In the Dark of the Night

A/N: So Kaycee and Cass decided to reinvade my brain the other day and it wasn’t a happy ending. This is what happened.

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Some days she’s not sure how she manages to put up with it. The girl has more talent in her pinky then most people in the business but the lifetime of isolation and imagination that’s developed this has had some negative side effects as well.

Like complete and total closed off-ness. And quite often, an inability to trust people. People beyond Rose that is. And her own mother.

Sometimes, when Kace isn’t around, Rose daydreams about how life could be. They have the glamour, the parties, and the Manolo Blahniks they’ve both always wanted but she wants more for her best friend and employer.

She wants Kaycee to be able to fall in love again, to be completely happy again, Goddess above just to have SEX again!

She remembers herself and Kaycee staying up late, whispering in the darkness about the famous people they were gonna date and be friends with. Kace always went for the young cute ones as date material, Will Moseley, Rupert Grint, and wanted the amazing ones as her friends, Kate Winslet, Alan Cumming, John Barrowman.

Half of that dream has come true, Rose muses as the trailer door bursts open, spilling in John, fresh faced from the set.

“No, Scott hasn’t called yet,” she replies before he can open his mouth. “I’m sure he’s fine though.”

“Of course he’s fine! Why wouldn’t he be?” John asks a little too hastily but he checks the cell phone she’s holding out all the same.

Rose isn’t insulted, in the five years since she and Kace broke into the business, John’s become her truest friend. Outside of Kaycee that is. And friends aren’t insulted when their friends are worried about their spouses.

“It’s a long flight, sweetie, he’s probably still in the air.” John nods, his brown hair flopping about as he sits down across from Rose and picks up the paper. “How was the shoot?”

He shrugs,

“All right, thank god you took my phone away, I would have been checking it every five minutes and Ron would have killed me!” He glances up, obviously weighing his words. Rose herself just looks at him over the top of the laptop she’s pretending to work at. Waiting. “Kaycee is off today.”

Of course she is. It’s the 5th of November. Kaycee is always off on that day. Sometimes, one or both of them will try to joke about ‘Remember, remember, the 5th of November’ but it tends to fall flat more often then not.

In little over a week it will be 14th and thank Goddess it’s on a Friday again because she knows it’s gonna be bad. It’s been ten years after all.

But Rose tries to play it off as she returns to her laptop,

“We can’t all be at 110% everyday, John.”

Unfortunately, he’s now one of those friends. The kind that knows when you’re lying and can get the truth out.

“More off then normal. Kace at her worst has never been less then 90% out there. Today, she was about 40.”

Rose’s head jerks up, 40% is cause for concern. Before she can tell herself to wait for John to leave, Rose is up and moving around the trailer. John can only watch in amazement as a lock box under the double bed is pulled out and opened with a key on Rose’s key ring. Into it goes 5 different types of pain killers, the bottle of Merlot that they had in the fridge, a half full bottle of vodka, and a pack of cigarettes he’s never seen before.

Rose locks the box up again, pushes it under the bed and returns to her laptop. The silence drifts between them just long enough for her to hope he won’t make a big deal.

“Wanna tell me about it?”

Or until he asks in that soft, patient voice, with it’s after tint of ‘I know’ that makes her want to cry.

For the first time in 15 years one of them is falling and the other can’t be there to catch them.

So Rose takes a deep breath and brings John into the club.

The ‘Kaycee’s Messed Up So Bad That It’s In Her Head That She’s Never Good Enough’ Club.

“Kaycee’s bi-sexual,” she announces. John is as shocked as any one would be. Kaycee has, after all, never been on a date in anyone’s memory. “And she got hurt real bad about ten years ago. Add it to her neuroses and she never recovered from it.” She started, as if the date just really sunk in. “I need to call her therapist, set up an appointment-.”

“Later,” John soothed, taking her hand and twisting their fingers together. “Tell me what happened to Kaycee.”

She takes a deep breath and tells him everything.

She talks about meeting a 15 year old dreaming of becoming a marine biologist even as she wrote. A young woman who had no idea that’s what she was, who did everything for herself, and hated to see others in pain. Who’d rather let her parents focus on helping her brother and saving their marriage then saving her.

How that young woman grew to realize that movies were her life. Who co-wrote a truly awful script, and knew it was awful, but went along with it because the other writer was Kace’s best friend/ secret crush. A year later they would fight and have never again spoken. Kaycee has since never turned in sub-par product, her standards bar is unreasonably high.

Who went off to college and fell in love. Twice. The awkward part being the two she fell for were together. But she kept silent and was a good friend.

Rose tells John how a tiny window had opened and the two had found out that their friend and confident fancied herself in love with them. She tells him about how for a few months, they were happy, sneaking around to sleep together, Kace turning out truly amazing work for her classes. Kaycee was happy, though she had only told Rose small bits.

Then the other two began to split and to avoid that, they cast Kace out. Not completely though, she was kept around to consol and council, which she did without them ever knowing that she was dying inside.

She tells him how the two eventually broke up, all contact with the boy, Damon, was stopped, though he had been considered a big brother. The next year Kaycee had moved in with the girl, Cassandra. Kace was still in love, doing her best to hide it. Cass had a new boyfriend, but considered the other girl her property. Kaycee had finally gotten serious about her health and found herself freeing up when she exercised. So she did it more. Cass tried to restrict that, becoming angry and punishing when Kace didn’t follow the rules. That never stopped Kaycee, who now had to be watched about eating and exercising, left to her own, she slowly lost at least a pound a day.

The meaning of the date is finally brought to light as Rose tells John about a fight the two have after Kaycee has a friend over to the house, one Cass couldn’t stand, when the other girl wasn’t home. It was one of the few times Kaycee had stood up for herself. The fight almost turned sour and Kaycee fled. She was half a foot taller then Cassandra, terrified that she’d be tempted to use that.

The next day, some meager overtures to fix things were made but by then both were wary, neither trusted the other.

A week later, out of the blue to Kaycee, who had just begun to hope, Cassandra took out disciplinary action, citing, among other things, sexual harassment. Terrified and heartbroken, Kaycee moved half out that night and completely out the next week. It wasn’t until then that anyone realized how deep the emotional abuse had gone, nor how long. Literally MONTHS worth. She soon turned her painkillers over to her therapist and put herself on suicide watch.

“They met just once for a mediation which the school demanded,” Rose says, winding up the story. “There were things they apologized for and things they didn’t, they were very civil. But she got hurt badly. I don’t think Kaycee has ever even tried to date or love again.” She waits a few seconds then amends. “Other than me.”

“I also wondered about you two,” but it’s flat and she can tell that she’s shocked him.

Kaycee is gonna kill her when she finds out. It was one of those unspoken laws between them. Beyond her parents and her brother, her Past stayed there. Anyone worth bringing with them had been brought. Rose makes a mental note to call Rachel later and see how she likes running the art department.

“Rose-.”

John’s cut off as the trailer door swings open; this time Kaycee’s the one tripping in, followed sedately by someone from the company.

“Hey, guys, just came to pick up that copy for Jordan here.”

She’s a little too bright, a little too over the top, and for the handful of people who know her well enough, completely obvious. Kaycee has put together television shows and movies on shoe string budgets and sets held together with masking tape and people holding them up. But right now, SHE’S only being held together with a twist tie.

But before Rose or John can think of what to say she’s gone again, copy in hand, frowning company person on her heels.

“Someday she is going to give out,” Rose says softly. “And after that she’ll be the best ever or just vanish.”

“Which do you think will happen?”

It isn’t until seven months later, a month after the movie premiers at the beginning of the summer season, when the Oscar buzz is beginning and Kaycee’s name is up there, that they get their answer.

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A/N: And on that note, I will leave you all to decide what Kaycee did.

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