You just might want to kill me for this. But I wrote it cause I was thinking about how Truman perceives Derek and Casey. Also just a heads up, a fair amount of swearing ahead.
Edited as of September 3, 2009 - Very remiss and forgetful of me not to do this but I do owe this fic to NotAContrivance. She made me look at Truman in a different manner. And after I stabbed myself sufficiently for liking/sympathising with him, I was able to think about the why's and what's of Truman's psyche.
So thank you NotAContrivance for initiating the turnaround. :)
tangled wisps of reality.
/
He's the poster child for fucked up.
Daddy issues, Mommy issues, every bloody psychological problem that is out there, he has it. By the truckload. And as a result, all it takes for him is a glance at person to know if they have issues too. Just like he does.
At the first glance, Casey is perfect. Derek is perfect and they are both so fucking perfect with their, 'I hate you' attitudes pasted on their faces, every single day.
He see's them and thinks that the only one in the family who maybe needs therapy is Nora. The strain of holding together a wildly enterprising family shows in her eyes and the crow's feet around them. But he knows what that therapy session will be like. There won't be pills of different kinds for her to digest, maybe with alcohol and there won't be a hundred different prodding questions about what she feels. The psychiatrist will tell her plain and simple, she needs to stop trying to control them and just let the whole thing unfold as it should. Her family is self-sufficient and she doesn't have to tear her hair out worrying about them all the time.
They are all fine.
But at the second glance he realizes that there are fucked up people in that oh so perfect blended family.
That's right. They are Derek and Casey, the supposedly poster children for perfect.
(And he wonders why he can't ever say their names apart. They just seem to run into one and other and try as he can, he just can't break them apart.
DerekandCasey.)
/
At first glance, Casey hates Derek. She loathes him and his attitude and his voice and just everything about him that is concrete and real. She hates that he pranks her endlessly, she hates that he makes her life living hell, she hates that he dates an endless string of girls, blonde haired and blue eyed, perfect and plastic like Barbie, she hates that he thinks only of himself and no one else, she hates that her whole world revolves around him and that not a day, an hour or a minute goes by without her talking about him.
She talks about him and he listens, happy for once that he's not the most hated person. But that happiness quickly dissolves into bitterness when he realizes that Casey talks about Derek not because she hates him but because she's trying so hard to hate him and she's failing.
She loves him. That's why she's trying so hard. Stupid, stupid, stupid his brain says. How did he not see this?
He laughs—and never mind about the fact that his stupid heart is breaking—because who knew that underneath all the veneer and polish and perfection, that Casey McDonald was just another girl in love with Derek Venturi. Like a hundred others at her school.
Except he's her step-brother and he's pretty sure that even though it's not technically incest, Casey is fighting it so hard because god forbid, anyone point any fingers at her for being in love with her step-brother.
She's just as fucked up as him, maybe even more except the only difference between him and her is that, he knows he's fucked up and she is just adding a layer of denial to her self everyday. He should really tell her, denial is of no use as it only delays the inevitable but something holds him back.
(Maybe he just wants her to find out one fine day and have her heart break just like she broke his. Because the knowledge that he's just a placeholder for fuckingperfect Derek Venturi is too bitter a pill for him to swallow.)
/
At the first glance Derek is perfect and he finds himself reluctantly looking up to him because this scrawny kid with the messy hair and smooth voice is the epitome of everything he ever wanted to be. He's popular, he's cocky, he's self-assured and the girls love him and so does everyone else.
But then he takes a second glance at him, because he just has to take a look at this kid who Casey keeps ranting about and when he looks really closely he finds out he was so way off the mark. Derek is perfect, but perfection is only in the eye of the beholder and all he can see is 'fucked-up', written in big bold letters all across him.
Who knew and who would have thought it would be Derek Venturi of all people?
It's like discovering your idol has feet of clay and he's filled with an insane urge to hurt them both for being in love with each other, not saying it and breaking his heart. It's like fighting for the ball on the playground during recess except this time, for stakes, its heartbreak and with a healthy dash of angst on the side.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why Derek does all those things he does. He sabotages her way at every turn in a twisted attempt to keep her with him, he pranks her because that's the only way she'll talk to him and he dates only blondes because then there is no way he can compare them to Casey. He loves her so much that he simultaneously wants to drive her away and keep her close. And because he knows, they won't ever be together – there's a baby on the way with her hair and his eyes – he settles for the second best thing. A 'sibling' relationship.
It's like taking what you don't want because you can't have what you actually want. He should know. He's had a lot of practice with that and it's what he's doing now with Casey.
See, he wants all of her –he wants her to look at him with those eyes, but since he can only get a part of her—not her heart—he settled for just having her.
(And yes, when Derek looks at him with those jealoussadangry eyes, there's something in his chest that explodes and it feels like bittersweet victory because there's three fucked up people in one fucked up love triangle. It doesn't feel good but it doesn't feel bad either.)
/
Once in a while he feels guilt and he tries to be a good person and gives her an out, with her cousin Vicki, who looks the same but is not really her. And when Derek punches him, all he wants to say is, 'fuck you, I'm trying to give you and in, just take it and leave you bastard,' but all he does is smirk as he wipes the blood from his nose. That's his gift for the favor. And now it can never be said that he didn't try.
Because he tried and she still came back and Derek moved on- or at least tried too, with some other brunette.
/
You can't say he didn't try. It's a pity they didn't try harder though. Whatever happened to the concept of fighting for your love? Guess it bit the dust along with a thousand other fairy tales and dreams.
(How ironic is it that he's rooting for the love of his life and his enemy? But that is him. Truman French. Poster child for fucked-up. Take a bow.)
/
Sometime he thinks, he wonders what if would be like if Casey never came back.
The answer comes to him in a flash. There wouldn't be three fucked-up lives and there wouldn't be three fucked-up people and for once he would be perfect and happy. Perfectly happy.
But like many other things that remains a what if.
And at the end of the day however, just like Casey has got her denial and Derek has got his lies, he's still got his what-ifs.
(They'll give him his happy ending and perfect life. And if not in real life, it will at least be in his hallucinations and dreams.)
I don't know what possessed me to write this. I have seriously no clue.