Chapter ONE: Guilt
She had been so sure she was over this, over him. She had stopped going to therapy, she'd been able to sleep full nights without the help of medication, she'd finally lost her virginity to a very nice kind boy who had cared about her.
But people who are fine don't break into marinas.
She had contemplated breaking into Casa de Casablancas but what was the point of that, none of his things were there, everything had been packed up and the house sold to a couple from out of town totally unaware of who had lived there prior.
So she had gone to the marina, there was a boat here somewhere she had heard Dick mention, somewhere among all the extravagant pristine boats was another boat, equally extravagant, equally pristine, that Cassidy had bought for Dick as a graduation present, the boat Dick had packed all of Cassidy's things on.
So there she is at three in the morning on Cassidy's birthday searching out Dick's boat to break into...onto?
What she's going to do after that she has no idea, surround herself with Cassidy and just cry and cry until someone finds her? Maybe, she's already doing a good job of that, she's wearing the sweater he left in her car, the one she keeps at the back of her closet that she doesn't dare let Veronica know about.
It doesn't even smell like him anymore.
There it is. the Margaret. She doesn't know the significance of the name and she doesn't really care it was something between Cass and Dick. Maybe it was a family thing.
She pulls herself up onto the boat and makes for below deck. The door is open but she's not sure if that's weird or not, it's a boat not a car, some PCHer isn't going to sail the thing into a chop shop for christ sakes and there is a state of the art security system on the gates at the marina...that she easily bypassed.
There's music playing below deck and she's half afraid she's caught Dick trying to woo some girl but there's an odd vacancy to the boat...ship...vessel. There are a wide array of bottles on the kitchenette counter and table in various stages of empty. A single glass, filled with gin and promptly forgotten. There isn't a single scrap of evidence that Dick has company. No lipstick on any of the bottles, no extra cup, no purse or heel. And she's not all that surprised when she thinks about it because she doesn't really want any company today either.
But shit that's a lot of booze to drink alone and it's so quiet she should at least check on the only Casablancas heir left.
She pushes through the boxes that clutter the cabin towards the almost closed door at the far end. Her hands running over boxes marked clothes and awards and books. Pushing passed a life deconstructed.
She has a hand on the door and slowly pushes it open to see Dick sitting on the edge of the bed, crying into a sweater.
"Dick?" She asks quietly and his head shoots up his eyes wide and angry. The anger fades from him when he recognises who it is.
"Did Logan send you to find me?" He asks his voice thick and rough from crying for god knows how long.
"No," she decides that if anyone will appreciate what she's doing it's Dick, the only other person on the planet that misses Cassidy so badly it's broken them, "I broke in because you said Cass's stuff was here." She sits down on the bed next to him, "I didn't think anyone would be here."
That brings a short laugh out of him, he sets the sweater down next to him and looks at her, "I thought you were over this...him."
"Yeah me too." A noise bubbles out of her mouth and she's not sure if it's more laugh or cry. She falls backwards on the bed and covers her face with her sweater covered hands and she just let's a brand new bout of sobs over take her.
She stiffens when an arm falls across her middle. She can feel Dick on the bed next to her, his weight denting the bed. His arm wraps around her middle, his hot fingers on her hip as he pulls her back against him.
He doesn't say anything right away and she's glad for it because she's sure everything she could possibly have to say is stained with tears and longing and guilt. Because even knowing everything he's done, knowing he's a murderer and rapist, she still just wants him here and she's not sure that kind of guilt can ever go away.
It's been a year and a half since he'd jumped, wasn't this shit supposed to get easier.
She rolled in his loose grip and buried her head in his shirt. He smelt like him but at the same time he didn't. She's sure it must be something in his dna. She balls up her hands in his shirt and cries, his body shaking slightly around her and she knows she's not alone in her tears. There's something amazingly comforting in that.
Finally she is with someone that understands, because Cassidy may have been a lot of things, most of them bad, but he had also been loved.
Her hands loosen their grip on his shirt and slide around him, holding him to her. She's positive this is the first time they have actually made physical contact with each other and she wonders why they didn't do it more often because the smell and feel of him settles something in her, calms the ache in her like nothing else has.
They stay like that for hours, in fact she's pretty sure she falls a sleep at one point because the next time she opens her eyes a warm orange light is filtering it's way through the cabin.
He rolls away from her but she's still lying on his arm, his fingers still pressed firmly against her hip.
"He'd be so pissed at me." Dick tells the quite of the boat.
"What for?"
"You want me to pick just one thing?" He asks and he turns to look at her and she does the same and his eyes are red and puffy, his face red from crying and she's sure that she mirrors him.
She nods, just one thing, she's not sure she can handle the sheer weight of all his guilt, not on top of her own.
"Fine..." He closes his eyes tight trying to pick out just one thing. A sigh escapes his mouth before he speaks again, eyes still closed, "you."
"Me?"
"Yeah for being a total bitch to you."
"I already accepted your apology Dick."
He opens his eyes to look at her and his hand grabs onto her more, his fingers pushing the sweater away like he's desperate to touch her skin. She let's him, his fingers rest on her skin and burn and cool all at once.
Something about the way he's looking at her makes her think that he thinks Cass would be pissed at a little more than just him being a dick to her. There's something dark in his eyes and it brings to mind failed kisses and standing too close.
"Yeah..." He responds sliding her closer to him on the bed. And his eyes are so much like Cassidy's, there's a broken quality to them now and it hits her right in the chest.
Lying on that bed with one Casablancas is so much like being with the other that she's not sure what to do with herself.
Sometimes it still feels like she's alone in that hotel room, naked and shivering and trying to figure out what she did wrong. Cold and wrong in her skin.
"I thought I was over it, over him, but sometimes it feels like I'm still in that hotel room..." She looks at him wondering if he knows how exactly his brother had left her. He looks away from her pained and its obvious that he knows.
Logan must have told him because they had somehow managed to keep it out of the papers exactly what Cassidy Casablancas had left in his wake. Perhaps Dick had even asked. She has trouble imagining Logan just offering up that information.
"I'm afraid of hotel bathrooms." She tells him honestly and it pulls a laugh out of him, it rumbles in his chest and through her body and it pulls a small smile onto her face, "seriously I hold it every time I'm at the suite."
"You know we're not going to steal your clothes right?" Dick tells her his fingers in her hair. She pulls herself closer to him, removing all the space between them and Dick wraps his arms tightly around her small body as if he can protect her from the past.
"Is there any tequila left?" She asks quietly into his chest.
"Yeah hold on." His arms squeeze her briefly and she's sure that he leaves a kiss in her hair before he removes himself from her.
She feels cold without his body. She climbs up the bed and takes stock. The bed is wide and comfortable and there are plenty of blankets, she could easily hole up in here for the rest of the week. On all fours she opens the bedside drawer and finds a plethora of condoms and quickly snaps the drawer shut.
She has a boyfriend, she doesn't need that. Although the feel of his body against hers is so comforting...
She shakes her head to remove the thoughts and vivid images. The idea of finding out if he's really as good as he thinks.
"What's up?" Dick's voice comes from the bedroom door and she turns quickly to see him standing there with a bottle in one hand and a pair of shot glasses in the other.
"Nothing..." She settles back onto the bed and takes the bottle from Dick as he crawls up to her.
She wants to taste him...
"I'll be right back." She tells him quickly and basically runs out of the room. She grabs her purse on the way above deck.
She leans against the railing and pulls her phone out of her purse. She scrolls through the numbers for Max. She feels wrong having a boyfriend, being with Max when all she wants to do is loose herself in the company of another man.
It's almost 10 he should be up no problem.
He answers on the third ring.
"Hey Mackie, how goes it this fine morning?"
"I want to break up." She tells him quickly, hoping her voice is stern and rational sounding.
"What?!" Max chokes on the other end, "why? What did I do?"
"Nothing really..." Mac admits sinking down onto the deck and letting her legs hang over the edge, "I just..." She sighs and flops backwards onto the deck and closes her eyes against the morning sun, "I want to see other people. You are a really nice guy and I like you and all just..."
"Not enough?" He supplies and his voice is thick and she kinda feels like crap.
"Yeah. Maybe in a couple of months we can be friends. We probably should have tried that first."
There's a long silence on the other end of the line, "I never would have pegged you to break up with someone over the phone."
"Yeah well I'm on a boat right now."
"Your on a boat? Aren't you supposed to be at a film history lecture."
"Yep." She pops the 'p' and hangs up before he can say anything else.
She just lies there letting the sun beat down on her hoping that if she waits long enough this guilt will go away or at the very least lessen.
She can hear Dick lie down next to her. Feel his arm against hers. She can even smell him, the smell of booze trying to over take the crisp oceany smell of him.
She keeps her eyes closed. If he heard everything...oh god. Please let the ocean just swallow her now. Because if he heard that she wants to see other people it can't be that far of a jump for him to think that he's the people. Which is true...she just wants to loose herself in him consequence free, but she doesn't want him to know that.
"You just dumped the test dude?"
She nods.
"Why?"
"I just don't...he just doesn't get it." She opens her eyes to look at him and his face is closer than she thought it'd be, "I just want to hole up here for the week and drink and just be with someone who gets it..." It occurs to her a second too late that she's just told him she wants to spend the whole week with no one but him, in a boat with one bed and drink.
"We'll need to go into town to get some food." Is his response and a breath escapes her lungs she didn't know she was holding, "then once this hangover blows over we can set out."
"Out?"
"Yeah you think Ronnie's not going to come after you? We'll head down the coast, find a nice place to dock for the rest of the week."
he leans over and presses a kiss to her hairline before he disappears back below deck. She can feel her skin heat and burn, he knows he's people.
they fill up the kitchenette with cereal and soy milk and regular milk (because Dick isn't putting that crap in his body), vegetables and tofu and chicken, frozen pizza (some no cheese veggie abomination) and juice.
They don't need to stock up on alcohol because the cabinets are already packed. Dick has been pounding back Gatoraide in an effort to speed up his recovery.
And he manages to set sail just after two, he does all the work and she wears a life jacket that he threw at her.
She's sitting behind him as he steers them down the coast when her phone blasts through the comfortable quiet.
private eyes...are watching you...
He turns to look at her, "Veronica?"
"How'd you guess?" She smiles at him and looks hard at the phone trying to figure out if she wants to answer it.
She hits ignore and the comfortable silence returns, the sound of soft wind and the boat cutting through the water.
private eyes...are watching you
The song fills the air again and Mac looks down at her phone but its dark. Dick however pulls his phone from his back pocket and hands it to her. A smile on his face.
"You should answer it, throw her for a loop, tell her I took you to Vegas or something, Paris, Monte Carlo, whatever."
She considers it but hits ignore on his phone as well. She waits for the voice mail to flash before she goes into it, "This is Dick's phone, we will be in the city of lights, recreating select scenes from last tango in Paris. If it's important leave a message." She hangs up and hands Dick her phone.
"You sure you want to spend the whole week with me without chance of rescue?" He's voice is oddly solemn, serious and dark. She just nods.
"Hey, this is Mac's phone, she's unavailable as we've run away to Paris to get eloped, feel free to send wedding gifts to the presidential suite at the Neptune Grande." He finishes his message and hands it back to her, her eyes are wide and her cheeks hot with a flush that Dick seems to love inducing.
"Oh that's not going to cause problems at all."
He shrugs, "the boat could use a new blender."
A/N: Inspired by the fact that in Gilmore girls Luke Danes has a dark day, the day his father died, when he just disappears off the map. Stay tuned for chapter two when we see some frantic and worried Logan and Veronica.
