Title: See Dick Grieve
Author: Emily Wallinger (Darko28)
Rating: PG-13 for cursing, thematic elements, and sensuality.
Disclaimer: Veronica Mars belongs to Rob Thomas and Co.
Author's Note: Um, yeah. I wrote this a year ago, back when Cassidy's death was still relevant. I found it last week and really fell back in love with it. So…here.
See Dick. See Dick mourn. Mourn, Dick, mourn.
Dick wishes that funerals were more like weddings or graduations. Occasions when people send stuffed teddy bears and brightly colored balloons. Not so with funerals. Sure there are flowers and casseroles. But the flowers die and the casseroles are filled with pity and unnatural looking vegetable blends.
Half of Neptune curses the Casablancas name with every breath they take. Dick doesn't see how public opinion has changed.
See Dick play dress-up. Nice suit, Dick.
Dick doesn't understand why the church is so empty and the streets are so full.
When they climb out of the limo, Logan pushes Dick towards the doors like a protective mother and suggests that the screaming crowd shove their signs somewhere dark and smelly.
Dick counts twelve.
Twelve people, here to say goodbye. He counts twice, just to be sure.
Logan, Veronica, Ghost World, his mother (sitting towards the back with her new family). Assorted well-wishers and gawkers.
It's all so funny that Dick can't hold it in anymore and starts to laugh. Laugh, chuckle, giggle, snicker, hoot, snort, guffaw. He laughs and it gets so bad that he can't breathe and he looses control of his gag reflex, all over Veronica's dress. It used to be blue; now it's mostly green.
See Dick lounge. Lounge, Dick, lounge.
He spends most of his time out in the pool. He lays on a floating raft and drifts in circles for hours on end.
Logan sits on the pavement and dips his feet. He's there to watch, not to swim.
"You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?" He tests the water gingerly. The sun is too strong; Dick doesn't bother to open his eyes.
"I don't know yet," he answers truthfully. He's been told that there's a measure of stupidity inherent in every decision he makes.
"Will you call me when you decide?"
Dick shrugs and splashes the water. A ripple shakes the calm.
He'll decide some things when the casseroles are gone. He turns over and tries to think about different summers.
See Dick. See Dick sleep. See Dick walk. See Dick sleepwalk.
At first he was afraid to fall asleep.
He thought maybe the dreams would be as bad as his waking life, but no dreams come and he thinks that might be worse.
He doesn't dream, but he starts to wake up in weird places. Places like Beaver's room.
He doesn't like it, but he can't stop. So he locks the door and throws the key into the pool.
When he wakes up the next morning, he's lying underneath Beaver's bed and the door is sitting in the corner, broken off its hinges.
He decides to leave things be.
See Dick. See Dick taunt Mac. No, Dick, no. Don't taunt Mac.
Ghost World stops by a few days later. He hasn't been in the presence of a female since the funeral and he vaguely realizes that he hasn't showered since then either.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi," Dick replies.
She steps inside and they start up the stairs without a word. Dick knows what she's here for.
They stop at his room. The door is still in the corner. If Mac notices, she doesn't mention it. Nor does she mention the ruffled sheets or the Dick shaped pattern in the bedspread.
And he hates her for it.
Mac sits down on the bed and promptly bursts into tears. Dick doesn't know what he's supposed to do, so he slips downstairs, locates a half empty bottle of beer, drains it, and starts back upward. One step, two step, three step, four. Mac is still crying. Beaver is still dead.
He suddenly realizes that she has no right to cry when he hasn't been able to and he wants to hurt her.
"I think I'm going to knock down the walls. Make a gym. Or a sewing room," he says from the doorway.
A moment later, blood is pouring down his face.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I shouldn't have. Can I take my things?"
Dick licks his teeth. "I taste like metal," he observes.
Mac leaves a few minutes later with a box full of junk.
See Dick. See Dick's hardhat. See Dick remodel.
"Don't you need buttresses?" Logan's hardhat matches Dick's. It makes Dick smile.
"I don't care," he answers with a shrug.
Downstairs Veronica is doing Dick's laundry. She decides not to say anything about the smell. Or the 32 empty cans of beer in the recycling bin. Or the hardened pile of vomit sitting next to the patio door.
Upstairs, Logan wants to tell Dick that maybe he should take some time to think about this, but he doesn't, mostly because Dick is holding a sledgehammer.
It's a summer full of unsaid things.
Dick wants to quote something poignant, but he can't think of anything, so he shouts, "Tally ho!" and swings the hammer. It slams into the wall. Crumble, crumble, dust. Dick can see his father's office through the hole. He raises the hammer again, but this time slips out of his hands goes flying through the open window. He can hear it land somewhere in the pool.
"Quittin' time," he announces, opening a can of beer.
It's a productive day.
See Dick. See Dick wax poetic.
Beaver's ashes are sitting high atop the shelf in Dick's closet. He almost knocks them over when reaching for his board polish. He hasn't surfed since before graduation and he has no plans to in the future, but his love of all things shiny remains fastidious. Besides, it gives him something to do, apart from floating in the pool.
The idea of Beaver-dust spilling all over his carpet doesn't please Dick so he decides to place his brother in a more suitable resting place.
A ceramic cow shaped cookie jar now rests on the mantle above the fireplace. It moos whenever the top is pulled back.
See Dick. See Dick get sued. Fight the man, Dick, fight the man!
The people who owned the Ford that Beaver fell onto want 50,000 dollars to replace their '81 Capri. Dick bets they could get a hundred grand if they sold it on e-Bay as the Neptune Teen Bomber Death Car. That's what the papers are calling him nowadays.
His father's lawyers urge his to take this to court and counter sue.
Dick decides to settle. He gives them 60 thousand and asks if he can keep the car.
He hires a tow truck to do what tow trucks do and they situate the car on the back lawn, next to the pool. Dick lays on it sometimes and looks up at the sky, not thinking.
He's gotten really good at not thinking in the past month.
For a moment a memory pops into his head. One from a different summer. It makes his head happy, and his stomach happy, and his heart happy. Then it's gone and he's still alone and Beaver's still dead.
See Dick. See Dick vent his aggression.
There's a tv in every room of the house. They are always on, always tuned to a different station. There are comedies and dramas, daytime soaps and talk shoes.
One day the tv in the guest room shows a special about the life of beavers. Dick finds a baseball bat, and when he is done the tv has learned it's lesson. It will never show another Animal Planet special again.
See Dick. See Dick not play nicely with other. Time out, Dick.
Logan comes over to play X-box. He brings new games, so Dick lets him in.
They don't speak for four hours. At the end of the game, Logan has 16 more kills than Dick on Halo 2. He thinks it's okay to do a victory dance because he thinks that at least the games have gone back to normal.
He's wrong. And he's knows it as soon as Dick has tackled him and is rubbing his face into the carpet. Logan lets him because he has a high tolerance for pain and he's scared of what Dick will do if he stops him.
Dick's fist connects with the side of Logan's nose. Blood starts to pour.
Dick is screaming and sobbing, but Logan's ears are ringing so all he can make out is "you son-of-a-bitch" and "could've have stopped him".
Dick looks at his shaking fists and climbs off of Logan. He retreats outside, to the safety of the pool, and climbs back on his raft. It's the first time in a week.
Logan follows him and sits by the edge of the pool. Things have gotten worse and better all at the same time. Either way he goes back to watching.
See Dick. See Dick depend on the kindness of strangers.
The casseroles are gone and Dick is hungry. The only things left in the pantry are a can of beets and a bottle of Flintstones vitamins. He's never eaten a single beet in his life and he doesn't plan on starting anytime soon.
He takes a handful of vitamins and chews. They leave a medley of fruit flavors lingering on his tongue.
He remembers something his freshman biology teacher said about vitamins and iron poisoning. He thinks about it for a while, pondering the pros and cons of death by vitamins, weighs them against the possibility of jumping to his death.
Neither option seems too pleasant. He decides to live.
Living requires food.
He finds the right number on the caller id and dials.
"Bring me food," he barks into the phone, hanging up a second later. He thinks for a moment and redials. "This is Dick," he adds.
Twenty minutes later Mac is at the front door, holding a bag of McDonald's in her hands.
"It's three o'clock in the morning," she informs him.
Dick shrugs. Time is still irrelevant.
They stand in silence as Dick devours her offerings.
"Do you want to see the death car?" he asks once he's finished.
See Dick emote. Finally, Dick, finally.
They star up at the sky in silence. There's a Beaver sized space between them.
"Do you want to fuck?" Dick asks tenderly, turning his head.
Mac snorts.
"Oh, sorry," he says. "Do you want to…make love?"
Mac frowns.
"Do you want to make out?"
"Alright."
They shuffle their way across the lawn and into the house, stumbling onto the couch. Mac pushes Dick's hand away from the button of her jeans and he shivers because the skin below her belly-button feels ice cold.
It's rough and cold and nothing like he's ever taken part in before and he likes the idea of not knowing what he's doing.
She moans into his mouth and he pulls away. "When you look at me, do you see him?"
She doesn't answer. He can see her eyes moving away from his own and towards the cookie jar on the mantle.
"What is that?" she points and he gets the feeling that she already has a pretty good idea.
"Beaver-dust," he answers.
The slap is sharp and unexpected. He realizes vaguely that she's burst into tears again.
"You put your brother in a cookie jar?"
She's screaming and carrying on, but he's stopped listening. When she leaves, she slams the door behind her. The top of the cookie jar falls open and goes "Moo."
See Dick. See Dick move forward.
A hospital bed is probably the second weirdest place he's every woken up.
Doctor's come and go, ask him why he'd try and jump out of a second floor window, but he doesn't know how to explain, so he doesn't even try.
How can he tell them that he doesn't want to die, he just wants to feel what his brother felt? How can he tell them that he was aiming for the pool and hit the death car?
He can't, so he doesn't.
Logan visits, Veronica waits in the hallway.
On Tuesday (he can't escape time in the hospital) he wakes up and Mac is sitting in the visitor's chair.
He looks at her. She averts her eyes.
He takes a deep breath. "I think he needs a grave."
Mac looks up and smiles slightly. It's crooked and genuine and Dick feels warm for the first time since a boy named Cassidy jumped off the tallest building in town.