Fic - Undercurrents (Mac, Dick) pg-15, 1/1
Title: Undercurrents
Summary: She halfheartedly believes she was insignificant in the whole scheme of things anyway. Some lies you tell yourself, but never fully believe.
Rating: pg - 15
Author's Notes: 2,412 words. Specific spoilers for 2x22 and 3x01. Heavy on the Mac/Cassidy; Slight Mac/Dick if you look hard enough. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. Feedback is a lovely thing.
After everything, Mac finds her life separated into two completely separate entities: before Cassidy and after Cassidy. She becomes one of those girls she has always hated -- the kind that let the guy define them, the kind that can’t live life without them. She can’t get out of bed, can’t sleep, can’t eat. She’s bitter and disillusioned. A mess. She refuses to see anyone, not that there was really anybody to see anyway. In her whole group of real friends, Veronica is in New York, dealing with her own problems and Cassidy is gone. Dead.
She chokes every time she turns the word over in her mind. Dead.
It takes Mac months to be able to utter the word out loud.
People call and offer condolences to her parents. Send pies and casseroles (which she never really gets because who can eat at a time like this?) and her parents graciously accept and offer excuses as to why Mac can’t come down. They walk on eggshells around her, barely even speak to her out of fear they will say the wrong thing, cross some boundary that will cause her to break.
Mac wants to tell them she already has, that her life is so broken beyond repair that she has given up on putting it back together, but she sort of likes the whole seclusion thing she has going on and doesn’t want to ruin it by doing something stupid like talking.
Her summer is spent lying in bed, huddled under her covers. Mac goes over every moment her and Cassidy ever shared in her head. From first to last. From last to first. Over and over until she can distinctly remember every touch, every kiss, every word spoken between the two. She thinks of the carnival and him holding her hand and looking at her as though she was the only thing in his world. She thinks of his kisses --sloppy and sweet, nervous.
She thinks about them breaking up the first time, weeks ago, and then him coming back, begging her for forgiveness and her, stupid and naive thinking maybe things will work out this time. Maybe this is it.
Mac tortures herself with these memories. With wondering how she couldn’t see it coming. How she couldn’t tell the difference between loving kid who was supposedly crazy about her and psychopath who was crazy in general. She begins to think that maybe the reason she never saw it was because she was so enthralled by him, so ecstatic that somebody could actually like her, that she was blinded to it. Were there warning signs? Hints to who he really was? Mac can’t remember.
She watches Lifetime movies on TV and muses mirthlessly that she could sell her story to them and make a fortune, maybe reap some benefits from the ridiculous mess that has become her life. Anti-social computer geek falls for handsome rich kid who turns out to be an evil psycho killer/rapist/mass murderer. It’s already better than half the crap they put on the TV now. It’s raw. Real. She’d sell the story in a heartbeat if she thought it would make her feel just a little bit better.
Mac wonders who they would get to play her. Nobody good, she muses pityingly, because she halfheartedly believes that her part was probably insignificant in the whole scheme of things anyway.
____
“Get out of bed.”
Veronica pulls at the comforter that is covering her head, her voice one of reason and slight annoyance. Didn’t she know what it was like to wallow? To feel pain? Surely after her Mom, Lilly and Duncan and… Cassidy doing what he did, being what he was, she knows. She has to know.
“No,” Mac mumbles pathetically, not even moving an inch.
“Is this how you’re going to spend your summer?” There is movement, the god-awful sound of curtains being drawn open and the faintest hum of a drawer being opened and the next thing she knows there’s something being thrown her way, landing right next to her head. “Get up.”
“No.”
The bed dips next to her, and slowly the comforter is pulled back. Mac winces against the stream of sunlight. The sight is pathetically foreign after weeks of being shut into her room, curtains drawn with nothing but the faint light of a nightlight in the corner that burnt out within the first week.
The light hurts her head too much and when she goes to pull the comforter back up, Veronica smacks her hand away.
“Look, Mac,” she sighs heavily, “I know… well I don’t know, but I get, kind of, what you’re going through. And it sucks. And it’s going to suck some more and then it’ll keep on sucking but eventually you’ll just… become numb,” Veronica’s voice is soft and caring, nurturing almost and it so far from the Veronica she knows and something inside of her thaws at the sound of it.
There’s a silence, long and palpable and Veronica does everything but look at Mac.
“I still love him,” Mac whispers quietly, looking away, anywhere but at Veronica. She feels almost guilty for saying it, because, really, how can you love a guy that caused so much pain that you feel like you’re drowning in it? “I want to hate him for what he did… but I can’t… Not yet.”
Veronica sighs again, heavy like she’s carrying a burden and places a gentle hand on Mac’s t-shirt clad shoulder. “I know,” she says and Mac almost believes her.
Mac cries -- just a little because she has done so much of it, so often that it is getting to the point where there are really none left to cry -- and Veronica bites her lip uncomfortably because she’s never done well with this sort of thing and pats her shoulder and lets her.
It is the last time they ever talk about it.
____
Mac goes from a life of self pity and wallowing to doing everything non-stop and to the point where she barely has time to eat let alone sleep. It is a blessing in disguise. She gets a job at radio shack, does stuff for Mr. Mars and Veronica at the agency. She works and works and tries not the think about anything too weighted and when she wasn’t working and the chance to think about stuff she shouldn’t be thinking about does come about, Veronica is there with Wallace in toe and sometimes, albeit rarely, a reluctant Logan. They go to the beach, go to baseball games, hang out at the Snack ‘N Pack and just be.
It is a respite and a distraction at the same time; Mac revels in it.
Wallace makes her laugh and Veronica keeps her busy and Logan never changes (despite his actual acknowledgement of her presence) which is okay with her because if he did change it would only serve as a constant reminder that something drastic had happened to cause that change. Mac doesn’t need another reminder… looking in the mirror and the ache in her heart is reminder enough.
____
Before she knows it, summer has come to end and Hearst’s ivory walls and green grass is a welcomed sight. Her parents help her move in and she feels sort of sad saying goodbye to them, but the fact that she needs this, needs this distance, this relief from… everything, weighs heavily on her mind. Neptune’s like an itch she can’t scratch and while Hearst is a little too close for comfort, she had already accepted admittance long before Cassidy and she grudgingly wasn’t going to let him ruin that part of her life too.
So, Mac does what she does best -- she adjusts.
Adjusts to a life away from home, to full-fledged independence, to a roommate that is way too perky for her liking. Mac goes to classes and meets new people, sleeps, and wakes, and eats and lets herself live a life that is somewhat reminiscent of normal. Sometimes she’ll dream of Cassidy, and sometimes she will think of Cassidy, and sometimes she won’t, but she doesn’t cry anymore which, in her opinion, has got to be a step in the right direction.
There is a guy named Michael she meets at the quad -- it starts with an innocent smile, conversation concerning their similar computers. He offers to pay for her coffee and while she is flattered and slightly embarrassed, she insists on paying for her own. He is cute and makes her laugh over the stupidest things and as much as she likes the attention, when he asks her out for coffee, she declines.
She likes Michael enough, sure, but while she has stopped the crying and the wallowing and doesn’t exactly ache for Cassidy in the way she used to, way back when at the beginning of all this, there is still something inside of her that can’t let go.
Some days, Mac thinks she can live with it like this, the longing and pain lying dormant in the back of her mind. Yet, they still creep up on her in the middle of lonely, sleepless nights, strangling her with the threat of never letting go.
Some nights, she still dreams of him, of them, of all she used to have.
Mac still loves Cassidy, even after it all, and she fears that that will always be the case.
____
“My little brother never cared about you, you know. You were just his beard.”
It bothers her more than it should, and after she stares after him for way too long, she slams the door shut with a satisfied thud and falls on to her bed, curling her legs to her chest. Mac knows she is the picture of pathetic lying there, but she can not simply bring herself to care. She reaches for her phone to call Veronica, but stops. She knows better. It’s just Dick and his mindless insults, she reminds herself. It doesn’t mean anything -- he barely knows what he is talking about half the time anyway.
Mac ties to think of Cassidy then, to remember what his hand felt like in hers, what his kisses tasted like. She closes her eyes like she used to and tries to imagine him there, beside her, lying right next to her. While she can remember his kisses and touches -- remembers them with a painstaking accuracy -- for the life of her, she cannot remember what his laugh sounds like.
She tries and tries and as much as it hurts that she cannot remember, a tiny piece of her begins to num, just slightly, and surprisingly, it feels… good.
____
Veronica drags her to one of Logan parties and it is not much of a surprise that within ten minutes her blonde friend has left Mac for her blonde boyfriend with promises of ‘I’ll be right back’ that will more than likely not be fulfilled. She is only angry for half a second before she turns on her heel to head towards the door. On her way, though, she catches sight of the unmistakable bleach blonde head of Dick Casablancas. Even though it’s disappearing, fading into the distance, Mac can’t squelch the sheer resentment that builds up inside of her at the mere sight of those greasy locks.
It was probably a safe bet that Mac should just walk away, leave things non-existent and unimportant like they should be, but something just will not let her.
Dick Casablancas was, well, a dick. All puns intended. And after he told her that Cassidy never loved her, well, he became even more of a dick. She think she hates him -- can hardly see the fire inside her as being anything other than hate -- but she also thought Cassidy loved her so what the hell did she know?
Stalking through the crowds of people who merely look at her with something reminiscent of ‘why the hell are you here’, Mac shoves them away and finally finds him in the kitchen. She stops short in the doorway, something holding her back from going any further. Dick, oblivious to her intrusion, grabs a bottle of God knows what off the counter and sort of stumbles his way across the kitchen towards the plastic cups that are haphazardly thrown across the island in the center of the room.
Dick is drunk, that much she can tell (he practically wreaks of liquor) as she watches him pour a drink with unsteady, shaking hands. He takes a gulp and pours some more, and Mac wryly thinks that if he hasn’t drunk himself into an early grave by his twenty-first birthday she just might keel over from sheer shock.
She watches him and takes in the bags under his eyes, the faint worry lines on his face and thinks of all the pain of the last few months, all the tears and nightmares and remembers, faintly, that she has not been the only one dealing with this.
Mac realizes that she is not the only one Cassidy left behind.
Something draws her into the room -- her unwillingness to let go, maybe -- and before she can think twice she’s taking a quiet step into the kitchen.
“I loved him,” Mac blurts out bluntly, without even thinking, without even knowing why. She watches as Dick’s blonde head snaps upward, his slight discomfort at the sight of her making her actually feel rather good. His hazed eyes become crystal clear as they focus in on her. She sees the shock in them, the resentment, the anger, the resignation. There’s a moment -- maybe a minute?-- of complete and utter silence. Of waiting -- something she has become entirely way too good at.
Dick pours another drink and pushes it towards her. “I did, too.”
Unsteady and not quite sure, Mac slides onto a stool across from him and grabs the drink, wincing as the liquid burns like fire down her throat. There are no apologies, no more declarations because really, it is awkward enough already and they both know it. The two them just drink in utter and complete silence as they allow themselves this one moment to think of the one thing that will always be between them, the one thing that will always, without fail, bind them together.
To Mac it feels something sort of like letting go.
Summary: She halfheartedly believes she was insignificant in the whole scheme of things anyway. Some lies you tell yourself, but never fully believe.
Rating: pg - 15
Author's Notes: 2,412 words. Specific spoilers for 2x22 and 3x01. Heavy on the Mac/Cassidy; Slight Mac/Dick if you look hard enough. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. Feedback is a lovely thing.
After everything, Mac finds her life separated into two completely separate entities: before Cassidy and after Cassidy. She becomes one of those girls she has always hated -- the kind that let the guy define them, the kind that can’t live life without them. She can’t get out of bed, can’t sleep, can’t eat. She’s bitter and disillusioned. A mess. She refuses to see anyone, not that there was really anybody to see anyway. In her whole group of real friends, Veronica is in New York, dealing with her own problems and Cassidy is gone. Dead.
She chokes every time she turns the word over in her mind. Dead.
It takes Mac months to be able to utter the word out loud.
People call and offer condolences to her parents. Send pies and casseroles (which she never really gets because who can eat at a time like this?) and her parents graciously accept and offer excuses as to why Mac can’t come down. They walk on eggshells around her, barely even speak to her out of fear they will say the wrong thing, cross some boundary that will cause her to break.
Mac wants to tell them she already has, that her life is so broken beyond repair that she has given up on putting it back together, but she sort of likes the whole seclusion thing she has going on and doesn’t want to ruin it by doing something stupid like talking.
Her summer is spent lying in bed, huddled under her covers. Mac goes over every moment her and Cassidy ever shared in her head. From first to last. From last to first. Over and over until she can distinctly remember every touch, every kiss, every word spoken between the two. She thinks of the carnival and him holding her hand and looking at her as though she was the only thing in his world. She thinks of his kisses --sloppy and sweet, nervous.
She thinks about them breaking up the first time, weeks ago, and then him coming back, begging her for forgiveness and her, stupid and naive thinking maybe things will work out this time. Maybe this is it.
Mac tortures herself with these memories. With wondering how she couldn’t see it coming. How she couldn’t tell the difference between loving kid who was supposedly crazy about her and psychopath who was crazy in general. She begins to think that maybe the reason she never saw it was because she was so enthralled by him, so ecstatic that somebody could actually like her, that she was blinded to it. Were there warning signs? Hints to who he really was? Mac can’t remember.
She watches Lifetime movies on TV and muses mirthlessly that she could sell her story to them and make a fortune, maybe reap some benefits from the ridiculous mess that has become her life. Anti-social computer geek falls for handsome rich kid who turns out to be an evil psycho killer/rapist/mass murderer. It’s already better than half the crap they put on the TV now. It’s raw. Real. She’d sell the story in a heartbeat if she thought it would make her feel just a little bit better.
Mac wonders who they would get to play her. Nobody good, she muses pityingly, because she halfheartedly believes that her part was probably insignificant in the whole scheme of things anyway.
____
“Get out of bed.”
Veronica pulls at the comforter that is covering her head, her voice one of reason and slight annoyance. Didn’t she know what it was like to wallow? To feel pain? Surely after her Mom, Lilly and Duncan and… Cassidy doing what he did, being what he was, she knows. She has to know.
“No,” Mac mumbles pathetically, not even moving an inch.
“Is this how you’re going to spend your summer?” There is movement, the god-awful sound of curtains being drawn open and the faintest hum of a drawer being opened and the next thing she knows there’s something being thrown her way, landing right next to her head. “Get up.”
“No.”
The bed dips next to her, and slowly the comforter is pulled back. Mac winces against the stream of sunlight. The sight is pathetically foreign after weeks of being shut into her room, curtains drawn with nothing but the faint light of a nightlight in the corner that burnt out within the first week.
The light hurts her head too much and when she goes to pull the comforter back up, Veronica smacks her hand away.
“Look, Mac,” she sighs heavily, “I know… well I don’t know, but I get, kind of, what you’re going through. And it sucks. And it’s going to suck some more and then it’ll keep on sucking but eventually you’ll just… become numb,” Veronica’s voice is soft and caring, nurturing almost and it so far from the Veronica she knows and something inside of her thaws at the sound of it.
There’s a silence, long and palpable and Veronica does everything but look at Mac.
“I still love him,” Mac whispers quietly, looking away, anywhere but at Veronica. She feels almost guilty for saying it, because, really, how can you love a guy that caused so much pain that you feel like you’re drowning in it? “I want to hate him for what he did… but I can’t… Not yet.”
Veronica sighs again, heavy like she’s carrying a burden and places a gentle hand on Mac’s t-shirt clad shoulder. “I know,” she says and Mac almost believes her.
Mac cries -- just a little because she has done so much of it, so often that it is getting to the point where there are really none left to cry -- and Veronica bites her lip uncomfortably because she’s never done well with this sort of thing and pats her shoulder and lets her.
It is the last time they ever talk about it.
____
Mac goes from a life of self pity and wallowing to doing everything non-stop and to the point where she barely has time to eat let alone sleep. It is a blessing in disguise. She gets a job at radio shack, does stuff for Mr. Mars and Veronica at the agency. She works and works and tries not the think about anything too weighted and when she wasn’t working and the chance to think about stuff she shouldn’t be thinking about does come about, Veronica is there with Wallace in toe and sometimes, albeit rarely, a reluctant Logan. They go to the beach, go to baseball games, hang out at the Snack ‘N Pack and just be.
It is a respite and a distraction at the same time; Mac revels in it.
Wallace makes her laugh and Veronica keeps her busy and Logan never changes (despite his actual acknowledgement of her presence) which is okay with her because if he did change it would only serve as a constant reminder that something drastic had happened to cause that change. Mac doesn’t need another reminder… looking in the mirror and the ache in her heart is reminder enough.
____
Before she knows it, summer has come to end and Hearst’s ivory walls and green grass is a welcomed sight. Her parents help her move in and she feels sort of sad saying goodbye to them, but the fact that she needs this, needs this distance, this relief from… everything, weighs heavily on her mind. Neptune’s like an itch she can’t scratch and while Hearst is a little too close for comfort, she had already accepted admittance long before Cassidy and she grudgingly wasn’t going to let him ruin that part of her life too.
So, Mac does what she does best -- she adjusts.
Adjusts to a life away from home, to full-fledged independence, to a roommate that is way too perky for her liking. Mac goes to classes and meets new people, sleeps, and wakes, and eats and lets herself live a life that is somewhat reminiscent of normal. Sometimes she’ll dream of Cassidy, and sometimes she will think of Cassidy, and sometimes she won’t, but she doesn’t cry anymore which, in her opinion, has got to be a step in the right direction.
There is a guy named Michael she meets at the quad -- it starts with an innocent smile, conversation concerning their similar computers. He offers to pay for her coffee and while she is flattered and slightly embarrassed, she insists on paying for her own. He is cute and makes her laugh over the stupidest things and as much as she likes the attention, when he asks her out for coffee, she declines.
She likes Michael enough, sure, but while she has stopped the crying and the wallowing and doesn’t exactly ache for Cassidy in the way she used to, way back when at the beginning of all this, there is still something inside of her that can’t let go.
Some days, Mac thinks she can live with it like this, the longing and pain lying dormant in the back of her mind. Yet, they still creep up on her in the middle of lonely, sleepless nights, strangling her with the threat of never letting go.
Some nights, she still dreams of him, of them, of all she used to have.
Mac still loves Cassidy, even after it all, and she fears that that will always be the case.
____
“My little brother never cared about you, you know. You were just his beard.”
It bothers her more than it should, and after she stares after him for way too long, she slams the door shut with a satisfied thud and falls on to her bed, curling her legs to her chest. Mac knows she is the picture of pathetic lying there, but she can not simply bring herself to care. She reaches for her phone to call Veronica, but stops. She knows better. It’s just Dick and his mindless insults, she reminds herself. It doesn’t mean anything -- he barely knows what he is talking about half the time anyway.
Mac ties to think of Cassidy then, to remember what his hand felt like in hers, what his kisses tasted like. She closes her eyes like she used to and tries to imagine him there, beside her, lying right next to her. While she can remember his kisses and touches -- remembers them with a painstaking accuracy -- for the life of her, she cannot remember what his laugh sounds like.
She tries and tries and as much as it hurts that she cannot remember, a tiny piece of her begins to num, just slightly, and surprisingly, it feels… good.
____
Veronica drags her to one of Logan parties and it is not much of a surprise that within ten minutes her blonde friend has left Mac for her blonde boyfriend with promises of ‘I’ll be right back’ that will more than likely not be fulfilled. She is only angry for half a second before she turns on her heel to head towards the door. On her way, though, she catches sight of the unmistakable bleach blonde head of Dick Casablancas. Even though it’s disappearing, fading into the distance, Mac can’t squelch the sheer resentment that builds up inside of her at the mere sight of those greasy locks.
It was probably a safe bet that Mac should just walk away, leave things non-existent and unimportant like they should be, but something just will not let her.
Dick Casablancas was, well, a dick. All puns intended. And after he told her that Cassidy never loved her, well, he became even more of a dick. She think she hates him -- can hardly see the fire inside her as being anything other than hate -- but she also thought Cassidy loved her so what the hell did she know?
Stalking through the crowds of people who merely look at her with something reminiscent of ‘why the hell are you here’, Mac shoves them away and finally finds him in the kitchen. She stops short in the doorway, something holding her back from going any further. Dick, oblivious to her intrusion, grabs a bottle of God knows what off the counter and sort of stumbles his way across the kitchen towards the plastic cups that are haphazardly thrown across the island in the center of the room.
Dick is drunk, that much she can tell (he practically wreaks of liquor) as she watches him pour a drink with unsteady, shaking hands. He takes a gulp and pours some more, and Mac wryly thinks that if he hasn’t drunk himself into an early grave by his twenty-first birthday she just might keel over from sheer shock.
She watches him and takes in the bags under his eyes, the faint worry lines on his face and thinks of all the pain of the last few months, all the tears and nightmares and remembers, faintly, that she has not been the only one dealing with this.
Mac realizes that she is not the only one Cassidy left behind.
Something draws her into the room -- her unwillingness to let go, maybe -- and before she can think twice she’s taking a quiet step into the kitchen.
“I loved him,” Mac blurts out bluntly, without even thinking, without even knowing why. She watches as Dick’s blonde head snaps upward, his slight discomfort at the sight of her making her actually feel rather good. His hazed eyes become crystal clear as they focus in on her. She sees the shock in them, the resentment, the anger, the resignation. There’s a moment -- maybe a minute?-- of complete and utter silence. Of waiting -- something she has become entirely way too good at.
Dick pours another drink and pushes it towards her. “I did, too.”
Unsteady and not quite sure, Mac slides onto a stool across from him and grabs the drink, wincing as the liquid burns like fire down her throat. There are no apologies, no more declarations because really, it is awkward enough already and they both know it. The two them just drink in utter and complete silence as they allow themselves this one moment to think of the one thing that will always be between them, the one thing that will always, without fail, bind them together.
To Mac it feels something sort of like letting go.