it's not a miracle we needed
Sooo... this is my first non-OC fic. I'm kind of going through a serious case of 'it wouldn't be too horrible if I died, because then I wouldn't have to deal with school anymore' and that means procrastination. And procrastination leads to fic. Except I can't seem to write for the OC lately and I wrote this a while ago, just for kicks, so... yeah. Feel free not to read it, this is just a way for me to vent, kind of.
Title: anything you ask and more
Rating: PG13 for slight swearing
A/N: Sid/Cassie, because I was very unhappy with the way they left things at the end of series 2.
A/N 2: It's my usual (no dialogue, run on sentences, random jumps through time)
A/N 3: Title is from 1901 by Phoenix, which is kind of like my new crack (as opposed to my old crack The Temper Trap and not, in fact, actual crack.)
She doesn’t want to go home and he makes the decision to stay with her.
He thought it would be harder, but it’s not. Leaving his home, his family, his friends; it’s really not that hard. He doesn’t want to go back to the house where his father died; he doesn’t want to go back to his mother, who left and let his father go; he doesn’t want to go back to the place that all of his friends had already abandoned.
They stay in New York and it’s easier than he thought it would be.
…
He thought he’d be lonely, but he’s not.
They don’t know anyone here and his friends are thousands of miles away, but he’s not lonely because she’s here. Maybe it’s all the people in her head that make their flat feel so occupied, even though it’s really only the two of them.
…
He ends up going to a local community college. They don’t seem to care about his suck grades. The admissions lady loves his accent and he thinks that’s what really gets him in.
Cassie doesn’t go. She wants to be a waitress - for now, at least, until she gets bored. He knows she likes watching the way they make their food and he’s heard her boss grumbling about how all the food in the stock rooms are constantly being reorganized.
But she likes it and it makes her happy and she comes home and hums to herself and smiles at him, all of her teeth showing and a wild glint in her eyes that he thinks he’ll never really understand.
…
Without anyone else, they work.
Without Tony and Michelle and everyone else, they work.
He gets calls from Tony nearly every day and whenever Michelle calls, Cassie gets that look in her eye and he ends the conversation as quickly as he can. He can live without Michelle.
Turns out, he can live without everyone else, really.
…
Adam comes back one day and doesn’t kick them out.
But he feels bad and he’s got a part time job now and one day he goes out and finds a cheap place and brings Cassie to it, hands over her eyes as she giggles and bites her lip.
“Oh, wow,” she says when he uncovers her eyes to the shabby apartment. “It’s lovely Sid. Who lives here?”
“I was thinking we could,” he says and feels nervous for the first time.
They’ve been living together for months but that was Adam’s place and this would be their place and that’s somehow different.
He forgets about it when she twirls to face him and throws her arms around him and whispers “lovely, lovely, lovely,” against his skin as she kisses his neck.
…
He was never particularly good at school, but somehow he finds he likes American college. It’s different and he knows he’ll actually need a degree here if he ever wants a real job.
And somehow, coming home to find Cassie making him peanut butter and banana sandwiches makes him want to get a real job. He wants to succeed, if only for her.
…
It’s never boring, and he can never decide if that’s a good thing or not.
Her mood swings are unpredictable and just when he thinks he’s got her pegged down, she changes. There are times when she becomes insatiably horny and she won’t let up even though he has classes and she has work. There’s times when she screams at him that he’s fucking Michelle, even though he hasn’t seen Michelle in nearly two years and he hasn’t even talked to her in three months.
…
She eats, at least.
He told her when he first got to New York - when he turned around and stared at her through the glass window of the diner she worked at - that he wouldn’t put up with her shit. He wasn’t going to be distracted by her rambling or her waving the food at him. He knew her tricks and he wasn’t going to let her keep doing it.
He remembers the way she said ‘ok’, but gave him the brightest smile he’d ever seen on her.
…
He’s never really gotten used to New York.
It’s too noisy and crowded and people are mean, but he’s learned to stay invisible on the streets. He blends. No one knows he’s foreign until he speaks and then people usually comment on his accent even though they’re the ones that have accents.
People like Cassie’s accent. She gets tips because they think she’s adorable. It’s not fair, but he has to agree that she is adorable when she’s working. Or anytime, really.
…
One day he wakes up and realizes it’s been five years since he left home.
They go back occasionally, like when Anwar got married or when Jal had one of her big concerts and sent them free tickets.
They go back every year and visit Chris’s grave.
He questioned it at first - how attached Cassie was to Chris. Sure, they’d been roommates, but sometimes he’d get a weird feeling in his chest like they were more, because Cassie goes crazy whenever Chris is mentioned.
He asks her about it, one day, on the second anniversary of his death, while they’re sitting at his grave.
All she does is turn to him and say “he understands me.”
He figures it out, then, why she’d ran. Chris had been the self-proclaimed fuckup, the one person in the world whose life was just as screwed up as Cassie’s. Looking back, he sees it now. Chris never made fun of her, he was never mean, he never got annoyed. He accepted her in a way that none of them ever had and he still can’t quite manage today.
…
She goes to the doctor and finds out she can never have children.
It’s a routine checkup, but the doctor finds out about her past and decides to make sure she’s ok.
She’s not.
She can’t ever have children because the eating disorder and the drugs and the suicide attempts have screwed her up for good.
She doesn’t come home after her appointment and he knows her well enough to worry and he calls the doctor’s office and makes them tell him the news. It takes him a couple seconds to process that she can’t have children.
And that he kind of wants them.
He finds her at JFK International, with a ticket to Beijing. He stares at her and she stares at him and they don’t really move until she sighs and throws the ticket in the trash and he takes her home.
That night they fight harder than they’ve fought in a long time.
…
They get married on a whim.
It’s her birthday and she tells him that they should get married because she’s on a new kick where she’s hardcore Christian and it’s a sin to live together without being married. He agrees because it’s easier than arguing and less hassle than going without sex until she gets over it.
The Christian thing doesn’t last but the marriage does.
They’re not like a normal couple and the rings on their fingers don’t change their daily life much. It takes three weeks for them to remember to let all of their friends know.
…
Tony, Michelle, and Jal fly over the week after.
Tony and Michelle aren’t together and he finds that kind of weird. Because of all the couples, he figured they’d be the ones to last.
Neither of them were willing to give up their future for the other, to move where the other was. Not like he’d done for Cassie.
And that, he realizes, has made all the difference.