FIC: The Cove (PG13) Cassidy/Mac
TITLE - The Cove
AUTHOR - Lizzy (herowlness)
CHARACTER/PAIRING - Cassidy/Mac, Mac POV
RATING - PG13
WARNINGS - Mild language, angst, themes of abuse,
SPOILERS - Post-221, so all aired episodes
WORD COUNT - 2276
SUMMARY - A unique invitation for a much-needed explanation.
THANKS - to mrsjamiewitter and onastick for beta-help and to sarah_p for hand-holding and cheerleading.
Cross posted to herowlness_fic, mac_cassidy, 09erdom, and veronicamarsfic
Exhaling a sigh of relief, Mac spins the combination on her locker for the last time. It's the final day of exams, and she'll be graduating the following night. High school behind her - finally - she's ready to move forward and embrace what Hearst has in store for her.
With a squeak of the hinges, the bright yellow door swings to the side, allowing her access to her final few textbooks and a small, square envelope. Curious, she reads her nickname printed across the front side and opens it to reveal a very plain off-white piece of cardstock.
Sure, there's a blue border around the edges, but the front is textless, so she flips the cover up, hoping for more information inside. To say she saw more information is an understatement.
0101001101101111011100100111001001111001
01010100011010000110010100100000
01000011011011110111011001100101
010101000110111101101110011010010110011101101000011101000010000001100001011101008
What the hell was this? With all these ones and zeros, the information looked more like something a computer would spit out than something that would be scrawled on the inside of a card. Minus that lone eight sitting at the end of the bottom line, this could very well be a message written in binary code. As she continues to look at the strange series of digits, trying desperately to make sense of it all, her mind automatically tries to process the message as binary code - if only to see if anything coherent can be derived from the numbers.
S-O-R-R-Y
This card is an apology? For what? She quickly looks over one shoulder, and then the other, wondering who could have possibly slipped this in her locker. Of course, since she had a late final, she's one of the last students in the halls of Neptune High. Still curious, she reads on, hoping that perhaps the final two lines will reveal more information about what, exactly, this card is all about.
T-H-E-C-O-V-E
Her heart skips a beat as she thinks of the Cove, and now she's almost positive that Cassidy is behind all of this. After all, the pair spent many happy hours hanging out on the rocky hillside that they'd termed 'the Cove,' for lack of a better name. They'd watch the sunset together or go for a swim in the surf. In fact, the Cove was where Cassidy had first kissed her.
The Cove was their place, so to speak, and binary appeared to be Cassidy's secret code of choice. After all, who but two geeks such as themselves would understand that numbers didn't always stand for numbers?
T-O-N-I-G-H-T-A-T-8
Ooooh, he was a tricky one, that Cassidy. Using the digit for eight to try to confuse her, or anyone else who might see the card, rather than simply using its - ironically enough - eight digit binary code.
Quickly, she glances at her watch to note the time. Three in the afternoon, which should give her a little over four hours to get herself ready for tonight. She's in the middle of considering how she should do her hair when she realizes that she shouldn't care, not tonight. No matter what sort of unnatural truce they've reached over the past few days, he still dumped her. If he wants her back, he can take her as she is or not at all. And, honestly, that's a possibility she's trying not to think about, if only for the potential heartbreak that's associated with getting her hopes up. Maybe he needs her to do some more work for the Phoenix Landtrust, or maybe he needs her to hack into the mainframe of one of his competitors. Other than the irregular thump-thump of her still slightly-bruised heart, why should she even think that this note has anything to do with them?
++++
It's not yet dark when she stops her VW Beetle about a hundred feet from the Cove. She sees the sun setting in the distance - the sky a beautiful array of colors - and she remembers again all the good times she and Cassidy spent together in this very location over the past few months.
She wasn't disillusioned enough to believe that she and Cassidy would be together forever or anything like that, but at the same point in time, she never expected to be so unceremoniously dumped either.
Mentally debating whether or not she should make her presence known, Mac sits inside her car with her hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. Less than five minutes pass before she shoves her keys in the pocket of her jeans and follows through with the choice that she had probably made hours before, after reading his encoded message.
No matter how much she may want to pretend that she is indifferent to Cassidy Casablancas, especially after everything that had happened between them, she knows that that was certainly not the case.
Her footfalls are scratchy against the sand-strewn stone as she makes her way towards the shadowy figure that is leaning back against one of the larger rocks in the Cove. She wonders if she should say something to let him know that she's arrived, even though she has likely made plenty of noise already.
Just when she's about to open her mouth and say something, he begins to speak.
"Mac, I have something that I need to tell you," he begins hesitantly. "I haven't told anyone about this before, but it's a part of my history and it made me who I am, and I want you to know about it."
"O-okay," she stutters, surprised that Cassidy is getting right into the meat of … whatever it is, first thing.
"You might want to sit down," he says in response, his voice emotionless and detached. He sounds so serious, and she feels her anxiousness growing with each moment of silence that passes between them. While Cassidy understands that there is more to life than partying - something his older brother has yet to realize - he does know how to have fun and crack jokes every now and again to lighten the mood.
From the set look of determination on his face, Mac knows that he is most certainly not joking now.
"When I was a kid," he begins slowly, his gaze set at a point just above her head, "Dick and I were on the little league team with all the other neighborhood kids. My mom thought it would be a great for us - keep us busy and out of trouble during the summer months. I'm not all that athletic, but it was still kinda fun, especially since our team was pretty good."
Mac doesn't know where he's going with this, and she can't say that she understands how playing on a little league team could affect him as grandly as his first words indicated. Still, while she may no longer trust him with her heart, at the very least she trusts him to tell her the truth. So she sits silent and waits, certain that he will make his point known in due time.
"It was really frustrating," he continues, "being one of the younger guys on the team and not having the same quickness or athleticism as the other boys. I played in every game - league rules - but I almost didn't want to play, just because I was afraid that I would mess things up for our team and make us lose. Coach Goodman picked up on that and invited me to come over to his house one afternoon to use his private batting cage and - "
His voice breaks with what Mac can only presume to be anguish, and she doesn't know what she should do. She moves to stand and maybe comfort him, only to be stilled by a stubborn shake of Cassidy's head.
Of course.
This is his story, his pain. He wants, and maybe even needs, to get through this on his own.
"So I went over to his house, the next afternoon, and it was good - at first. He really took the time to work on my batting stance and improve my fielding ability.
"But, later, when he was showing me how to pop-up a ball and how to bunt, he - he touched me, and I just … "
His voice trails off and his eyes meet hers for the first time since she arrived. She's horrified to see all of the pain and anguish and shame that are bottled up inside of him, and she wants to console him, tell him that everything will be okay.
But she doesn't know that, can't know that. With Veronica's help she may be able to make Mr. Goodman pay for what he did, but if she's the first person Cassidy ever told, she doesn't think that he'd want her repeating this story to Veronica - or anyone else, for that matter. So she stays put and waits for some signal from him before doing anything.
"He told me that this was just going to be our little secret, a fun little game just between us," Cassidy starts again after a few moments. "And even though what he was doing to me felt wrong and bad, I didn't say anything. It's not that I didn't want to; I just … couldn't find the words.
"So I grew up, life went on, and I tried to act like just another rich kid at Neptune High, tried to forget … that. That's not the sort of thing you can ever really forget though, so I just tried not to think about it, and to be just another 09'er.
"Mac, I am so sorry for what I said to you a few weeks ago in the quad. I've been trying to be just like any other 09'er, and I wasn't ready to admit that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to relationships or sex or … anything that comes after kissing, really. And you called me on it, and you were right, and I just wasn't ready to admit that I … I don't really know who I am because I've just tried so hard to be what other people wanted me to be. Like, if they were proud of me, I could just forget how dirty I felt whenever I saw Mr. Goodman or whenever someone said his name."
He pauses, takes a deep breath, and meets her eyes. She sees all the tears left unshed shining in his bright blue eyes, and her heart breaks for him. All the money and power in the world couldn't protect him from what had happened when he was little. While the concept that no one is safe from such terrors is something she's known for years, she doesn't like it when the proof of said fact hits so closely to home.
"I said a lot of things that I didn't mean and that I shouldn't have said," he says slowly. "Things that you didn't deserve. I was such an asshole that day, and afterwards, I couldn't believe that I did what I did. I don't have any excuse other than I felt cornered, and I was afraid that my dirty little secret was about to expose me as a fraud before the entire school.
"I'm not asking for you to take me back or even to forgive me for what I said. It's just, with the way you helped me get Weevil to fix my car, I figured I owed you at least an explanation."
And then he looks at her expectantly, attempting to give off the impression of being open and receptive when she saw the hesitancy playing in the twitch of his lips. She wants to forgive him, to forget everything, to just move forward and try to reclaim what they had before.
But she doubts that he will ever be able to fully forget what happened to him, and so long as that is haunting his dreams, it will affect the theoretical them.
He's looking at her like he's isolated from the world, and she's the only one who can save him. She's only eighteen; she doesn't know if she wants or needs this much responsibility at this point in her life.
But no matter how much she might want to deny it, she cares about him, and she can't just leave him to suffer alone.
Slowly, she stands up and moves forward and envelopes him in her arms. She feels the tension in his muscles and wishes that she could do something to take away his pain and fear.
His body starts to shake in her arms as he finally releases the tears that he's kept trapped inside for so long, and she just holds him tighter and runs her right hand soothingly over his back.
"I'm here, Cassidy. Whatever you need, I'm here."
She's not sure if she means that literally, if she would really do anything and everything to give him what he needs, but she trusts him - even after everything - and knows that he wouldn't ask for anything she wouldn't feel comfortable giving.
They're here, at the Cove, together, and as Mac watches the sunset on the oceanic horizon, she wonders if they've finally come full circle. Their tentative friendship forged six months prior had slowly developed into a relationship, and now they're back to being friends again - with perhaps a stronger foundation than they had before.
This is hardly the cloakroom that Weevil suggested a few days earlier, but at the very least, they've reached some sort of resolution between themselves. They've reestablished their friendship and have left the door open for deeper developments in the future.
Mac's not in any rush - Cassidy needs her now, and she's not going anywhere.
END
Yeah, so I really should have been studying for finals instead of writing this, but I couldn't resist my very persistent muse.
I hope you enjoyed this - despite the very ... indefinite and uncertain status of the M/C relationship at the end. I'd love to hear your thoughts, so if you can take a moment to leave some concrit, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again!
If you enjoyed this and would like to read my other VM fanfic, please check out herowlness_fic
AUTHOR - Lizzy (herowlness)
CHARACTER/PAIRING - Cassidy/Mac, Mac POV
RATING - PG13
WARNINGS - Mild language, angst, themes of abuse,
SPOILERS - Post-221, so all aired episodes
WORD COUNT - 2276
SUMMARY - A unique invitation for a much-needed explanation.
THANKS - to mrsjamiewitter and onastick for beta-help and to sarah_p for hand-holding and cheerleading.
Cross posted to herowlness_fic, mac_cassidy, 09erdom, and veronicamarsfic
Exhaling a sigh of relief, Mac spins the combination on her locker for the last time. It's the final day of exams, and she'll be graduating the following night. High school behind her - finally - she's ready to move forward and embrace what Hearst has in store for her.
With a squeak of the hinges, the bright yellow door swings to the side, allowing her access to her final few textbooks and a small, square envelope. Curious, she reads her nickname printed across the front side and opens it to reveal a very plain off-white piece of cardstock.
Sure, there's a blue border around the edges, but the front is textless, so she flips the cover up, hoping for more information inside. To say she saw more information is an understatement.
0101001101101111011100100111001001111001
01010100011010000110010100100000
01000011011011110111011001100101
010101000110111101101110011010010110011101101000011101000010000001100001011101008
What the hell was this? With all these ones and zeros, the information looked more like something a computer would spit out than something that would be scrawled on the inside of a card. Minus that lone eight sitting at the end of the bottom line, this could very well be a message written in binary code. As she continues to look at the strange series of digits, trying desperately to make sense of it all, her mind automatically tries to process the message as binary code - if only to see if anything coherent can be derived from the numbers.
S-O-R-R-Y
This card is an apology? For what? She quickly looks over one shoulder, and then the other, wondering who could have possibly slipped this in her locker. Of course, since she had a late final, she's one of the last students in the halls of Neptune High. Still curious, she reads on, hoping that perhaps the final two lines will reveal more information about what, exactly, this card is all about.
T-H-E-C-O-V-E
Her heart skips a beat as she thinks of the Cove, and now she's almost positive that Cassidy is behind all of this. After all, the pair spent many happy hours hanging out on the rocky hillside that they'd termed 'the Cove,' for lack of a better name. They'd watch the sunset together or go for a swim in the surf. In fact, the Cove was where Cassidy had first kissed her.
The Cove was their place, so to speak, and binary appeared to be Cassidy's secret code of choice. After all, who but two geeks such as themselves would understand that numbers didn't always stand for numbers?
T-O-N-I-G-H-T-A-T-8
Ooooh, he was a tricky one, that Cassidy. Using the digit for eight to try to confuse her, or anyone else who might see the card, rather than simply using its - ironically enough - eight digit binary code.
Quickly, she glances at her watch to note the time. Three in the afternoon, which should give her a little over four hours to get herself ready for tonight. She's in the middle of considering how she should do her hair when she realizes that she shouldn't care, not tonight. No matter what sort of unnatural truce they've reached over the past few days, he still dumped her. If he wants her back, he can take her as she is or not at all. And, honestly, that's a possibility she's trying not to think about, if only for the potential heartbreak that's associated with getting her hopes up. Maybe he needs her to do some more work for the Phoenix Landtrust, or maybe he needs her to hack into the mainframe of one of his competitors. Other than the irregular thump-thump of her still slightly-bruised heart, why should she even think that this note has anything to do with them?
++++
It's not yet dark when she stops her VW Beetle about a hundred feet from the Cove. She sees the sun setting in the distance - the sky a beautiful array of colors - and she remembers again all the good times she and Cassidy spent together in this very location over the past few months.
She wasn't disillusioned enough to believe that she and Cassidy would be together forever or anything like that, but at the same point in time, she never expected to be so unceremoniously dumped either.
Mentally debating whether or not she should make her presence known, Mac sits inside her car with her hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. Less than five minutes pass before she shoves her keys in the pocket of her jeans and follows through with the choice that she had probably made hours before, after reading his encoded message.
No matter how much she may want to pretend that she is indifferent to Cassidy Casablancas, especially after everything that had happened between them, she knows that that was certainly not the case.
Her footfalls are scratchy against the sand-strewn stone as she makes her way towards the shadowy figure that is leaning back against one of the larger rocks in the Cove. She wonders if she should say something to let him know that she's arrived, even though she has likely made plenty of noise already.
Just when she's about to open her mouth and say something, he begins to speak.
"Mac, I have something that I need to tell you," he begins hesitantly. "I haven't told anyone about this before, but it's a part of my history and it made me who I am, and I want you to know about it."
"O-okay," she stutters, surprised that Cassidy is getting right into the meat of … whatever it is, first thing.
"You might want to sit down," he says in response, his voice emotionless and detached. He sounds so serious, and she feels her anxiousness growing with each moment of silence that passes between them. While Cassidy understands that there is more to life than partying - something his older brother has yet to realize - he does know how to have fun and crack jokes every now and again to lighten the mood.
From the set look of determination on his face, Mac knows that he is most certainly not joking now.
"When I was a kid," he begins slowly, his gaze set at a point just above her head, "Dick and I were on the little league team with all the other neighborhood kids. My mom thought it would be a great for us - keep us busy and out of trouble during the summer months. I'm not all that athletic, but it was still kinda fun, especially since our team was pretty good."
Mac doesn't know where he's going with this, and she can't say that she understands how playing on a little league team could affect him as grandly as his first words indicated. Still, while she may no longer trust him with her heart, at the very least she trusts him to tell her the truth. So she sits silent and waits, certain that he will make his point known in due time.
"It was really frustrating," he continues, "being one of the younger guys on the team and not having the same quickness or athleticism as the other boys. I played in every game - league rules - but I almost didn't want to play, just because I was afraid that I would mess things up for our team and make us lose. Coach Goodman picked up on that and invited me to come over to his house one afternoon to use his private batting cage and - "
His voice breaks with what Mac can only presume to be anguish, and she doesn't know what she should do. She moves to stand and maybe comfort him, only to be stilled by a stubborn shake of Cassidy's head.
Of course.
This is his story, his pain. He wants, and maybe even needs, to get through this on his own.
"So I went over to his house, the next afternoon, and it was good - at first. He really took the time to work on my batting stance and improve my fielding ability.
"But, later, when he was showing me how to pop-up a ball and how to bunt, he - he touched me, and I just … "
His voice trails off and his eyes meet hers for the first time since she arrived. She's horrified to see all of the pain and anguish and shame that are bottled up inside of him, and she wants to console him, tell him that everything will be okay.
But she doesn't know that, can't know that. With Veronica's help she may be able to make Mr. Goodman pay for what he did, but if she's the first person Cassidy ever told, she doesn't think that he'd want her repeating this story to Veronica - or anyone else, for that matter. So she stays put and waits for some signal from him before doing anything.
"He told me that this was just going to be our little secret, a fun little game just between us," Cassidy starts again after a few moments. "And even though what he was doing to me felt wrong and bad, I didn't say anything. It's not that I didn't want to; I just … couldn't find the words.
"So I grew up, life went on, and I tried to act like just another rich kid at Neptune High, tried to forget … that. That's not the sort of thing you can ever really forget though, so I just tried not to think about it, and to be just another 09'er.
"Mac, I am so sorry for what I said to you a few weeks ago in the quad. I've been trying to be just like any other 09'er, and I wasn't ready to admit that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to relationships or sex or … anything that comes after kissing, really. And you called me on it, and you were right, and I just wasn't ready to admit that I … I don't really know who I am because I've just tried so hard to be what other people wanted me to be. Like, if they were proud of me, I could just forget how dirty I felt whenever I saw Mr. Goodman or whenever someone said his name."
He pauses, takes a deep breath, and meets her eyes. She sees all the tears left unshed shining in his bright blue eyes, and her heart breaks for him. All the money and power in the world couldn't protect him from what had happened when he was little. While the concept that no one is safe from such terrors is something she's known for years, she doesn't like it when the proof of said fact hits so closely to home.
"I said a lot of things that I didn't mean and that I shouldn't have said," he says slowly. "Things that you didn't deserve. I was such an asshole that day, and afterwards, I couldn't believe that I did what I did. I don't have any excuse other than I felt cornered, and I was afraid that my dirty little secret was about to expose me as a fraud before the entire school.
"I'm not asking for you to take me back or even to forgive me for what I said. It's just, with the way you helped me get Weevil to fix my car, I figured I owed you at least an explanation."
And then he looks at her expectantly, attempting to give off the impression of being open and receptive when she saw the hesitancy playing in the twitch of his lips. She wants to forgive him, to forget everything, to just move forward and try to reclaim what they had before.
But she doubts that he will ever be able to fully forget what happened to him, and so long as that is haunting his dreams, it will affect the theoretical them.
He's looking at her like he's isolated from the world, and she's the only one who can save him. She's only eighteen; she doesn't know if she wants or needs this much responsibility at this point in her life.
But no matter how much she might want to deny it, she cares about him, and she can't just leave him to suffer alone.
Slowly, she stands up and moves forward and envelopes him in her arms. She feels the tension in his muscles and wishes that she could do something to take away his pain and fear.
His body starts to shake in her arms as he finally releases the tears that he's kept trapped inside for so long, and she just holds him tighter and runs her right hand soothingly over his back.
"I'm here, Cassidy. Whatever you need, I'm here."
She's not sure if she means that literally, if she would really do anything and everything to give him what he needs, but she trusts him - even after everything - and knows that he wouldn't ask for anything she wouldn't feel comfortable giving.
They're here, at the Cove, together, and as Mac watches the sunset on the oceanic horizon, she wonders if they've finally come full circle. Their tentative friendship forged six months prior had slowly developed into a relationship, and now they're back to being friends again - with perhaps a stronger foundation than they had before.
This is hardly the cloakroom that Weevil suggested a few days earlier, but at the very least, they've reached some sort of resolution between themselves. They've reestablished their friendship and have left the door open for deeper developments in the future.
Mac's not in any rush - Cassidy needs her now, and she's not going anywhere.
END
Yeah, so I really should have been studying for finals instead of writing this, but I couldn't resist my very persistent muse.
I hope you enjoyed this - despite the very ... indefinite and uncertain status of the M/C relationship at the end. I'd love to hear your thoughts, so if you can take a moment to leave some concrit, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again!
If you enjoyed this and would like to read my other VM fanfic, please check out herowlness_fic