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Getting up balls early to drive to Neptune Airport isn’t exactly what he thinks of as a good time, but it’s what he did this morning. Kissed his wife goodbye, got into his baby, and drove off into the sunrise.
Echolls said she’d be on the first flight out of New York, and he’s sure she will be. He’s also sure, since she never bothered to give him a ring, that she’s planning on sneaking back into town like a thief instead of asking someone for some help.
Which is why he’s here. To thwart her.
He smirks as he looks at the Cinnabun across from where the departures from New York get out. This was the best positioning he could have asked for, because the mirror above the stand lets him see everything happening behind him.
So he sees her face as she recognizes him. Sees her panicked look. Sees the wheels go round in her head as she tries to figure out how to sneak off.
Joke’s on her, because security won’t let her back in the way she came. And this is the only corridor out into Neptune proper from that direction anyway.
He wants to head all that off at the pass, though. Because if there’s one thing he’s sure hasn’t changed about Veronica Mars, aside from the fact that she’s almost terminally allergic to asking for help, is her ability to lie, cheat, and flirt her way into an alternate route.
He turns around and catches her eye, grins wide and long. Because she’s there, in the flesh. Calls to her over the crowd, “The prodigal child returns”, and watches her grimace. He’s gotten one over on her, and it gives him a little kick to his step as he makes his way toward her.
The kick to his step gets a bit more juice when he realizes she’s checking him out. Yeah, he’s got a smoking hot wife he loves with almost all his heart. But Vee’s the girl he crushed on, and she’s still gorgeous too. So the ego boost alone is enough to make him ask, “See something you like?”
She stiffens, and scoffs at him. “Hardly. More like trying to figure out what you’re doing here, because it can’t be for me. I didn’t call you to tell you when I was getting in.”
“You told the boss man you were going to get here by morning. I might not be the licensed PI out of the two of us, but even I can look at flight schedules and put together the pieces, Vee.” He grins at her, and everything he ever loved about her floods back as she gives him that look. It’s the look that says she knows she’s been bested, but won’t ever stand down. He loves how she won’t ever back down, still.
“Weevil -”
“It’s Eli now,” he tells her. And it’s true but it isn’t all at the same time. He doesn’t think of himself as Eli. It’s not the name he gives himself, in his own head, with his own thoughts. He’s not really Weevil anymore, though, especially not to her. Weevil was a gang leader, a felon, a guy with few prospects and - last she saw him - at the end of his rope. He’s not that guy. Not anymore.
She blinks at him, and flushes. He almost backtracks. Almost tells her he’ll still be Weevil for her. But he doesn’t get it out before she says peevishly, “Fine. Well, it’s Veronica now.”
He can’t do anything but pull her to him in response. “Give me some love, chica. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.”
She lets him fold her into his embrace, and he wants to thank her for that. For not fighting him on this. She relaxes in his arms, and he feels her forehead press into his shoulder. Her fingers crinkle the leather, and she squeezes him, gently.
“It’s good to be back,” she tells him, and he snorts at her, sure that it isn’t. He almost misses the second part. “I missed you.”
“Yeah?” He releases her and grabs for her bag with one hand as he rubs his head with the other. “Good to hear. Because I thought we were tight, but then you just up and vanished on me,” he chides.
“It wasn’t you,” she explains to him as he leads her out into the world, and he winces at the ache in her voice. “I just couldn’t stay.”
“Yeah. I get you.” He does. He knows why she left. How she pushed herself harder faster more until it made her snap. How he was next to her, would have been next to her, if she’d asked, no matter the cost to him or her. How Neptune was a poison that seeped into all of their veins, his and hers and Echolls’ more than others, and how she was strong enough to fight and delicate enough to break.
He gets it, and he doesn’t want to be the reason she beats herself up. Not anymore.
She smiles sadly at him, and wraps her arms around herself. “Yeah.”
“After you left, I got on the real straight and narrow,” he tells her casually. Wants her to know it. Wants her to get that her getting out didn’t damn him. “Got arrested just the once more before your dad hooked me up with another job, at his mechanic’s. I think he called in a favor or something. You have anything to do with that?”
“I may have requested one last get out of jail free card,” she tells him, and he reaches out and wraps his free arm around her shoulder.
“I was pissed as hell at you, that you didn’t come back,” he tells her. “Sheriff told me you didn’t want to know nothing about me, so he wasn’t even going to pass my message to you on. And then, the doors just opened and I was working with my tools at a place that didn’t double as a chop shop. And it hit me: Sheriff likes me fine, yeah, but only one Mars would stick her neck out that far for me. So, thanks.”
He’s been waiting a long time to tell her that. To let her know that he knows what she did for him. That he appreciated it then and is awed by it now. That she’s still this bright shining light when he looks back over his life. But that’s too sentimental to tell her, that she was his guardian angel. So he tells her another truth instead.
“I do get it, you know. Because I probably would have kept wanting to do all sorts of illegal shit if you were around to do it for, or to get me out when it came down to it. Once you were gone-gone, man, it was a wake up.”
He’s made her uncomfortable, he knows, because she turns away from him and her face goes tight. But then she’s turning back and staring at him in wonder and asks, “Eli Navarro, did some woman make you an honest man?”
He grins bashfully at her. He can’t help it. Miranda does funny things to him, makes him a believer in happily ever afters and true love and shit like that. Miranda made him a guy who didn’t think dropping a couple thousand on matching rings was a stupid move. (Most of the time.) She was a girl - is a woman - he thinks would get Vee. A woman Vee would get.
“Yeah. I, uh, I wanted to tell you. Was gonna make you my best man, you know, if I tracked you down. Found an address for you and everything, sent you an invite through the USPS. Guess it never got to you,” he explains. It’s a pain that never receded, the fact that the spot next to him at the altar was empty. Echolls was down the line, but he didn’t ask anyone to stand beside him.
Miranda asked once, and he told her the truth. His first best friend got knifed, and his second disappeared without a trace.
He never did share that with Echolls. He’s not sure if it was because he was afraid Echolls could reach her, or because he was afraid he couldn’t.
“I moved around a lot,” she offers, breaking into his reminiscence. “I didn’t get it. I would have come, if I had.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re here now, aren’t you?”
She leans into him again, presses her side against his, and sighs. He hugs her shoulder in return, holds in his own happy sigh as he leads her to his car. Proudly waiting on her assessment.
Her assessment is, “What is this?”
“This,” he answers, “is my baby. A 1967 Pontiac GTO. Rebuilt it from the rust up. It was my first major project for me, you know. Something I could keep. Call my own.”
He thinks back about the days, the nights, of tracking down parts. Never hot ones. Of buffing it out. Of picking out the right color paint for the period. It was his yoga, his meditation style. Go to the garage, and build a car, legal and right. Something no one could take from him. Something to be just his.
She’s still staring at it, mouth agape, after he’s loaded up her shit, and he just grins. She approves.
“You gonna get in it, or are you just gonna eye fuck it all day?”
“Both?” she answers. “It’s you, Weevil. It’s you as a car.”
He leans onto the roof and grins at her again. “And what are you driving these days, Miss Daisy?”
“I’m a New Yorker, now. My ride is the 6 train.” She eyes drift, and he wants to follow her to wherever it is she just went. And then she snaps back into herself and smiles at him. “It’s an exercise in experiencing a loss of control, most days.”
He smirks, and opens the door for her. “You never did do too well when you weren’t the one behind the wheel.”
She scowls at him, and climbs in.
It’s a couple of minutes of silence, comfortable and sweet, before Vee breaks it. He knew she would. He needs to know about her life less than she craves knowing about Neptune, and that’s a truth he trusted to never have changed.
“How did you and Logan hook up, anyway?” She asks it casually, which just proves how fixated she is on it.
He glances over at Vee, casually, and his eyes smile even as he manages to keep one from his lips. “It bother you?”
“Why would it?”
“Because.” He turns to her completely after hitting a red light. “You’re not behind the wheel.”
She huffs, and turns away from him, and he laughs at her. She answers with a, “Light’s green,” and he knows.
He taps the gas. Decides to fill her in. “I don’t know what your dad told you, about Echolls.”
She goes silent, and the light she shines dims a bit. He doesn’t need to look to know that her eyes are dark and gloomy.
“Yeah, I guess I should have figured that,” he mutters, because he did see it coming. “He was in a bad place, after you were gone. I think he figured, whatever it was that kept drawing the two of you together would keep working it’s magic. And when you vamoosed, it kicked him in the teeth. But me, I had that one moment where you stepped in. So, I decided to pass it along.”
She draws in a shuddering breath, and even though he doesn’t want her to hurt any more, he presses on. He needs her to know. She needs to hear it before she sees Echolls. He needs her to know that he understood, even if Echolls didn’t and still doesn’t. He needs her to know he took care of the guy in her absence, until he turned into him just taking care of the guy because.
“I told him that it wasn’t us, and it wasn’t on us that you couldn’t stay. I told him that you were a bitch, and he punched me, hard, and we fought. And then we drank. And then he’d call me when he’d gotten himself in some shit, or I’d call him when I figured he needed to get drunk and beat the shit out with someone who wasn’t going to hold a grudge. And then one day, I’m working at the garage, fixing up my baby,” he tells her as he runs his hand over the dash, “and I get this call. And it’s Echolls, looking for a guy Friday. He figured I was probably up for it. So, there it is.”
“And now you’re picking me up at the airport for him,” she drawls, but there’s still the questioning at the tail end of it. She doesn’t get it, not yet, and he doesn’t know how to explain it to her.
So he laughs instead, and she joins in. “Yeah. We’re not, you know, best friends or anything. But we’re the two who were left.”
It is what it is, he wants to say. Echolls was the guy who he could drink with, who he could talk about her with. Who he could, eventually, talk about Lilly with. Echolls was the one who got it, him, in ways no one else did.
He tried to talk to Fennel once, but the kid side eyed him and then slipped away without so much as a parting shot. He didn’t bother with Mac. He figured out they were still on Vee’s radar, when he and Echolls clearly weren’t. So, that left Echolls.
The station comes into view, and her body tightens. He feels it, rather than sees it. Vee always did manage to control the temperature of the room, and right now his car is humming with pent up energy. And what he’s going to say to her after her turns off the car isn’t going to make it any less present.
“Listen, Vee, you’re still my girl. But he’s someone to me now, too. Got me?”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t know if she does though, because she just sits and stares ahead at the building.
“You know,” she confides, “I don’t know what I was more scared of, a Neptune that was exactly the same as I left it or one where everyone moved on.”
He hugs her again, because she needs it. But also because he’s spent the last nine years without it, and he’s going to take every moment he’s got with her. “Vee, we grew up. But we didn’t move on. At least, not me. And not him. You’re still someone I’m glad to know. You’re still someone I love.”
“You don’t even know me anymore,” she weakly protests, and he laughs at her outright. Because she’s still Vee, still Veronica Mars, still hard ass and still loyal as fuck. Still won’t ask for help, and still desperate for answers.
She’s calmer now, and she seems like she’s more in control. But the idea that he doesn’t know her, that it’s even a possibility, is ridiculous. But telling her that is a sure fire way to get her obstinate, so he goes the other way with it instead.
“You telling me you don’t love me?” She shakes her head. “So, what’s to stop me from loving you? And I know you, Veronica Mars. You hopped a plane because a guy told you he needed you. There’s nothing more you than that.”
“What’s his bail?”
“He doesn’t have one set yet.” He shifts. Decides that’s a bridge Echolls can walk, or not. “Listen, Vee, I don’t know what you know about the town any more.”
“Assume I’m Sergeant Schultz here,” she tells him, and he laughs.
“Alright, well, there’s a new Lamb in charge - Dan Lamb, and he’s about as big a dick as the original. And he feels about the same way toward Logan, and me, so there’s that.”
Veronica nods. “What you’re telling me is that Logan’s not getting bail until he has to.”
Relief floods through him. “Yeah. On the plus side, I’m going to be waiting to drive your ass all around town, because you don’t have a car yet.”
Veronica laughs. “Oh, great.”
He smiles at her again, enjoying the calm in the middle of the storm. “Yeah, isn’t it? We can play catch up after we get out of this shit hole.”