I know

He's read every single message she had sent. Has listened to all the messages she'd left before his inbox had filled up.

It's this beautiful, strange mix of things, just like her.

Desperate apologies, declarations of love, outrage that he had taken Dick back but hadn't even looked at her, promises of letting him have his wicked way with her, beautifully detailed messages about what they could do together, fantastic angry short things filled with rage and swearing and promising him that she would take revenge on the house of Casablancas for wronging her.

Entrapment she had called it more than once.

His favorite ones are the ones that are just regular messages, about how her brother had roped her into helping with a science fair, or the stream of complaints about Butters.

Fuck, he missed her and Dick wasn't helping with his talk of threesomes and how it wouldn't really be incest if Mac was in the middle and how he bet she liked it rough.

He knew she liked it kind of rough and he hated Dick for reminding him.

If nothing else he just missed her company. The sexy stuff was great, fucking fantastic really, but her company trumped everything. The stop and start intellectual conversations weaved through conversations about video games and movies and nothing in particular.

God.

He missed her friendship and if he wasn't a mass murderer, with one more on his list, he'd say something to her.

She was better off without him, without either of them.

He wanted her to be happy and safe. There was no guarantee of either of those things if they dragged her into this, this filth.

"Just talk to her. She calls you like every day, man." Dick tried for the millionth time. He's starting to think that Dick is mostly just in it for the potential threesome.

He powers on his phone.

It's silent.

No new messages.

His heart stops.

"What?" He lets slip by accident, he goes in to check his messages anyway hating that Dick is right across the couch looking at him with concern.

There really are no new messages.

He tosses the phone between them like it doesn't matter, "Good, it's about time she stopped trying to contact me." He grabs his drink from the coffee table and really wishes it had been any cup other than his muff dive mug, "It was getting pathetic." He grumbles, "She's better than that."

There is no acknowledgement that she's given up on him other than the messages just stopping. Everything else seems to be the same, she doesn't go out of her way to avoid him, but there was this invisible wall between them when they passed in the halls and he looked back at her every time but she never looked back.

Why would she bother, he had made it more than clear that they weren't getting back together.

He should be on his way to lunch to try not to watch Mac, to the quad or whatever you wanted to call it, but he's bugging Mr. Wu for some extra credit for Dick.

Apparently the idiot wasn't going to graduate with everyone else.

He was at home pouting in spite of what Cassidy had told him about that being the opposite of what he needed to do if he didn't want to go to summer school.

He had just bitched about not being able to handle physics and an upcoming felony. So he had left him in hopes that some quality time with his bong and Master Chief could get him out of his funk.

"I'm not going to give you the extra credit to do for him, Cassidy." He was horribly unmovable on the whole topic. Which was just outrageous, he hadn't even decided if he would actual do the homework for him or not yet. It had been so much easier when the teachers didn't know his handwriting.

"What if I video him doing it?"

"I'm sorry, but if Dick wants to avoid summer school he'll need to come see me him-"

A shot rang out interrupting the man's denial.

"Where..." They both looked at the open door and saw students running quickly for cover.

Mr. Wu moved quickly to the door and stopped a student, "What's happening?"

"Someone has a gun in the quad-" Mr. Wu sent them quickly away and turned to Cassidy.

His entire insides had gone cold. Mac would be in the quad right now. His mind was spinning into a panic. God, what was the last thing he had said to her?

Not to talk to him again.

Right now he wanted nothing more than to hear the sound of her voice.

Another shot rang out followed by the low sound of muffled screams.

Oh God.

Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!.

He shot out of the room, sneakers squealing against the shinning floor, blood pumping in his ears.

Door after door was being locked down.

The police came barrelling down the hallway and some deputy with a mustache stops long enough to grab him by the collar and shove him into a classroom before it has a chance to lock down.

"No!" He tried to get back out the door, but a pair of strong arms pulled him away from the door.

He tries to remove the arms from him urgently; it feels like his heart is going to explode.

"I need to-" he tries, but one of the hands clamps down over his mouth as they pull him under a lab table.

He bites into the hand and it comes away with a hiss of pain.

A familiar tone, he turns to look at the person who still has one arm wrapped around him to keep him immobile.

Logan.

He's suddenly not so sure that the arm around him is to keep him there, but rather to keep Logan there. His eyes are wide and scared and he can understand that fear pumping through him because Veronica must be out there now.

There's another gunshot and it feels louder than the others, it goes right through him.

Everything is silent for what feels like an eternity filled with scared, dead silence, until Clemmons comes across the speaker telling them all to go back to homeroom for a headcount and then home.

The teacher unlocks the door and Cassidy is out of it before it's even open all the way, Logan not far behind him.

He doesn't go to homeroom; anyone he cares about in his own grade would have been on the far side of the school, far away from the action in English Lit.

He only cares about one person and if she was on the other end of those gunshots he's not even sure what he'll do.

There's a crowd milling around near the main doors out to the quad.

There are too many.

He can see Logan push to the front of the crowd and stop. Getting up on tip toes, he can see Veronica, sitting with Gia and Jackie Cook talking to the mustached deputy.

Logan goes no further, slides back through the crowd and, with a hand on Cassidy's shoulder, wanders off to his homeroom to be counted.

Where is she?

Where is she!?

"Where's Mac?" He asks and, God, he doesn't think he's ever sounded so desperate in his life.

"Cassidy?" A voice comes through from the other side of the crowd.

Everything in him just sags because it's her. Thank fucking everything, it's her. He pushes through the crowd to her and wraps his arms around her.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm an idiot, I'm sorry." The words pour out of him as her hands come up and latch onto him.

God, she feels and smells amazing, and he's missed every piece of her.

"Cassidy-"

"I love you." He tells her firmly, pulling back to look her in the face. The crowd is pushing in around them, their attention fractured between the scene unfolding in their midst and the aftermath of the shooting.

"I love yo-" she starts, but his mouth is on hers hard and urgent. God, he needs her, needs to know she's real and alive.

They are broken up by a teacher who is dispersing the crowd.

"Get to your homerooms for head count; I don't care what you do after that."

He holds her hand tight until they have to go down separate halls to reach homeroom.

"Come home with me." He's not sure how much of that is begging.

"What about Dick?"

"Non issue. Come home with me."

"...Okay."

He starts down the hall when he's stopped by her yelling his name.

He turns to see her, "So we're back together then? For real?"

"Fuck yes."

She's better off without him, he knows that, but God he doesn't care about that now. All he cares about right now is getting her home and putting every piece of her to memory.

She smiles at him and it's this soft, warm thing as she shakes her head and disappears down the hall to her homeroom.

"You can stop holding my hand if it would make it easier to drive." She laughs and tries to pull her hand away, but he squeezes his fingers to keep her locked there.

"Are you saying I'm a bad driver? I'll have you know I am a champion at one handed driving."

"That's why I've had to pull us back into the correct lane twice?"

He shakes his head, "Flukes, I assure you." He leans across the console to kiss her when she pushes him back into his seat.

"If you don't start driving like a normal person I'm going to get into the backseat."

"Is that a promise?" He's fairly sure he's leering at her. Her laughter fills the car and she finally manages to get her hand back just as they pull up to his house.

She pauses at the front door, seemingly afraid.

"What about your brother..."

"What, you want him to join in?" He silently curses Dick for talking in depth about the threesome he wants for Christmas or his birthday or both because its sitting somewhere in the back of his mind now as well.

Mac blushes brilliantly and stutters. Oh great now the fantasy will be in the back of her mind, too.

"Should we talk about what happened?" She asks as he opens the door.

Before he can respond, Dick comes rushing up to the door.

"You're okay." He sighs and sags against the wall.

"Yeah..."

"The news."

"Why were you watching the news?"

"Kendall." He tells them simply before his face flushes a little and his eyes lower to where their hands are connected, "So you're back together then..."

"Yeah, we'll be upstairs." He tells Dick who nods.

After all his pushing and prodding to get them back together he seems awfully surprised that it actually happened, totally unprepared, which, to be fair, he isn't prepared either.

"Hey..." Mac is squeezing his hand, but her eyes are focused on his brother's mouth.

"Hey..." Dick responds, "I'm going to call Logan over, maybe we can have dinner together and shit?" Dick tears his eyes from Mac, to look at Cassidy.

There's something in his eyes that seems to promise that it will get better and he actually believes him.

Dick loves Mac, but he loves Cassidy enough to kill, to know all the secrets, well most of them, and still love him.

He's not sure how to end this weird, little meeting so he nods at Dick and starts towards the stairs, pulling Mac behind him.

He looks back at them, Mac confused and blushing and holding his hand tightly, Dick biting his lip and watching them go. It was going to be weird for a while still, but he was selfish and he wasn't willing to give up either of them in favor of the other, being without Mac had almost killed him for Christ's sake.

Mac doesn't let go of his hand until they are safely in his room.

"That was weird." She tells him softly, "He's not going to try anything again, right?" She lets him lead her to the bed.

"I don't think so, no. He got whatever answer he needed, I guess."

He still doesn't think that Dick is quite right about Mac not having feelings for him, but if it keeps his actions in a purely fantastical realm he's not going to deny it.

"I didn't mean to... I didn't want to..." She starts, but he shakes his head.

"I know. I got all your messages."

"All of them?" She's fiddling nervously with the hem of her skirt. He loved that skirt. He wasn't sure why, it felt good against his skin. Her face is flushed, "Even the ones about..."

What she would let him do to her.

God, he would love to bend her over his lap and push that skirt up around her waist, to feel and hear her again, to fill his senses with only her.

"We can do whatever you want; you don't deserve to be punished. If anything, I do."

There's a space between them, on the bed, that he wants to eradicate, but he was an asshole to her, he froze her out, exactly like she told him never to do when they first started dating.

He's staring at the space between them as the words pour out of his mouth, "I know it'll be weird with Dick, but we're kind of a package now. You were right, I missed him. I missed you, too. So badly." He flops backwards looking up at her, you can just barely see the dark color of her bra through her shirt.

"Didn't seem like it." Her voice is dipped in acid and he deserves every burn.

"You know you deserve better than me, right?"

She turns to look at him as his fingers slip under her shirt. She's warm and silk soft against his skin.

"I know." She's smirking down at him, shifting until she's straddling him, looking down at him with dark eyes.

"Well just so long as you know. I missed you."

"I know."

"I love you."

"I know." She leans down until she is folded in half over him, her head resting against his chest, "Now shut up."

"Do you want me to do anything?" He asked, raising his hips up against her so she could feel that her closeness was doing things to him.

"Let's just stay like this for awhile."

"Anything you want."

"Anything?" There's something beautifully suggestive and dark in her tone.

"Absolutely anything."

"How about that island you promised me." Her tone shifts into a light thing, she still thinks it's a joke.

"Done."

"Great we can spend the summer there after grad." She tells him, happily playing along.

"Sounds great." He folds his arms over her back.

There's just one thing left. One piece of the puzzle left to fall in place and he can finally be at peace.

Soon.