Bad People
He still hasn't managed to get I love you out of his mouth when she can see him. When she's unconscious, no problem. After she leaves the room, sure, but when she could actually hear him? Nothing. He's not sure what the problem is, but the worst thing about the whole mess is that everyone knows he didn't say it.
That they didn't have sex and that he didn't say it back.
Worst then that, they all seem to know what he had said instead.
Casey had asked if he thought he got away with that because she was a dork, too, that he was younger and scared, or just because she really did actually love him.
Like a for real kind of love not just some flash in the pan teenage thing.
He hoped it was the last one, but it was probably a combination of the first two.
"Maybe you don't actually love her." Dick offered as they sat on an ocean, made of glass, looking out at the impossibly straight horizon. There was a hopeful sound in his tone, but he didn't look at him, "I mean she's the first girl that really liked you, that's a big deal. I was sure I loved Madison for like a whole year."
"I love her."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
He wants to say so many things, that he bought her an island, that he actually wants to have sex with her, that he is waiting for when she also wants to instead of just taking it like he could, because she makes him feel something; something big and small and heavy and light all at once, something impossible and amazing.
He knows because he knows.
"Why do you think you love her?" He asks and is more than a little amazed that they are having this conversation at all. It must be the presences of the ocean and the surfboards that take some of the edge away from the topic.
They can't get into a fist fight here without it ending up all ordinary people.
"I don't think I love her. I just do."
"You've barely spoken to her."
"I don't want her to think I'm-" the word is stuck in his throat, but he knows him well enough to fill in the blanks.
They let the soft sounds of the ocean fill up the space.
Dick is letting water slip through his fingers, and he's sure that's how he feels about Mac but that's how he has felt about everything for so long.
"It's the words, right? I can never say them when they matter either." Dick's voice feels so far away and raw.
He misses fun Dick, this version of his brother was too deep and too observant. It was dangerous, for them both.
"Maybe..." His response feels forced, he's wanted this kind of attention from his brother for pretty much his whole life and now that he had it, he just didn't know how to deal with it.
He had been alone in everything for so long and now both Dick and Mac seemed to be squirming their way into everything.
It felt claustrophobic.
"Just kiss her."
"I kiss her all the time."
He's probably imagining it, but he could have sworn that Dick had flinched a little.
"I mean for real, something that just pours out everything, puts everything in the open and shit. Love means never having to say it."
Dick mangles the love story quote, but there's something thick in the words that make it mean so much more.
"Or you could just write her a letter. One of those love letters girls keep forever and grandchildren find in the attic, and learn way too much about how you like it rough." He turns his board back to shore, "You're good with words."
Dick isn't as bad with words as he thinks he is.
He watches Dick paddle back to shore, watches him shake out his hair 'accidentally' on some short brunette in a bikini. Watches the ease Dick has at getting the girl to wrap her arms around him. He turns away when she starts to kiss his brother.
She looks too much like Mac from this far away. Although he's pretty sure that's exactly why his brother chose her in the first place.
It was so easy for Dick, but did that make it mean less? It was sure starting to sound like it; hollow romances, easy lays that meant nothing outside of the enjoyment of the act. Which was fine, he wasn't going to begrudge Dick that, so he liked having sex, so did everyone. It was that pieces of him were being pulled around, and he wasn't sure he had felt guilt before this.
Loving the same girl was creating this strange push-pull in their relationship, it felt deeper, but at the same time felt shallow and pulled tight, like it could snap.
He spent an hour on the glass, waiting for something, a wave, a revelation, anything. Nothing came but a stick taking its time on the current.
When he got back to the truck, the windows were fogged and it rocked ever so slightly.
Great.
At least Dick had been nice enough to toss his clothes into the bed of the truck. He changes and checks his pockets for his phone, trying really hard not to listen to the moaning coming from the cab.
No keys.
No phone.
"Just fucking great."
Maybe they were almost done?
A feminine moan and the all too familiar grunt of his brother pushes him away from the truck. He has no intention of listening to that. It's bad enough when Dick has a girl at the house, at least there was Zeppelin to cover the noises.
He walks with no place in mind, he just needs to waste time until he's sure it's safe to go back to the beach, to his brother, to his god damn phone.
He ends up at the Grande.
Logan looks like hell warmed over. His case was dismissed last week. He should be happy, but the stink of vodka soaked depression hangs on him like it only can on the ridiculously rich.
With that air of practised extravagance.
He wasn't sure if this was a better place for his friend to be in than that spectacular, volatile anger from before.
"Hey." He greeted plainly and walked back into the suite, leaving the door wide open for him.
He trailed after him and found him watching the TV. No light in the room. All the lights off, blinds, curtains, and doors closed.
The only light came in flickering colors from the television, lighting him up in blues and oranges as the older boy took a drink straight from a bottle.
The vodka in question.
He settles into the couch next to him, he's watching that Tinseltown Diaries shit that's been on repeat pretty much all year.
The fabulous and tragic life of Aaron Echolls.
"Thank God mom isn't around to see this. She'd probably jump off the bridge all over again." Logan grumbles and hands him the half empty bottle.
He takes it mostly to keep it out of Logan's hands. He notices a stack of movies and a very feminine cardigan piled haphazardly against a wall.
It's too fluffy and sweet to be a left over from Veronica. No. He had seen a Veronica-induced bender only once before, but it had been a more active thing and he found he much preferred its destructive force to this lethargic hole of depression.
It was trying to suck him in and it'd be far too easy for that. He tried to focus on the few good things he'd managed to scrape together.
A multimillion dollar company.
A beautiful girlfriend who loved him... Or at least the him that she knew, which he had to admit was more than anyone else probably ever knew.
A death toll...
Okay maybe that, in and of itself, wasn't good. He felt marginally bad for the whole Meg thing, but a secret could only be kept between three people if two were dead.
He made his bed and he had no problem lying in it.
The weird depth of his strained relationship with Dick. It was a strange thing knowing that his brother would actually back him up, even if he wanted his girlfriend for himself.
"I'm a bad person..." Logan whispers to the image of his father, "God I'm going to be just like him, aren't I..." He doesn't turn to Cassidy and he's not sure if he's supposed to answer.
He answers anyway.
He likes Logan.
"No."
"No, I'm not a bad person, or no, I'm not going to be my father?"
"No you're not going to be your father. If nature over nurture is real, how do you explain Dick and I?" He sets the bottle down on the coffee table, as far from Logan as possible, "You are a completely different person than your father, shaped by your own experiences and influences."
"I'm pretty sure those experiences and influences are making me a bad person. I'm a bad person and I don't deserve Hannah." Logan's voice is still low, like he doesn't want to be heard, like it's a secret that Logan Echolls is a bad person.
He knows his experiences have made him bad. It isn't an uncommon fantasy, imagining what he'd be like if he had taken up soccer like Dick, or if his mother had had her way and he had ended up playing the violin instead. It was an exercise in futility. He would never be that person, normal, with normal urges and feelings and without bloodstained hands and fingers.
But that was fine.
He didn't care for that anymore. Mac had given him something he hadn't thought possible and, yes, he didn't deserve her either, but fuck if he was going to let that stop him from seeing her.
"We're all bad people, Logan, but that doesn't stop most of us from being with who we want to be with."
"You and Mac?" Logan asks, an oddly understanding look flitting across his sullen face, "You're not a bad person, Cassidy." He reaches out his hand to ruffle his hair, but Cassidy catches it with ease despite the practised drunk Logan is.
"Everyone is bad, Logan. Some people are just better at it than others." He tosses Logan's arm back at him, lightly, and gets up from the couch.
Logan doesn't say anything as he moves around the suite, cleaning up the bottles of booze and getting Logan a glass of water.
He borrows Logan's cell phone to call Mac and beg her to pick him up.
He's about to leave Logan when he finally speaks again.
"You don't really think you're a bad person, do you?"
"I know I'm a bad person."
"But what about Mac?"
He can't help but smirk a little, "She's bad, too, It's part of what I love about her."