Chapter Text
Despite the thirty minute drive, the ten minute walk-down to the living area, and ten minute rest while Dennis, furious and stubborn, carries in Claire and Marcia, Casey’s hands refuse to stop shaking.
She is strong. She is a survivor. These are undeniable facts of her existence, the intrinsic truths she refuses to give up or deny. She is also petrified. Not because of anything else but because she has been stuck in a situation she doesn’t know how to fix with growing consequences. It hurts. It hurt to die this time. It felt worse than all the times before. For the first time she felt truly afraid; she felt as if she might not wake up again.
Dennis isn’t intentionally loud but his footsteps are determined and thus impossible to ignore. The clack of the heels of his dress-shoes changes from cement to tiles, and she hears the noise of the metal doors swinging open. Things have changed. At least now she doesn’t jump at every little sound. She just wishes the change was more relevant to her mission, to her problem, to her continued existence.
She used to be hyper-vigilant and always, always, made sure to come home late. Even Claire’s birthday party was an excuse. She thought it would be easier to walk back home; she would have made an hour just for herself, an hour away from terror.
The amount of clothes on her is suddenly stifling. She’s forgotten to take some of the layers off this time.
“Casey?” Dennis says. She can’t look at him she can’t she’s--
Dennis kneels in front of her, frowning, but still she can just look at her hands. She didn’t even try to help Claire and Marcia. It wasn’t a thought, it wasn’t an idea at all. She’d written them off, just like every other girl the Beast had killed and mauled in the silent months between them, just because she saw herself in Kevin, and saw a girl with a shotgun in the Beast.
She wishes, she’s always wished for so long, she’d pulled that trigger.
Large hands slide into hers, holding them tightly. “Hey,” Dennis says, “Hey, what’s wrong?” Casey can now hear the silent What can I fix?
Dennis is not a compassionate person. When Casey finally looks at him, it sits awkwardly on his face, body taut as if he might leap away at any moment just as soon as Casey releases him. Still like that, he looks strong too. Reliable. Dennis had been made for that as well: to look at the world disillusioned, bear the brunt of the worst Kevin couldn’t take, force the body to function and get them all through another day.
“What happened during the last loop?” he asks.
Casey takes a deep breath, then another. “The Beast came back.”
“Did he-- did we-- did you see us?”
“Dr. Fletcher wanted to help the girls. By the time she got them out, he was here. They were running away and I felt the loop closing, going loose I--” she licks her lips, tries to breathe properly. “Why is it girls?”
“What?”
“The sacrifice, the- the sacred food. It’s always girls. The reports on the TV were always the same. Just like Marcia, Claire and I, high school girls. Why?”
She feels Dennis trying to pull away and she holds onto his hands, not with strength, which he could conquer in any moment, but with gentleness which seems that he can’t deny himself.
“It’s...uhh Miss Patricia...” he licks his lips, gaze leaving her own and slipping away. Ashamed. Casey knows it when she sees it. “She told me what to look for. And I picked.”
“How did Miss Patricia know what to look for?”
He shakes his head, saying, “I don’t-- I don’t know Casey I was. I was just supposed to grab one. I just did what she told me to do.”
He moves to stand and Casey looks up, finding Dennis suddenly too close, her hands suddenly too cold. She wishes, now more than ever, that Kevin and all the others could remember her.
She grabs his wrist before he can go, without realising what she’s doing until the soft fabric of his shirt is there under her fingers. He stills and turns around very, very slowly.
Casey doesn’t have a plan. But she knows what she’s missed. “Sit with me a little, won’t you?”
She knows he’ll refuse, so she gentles her hold on his wrist, and slides her hand down so she can take his. “Please?”
She can see him swallow, blink a few times, before his shoulders sag. Instead of reclaiming his hand, he simply sits on her right side, now his fingers starting to shake, as if he’s doing something he isn’t supposed to.
She turns to him. Kevin and she used to hold hands like this. It, inevitably, brought him out no matter who had the light. But that was after everything. That was after she’d woken him up after a two year slumber in his own head. The same touch doesn’t work the same way. Wrong key and wrong formula.
Casey rests her forehead on Dennis’ shoulder, legs tucked under her. He’s warm. He’s always been warm. Dennis, for his part, just breathes and doesn’t try saying anything. She supposes there’s really nothing to say; she’s stealing moment long gone now, that she hasn’t had time to mourn the passing of yet.
His scent, at least, is familiar.
-
“Casey,” she hears, half-asleep. She isn’t sure if it’s memory or deja-vu. Warm fingers are on her cheek. “I’m trying to be good.”
-
“Hmm, Mr. Dennis isn’t feeling very good today,” Hedwig says, hours later, after they’ve drawn and colored and she watched him try and choreograph a dance. They’re on his bed, trying to play tic-tac-toe after an eventful and frustrating bout of hangman. “He says I have to be really good instead.”
Casey doesn’t laugh but it’s a near thing. “What else does Dennis say?”
Hedwig tries to place an x, but Casey prevents him from completing the line. “Miss Patricia doesn’t like you. Are you his girlfriend?”
“No, why?”
“Because, if you’re not, will be you my girlfriend?” Hedwig looks up from the game.
Casey beats him and Hedwig groans, demanding a rematch.
Casey had heard that one before. Interesting, how this time she isn’t as afraid as she’d been before. “Sorry, Hedwig. But I like Kevin.”
Hedwig frowns. He huffs and says, “But like, you talked to him once. You see Mr. Dennis all the time.”
She hums, placing her first x in the grid. She liked Dennis too, but she supposes she can’t tell a nine-year-old that. The thing Kevin explained, the last time he was himself, was that if he knows something and if he feels something, at least one of the personalities also knows or feels it. Dennis had been a surprise. But then again, she knew him before she knew Kevin. It’s a question of chicken and egg that she doesn’t care to find an answer for.
“Is it because of your crazy scars? Because, I don’t think Mr. Dennis would mind you know,” Hedwig says. “Oh shit! I got one, I got one!”
“Hedwig,” Casey starts, “Are you trying to be Dennis’ wingman?”
“You know how it goes, Case, bros before hoes, et cetera.”
Casey laughs. “Why doesn’t Miss Patricia like me, Hedwig?”
Dutifully, Hedwig recites, “Because you’re trying to stop us from becoming who we are and because, she says, you’re holding us hostage. That the Beast will avenge us, and punish the impure. Casey, are you even playing anymore?.”
Casey, startled, looks down at the piece of paper and throws the game. Hedwig whoops. He sets up another and starts.
“She’s mad that Mr. Dennis isn’t listening to her as much as he did before. Now I have to listen to Miss Patricia ‘cause she’s an adult, but. You said the Beast is real and we became him so that’s crazy talk too.”
“Did you see him? Did you see what he can do?”
“Yeah, it’s crazy,” Hedwig smiles. “And like, super cool.”
She nods. “He’s like...an avenging spirit. But if you do what he wants, what Miss Patricia says, you’ll be in danger.”
“Hmm, that’s okay tho? Mr. Dennis is here too.”
Casey realizes Hedwig doesn’t understand what being in danger means any more than a kid would understand algebra. He always has an adult to hold his hand.
She asks, “Have you ever gotten lost, Hedwig?”
“Kinda. But then someone always knew to tell me where to go.”
“Being in danger,” Casey says, “means getting lost in a crowd, and not having anyone with you. And not knowing where to go. And very bad men chasing you.”
Nervously, Hedwig looks at her, at the paper, then at her again. “Are you trying to scare me? Because, it’s totally not working.”
“No, Hedwig. I’m trying to help you understand. I don’t want you, or any other, hurt.”
“Not even the Beast?”
“Not even him.”
Hedwig grows quiet for a long moment. Then he looks up and says, “Can we play hangman again?”
Casey sighs and flips the page around.
-
Mr. Glass had called the Beast a spirit of vengeance. That is how, Kevin told her, he’d bought him and garnered his loyalty: the pure wanted revenge and that was all the Beast had to offer. She wonders, on her cot, listening to Hedwig’s fitful sleep, what kind of vengeance the Beast has to exude upon high school girls. If anyone, Casey would have thought he’d target women like Kevin’s mother. But that creature has long since rotted in some dark earth even Kevin doesn’t know the location of, and shouldn’t, and Dennis would have forgotten simply for the purpose of leaving ghosts behind.
Yet. It’s not women, it’s girls whose death is required for the Beast’s birth. It’s inevitable, she realises. Claire and Marcia really never had a chance to begin with -- whatever happens, she knows now, the Beast has to be. Patricia won’t have it otherwise.
There’s something there, dangling in front of her face. But Casey misses it.
-
Her hands are cold where they touch Dennis’ face, cupping his gut-wrenched expression. He usually refuses to share. Now, she isn’t sure what she sees: plea for help, pain as he watches her own, or a desperate need to understand. What has always been an issue between them -- he was the one who took her -- now seems irrelevant as he tries to convince her that he can help her.
Trust isn’t easy to come by, and it took a long time for her to feel anywhere in the realm of safe with him, no matter the facts: that he was there to protect, that he was mournful, that he is Kevin.
Dennis avoids words. That’s his issue as well. She supposes walls aren’t made to speak. But she doesn’t fear him. More than anything, his mountain-like shoulders are a barrier between the world and her.
He hasn’t touched her yet. Perhaps he’s been afraid to. Now, as she bleeds, she needs him to.
“I am him too,” Dennis says, reaching for her finally when she’s not strong enough to stand on her own any longer. She leans, tucking herself under his chin. The wall is marked in red with her shape.
Dennis is also merciful -- a strange quality. He tugs the shard of glass sticking from her back, a momento of Mr. Glass himself, and she bleeds rivers. His hands are shaking where they hold her.
He lets her bleed all over him. The message is clear.
-
Sleeping, she’s found, even on the cot, sits better with her than looping. As usual Hedwig isn’t there -- he wakes ridiculously early simply to hand over the light to Dennis who is tasked in starting their day.
Casey doesn’t know what time it is. She rarely pays attention anymore, but the chill in the air tells her it’s still early.
At least one good thing from wearing all those shirts is that now she can shrug off her hoodie and put on her flannel. She goes about what has become her routine: change shirts, bathroom, then head for the kitchen. Usually Dennis isn’t there. Now, he sits at the table and turns when he sees her.
A muscle in his jaw jumps and then something extraordinary: his cheeks flush with color until they’re pink. His eyes jump from her face down and return just as quickly. He clears his throat.
Casey, in that moment, remembers her dream and the fact that the next time they’d met Dennis had pressed a soft, tentative kiss to her lips, a brush really nothing more, and refused to come out after.
Casey is suddenly all too aware of how large the collar of her white shirt is, that she hasn’t buttoned up the flannel. She notes, not for the first time, the way Dennis’ shirt strains as he shifts to cross his hands in front of him, the way his pants fit over his thighs. She takes a breath, and realises all over again that she is, has, and probably will continue to be attracted to him.
“There’s, uh coffee, if you’d like,” he says.
Swallowing her memory down, though she feels it simmering just under her skin ready to leap at any moment, she nods and goes to pour herself a cup. She knows she must be flushed as well. She knows, also, that he must have noticed her looking -- Dennis notices everything. Hyper-aware. How familiar.
She’s aware of him now too. From the way his leg bounces, the sound of him standing up, the few steps separating them covered in a stride, his presence at her back. She feels as if she’s full of charge, just waiting for something -- for him to touch her, to let all this heat she holds melt all over him.
He doesn’t remember her. He doesn’t know what she does, doesn’t feel the way she feels, so she should step away and let all of the potential of the moment fall between the cracks in the tiles and dissipate. But she’s been waiting for this. Wanting this. And the undeniable truth of the matter is that, even without memories, Dennis want her too.
He doesn’t touch her. He waits, and eventually she has to turn around. She’s pinned she realises. She also realises she isn’t afraid. Not in any real, tangible, nauseating definition of the word. She’s expectant. She knows if she asks him, he will move away.
Dennis puts a hand on the refrigerator, as if he needs something to hold. “Casey,” he says, “I’m trying to be good . Okay?”
The only thing separating them is the mug of coffee. She replaces it on the counter and the barrier is gone. It’s reckless, she knows this. Paradoxically, now that he's not asking for her trust she has most to give. She feels safe with him in a way she’s never really felt safe; they’re the same and he understands, and she has had the Beast too many times close to her jugular to not know he would never bite.
He must read something on his face because he freezes. She would think of deer and headlights, would think of the mating chase and statistics, but all lessons have left her mind. Dennis is there, in front of her, waiting, and she wants him. The equation is simple.
She reaches out and places a hand on his cheek. She can feel him take a shuddering breath, his frown growing stronger for a moment before his expression turns pained.
“What are you doing?” he asks, but when she leans in and she presses her lips to his, he doesn’t move away, doesn’t protest, doesn’t shake. He lets her. Then, when she thinks its over, when she’s ready to just as tentatively move away, he kisses back.
Fire bursts in her belly when he wraps a hand around her waist pulling her tighter to him, hips meeting hips, belly to belly. Her hands go to his shoulders, to his back, and she’s gasping as the kiss strays from soft, barrelling headfirst right into sharp and heated. Dennis kisses her like he needs her, like he wants her, and he does it so well that she’s dazed when he pulls back.
The pained expression is still there though, when she looks at him again. She wants to ask him, but she knows that if she doesn’t wait for him to speak some sort of magic might break and he’ll remember he’s holding her and leave.
“Just,” he sighs, shakes his head, passes his hand over it. “Just tell me if you want this. Really. I don't want to be--” like your uncle “--I just. Just tell me.”
“Dennis, it’s okay.” She takes his free hand and guides it, slowly, to her face, her neck, and rests it on her clavicles. “I want this. I want you. Okay?”
His touch is gentle and tentative over her skin, hand trailing up to her shoulder to brush her hair over it.
“Okay,” he replies. Then he’s there again, leaning in to kiss her, his palm on her jaw cradling her cheek as their lips meet.
There’s a question somewhere in there, perhaps in the tenderness of his touch, the softness of his mouth, the safety of his hand on her hip. Her replies are telegraphed by means of her body: she opens her mouth and deepens the kiss, coils herself against him until they’re touching belly to thigh, her hand slowly feeling the way down his muscled back. She can feel the heat of him, radiating and seeping into her, to her very center, from which it radiates out.
Casey gasps when Dennis steps forward, pushing her back into the kitchen counter. It takes no effort at all on his part to lift her up on it and fit himself between her knees. His hands trace down her back, curl around her flanks, yet hesitate when they get to her skin.
She breaks for breath, and to see the perfect, heated look on his face, full of nothing but want. She leans back, as much as she can, and takes his hand where it’s brushing her naked hip. She lifts her shirt and guides it to her belly. He can touch. She wants him to touch her.
His fingers are tentative as they pass over her scars. He isn’t looking at her anymore but down at his hand, at her body and at the proof of her survival: she is alive despite her uncle. She’s having someone else touch her, someone she wants to touch her, in spite of years of terror written on her skin, signed in cuts and burns.
Dennis’ touch turns bold, both hands trailing over her skin, sparking every sense in her when he kisses her again. Then, his grip turns to stone.
“Hold on,” he says, a moment before he lifts her as if she weighs nothing at all, and puts her down on the kitchen table.
Dennis doesn’t even look winded. He grabs Casey by her thighs, drags her to himself, hands warm on her legs. Then, when he’s satisfied in making a mess of her with his kisses, he bows his head to where he’d pushed up her shirt, and traces his mouth over her skin.
Casey shudders. If she wasn’t wet before she sure is now. There’s something about having a man like Dennis be desperate to touch her, have his strength, more or less, in her lap. The strength in his shoulders is ridiculous, his look, when he glances at her, fingers hooking in the waistband of her leggings and underwear, questioning. He’s waiting for her cue.
She feels her lungs constricting, knows in a sense where this is going, so she’s happy to help him get them off. For a moment, Casey wonders if she’s being too hurried, if she’s being too desperate, but then Dennis takes his glasses off, puts them in his pocket, and kneels in front of her, each of her thighs resting on his wide shoulders, and doesn’t hesitate to spread her open and lick.
“Oh,” she gasps.
Dennis leads with his nose, but his tongue is flat against her folds, lapping at her. However hurried he was before, now he takes his time, as if he enjoys this, as if he wanted this. He did, she realises, and stops worrying.
Casey tries to breathe and melts into the sensation of Dennis’ mouth eating her out. One of his hands rests just on her mound, putting pressure, as if he knows that feels good for her, somehow. She groans, and from then on can’t stop the sounds coming from her mouth, unbidden. Dennis’ mouth turns insistent, and he keeps sucking her folds, building pressure and pleasure that accumulates in her belly. She knows blood is rushing to her head, she can almost hear the pounding in her ears. Her cheeks are warm and she can’t really get a good breath in, not when Dennis decides to suck on her clit. Her thighs are shaking, pushing against Dennis’ hand that is the only reason why she hasn’t closed them around his ears yet.
She’s moaning now, outright, and it would be mortified if they weren’t alone. She can’t think straight, not right now anyway. She doesn’t care. All she cares about is that she can feel electricity on her skin, and that Dennis doesn’t stop.
He glances up at her and it’s so hot she knows he must taste more of her wetness on his tongue just then and there. He shifts slowly, the hand on her inner thigh that had been holding her legs open straying to her pussy. His fingers are cold when they touch her, but she gets used to them soon, especially when they start slowly sinking inside her. It’s not an uncomfortable intrusion. She’s wet enough that she doesn’t feel it much.
Dennis takes a moment to breathe, and he looks a downright mess. His face is wet from her, and she feels her cheeks burning bright. “Fuck,” he curses into her hip, fingers slowly moving in and out of her heat. “Look at you,” he says, and he does look at her, all of her. He licks his lips, and curses again.
“I’m going to make you come,” he informs, before he presses his lips against the inner seam of her thigh to bite.
Casey shivers, and it’s a delicious revelation of a sensation. She laughs softly, and her laugh turns into a gasp when his fingers curl and she feels them brushing a spot within her that feels so good her toes curl.
Dennis doesn’t waste time after that. He fucks her on his fingers, licking the rest of her pussy until she’s shaking, white knuckles unable to help her hold herself together where they’re wrapped against the table’s edge. Her vision’s swimming, narrowing, and fuck it feels too good. She reaches for him then, fingers digging into his shoulder before straying to the side of his face, the back of his head. She can feel him groaning when she bucks against him.
Dennis’ movements become sharp and quick with the way she’s pushing her hips back into his hand and mouth, and she can feel she’s right there, right at the edge. She moans when she comes, trembling with pleasure and squeezing around Dennis’ fingers that don’t stop --God they don’t stop-- fucking her right through her orgasm as she throws her head back and screws her eyes shut.
Her vision goes blank.
-
There’s a singular moment of confusion in which Casey finds herself in the car. Realization dawns only moments before she’s leaping out of her seat. Casey’s father is on the ground but Casey runs to Dennis anyway, throwing her hands around his neck, and letting him catch her and kiss her silly.
They aren’t supposed to do this. The loop will break again. They don’t have time. Yet, Dennis leaves his hunt, Casey embraces her wishes, and they end up in a motel room right next to the mall, stumbling to the bed.
Her clothes are thrown, halfway gracefully, over a chair, just because she knows Dennis would stop if it were on the floor. His shirt accompanies her own. His undershirt, however, she has the privilege of taking off, feeling the heat of his skin and the firmness of his abdomen as she traces his hands up his body.
She’s seen him naked many times before but it wasn’t like this. Sexual intimacy is different than sheer nudity. He holds still as she touches him until, at last, she looks up so he can kiss her again and lay her on the bed, his weight a comfort. The bed creaks. It’s shitty, old, cheap. She doesn’t care.
Their shoes are by the door, her tights slowly pushed down her thighs, while she works on Dennis’ belt. She unzips his pants, feels him through his underwear and Dennis curses, thrusting into her loose grip as he kisses down her neck.
A wave of heat washes over her, an inscrutable thought at the forefront of her mind: she wants to see him sick with need.
She releases him to push the waistband down his ass, flesh perfect for grabbing. God, she thinks, he’s beautiful. She could touch him for hours if he’d only let her.
“We don’t--” Casey starts, humming halfway through when he pulls back to sit on his haunches, hands on her knees. She takes a moment to just look at him and ingrain the picture in her brain. God. God. She gets to have this. “--have time. The loop might--will break soon.”
In a quite familiar manner, he removes his glasses, folds them, and puts them on the floor. He leans down to kiss her. They end up laying on their sides just kissing, hands trailing over unveiled skin, one of Casey’s legs throws over his hip just so he can come that little bit closer.
Eventually though, she can feel herself growing needy, shivering a little every time his mouth finds her breasts or fingers pinch the pink skin. He seems to know it too. His hand wanders lower, just brushing against her lower lips, teasing.
“You’re so wet,” he mumbles into her lips, as if half-drunk. Casey feels similar -- high on doing what she shouldn’t-but-wants, intoxicated on the smell, touch, feel of him.
She hooks with her leg, and he helps her up, until she’s sitting on his hips. She moves them quickly, just rubbing herself on him.
He watches her for a very, very long moment, before he says, “Come up here.”
She quirks an eyebrow but the look in his eye is telling.
“Again?” she asks, as she kneels over his face.
“I wasn’t finished before.”
“You just like it.”
Dennis’ frown lessens when he gives her an amused smirk. “I like watching you.”
Casey doesn’t complain. It’s different then before. She hasn’t really done this but it still feels good, only this time she can move on her own, have him where she wants him at all times, making a right mess out of him. She rides his face until she’s almost there, almost coming, and his face is a reddened sticky mess. Then she lifts up, making him groan.
She catches her breath, slowly moving down to where Dennis had been touching himself. He removes his hand from his cock, and she can see him swallowing as she lifts herself on her knees. Very, very slowly, she lowers herself just to rest her lips on him. Moving her hips like that, feeling him slipping between her folds and brushing against her clit feels good too. There seem to be few things she can do with Dennis that don’t.
Precome pools slowly onto his belly, his cock straining against her. Dennis is big. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a challenge now. Not when he looks so needy, so ruined, so wrecked by her.
“Casey,” he says, and sounds almost as if he’s going to beg. His voice sends a thrill down her spine. “Casey, please, just--”
He licks his lips, his hands soft on her hips. They could both come like this, she knows. But that’s for another time. Perhaps when they’re able to have more time. Now, she lifts herself and sinks onto him, until she’s twitching around his girth, and Dennis’ fingers are so firm they’re digging bruises into her hips.
Both of them are breathing hard, groaning, as Casey slowly moves. She hasn’t done this before. Dennis, wonderful, beautiful, hot, helps her out, her hands in his until she’s bouncing softly on top of him. He feels so good inside her, her toes curl each time she sinks down. Casey almost closes her eyes; her mind feels drowsy and sluggish, but her skin is set afire. But even though everything else around her loses focus, Dennis’ face twisted in pleasure is clear.
She has to lean down to kiss him even though it ruins the tempo. It’s sloppy, she supposes, more than it should be, but she can taste herself on his lips and she doesn’t mind, not at all. Dennis doesn’t complain at least. She thinks he too feels quite as punch-drunk as she does.
“Casey,” he says, to no apparent reason. He just holds her hips, shifts his legs so he can fuck up into her until she’s moaning into his neck. Somehow, she manages to push herself upright again, to move her hips in tandem with his until she’s riding the fine line of pleasure but with no end.
Eventually, Dennis notices something because their tempo slows down to a brutal grind. His hands guide her hips though she can do nothing more than twitch around his cock she can feel now completely with the way she’s seated on top of him. One of Dennis' hands unpeals itself from her hip and presses against her belly. She watches, stuck, completely fucking bound to the movement of his hand that reaches her pussy and presses against her mound before fingers find her clit. Shivers of pleasure rock down her spine and she tightens around him, trying to withstand the pleasure. She moans right there like an animal in heat, hips erratic, grinding onto the feel-good spot, until she’s coming with a beautiful fresh wave of pleasure that has her screwing her eyes shut.
-
Kevin sighs. They can hear the revving of car motors in the distance, the squeaking of wheels, the time ticking down. Casey isn’t sure who is holding whom anymore -- it started, as it usually did, with her hugging him but then it evolved with a reassuring, strong hands, warm grip, clean scent in her nose. Those hands now slide to her shoulders, and when she looks up they reach for her cheeks, so he can place a soft kiss to her forehead.
She touches his cheek, and they sway like that, holding onto each other. Then he gasps, staggers. Blood seeps, untapped wine.
-
They’re on the highway, Claire and Marcia passed out in the back, when Dennis says, “I’m going to take this as a sign that this isn’t supposed to happen.”
His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Casey can still feel him, inexplicably. The phantom sensation of him between her thighs, inside her, the heat of his skin, the strength of his grip. She imagines there are bruises. She wants them.
He glances at her and does a double take. “Stop,” he says.
“I’m not doing anything.”
As it turns out, neither is Dennis. It’s difficult to avoid her by virtue of them being together in a small space, but Hedwig takes over soon enough, denoting a clear distance. She questions what she’s done, but having a nine-year-old tends to get pretty occupying and if anyone, Hedwig’s been requesting and in need of attention for some time. Casey isn’t the best conversationalist, but she doesn’t have to be; Hedwig talks and talks and talks to fill the hours, be it about his favorite songs or favorite things, and all she really has to do is nod, and smile, or incline her head to show she’s listening. She makes them lunch, ignores the sound of the other two knocking on the doors, and they go play in the living room.
She likes Hedwig. He’s the kid that Kevin couldn’t, and didn’t, get to be. More than ever, she misses Kevin now.
“I think this is the most I’ve been out in ages ,” Hedwig says somewhere around nightfall.
“You’re still controlling the light?”
He snorts. “Uh, yeah. Otherwise Barry or Jade or someone would have wanted to come out. I’m not sharing.”
“Well, does it even matter at this point?” she asks.
Hedwig lifts an eyebrow.
“Whatever they do it’s all going to restart anyway.”
The boy considers this and shrugs in a ‘what-can-you-do’ fashion. Then he remembers himself and his previous thought.
“Hey, can I tell you a secret if you tell me a secret?”
“Sure, Hedwig.”
“Kevin, really really really likes you. But I don’t. Is that weird?”
She chuckles. “No, I don’t thinks so. But I wish I could speak with him.”
His shoulders slump. A moment later he perks up. “Now you tell me your secret.”
“Okay,” she says. “My secret is that I really miss Kevin.”
“That’s not a secret! You always say you want to talk with him.”
Casey doesn’t think she’s really mentioned him all that much. That being said she replies, “Alright. Then, my secret is that I don’t really know how to end the loops. And I think Mr. Dennis got mad at me for that.”
“Casey,” Hedwig looks at her. “I like you. But your secrets are boring.”
She can’t really say anything to that but laugh.
-
She drifts on the couch. It’s barely able to contain Kevin’s bulk, much less both of them, but somehow Hedwig and she make it work via the virtue of him clinging to her and spooning her. The first time he’d done that it was terrifying. Now, she finds comfort in his warmth. Experience changes perception, and right now, Casey isn’t being held my a malevolent killer, or someone she’d like to fuck, but by someone important, someone that requires comfort as much as she does.
She feels hazy as she wakes up. She wonders, in those grey moments, what it means knowing she and Kevin are the same. She wonders if she’s capable of the same violence as the Beast, of the same self-sacrifice as Kevin, the same selfishness as Barry. She feels she is. After all, there are lines connecting a girl holding a shotgun and the Beast. She supposes, pushed too far, she could have done evil.
Still, isn’t that what she’s doing now? Her violence is a prison of time, her self-sacrifice is being stuck in this too, selfishness her wish to change the unchangeable. She ignores two people sentenced to die two doors away from where she lies, and pays them no heed because there are more important things -- and her indifference to their situation is supposed to be telling. She supposes, with no consequences holding her accountable, she might have let herself indulge too much. This whole situation is wrong. Kevin should have never felt weak enough to force Dennis out into the light. And Dennis shouldn’t have had to resort to base, primal, animalistic violence to try and fix things.
If anything, Casey thinks, that’s self-violence. She knows it at sight, she’d been wading in those waters. Perhaps, when she hadn’t killed Kevin when he asked her, he took matters into his own hands. There’s nothing easier than following along the nature’s rhythm, and the nature of the human condition has always been to self-destruct spectacularly.
-
The breathing behind her changes. The hand that has been holding her hip, a protective measure so she doesn’t fall, now stills, stiffens, and there’s a very long and very deliberate inhale. A nose is at the top of her head, breathing her in. The hand doesn’t move. Dennis.
Liquid heat shoots down to her toes, warming up a path from her cheeks as it goes. Slowly, Dennis lifts himself, finding purchase on her hip, and she turns to look at him. Even dressed in a tracksuit, even without his glasses, she knows the frown. When he sees she’s awake he sighs through his nose. He looks at her, all of her, then turns his head away and licks his lips. He tries to stand but she touches his hand, and it stills.
Their eyes hold together, and for a very long moment they don’t say anything. Then, Dennis sits back onto his haunches, and rubs his head with the free one. Almost desperately, he says, “I’m trying to be good.”
“You are good,” she replies.
He looks down, and says, “Don’t-- don’t say that just because you want something from me.”
Casey sits up now, sleepiness gone and replaced with an irreparable need to fix this. She needs to make her intentions clear.
“Dennis,” she says, “that’s not it at all. With so many loops we could have-- there were times when we could have done this before. You, or Kevin, or Barry, but we didn’t. And right now, it’s not about that.
“I think you’re good because you’re trying to protect everyone. You’re persistent in it even though, what, we’d gone about this ten times already? I think you know that kidnapping the girls isn’t right or legal, but I think you weighed the consequences of killing them versus the consequences of letting things continue down the same line, and you decided which path is the best.” She realizes it as she’s saying it. “I think you really want the Beast to fix all of this. Because you want to be good, and want everything to be fine.”
He’s looking at her again, and she sees something vulnerable in his face. She never though that he’d be the one who wasn’t ready for this, or perhaps she’d never thought to read into the reason why the loop broke every time they were together. Clearly, Dennis did.
She offers her hands now, and after a moment, with a shuddering sigh, Dennis lifts himself up to sit properly, and takes them. “You’re okay,” she ends up saying, inevitably, as she presses her face into his shoulder. They stay like that for a long time.
Casey doesn’t think Dennis has heard a lot of validation in his lifetime. He melts under her hands, malleable, relaxed, perhaps, for the first time. No wonder he lets Dr. Fletcher in every night. She supposes he needs to hear it, even though he knows the consequences.
She understands that. She needed to hear that what she was doing was right, in court, even though she’d gotten herself there in the first place.
What Dennis really wants to do, she realises, is to be close. It’s a brush of their shoulders, fingers on her elbow, sitting together, having a meal together with all the trials and tribulations of his condition, and holding her as she drifts and wakes up from sleep.
It’s a hand, without ulterior motives, warm on her flank, his head on her shoulder, knees tucked into hers. He sighs when she turns her head to kiss his cheek.
They crowd on her small bed and fall asleep.
-
The thing that everyone knows about time is that it slips when you’re spending it with someone in whom you enjoy.
-
Casey realizes the next day after they had lunch and she, eventually, ended up resting her feet in his lap, is that she can do silence with him. It’s not the same as with Kevin, but it doesn’t have to be. The only real sound is of the lights, background electricity, and Dennis turning a page.
Casey wanted to be alone for so long that she never realised there could be peace with another person, with little effort on both ends. She doesn’t have to do anything, after all. She just lies on the couch, breathing. Existing. And that’s okay. That seems to be appreciated.
Eventually, Dennis shuts the book, folds his glasses, and places both on the coffee table. He shifts and she accommodates until he’s resting between the back of the couch and her body, face pressed into her hip and belly. She touches him then, slowly massaging infinites into his temples, tracing his cheek, touching his neck. He lets her. He mellows into it, a large machine powering down.
-
Casey drifts into consciousness with soft kisses pressed into her shoulder. For a moment she doesn’t know what to do with the feelings in her chest: it’s like a chalice has been filling inside her and now, it’s filled to the brim, belly satiated -- and still Dennis keeps pouring wine inside, still he offers food that she can’t help but take.
The feeling dissipates slowly, the chalice expanding. She breathes, comfortable, as his hands trace over her skin. She hums in question, turning her head towards him, and is given a kiss on the lips. She smiles into it, and he smiles back at her. There’s a moment where he lets her touch his brow, smoothing out the perpetual frown.
He’s looking at her, blue eyes giving into the black. His eyes are kind. They make her feel as if she’s safe, and wanted, and cared for, like water cupped into his hands, a secret only the two of them know. He kisses her again and this time she can feel the intent when she shifts, the hard line of him pressing into her back.
She feels like she has to whisper when she asks, only a breath separating their mouths, “You’re allowed to want this, you know?”
“Yeah,” he says after a beat. Despite it, he sounds as if he’s just realised that.
He repeats himself when he kisses her, harder this time, his touch turning intentional, as it lays on her belly. “The question becomes, do you want it too?”
“Yeah,” she chuckles softly, laying back into her original position.
He kisses her shoulder, her neck, and it goes from there. Despite her quick-beating heart, she feels half asleep, especially with Dennis’ warm hand on her. He touches her belly, her flank, her breasts, before he moves lower. It’s easy to accommodate when he peels away her leggings and underwear, to shudder when his rough fingers touch her folds, wet. She isn’t sure how much time passes between him touching her, just his fingers spreading wetness over her pussy, circling her clit, sending jolts of electricity up her spine. All she knows is that when he pulls away his fingers are wet and sticky, that she’s throbbing with need, and that he’s folding her leg, holding it in a knee before he’s sinking inside her.
His groan is overshadowed by her gasp. The pleasure isn’t sharp, nor as necessary as it was before. This is a slow tide, creeping up on her. It’s waves of it, lapping at her mind, the point of which isn’t for a cresting wave, but for a complete flood; the point is to prolong it as much as possible just because it feels that good.
She wishes they could do this differently, have more time, where she could just touch him for hours on end. She wishes the loop wouldn’t keep breaking. They aren’t supposed to do this really, not with previous experience, but she wants it and it’s difficult to stop herself when the only consequence is mild and on her part.
Dennis gives one sharp thrust, then another, and she very nearly mewls. His cock is hitting her just right, just where it feels good. It must mean he’s nearing his own peak. It doesn’t matter, not really, not when he keeps doing it, and her thighs are starting to tremble. She sneaks a hand down and start touching herself, breath turned quick and uneven.
“I’m going to-- I’m gonna--” she pants and is silenced with a harsh kiss. His hand on her thigh isn’t cruel but it’s strong, reliable. She moans into his mouth.
Something explodes. For a moment the noise is unintelligible. She convulses, trembling around Dennis’ cock as he gives into the need and fucks into her, harsh and sharp, and just the way she needs to ride her orgasm.
She’s panting when Dennis lifts himself up, pushes her down to lay on the couch and slides between her legs, tugging her by the ankles. His cock lays over her pussy, heavy and warm and pulsing, and she watches the way he licks his lips, teases his way back into her. If this doesn’t end soon, Casey thinks, sighing when he bottoms out, Dennis will end up coming soon, probably, inside her. The thought it far from distasteful. It doesn’t matter anyway.
The noise repeats after a bout of silence and she realises it’s Dennis phone. He groans, frustrated, and grabs for it to, if nothing else, silence it. He stills.
“It’s Dr. Fletcher,” he says.
It’s already gotten that late. Which means that Dennis should be getting ready to go meet the Beast. He seems to realise it too because he looks at her, as if suddenly trapped between two fires.
“It’s ok,” she says, patting his shoulder.
He slides out of her and is quick to right his clothes and get onto his feet so he can answer the phone. Casey needs to grab a couple of breaths first. The lingering sensation of sex is delicious, but the euphoria is fading. Still, Dennis is looking at her, eating her with his eyes.
Casey manages to straighten out her clothes, get up and look presentable by the time Dennis comes back with Dr. Fletcher.
“Oh, you should have said you had guests, I wouldn’t have intruded,” Dr. Fletcher says when she takes notice of Casey.
“No, it’s alright,” Dennis says. “Dr. Fletcher this is Casey. She’s a good friend of mine.”
Dr. Fletcher shakes Casey’s hand.
Dennis has put his jacket on, and says to Casey, “I have to--”
Casey nods. “Yeah no, go.”
Dennis, perhaps impulse driven by what they did just minutes before, leans in to give her forehead a kiss, touching her shoulder, before he apologises to Dr. Fletcher and makes a hasty retreat.
Casey looks at Dr. Fletcher and smiles. “Sorry about that. He has an appointment. Hopefully, you’ll do okay with me?”
“Well, I am always interested in meeting friends of Kevin and the other personalities. I assume you’re aware of Kevin’s condition?”
“I am,” she replies. Casey remembers how to be a host and offers coffee, tea, and fishes out the fruit salad she’s been eating the past ten loops, before they settle in at the kitchen table.
“It’s remarkable with what ease you seem to have accepted it. People usually need a bit of time to understand what’s going on,” Dr. Karen says. While her eyes are half kind and half careful, her soft smile is real.
Casey, at once, understands why Kevin likes her.
“I had time to adjust,” she replies with something more forced.
Dr. Fletcher hums. “Forgive me, if this is rude, but I’ve never heard Kevin or the other personalities really mentioning you.”
“That’s alright, I'm a fairly new addition,” she replies. “You’ve known them for a long time. Ten years?”
“Yes. Did Dennis talk about therapy?”
Kevin did, a long time ago now. But only just.
“I’ve always been curious how come there’s so many of them.”
“Oh well,” Dr. Fletcher blinks, she shifts. She must have expected an answer. “A child’s mind is very malleable. If they’re abused incredibly early in their life the main personality, the psyche, can’t handle certain things, which is when alters, like Dennis, appear to help. They tend to block out those memories, to protect the mind and the body. The last time Kevin and I spoke, which if I recall, was over two years ago, was after we got to his part of the history when he was abused. He had no memories of it you see, but facing his past would have helped him live with his alters.“
“He wasn’t ready,” Casey guesses. Kevin had regretted that too. He’d been on a bus, one way ticket out of Philadelphia. She supposes Barry had put his foot down then. Stable jobs weren’t just handed out.
“No. He retreated into himself after that. Did you talk to him?”
“No,” she says, “not really.” She wishes she did though. “So all of his personalities are made when he was a child?”
“Yes. It’s usually why there are fewer than 23. Children construct them of what they know so fairies, goblins, werewolves, even dogs and cats. And when they grow older, the firm up. You can draw of wet concrete, but not dry one.”
“So it’s not possible for more to emerge?”
“No,” Dr. Fletcher shakes her head. Her eyes narrow. “Why? Has he been mentioning someone?”
Casey remains quiet, if only because she has just realised one thing: the Beast is inevitable, not because he is a spirit of vengeance, but because he has been there all along. He has been with Kevin since he was a child. Perhaps unacknowledged, yes, unknown to others, but he has always been there. Patricia was right. Casey had been denying a part of Kevin, of them, even if she didn’t know it.
“You know your appearance is strikingly similar to one of the missing girls, on the TV,” Dr. Fletcher says, eyes sharp and knowing.
Casey forgot about that. She looks at Dr. Fletcher and remains mum.
“If you are one of them, then I understand if you’re scared. Did Dennis harm you in any way?”
Casey shakes her head.
“Do you feel any particularly strong emotions towards him? To please him? Emotions of love?”
Casey feels amusement at that. Not any more than she felt it before, in the first loop. Now, though, she feels cared for. She feels held by him.
“I am here of my own free will, Dr. Fletcher.”
Dr. Fletcher sighs, a shuddering nervous sigh. “Did you help him? Where are the other girls?”
“They’re okay. Probably just scared.”
That seems to spook Dr. Fletcher all the more. “What do you intend to do with them?”
Casey licks her lips. “Hopefully, nothing.” If she can prove to Dennis that the Beast is already within him, within Kevin, he won’t have to kill to bring him out.
“Hopefully? Casey, this is an egregious wrong!” she says, and unable to sit any longer she stands, pushing her chair back, demanding reason. “I need you to see that alright? And we need to help you and the others girls get out of here.”
It takes Casey a moment to comprehend that this is the same reality as the one half an hour ago where she was held by Dennis, and the same one two hours ago when he’d clung to her. The shift isn’t gradual, it’s being dropped into deep water.
Remaining calm, which is the one thing she has always known to do, she asks,“Why would he take us?”
“Excuse me?”
“Out of everyone he could take. He said Patricia told him what to look for, but he selected us.”
“Young women are generally easy--”
“No,” Casey interrupts. “It can’t be that. We had an adult man with us. Predators usually go for easier prey. Children.”
Dr. Fletcher shifts on her feet, her eyes, not so subtly, glancing towards the clock hanging above the entrance.
“I wish I could answer but we don’t have time for this Casey. Who did Dennis go out to meet?”
“You can’t leave, I’m the only one with the keys,” Casey says. She never thought she’d resort to blackmail and yet it doesn’t feel so difficult now. “Tell me.”
Dr. Fletcher huffs, but she has her priorities straight which, in this case, means getting the hell out of the zoo.
“It could be connected to his past trauma experiences at the hands of women.”
“Trauma. Kevin’s mother abused him. I know that. But what could have someone my age done to him?”
“There was an incident at work, a few months ago: two young women put his hands on their breasts, and ran away laughing. That’s sexual harassment. It could have very well triggered Dennis to surface, considering he’s the proverbial shield against the world.”
Casey considers this but only for a moment. Realization doesn’t dawn-- it’s cold and horrid. If Dennis is there to protect Kevin, and woke due to sexual harassment it means that she and Kevin really are similar; his mother didn’t only beat him.
She was right, wondering why the Beast didn’t go for women similar to Kevin’s mother -- he did. It’s a simple case of transference. To get revenge on her, something he couldn’t do in the beginning, and something he can’t do now she being dead the past ten years, he’s exuding violence on those who, he sees, threatened him the same way. He’s getting his revenge on his mother by killing the girls.
In the first loop, he’d been getting his revenge over and over again, with no end. There was no end. There was never supposed to be one-- Casey knows that hate and it never really burns out. Sooner would have Kevin died than gotten it all out of his system.
“Casey?” Dr. Fletcher’s voice filters in, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Who did Dennis go out to meet?”
“The Beast.”
“The Beast is a fragment of imagination,” Dr. Fletcher says. “He can’t be real. We need to leave. I can’t bear witness to anyone coming to harm, and I won’t be responsible for you, or any of the girls, dying. Casey, please, it’s better to stop this before it’s even started. Kevin needs help now. Whatever happened to him, those young women don’t deserve to- to die .”
“Nobody deserves anything. And I haven’t earned what I got.”
Despite this, Casey stands up and takes the keys. She needs to talk with Kevin, now, more than ever. She leads Dr. Fletcher to the other room, and unlocks the doors where she used to be kept with Claire and Marcia.
Dr. Fletcher walks in, shaking, shocked, and it’s simple to close the doors behind her. She leaves before she can hear them realising they’re locked in. She can’t have them running away. She can’t have Dr. Fletcher dying either.
Casey’s in the hallway when she feels chills running down her spine, hairs standing on end. A moment later she hears soft patter of feet. She doesn’t have to turn to know the Beast is there, in front of her.
Still, she turns, and watches as he advances, eyes blood-shot, skin clammy and littered with pronounced veins, mouth twisted in a perpetual growl, teeth bared. The heat radiating from him, when he stops in front of her, is strangely pleasant. She knows his skin is hot. She hugged him, touched him, enough times to know this.
She isn’t afraid. She looks him in the eye, and lets him crowd into her, face nuzzling her hair, her cheek, her neck.
“You smell of me,” he growls. His hands flex, for a moment, before they go to her hips. “You smell like mine.”
His hand is rough where he places it on her belly. She gasps, and feels, mortifyingly enough, her thighs smarting in a rather telling way.
“Let me talk to Kevin,” she says, as the Beast very nearly coils around her.
He huffs, loud, akin to a large cat. “You always want to talk with Kevin.”
She frowns, pulling away to look at him, confused. He presses his palm over her mouth before she can open it.
“Don’t say his name,” The Beast says. “Hurts.”
There’s a moment in which he lingers, just looking at her. Then he closes his eyes and the veins recede, the heat dissipates, and his shoulders, it seems like, grow smaller even if it’s just a posture change. He lowers his hand and when she looks at him, it’s the blue eyes she’s been waiting for that look back at her.
“Oh,” Kevin says, “It’s you-- you look different.”
Casey feels tears welling up in her eyes: relief, at finally speaking with him, and terrible sadness, knowing all of their history will never come back.
“Don’t-- why are you crying? Hey, Casey, come on.” He hugs her then, holds her in the way only he really does, and she feels, finally, as if she doesn’t have to be strong anymore.
“Shh,” he says as she works through all the emotions she’s been keeping close to her chest. After a while, he looks around and says, “Where- where are we exactly?”
“In the hallway,” she replies, dumbly. She pulls away, wipes her face, and would feel embarrassed if it were anyone but him. Even though he doesn’t remember her.
“Oh, right,” he says. He’s looking around as if he hasn’t seen the place in a long time. He hasn’t really, two years. “It’s just...different. I-- wasn’t I in the hospital, before?”
Casey looks up at him. “What?”
“You were there too,” he says. “With that woman. Right? I’m not-- making it up?”
Casey feels her legs going weak, and she realises: she never told Hedwig about her scars, only Patricia and she doubts she would have told the child anything; she never told Dennis about her uncle -- she told Kevin in the first loop; she didn’t ask the Beast to talk to Kevin at all. She realises, quite suddenly, painfully, wretchedly, that Kevin remembers her. Or, at least, remembers parts of his time within the first loop.
“You were,” she says, breath hard to come by. “Kevin, I need you to know something, okay? I need you to know that my uncle is in jail now. I put him there.”
“I know? You’ve told me this before, Casey.”
She laughs, holding their hands entwined. “I’m sorry you couldn’t get justice for what happened to you. You can’t go back and put your mother behind bars. But you know what you can do? You can say fuck her, and try and live your life despite her.”
Kevin is shaking. He nods, and says, “The Beast? Did you manage to stop him?”
“Kevin he is all your anger. He wants to get revenge, for you, onto the person who did it most. The only one who can stop him is you.”
“Wait what do you mean,what--”
“The alters were there to protect you from bad experiences you couldn’t handle as a child. But the pain of what happened is still there.” She touches the middle of his chest where his heart should be. “When you’re ready to deal with your past, you can only then get past it. Do you think you can do that?”
“I’m...I’m not strong enough, Casey.” Kevin sounds as if he’s pleading. He sounds somewhere in the middle, between the man she has grown to know and the man she met the first time, the man who told her to kill him.
Casey squeezes his hand. “You are. And I’ll be here for you. I’ll always be here for you. No matter how much time it takes.”
He shifts, and she sees it’s Dennis in the light.
“You knew.” It sounds like an accusation even though she didn’t want it to be one.
Dennis’ face is guilty. “Let’s sit down,” he offers.
She shakes her head, refuses, even when he puts a calming hand on her arm.
“I’ve been remembering bits and pieces. Like dreams. Like very old memories.”
She nods. “From the start?”
“No. Recently. Since we--” he trails off. “I think it was Hedwig who pointed it out first. Patricia went quiet after that. Casey, what you just said to Kevin--”
She wishes she had the time to feel betrayed. She wishes she could feel angry with him at all. But as much as she could, once, be angry with herself, that’s as little as she can be angry with them now.
She sighs, tired, defeated, feeling smaller than ever. “The Beast didn’t just emerge. He was always there within you. Dr. Fletcher told me about those girls. They made you come out didn’t they? And the only one who hurt you in the same way before then was your mother. That’s why you kidnapped us. That’s why Patricia told you who to look for. You just. Wanted to punish her for what she did, with the Beast, through us.”
“When...” Dennis sighs. “Kevin can’t know about the past. It hurt him trying. Barry had to take over when he was on that bus. He just-- didn’t want to live. He was going to do something stupid. I was trying to fix that.”
Casey feels her gut twisting, and she thinks it’s because she’s hurting right now. It grows though, and grows, and she staggers so Dennis has to catch her.
“There’s nothing left to fix,” she says. “Dr. Fletcher is alive and she can help Kevin. She can, at least, help you find a better therapist. Kevin has to face the past. And you can be there to help him, support him. Every one of you. And I’ll be here too.”
He picks her up, slowly, as if she were a child.
“Where is Karen?”
“In the room with the other two.”
He carries her through the rooms, weighing to him nothing at all. He opens the doors and she can hear Dr. Fletcher’s gasp.
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing, she’s ill,” Dennis replies. He stoppers the doors. “Come on,” he instructs, “I’m letting you go.”
There’s a moment of hesitation, one Dennis doesn’t have patience for. “Dr. Fletcher, please. I know what you will have to do. I understand the consequences.”
He turns around then and she can see them over his shoulder. He opens the other doors as well and goes to the living room where they can curl up on the couch.
“Is it the loop?” he asks.
She nods. She feels glass in her throat and when she coughs there’s blood.
He pets her hair, gentle, warm.
“This is the last time,” he promises, and kisses her head.
Casey closes her eyes.
-
Casey opens her eyes. She’s sitting in the passenger seat, the front dashboard in front of her messy with paper and garbage. Behind her, Claire and Marcia giggle as they watch a video. Casey takes a breath and opens the doors.
Mr. Benoit looks up from where he’s putting away the bags and asks, “Something wrong, Casey?”
“I’ll be walking after all, thank you,” she says.
Mr. Benoit puts the food away, closes the trunk and insists, “Are you sure? Look, I would feel better if I knew you were delivered home safely, alright?”
She sees Dennis moving towards. Mr. Benoit stiffens, but Casey sighs in relief. The lie is ready on her tongue, but the smile is genuine.
“Dennis,” she says, voice filled with true relief. She offers her hand for show and he shakes it, picking up the cues. Out of politeness, he introduces himself to Mr. Benoit and says, “I’m a friend of her uncle. Casey, you okay?”
“Yeah, Mr. Benoit was offering me a ride home.”
“I can drive you home,” he says. “I need to talk with John anyway.”
Casey notices how Mr. Benoit’s shoulders unwind, wariness leaving his face. He looks at her when she says, “That sounds great, thank you. Thanks for the offer Mr. Benoit. I’ll see you around.”
“Alright then, take care,” he says, and she knows his gaze lingers as they move through the parking lot until they’re inside Dennis’ car. They watch as Mr. Benoit drives away. She turns to Dennis, who smiles at her, and watches as he hands the light over to Miss Patricia.
“You’re a very smart girl, aren’t you?” she asks, and she looks almost confused by it. She folds Dennis’ glasses and puts them in the front pocket of his slacks.
They get out of the car and head for the mall.
“You see, when Kevin knows something, at least one of us knows it as well,” she explains. “The Beast isn’t in that train yard anymore. He has a seat now, with the rest of us.”
She stops Casey in front of the sliding doors. She brushes her hair back behind an ear, smile true, nearly proud. “Well done.”
Casey watches as, instead of Miss Patricia, it’s Kevin who sits in the light. His smile is tentative at first, but when she opens her arms he reaches out and wraps her in his.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi,” he replies, chuckling softly. “You’re still here.”
“I said I would be.”
He pulls back to kiss her forehead. “Thank you.”
It’s simple to take his hand and for the two of them to walk into the mall. They get coffee, she supposes, like normal people would, and sit down at the 2nd floor cafe, in a corner so as to not be overheard.
“For the sake of sounding redundant -- you look different,” he says, and they both laugh at that.
“You look different too,” she replies. He does. He looks relieved for one. Lighter than she’s ever seen him before.
“That’s thanks to you. Not bleeding this time too, which is a change.”
“You remember?”
“Yeah, when I came to all my memories from the previous loop were there.” His smile is still there when he looks at her and says, “I thought I told you to let me go.”
She smiles. “That wasn’t an option.”
“Thank you.”
They drink their coffee. Casey gives him space and Kevin eventually finds his bravery and his words.
“The alters,” he starts, “the system really, has always been here to help me. In whatever way they think that help has to take shape. I couldn’t handle the fact of what...happened to me.”
“Dr. Fletcher cares about you very much,” she reminds him. “I think she cares more than she should be.”
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “Maybe it’s time to find another therapist. But I’d still want to have her around.”
“You can do anything you like, Kevin.”
“I...you’re right. When I think how miserable I was in that hospital, the situation right now doesn’t seem so horrible.”
She huffs out a laugh. Perspective. It’s always like that.
Kevin’s mouth twists into a mirroring smile that fades as he says, “What about you? I can do anything I like now, but you still have to deal with your uncle. Again.”
She stills. She’s not considered that. Sure she knew about it, but now, faced with it, she takes a very deep breath. If she did it once, she knows she can do it again.
“You don’t have to go through it alone again,” Kevin says. “I will be there with you, if you’ll have me.”
“All of you?”
Kevin raises an eyebrow then laughs. “Yes, every one of me.”
“Then,” she says, “I’d like to finish my coffee. And then I’d like you to take me to the police station.”
He looks at her with knowing eyes. “Alright.” Then, he adds, “You didn’t think what to do after the loop was over, did you?”
She admits to it by shaking her head. “I’m going to have to finish high school. Go turn eighteen again. And you?”
“I think I’ll start with finding a better therapist. There’s time for the rest.”