A/N: I've had this written for ages, and I've recently been revisiting the Cassons so I thought I'd post it. I haven't written the entire story yet, but I'm hoping posting it will give me the motivation I need to get back into writing. It will eventually be a Rose/Tom story, at least that's how it's planned in my head, but I wanted to dedicate a chapter to each of the other siblings first :)
It was true that the Cassons had a roundabout way of finding happiness.
"Stubborn, the whole lot of you," Bill stated indignantly, until Rose countered that they all needed to search for love in a guarded sort of way on account of witnessing so much treachery on their father's behalf. Rose always said what she pleased, and there wasn't a thing anyone could do about it.
Caddy had found her happy ending first, with Darling Michael, ("I always knew. How could I have ever doubted?") followed by five children.
"Five!" Michael often exclaimed after coming home from a long day of driving lessons, helping his mate Luke in his auto shop, and, on particularly trying days, assisting the elderly ladies on their street with plumbing and other handy household tasks because five growing children constantly needed clothes and shoes and school things and a house bigger than the zoo flat. "Five of them!"
"Yes, five, Michael, darling, and please stop shouting about it. If I had known we'd have two sets of twins, then perhaps…" But she never finished, because she loved all her children so dearly, no matter how exhausting and expensive they were.
Buttercup was fourteen and growing like a weed. He did not mind being called Buttercup, so conditioned to responding to the nickname that he slipped between the identities of Buttercup and Carlos easily.
"I can hardly stand how fast he's growing up," said Caddy, licking her hand and smoothing down his unruly hair and tutting and tutting, having a new appreciation for Eve and all her endless tears of nostalgia. Buttercup was tall for his age with dark, gorgeous eyes, golden skin and shiny black hair he insisted on growing out.
"So I can have a ponytail, just like Dad's when he was younger. Maybe an earring too." And Michael groaned and rolled his eyes and thought suddenly of Bill with an unexpected affinity.
Jassy and Juniper were eleven, wickedly brilliant and nearly always scheming. And Hazel and Holly, aged seven, were fair and golden, just like their mother.
"We would like guinea pigs for the garden, Mummy, please. Just like from your stories," Hazel and Holly had asked so politely one day that Caddy had taken them to the pet shop at once.
Buttercup obligingly constructed a hutch from scrap lumber, under Caddy's careful instruction while Timmy, their large, dopey Labrador, sat nearby in a patch of shade, never far from Buttercup's side. Jassy and Juniper painted the hutch brightly in the late afternoon once Buttercup had finished constructing it.
"All of the family colors," explained Juniper to the younger twins. "Here is Mummy's gold," she pointed to the roof. "And the walls are Auntie Saffron's yellow, and the ramp is Uncle Indy's blue, and the flowers here on the sides are Auntie Rose's pink."
It was dark once the paint had dried, and Holly and Hazel lovingly placed a bedding of straw on the floor.
Michael, finally back from a grueling day of work, had hoped to come home to a hot supper and children tidily tucked into bed, instead found his entire family out under the stars in the garden, arguing over names for their newly acquired pets. And Michael, who realised that he had come home to proper supper perhaps less than a dozen times in fourteen years of marriage and children lurking about no matter how many times they were dumped into bed, let out a small weary sigh, kissed his wife, and settled into the damp grass to meet the newest members of the family.
