VM fic: Weak, But Not Giving In
Weak, But Not Giving In
Rating: R
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Pairing: Beaver/Mac, implied Beaver/Dick
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns all.
Summary: A summary would be too spoilery
Spoilers: All of season two. DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE SEASON FINALE!
Author's Note: Thank you so much to my beta, snoopypez, for catching my spelling mistakes and telling me this is good enough to post, even thought it's different from my normal writing style. :3 Oh, and the title is inspired by Rilo Kiley's A Better Son/Daughter.
Weak, But Not Giving In
When he opens his eyes again, all he sees is white, and he’s not sure what he was expecting, but it isn’t this. He thought he’d maybe see Lilly, but he didn’t want to because though everyone loved her, he still thought she was kind of a cunt and she made Logan cry and he kind of hated that, though Logan probably deserved it.
He thought it might see Meg and out of anyone, he knew she wouldn’t be mad at him, because she was nice and forgiving and he never meant for her to be on the bus, but she was mad at Duncan or something stupid and didn’t want to ride back in the limo.
What he didn’t expect to see when he opened his eyes, however, was the sheriff. Lamb is talking to Kendall and someone else…there are words being thrown around that Cassidy doesn’t understand because how can ‘murderer’ or ‘rapist’ apply to him when he’s dead?
He’s not sure if he tries to speak or not, but even if he did, he couldn’t say anything because there was a tube down his throat and everything is so bright that he just shakes his head and closes his eyes again.
+++
It’s three weeks later the next time he opens them and no ones there. He understands now that he didn’t die and isn’t sure how he feels about that.
There isn’t anyone waiting for him to see if he’s woken up…he’s just alone with tubes and needles and machines that are beeping so loud they hurt his ears. He’s more scared than he’d admit and he tries to keep his eyes open as long as he can to see if anyone will come for him, but they don’t and soon tears are blurring his vision too much anyway, so he gives up and dozes off again. It isn’t worth it.
+++
Two months have gone by and he can get out of bed now. The doctors tell him he’s lucky he didn’t suffer any brain damage and his broken legs have healed, though he still has to use a walker when he walks, because he’s so weak.
He’s lost twenty pounds and there are pins in his left arm, holding the bones in place while they heal.
There are endless mental health tests and stupid questions that they ask him: like if he knows what year it is or where he is. He passes those tests easily, and he isn’t sure how he does with the mental health ones, because those aren’t supposed to have right answers, anyway, are they?
There is only one question he can never answer.
They ask him if he knows his name.
He says Cassidy, but it sounds foreign.
He says Beaver, but it comes out hateful.
In the end he just shakes his head, says he doesn’t know, and throws up all over his hospital gown.
They don’t ask him again.
+++
He doesn’t know how much time has passed now. Kendall has been to see him exactly once: to tell him that he can get off with a plea bargain. Temporary insanity.
He just nods, but he doesn’t know how temporary it is if he’s felt this way since he was eleven.
His trial is in nine months and he’s confused for a moment what exactly he’s being tried for, because it seems like a lifetime ago, but then he remembers again and it scares him, because he’s not really sorry for it, no matter how much he wants to be.
A week later, his real mother calls him on the phone. It’s a short conversation, because he doesn’t know how to explain and all she can seem to say is “Oh, Cassidy.” She asks him if he’d have been happier in Europe with her and he hangs up on her.
He feels like screaming, but if he started, he might never be able to stop, so he just sits there and stares at his hospital bracelet until the typed black words on it start to blur.
Mac doesn’t visit him…but she does drop off a letter she’d written him. When the nurse hands it to him, he just sets it aside. He doesn’t want to know what she has to say.
+++
Two and a half months to the date of his attempted suicide, he gets out of the hospital.
Dick comes to pick him up and he looks tan and smells like Bourbon, though it’s only ten in the morning. It’s the first time his brother has been to see him.
He’s so caught off guard to see Dick leaning against the hospital wall that he asks him what he’s doing here.
“I came to get you, fuckwad,” he replies affectionately, crossing the room and smacking Cassidy upside the head, “Let’s go home.”
The room tilts at the smack and he throws up a little in his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything. He just swallows it back down again and nods, sliding out of the bed and putting on a pair of clothes Dick brought him-they don’t fit. He’s lost so much weight.
They ride home in relative silence.
Cassidy’s surprised. He thought there would be questions or accusing looks, but there is nothing. Dick blasts music from the speakers and speeds. He talks about the waves and playing Halo 2 with Logan.
He doesn’t ask Cassidy about Woody Goodman.
When they get home, Dick offers his brother a pot brownie.
Cassidy declines and goes up to his room.
He sleeps for 48 hours.
+++
Logan doesn’t come over to the house anymore-that’s the first thing he notices. Logan won’t even come to the door when Cassidy is home. He just honks and Dick bounds out of the house, surfboard underarm.
Dick doesn’t invite him to do things anymore.
He calls him Cassidy now.
For the first time in his life, Cassidy is now a separate entity. He’s no longer Beaver (DickandBeaver). He’s no longer his brother’s best friend, his constant companion. They don’t share jokes or secrets and when Dick does look at him, he gives him this look like-like ‘why didn’t you tell me? fuck everyone else, you could have told me’
DickandBeaverDickandBeaverDickand-
Cassidy.
+++
Everyone calls him Cassidy now and he secretly wishes they wouldn’t.
He doesn’t look up immediately when he hears the name.
He doesn’t know who this Cassidy is and wishes he’d just go away.
Everyone knows him now.
He’s no longer invisible.
And he just
Wants.
It.
To.
Stop.
+++
Nothing has changed.
Everything has changed.
Nearly six months after the fact, his receives an e-mail from his father.
‘Son, I’m glad to hear you’re okay.’
He doesn’t feel anything when he reads the words.
He prints it out and leaves it on Dick’s bed.
The next morning Cassidy sees it in pieces on Dick’s floor and smiles for the first time in months.
Maybe Dick is starting to get it.
+++
The doctor tells him that he’s okay to go back to school in the fall. He’d rather sail off the top of the Neptune Grand again, but he doesn’t say this.
He smiles and nods.
He’ll be a senior this year.
+++
He’s off pain medication and he can remember his dreams again. A lot of them are in black and white and he wonders when that happened. Wonders if that’s normal until he remembers that nothing about this is normal.
The first dream in color is about Veronica. She’s in virgin white and smells of bubblegum. She looks like an angel and he can’t stop.
Can’t stop.
When he wakes up, his sheets are sticky with come and there’s vomit on his pillow.
He’s never been go disgusted and turned on.
He’s broken.
He’ll always be broken.
He takes a shower to wash away the shame, though the water is never quite hot enough.
He crawls into bed with Dick; hair is still wet from the shower. The water droplets slide across his face mimicking tears, though there might be real tears in there too. He doesn’t know anymore.
The air is hot and still in the room. Cassidy assumes Dick is asleep, but he isn’t.
When he speaks, his voice cuts like a knife through the darkness. “When you were eleven…dude…”
Cassidy closes his eyes and swallows. He knows what Dick is asking and part of him is surprised it took him this long. “Yes.”
“H-how long…”
It’s the first time Cassidy has ever heard his brother’s voice hitch in his throat like that and he turns his head to the side, looking at him in the darkness. “Does it matter?”
They are silent for a very long time.
Cassidy has nearly dozed off when he hears Dick’s voice, choked and whisper-soft, “If I’d have known…”
Cassidy just grumbles, “Dick, don’t” sleepily and rolls over. There are a million ways the sentence could have been finished, and Cassidy has thought about every one of them, but it’s too late now. And it’s dark. And Dick smells like the ocean.
He wants to tell Dick he loves him, but he’s asleep before he can say the words.
+++
It’s the next morning that Dick calls him Beaver again.
He doesn’t notice it at first. Dick is eating cereal out of the box and looks up when Beaver enters the kitchen, asking through a mouthful of food. “Dude, Beaver, wanna go surfing?”
He’s about to decline, because Logan will probably be there, and Sean and Luke and a million other boys’ he’s grown up with that he never wants to see again, but then he hears the nickname. Beaver (DickandBeaver). And he says yes. Yes. Sure, let’s.
DickandBeaverDickandBeaverDickand-
Beaver.
Again.
Normal (mostly).
+++
After a while, he doesn’t even get weird looks from people. Logan has moved on and in a way…Beaver has too.
He gets fined and has to do about a million hours of community service, but his family had hired good lawyers and rich kids never really get penalized for anything they do. Even murder.
It’s a tunnel.
He’s been in a tunnel since he was eleven years old and he can now see the light at the end of it.
He reads Mac’s letter.
He calls her and asks her out.
When they sleep together, it’s sweet and slow and pure.
He loves her.
+++
It’s a year after the fact and he’s graduating from high school. He’s smiling as he takes his diploma. He can hear Dick cheering in the audience louder than anyone.
It’s like he’s been asleep since he was eleven years old and he’s just now waking up.
Nothing has really changed, he’s still the same person, but he’s better now.
He didn’t die the day he stepped off the building of the Neptune Grand; he lived.
He’s happy for the first time since he can remember.
He is whole again.
DickandBeaver (And Mac)
Welcome to your life.
Rating: R
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Pairing: Beaver/Mac, implied Beaver/Dick
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns all.
Summary: A summary would be too spoilery
Spoilers: All of season two. DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE SEASON FINALE!
Author's Note: Thank you so much to my beta, snoopypez, for catching my spelling mistakes and telling me this is good enough to post, even thought it's different from my normal writing style. :3 Oh, and the title is inspired by Rilo Kiley's A Better Son/Daughter.
Weak, But Not Giving In
When he opens his eyes again, all he sees is white, and he’s not sure what he was expecting, but it isn’t this. He thought he’d maybe see Lilly, but he didn’t want to because though everyone loved her, he still thought she was kind of a cunt and she made Logan cry and he kind of hated that, though Logan probably deserved it.
He thought it might see Meg and out of anyone, he knew she wouldn’t be mad at him, because she was nice and forgiving and he never meant for her to be on the bus, but she was mad at Duncan or something stupid and didn’t want to ride back in the limo.
What he didn’t expect to see when he opened his eyes, however, was the sheriff. Lamb is talking to Kendall and someone else…there are words being thrown around that Cassidy doesn’t understand because how can ‘murderer’ or ‘rapist’ apply to him when he’s dead?
He’s not sure if he tries to speak or not, but even if he did, he couldn’t say anything because there was a tube down his throat and everything is so bright that he just shakes his head and closes his eyes again.
+++
It’s three weeks later the next time he opens them and no ones there. He understands now that he didn’t die and isn’t sure how he feels about that.
There isn’t anyone waiting for him to see if he’s woken up…he’s just alone with tubes and needles and machines that are beeping so loud they hurt his ears. He’s more scared than he’d admit and he tries to keep his eyes open as long as he can to see if anyone will come for him, but they don’t and soon tears are blurring his vision too much anyway, so he gives up and dozes off again. It isn’t worth it.
+++
Two months have gone by and he can get out of bed now. The doctors tell him he’s lucky he didn’t suffer any brain damage and his broken legs have healed, though he still has to use a walker when he walks, because he’s so weak.
He’s lost twenty pounds and there are pins in his left arm, holding the bones in place while they heal.
There are endless mental health tests and stupid questions that they ask him: like if he knows what year it is or where he is. He passes those tests easily, and he isn’t sure how he does with the mental health ones, because those aren’t supposed to have right answers, anyway, are they?
There is only one question he can never answer.
They ask him if he knows his name.
He says Cassidy, but it sounds foreign.
He says Beaver, but it comes out hateful.
In the end he just shakes his head, says he doesn’t know, and throws up all over his hospital gown.
They don’t ask him again.
+++
He doesn’t know how much time has passed now. Kendall has been to see him exactly once: to tell him that he can get off with a plea bargain. Temporary insanity.
He just nods, but he doesn’t know how temporary it is if he’s felt this way since he was eleven.
His trial is in nine months and he’s confused for a moment what exactly he’s being tried for, because it seems like a lifetime ago, but then he remembers again and it scares him, because he’s not really sorry for it, no matter how much he wants to be.
A week later, his real mother calls him on the phone. It’s a short conversation, because he doesn’t know how to explain and all she can seem to say is “Oh, Cassidy.” She asks him if he’d have been happier in Europe with her and he hangs up on her.
He feels like screaming, but if he started, he might never be able to stop, so he just sits there and stares at his hospital bracelet until the typed black words on it start to blur.
Mac doesn’t visit him…but she does drop off a letter she’d written him. When the nurse hands it to him, he just sets it aside. He doesn’t want to know what she has to say.
+++
Two and a half months to the date of his attempted suicide, he gets out of the hospital.
Dick comes to pick him up and he looks tan and smells like Bourbon, though it’s only ten in the morning. It’s the first time his brother has been to see him.
He’s so caught off guard to see Dick leaning against the hospital wall that he asks him what he’s doing here.
“I came to get you, fuckwad,” he replies affectionately, crossing the room and smacking Cassidy upside the head, “Let’s go home.”
The room tilts at the smack and he throws up a little in his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything. He just swallows it back down again and nods, sliding out of the bed and putting on a pair of clothes Dick brought him-they don’t fit. He’s lost so much weight.
They ride home in relative silence.
Cassidy’s surprised. He thought there would be questions or accusing looks, but there is nothing. Dick blasts music from the speakers and speeds. He talks about the waves and playing Halo 2 with Logan.
He doesn’t ask Cassidy about Woody Goodman.
When they get home, Dick offers his brother a pot brownie.
Cassidy declines and goes up to his room.
He sleeps for 48 hours.
+++
Logan doesn’t come over to the house anymore-that’s the first thing he notices. Logan won’t even come to the door when Cassidy is home. He just honks and Dick bounds out of the house, surfboard underarm.
Dick doesn’t invite him to do things anymore.
He calls him Cassidy now.
For the first time in his life, Cassidy is now a separate entity. He’s no longer Beaver (DickandBeaver). He’s no longer his brother’s best friend, his constant companion. They don’t share jokes or secrets and when Dick does look at him, he gives him this look like-like ‘why didn’t you tell me? fuck everyone else, you could have told me’
DickandBeaverDickandBeaverDickand-
Cassidy.
+++
Everyone calls him Cassidy now and he secretly wishes they wouldn’t.
He doesn’t look up immediately when he hears the name.
He doesn’t know who this Cassidy is and wishes he’d just go away.
Everyone knows him now.
He’s no longer invisible.
And he just
Wants.
It.
To.
Stop.
+++
Nothing has changed.
Everything has changed.
Nearly six months after the fact, his receives an e-mail from his father.
‘Son, I’m glad to hear you’re okay.’
He doesn’t feel anything when he reads the words.
He prints it out and leaves it on Dick’s bed.
The next morning Cassidy sees it in pieces on Dick’s floor and smiles for the first time in months.
Maybe Dick is starting to get it.
+++
The doctor tells him that he’s okay to go back to school in the fall. He’d rather sail off the top of the Neptune Grand again, but he doesn’t say this.
He smiles and nods.
He’ll be a senior this year.
+++
He’s off pain medication and he can remember his dreams again. A lot of them are in black and white and he wonders when that happened. Wonders if that’s normal until he remembers that nothing about this is normal.
The first dream in color is about Veronica. She’s in virgin white and smells of bubblegum. She looks like an angel and he can’t stop.
Can’t stop.
When he wakes up, his sheets are sticky with come and there’s vomit on his pillow.
He’s never been go disgusted and turned on.
He’s broken.
He’ll always be broken.
He takes a shower to wash away the shame, though the water is never quite hot enough.
He crawls into bed with Dick; hair is still wet from the shower. The water droplets slide across his face mimicking tears, though there might be real tears in there too. He doesn’t know anymore.
The air is hot and still in the room. Cassidy assumes Dick is asleep, but he isn’t.
When he speaks, his voice cuts like a knife through the darkness. “When you were eleven…dude…”
Cassidy closes his eyes and swallows. He knows what Dick is asking and part of him is surprised it took him this long. “Yes.”
“H-how long…”
It’s the first time Cassidy has ever heard his brother’s voice hitch in his throat like that and he turns his head to the side, looking at him in the darkness. “Does it matter?”
They are silent for a very long time.
Cassidy has nearly dozed off when he hears Dick’s voice, choked and whisper-soft, “If I’d have known…”
Cassidy just grumbles, “Dick, don’t” sleepily and rolls over. There are a million ways the sentence could have been finished, and Cassidy has thought about every one of them, but it’s too late now. And it’s dark. And Dick smells like the ocean.
He wants to tell Dick he loves him, but he’s asleep before he can say the words.
+++
It’s the next morning that Dick calls him Beaver again.
He doesn’t notice it at first. Dick is eating cereal out of the box and looks up when Beaver enters the kitchen, asking through a mouthful of food. “Dude, Beaver, wanna go surfing?”
He’s about to decline, because Logan will probably be there, and Sean and Luke and a million other boys’ he’s grown up with that he never wants to see again, but then he hears the nickname. Beaver (DickandBeaver). And he says yes. Yes. Sure, let’s.
DickandBeaverDickandBeaverDickand-
Beaver.
Again.
Normal (mostly).
+++
After a while, he doesn’t even get weird looks from people. Logan has moved on and in a way…Beaver has too.
He gets fined and has to do about a million hours of community service, but his family had hired good lawyers and rich kids never really get penalized for anything they do. Even murder.
It’s a tunnel.
He’s been in a tunnel since he was eleven years old and he can now see the light at the end of it.
He reads Mac’s letter.
He calls her and asks her out.
When they sleep together, it’s sweet and slow and pure.
He loves her.
+++
It’s a year after the fact and he’s graduating from high school. He’s smiling as he takes his diploma. He can hear Dick cheering in the audience louder than anyone.
It’s like he’s been asleep since he was eleven years old and he’s just now waking up.
Nothing has really changed, he’s still the same person, but he’s better now.
He didn’t die the day he stepped off the building of the Neptune Grand; he lived.
He’s happy for the first time since he can remember.
He is whole again.
DickandBeaver (And Mac)
Welcome to your life.