven't stood still on this beach waiting for you to come home."
"And I haven't been running all over the world pining for you, my one true love," she points out, conveniently forgetting Damascus since it's her nightmares where she remembers it best anyway. "And yet...here we are."
"Here we are," he echoes. He tilts his head back, staring up at the sky like it might hold the answers to sixteen years worth of questions. "So, where are we supposed to go next?"
She only knows one place she wants to be. A place she's felt safe and cared for and at peace. And, God, peace is all she wants these days. Peace and quiet and one perfect night.
She steps into it, sliding her arms around his waist and hugging him close. "How about we start with dinner?"
He kisses the top of her head. He tells her, "I wish you could've met Esteban...he would've loved his auntie Ronnie."
And she laughs shakily, damply, tasting the ocean and the future. "I would've loved him, too."
--end--
April 28, 2006.