TOW The Weird Geller Dimension

Summary: Cassie Geller is excited for Monica's wedding, but her fiancé Chandler sure likes to stare. At Monica's insistence, Cassie packs up to spend a couple of nights with… Ross.

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing, except for my interpretation of Cassie's character and my invented childhood of the Geller cousins.

Rated T for language, non-graphic depictions of intimacy, and themes that some might find disturbing. Don't like- don't read- don't flame.

A/N: Cassie was only in one episode (7.19: The One with Ross and Monica's Cousin), played by Denise Richards, and she was clearly thrown into the show for eye candy and comedy: but that episode captured my imagination and made me wonder exactly what kinds of cousins she and Ross had been. I tried to stick to canon as much as possible, but the portrayal of Cassie in the actual episode did not mesh well with the character she grew into as I wrote this fic.

I haven't (yet) seen Logan's Run, so I substituted that movie with The Return of the Jedi- another movie that I'd imagine Ross could consider "the sexiest movie ever." Return of the Jedi is when Luke and Leia realize that they! Are! Related! (Oh, Ross.) Also, in the actual episode Monica says that Cassie is supposed to be 25, but since I wanted her, Ross, and Monica to be closer to the same age, she'd be more like 30 or 31.

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Cassie Geller hadn't seen her cousins since she and Monica were thirteen and Ross fourteen.

When most people saw Cassie, they saw a beautiful woman whose long blond hair dazzled when she shook it out. If they could get beyond the hair, they saw an impeccable sense of style: sophisticated clothes with just enough reveal to tantalize, and just enough conceal to remain professional and classy.

What they didn't know was that she had only started to learn how to dress when she was nineteen or so. Before that she'd been so hopelessly unstylish that no one saw beauty in her. She'd worn oversized T-shirts and kept her hair in a braid. She'd had braces until she was seventeen. She hadn't even kissed a boy until she was eighteen, and he was a guy she'd met through a Dungeons and Dragons campaign during her freshman year of college. It had taken years of effort for her to develop confidence in her femininity; to make up for the teenage years spent playing video games, rolling many-sided dice, reading comics and Asimov books in the half-dark, and spending time with a lot of boys and a few girls of questionable hygiene and even more questionable grasp on reality.

That's right- Cassie Geller was an even bigger dork than Ross.

They'd all lived on Long Island before Cassie and her family moved away to Poughkeepsie (geographically quite close, but to New Yorkers, half a planet away). Cassie was actually a second cousin to Monica and Ross, but since they lived twenty minutes away from each other, their families were close. Cassie had played with Monica, since they were the same age and in the same grade: but as she'd gone through the motions of bossy Monica's clean, serene, and neat-as-a-pin tea parties, she'd always been a little bit bored. At night Monica lost her bossiness and the two girls would exchange silly inside jokes and make fun of every single member of their shared family that was unfortunate enough to live close by. They could spend hours abusing Ross as they lay under layers of Monica's pink-rose Laura Ashley blankets and gazed up at the glow-in-the-dark stars.

Monica and Cassie were both eager to please each other, quick to say "I'm sorry" and to defer to the other's preference, but it was all an intricate game of politeness, like in Monica's tea parties. Monica wanted to be recognized as the politest, most helpful, and "best" girl. Cassie didn't much care for that, but something about Monica drove her to compete for the same thing.

Cassie had no desire to please Ross.

When they were seven and eight, an age which most kids decided they were too cool for Legos, Ross would build the most intricate and implausible towers he could imagine. These constructions would be held up by a one-square block as precariously as if by a silken thread. Ross would squint and calculate for minutes at a time before adding a new piece, and then his eyes would widen to colossal proportions as he waited to see if it would hold together, or fall.

Cassie would watch, hidden behind a pillar of their wood-paneled, brown-couch-stuffed basement, smirking as she waited for the perfect time to attack. She'd be unwillingly impressed at his constructions, which became more and more outlandish, but nothing could stop her from wanting to knock his work down. At the opportune moment, as Ross was about to declare himself finished and yell upstairs for everybody to come down and look, she'd tiptoe out behind him, pounce on his back, and sink her teeth into his neck. He'd yelp and flail, and it would all come tumbling down.

Sometimes she felt bad. But an irresistible impulse made her do it over and over. Getting to him was just too easy.

When she was nine, she went too far and made ten-year-old Ross cry. She'd felt her stomach tighten at the sight of the big boy, six inches taller and seven and a half pounds heavier than her, with tears filling his huge dark eyes, gulping and desperately trying not to let the tears fall, knowing that it was unacceptable for a ten-year-old to cry, especially a boy. Shame and hurt and anger warred in his face. He resolutely did not look at Cassie, and fortunately no adults came running down to yell at Cassie or to shame Ross further. She knew that he was bracing himself for further taunts from her about the tears. But at that moment, she resolved to never tease Ross again.

It didn't stick.

She just couldn't stay away from Ross. And because she was so used to teasing him, any attempt that she made to be nice and friendly with him felt awkward to her. To hide the awkwardness she'd snap back into the pattern of meanness and taunting. Ross would meet her stammering attempts at friendliness with suspicion, which was often what drove her over the edge.

It was only Ross who brought out this side of her. To everyone else, she was polite. At school she was a doormat, the butt of a constant, low-flowing stream of teasing. She'd yearned to be the one who would carry around teddy bears from several different boys on Valentine's Day, but she also knew that it would never happen. Cassie was not a pretty girl. She was a smart girl, a studious girl who made straight As and read ahead in her textbooks for fun, a quiet girl who never responded to ill-treatment with aggression.

Maybe her drive to annoy Ross wouldn't go away because Ross was an easier target than she was. Maybe it was because she was so tired of being at the bottom of the totem pole that she yearned to take out her anger on someone. She didn't have the guts to stand up for herself against bullying at school. It didn't take any guts to bully Ross. The best and worst part was that Ross could never leave. He was family. He didn't have a choice.

When Cassie wasn't around Ross, she would berate herself for the way she treated him. She actually quite liked Ross. She knew she had more in common with him than with Monica or the other cousins. They liked some of the same books. Both of them loved school, and they both listed science and history as their favorite subjects. They both read comics. Cassie would have liked nothing better than to lie out under the stairs with Ross in the middle of the night, reading the latest Green Lantern together with a flashlight as the rest of the house slept.

But as soon as she saw him, every time he and Monica and their parents came over, she knew she was doomed. His face might as well have read "Tease Me" across the forehead. Before he'd even step over the threshold of her house, Cassie would be on him, tugging his ears and poking his plump cheeks, with a fresh taunt ready at the tip of her tongue.