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And every evening, every time
I keep replaying in my mind
And wondering if you do the same
And if it makes you lose your breath
And if it makes you just forget
That all of it's a bit insane
I cannot fall in love with you
I cannot feel this way so soon
I cannot be this way with you
I cannot fall in love with you
Casey might be losing it.
“Who,” she whisper-yells, “is screaming at six in the morning on a Saturday?”
“Shh,” Rachel hushes, half-asleep and wholly unbothered. Casey had discovered that her roommate could sleep through anything when Rachel had slept through an entire fire drill while at her boyfriend’s for the weekend. It was ridiculous. Also, a complete safety hazard. Casey, a light sleeper, is envious of her ability.
She turns over to glare at Rachel, her body safe under the covers of her own bed. “Me, ‘shh’? I’m not the one yelling at an ungodly hour!”
“For fuck’s sake, Case,” Rachel mutters sleepily, “just yell at ‘em like you usu’lly do.” Then, she promptly rolls over, puts a pillow over her head, and goes back to sleep.
Casey huffs, opting to get up and look for her bedroom slippers. She likes Rachel a lot, and they had become fast friends, but she had learned from experience that she is useless before her cup of morning coffee.
As she stuffs her feet inside her bunny slippers, she begins to hear pounding outside the door, followed by the faint masculine chanting of ‘chug, chug, chug!’—both the unmistakable sounds of a party.
On a Saturday morning? she fumes, as she brushes her teeth. Guess I can’t avoid all the Dereks of the universe.
(Because she has been able to, throughout her first two months at Queen’s. She deliberately forwent telling him which residence she’d be staying at, and she paid off her family members so they wouldn’t tell him either. She’s actually quite good at avoiding him when she puts her mind to it.
The issue is, despite the fact that he now has a choice to be free of her, Derek can’t seem to leave her alone. She’d always known that he took enjoyment in torturing her, but she didn’t realize it had been this much; she’d expected that once he had the option, he’d jump at the chance to to avoid her. That was not the case. He texted her spam on her cell phone until she blocked his number, then he paid Lizzie to pass along messages to her. When even Lizzie could no longer be bought as a messenger, he began to email her.
It was usually to ask her to write his assignments for him, but still. He has been in contact with her—willingly.
She’s ignoring him, of course. That’s what they say the best tactic is when dealing with people like him. They, being Yahoo answers.
Anyway, this is besides the point.
The point is: she’s beginning to discover that people like Derek—those who didn’t have respect or consideration for other people—live everywhere.)
Hastily, she puts her hair up in a ponytail, washes her face, and shucks on the fuzzy pink bathrobe she’d received as a Christmas present from Lizzie. She looks outrageous, but she doubts that matters to the imbeciles in her hallway. She moves into the common area, cursing internally and entirely prepared to give the jackasses a piece of her mind, when she opens the door, and—
Of course.
(Speak of the devil.)
“Derek?”
He turns at her voice, eyes going wide when he sees her. He looks the same, but a little different: hair shaggier, and clothes wackier than the usual. He’s decked out in Queen’s colours, a mismatched combination of red, blue, and yellow. He also looks drunk as hell, and she’s pretty sure there’s beer spilled all over the front of his sweater.
“Casey?” Derek rasps, surprise evident across his features.
Two beats pass. They stare at each other with unease. She hasn’t seen him in two months—a bit more than that, probably. She’s heard from him, but she hasn’t actually seen him in the flesh in a while. It feels… strange.
“You guys know each other?” says another voice, and when she breaks eye contact to look to his left, she finds—for some bizarre reason—Rachel’s boyfriend, Jason.
Honestly, she doesn’t even know where to begin with that question, so she ignores it. “What are you doing here?” she asks instead, directing it to Derek. She’s too surprised to remember why she came out in the hallway in the first place. Derek stares at her, still mildly stupefied, and then, after seeing a group of guys with beers at the other end of the hallway, she remembers. The anger builds inside her once again, as if boiling on low heat. “Are you drunk?”
The accusation pulls him out of the shock. “Well, I was getting there before you crashed the party,” he says peppily, sounding more coherent than she’d expected. That being said, she can tell an imminent slur will take over his voice within the hour.
“Really, Derek? Drunk this early in the day?” she accuses, and the little person inside her turns the dial up on the stove, allowing her to simmer at medium-high heat. “Also, you woke me up, which is why I’m here to”—she uses air-quotes—“crash your party.”
“Oops,” Derek says, a little too loudly, blatantly uncaring. He starts to shove a bottle of vodka into his bag, and Casey watches him struggle with the zipper for a few seconds. “So sorry. Wouldn’t want to disturb the princess’s beauty sleep.”
“Woah,” Jason inputs, seemingly taken aback by their level of acquaintance.
Her jaw clenches. Two months without seeing each other, and he automatically goes for the digs. Well, if he can, she will too. “Doesn’t seem like you’ve been getting much beauty sleep,” she remarks, voice sweet at butterscotch. She gives him a once-over, letting the look speak for itself.
“Oh, are we judging each other now?” Derek asks, fake-surprised. He crosses his arms and his eyes skirt over her appearance, pursing his lips as if in deep thought. “Well, I gotta say, the robe is a little 2003—”
“It was a gift, which you know,” she cut in, blood simmering on high-dial as he begins to approach her.
“—and honestly, the pony is too tight, don’t ya’ think?” he finishes, close enough that he can reach around her back to tug on it. He does it gently. Almost playfully, his lip twitching; he’s holding back a smile, which is unexpected. She’d been expecting that he’d deliberately yank out a few hairs out like he usually does. Quieter, he adds, “Wouldn’t want to cause any more brain damage.”
Lacking a comeback, she tilts her head up to look at him, fury dissipating inside her for an unknown reason. “You didn’t reply to my question. What’s going on?”
He rolls his eyes. “Nothing, Space-Case.”
She sniffs him exaggeratedly. “You smell like early onset alcoholism.”
Derek presses his lips together, something he does when he thinks she’s being funny but refuses to admit to it. She clocks the motion and feels pleased nonetheless. “Uh, it’s homecoming?” Derek explains, but the tone of his voice says ‘obviously’.
“While this is fascinating,” Jason cuts in again, and Casey is momentarily startled, having forgotten they were not alone, “remind me how you two know each other?”
“I’m his—” Casey begins, at the same Derek cuts in, staring at her with an odd look on his face: “High school.”
She lets her sentence hang in the air, and pauses.
That’s vague—not a lie, but consciously ambiguous in a way that makes her unsure of how to feel about it.
She searches his face, and while she doesn’t know what he’s up to, she relents. “Yeah, uh, we knew each other in high school.”
He probably did it because he doesn’t want to be associated with her more than he needs to. He’s ashamed. Of her. Well, whatever. Them being related isn’t something she wants to advertise to the world either, honestly, so she’s fine with it! She’s fine.
Her mood is souring by the second.
“Did you date?” Jason asks, and she chokes.
“No!” she yells, at the same time Derek cackles and says, “Uh, no fucking way.”
“Woah,” Jason says again, looking between them like he’s found a new species and is writing internal observational notes. “Alright, wow. I was just asking. There’s clearly some kind of history.”
She can’t help but feel uncomfortable, not knowing how to respond, but Derek saves her by clarifying. “It isn’t like that. We’ve seen each other around a lot.”
That’s the least of it. “Our circles overlapped sometimes, socially,” Casey adds. It’s the truth. Sort of.
Derek laughs, and her spine goes taut, mentally preparing for him to call her a loser or make a mocking joke like you wish. Instead, he shrugs easily and says, “Don’t know if I’d put it like that, but…”
She blinks. Maybe the alcohol has relaxed him. It’s the only explanation.
He pulls at her ponytail again and she swats his hand away, feeling relieved that he chose not to take a shot at her. “Sorry, wouldn’t want anyone to question your popularity,” she says, hoping the joke comes across.
One side of Derek’s mouth curls into an almost-smile. “It isn’t that,” he replies, but refuses to elaborate further.
The door behind her opens. “Jase?” Rachel croaks out, looking like an entire mess. She did not bother to do the tidying up that Casey chose to when preparing to leave their room.
Casey moves to the side so that Rachel can pass by—away from Derek. She meets his eyes for a split second, at a loss for what she finds inside them, and looks away.
“Hey, cutie,” Jason says, smiling as he takes her in his arms. “You wanna come with us?”
“Nah,” Rachel says, nuzzling into him. It’s lovesick and kind of disgusting and Casey wants to throw up from how happy they look together. “We’ll meet up later.”
“You’re participating in this?” Casey asks, surprised. Rachel and her aren’t very similar, personality-wise, but one of the reasons they got matched as roommates was because they’re both not big drinkers. Homecoming, from what she’s heard, was all about getting drunk and destroying school property.
Rachel glances at her and shrugs. “I won’t drink much, but it’s tradition, isn’t it? The entire school is doing it.”
Derek snorts. “Not Casey. She’s way too uptight for that.”
She goes still, welcoming the rage building inside of her. This, right here, is an emotion she’s familiar with.
(See, what he’s said is a big no-no. He knows how much Casey despises it when people call her that word. They’ve argued about it countless times, because, correction: she is not uptight; she is disciplined, and there was an important distinction between the two. She doesn’t just mean how one is an insult, and the other is a compliment—she means how one described her perfectly, and the other sounded more like something that would come from the mouth of—well, him.)
Derek can likely see the steam coming out of her ears, because he switches gears. “I mean,” he mumble-slurs, attempting to backtrack, “it’s not like you’d have fun. It’s not your scene.”
Not her scene? Not her scene? What does Derek know about her ‘scene’? He hasn’t seen her in two months! For all he knows, she could’ve been getting drunk every night!
“Whatever,” she seethes, squaring her shoulders. “I don’t care. Have fun getting alcohol poisoning.”
She storms inside her room, slamming the door for dramatic effect, and collapses against it from the inside.
“Uh, Casey?” she hears Rachel say, muffled through the door. “I left my key card inside.”
Feeling silly, she opens the door so that it’s barely ajar and goes to hide in the bathroom until she can’t hear Derek’s voice in her hallway anymore, breathing deeply and utterly annoyed that she let him get to her like a goddamn rookie.
<<<<<
He’s nudging his foot against hers as they sit in their chairs, just to be an annoyance, until she’s forced to sigh from exasperation. “Der-ek, can you quit it?”
“You’re so tense, Case,” he mutters. “Chill.”
“Hospitals make me nervous,” she admits, jittering her leg. “You don’t think something is wrong, right? Mom and the baby are alright? You don’t think—”
“You’re right. I don’t think, and neither should you anymore,” he says, jokingly. He wraps an arm around her shoulders to pull her upright, steering her in the direction of the coffee stand, a surprising pseudo sign of comfort. It’s the only way he knows how. She’s known him for long enough to recognize it for what it is, though, and she appreciates it. “They’re fine. It’s just a check-up.”
“They’re taking a while,” Casey mentions, chewing her lip.
“They’re fine,” he repeats, strongly. He pushes her in front of the barista, and she almost falls from the force of the movement. She huffs, and he gestures toward the coffee beans. “Get something.”
She eyes him. “You paying?”
Derek snorts. “That’s a joke, right?”
She rolls her eyes. It was worth a shot. “I’ll get a vanilla latte,” she says to the barista, and he nods, ringing her up.
“And I’ll get a coffee, black,” Derek adds, grinning at her cheekily.
She scoffs. “I’m not buying you coffee.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are,” Derek drawls, patiently, “because we don’t want to waste this young man’s time, do we?”
Casey bristles, but then the barista cuts in nosily: “Maybe you should just buy your girlfriend coffee, man.”
She sucks in a breath. It’s fine. Sometimes people make that mistake. It’s happened before, although it’s incredibly awkward every time it happens. Her mouth opens to correct him, but Derek touches her wrist to stop her.
“Fine,” is all Derek says, eyes unreadable. He hip-checks her out of the way and pulls out his wallet. “Princess gets her coffee.”
Casey swallows, unsure of how to feel about what transpired. He didn’t correct him. Derek didn’t correct the guy.
Why didn’t he correct him?
“Thanks,” Casey mumbles, when they’re walking back to their seats.
“Whatever,” Derek replies, as if nothing happened.
And they pretend it didn’t happen.
And then it happens again.
And again, and again.
They don’t do it every time, barely often, but they do it. It happens. It’s not always that the person assumes they’re dating or together—sometimes they ask other questions, and they keep it vague. How do you two know each other, people wonder, and sometimes she doesn’t want to say how. She doesn’t know why that is. She just doesn’t. Sometimes it’s Derek who does it—actually, mostly it’s Derek—but sometimes Casey does it, too. It’s much too complicated to explain the situation. They’re step-siblings, emphasis on ‘step’. Step, okay, not actual siblings. No, Derek is not her brother. No, she does not think of him like that. No, she doesn’t know why, when she thinks of Marti and Edwin as her siblings. She and Derek aren’t actually related—but they are, in all technicality.
No one gets it. Not even their own family. So, forgive her for bypassing the long explanations on the rare occasion by omission of truth. She might not know why Derek chooses to do it, but for her it’s purely because it’s a complicated thing, their relation-thing-or-whatever, and she doesn’t want to waste time with the details. This way, it’s efficient. That’s all it is: a need for efficiency.
Whatever. (Isn’t that what he said? ‘Whatever.’)
Move along.
>>>>>
Rachel throws an eraser at her head.
“Rach!” she laughs, throwing it back at her like they’re children.
“You’re driving me nuts,” Rachel complains, plopping onto her bed. “You already had midterms. What could you possibly be studying for now?”
“I’m checking to make sure I got the answers right,” Casey tries to say around the highlighter in her mouth.
“Oh, my God. Casey!” Rachel groans. “Please. Please. I beg you. Let’s go out, do something fun! You have nothing to do so you’re going stir-crazy.”
Casey turns in her chair, sighing. She might be able to take a break; she kind of needs one, actually. “What are we supposed to do? It’s eight on a Tuesday.”
Rachel does this little dance in her chair, and that’s when Casey realizes that she has fallen into a trap. “I’m going out with Jase…” Rachel starts, then sing-songs: “And we can make it a double-date!”
“Uh,” Casey says, not expecting this turn of events. “I’m not dating anyone?”
Rachel rolls her eyes. “I know, Casey, that’s the point. I’ll set you up!”
She blanches. “With who?”
“This guy we know,” Rachel replies, ominously. Casey doesn’t like the sound of that. “We both think you’d be a good match. It’ll be a fun little blind date!”
“I don’t know, Rach…” Casey trails off, biting her lip. She doesn’t do blind dates. Or, well, it’s more that she’s never done a blind date before, and she’s not sure if she’ll like it. “What’s his name?”
“I can’t tell you that! It’s a blind date. He won’t know either.”
Casey is quiet for a few moments, thinking up ways to get out of it. Surprise assignment she’d forgotten about? Unexpected dance class? Book club meeting?
Rachel continues. “I promise that we’ll do this just one time and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll let you handle your own love life. But just try?” She gives a pathetic pout at the end, and Casey sighs, feeling her resolve melt. She does like hanging out with Rachel, and she doesn’t think Rachel would set her up with someone terrible. Jason is a good guy, from what she’s seen, so she has good taste…
“Ugh,” she mutters, getting up to search her closet for something date-appropriate. “He better be cute.”
“Yes!” Rachel squeals, following her. “Oh, I know just what you should wear.”
“And you’re sure he’s a good guy?” Casey asks in the lobby of the restaurant, worrying a lip between her teeth. Her hair is down and curled, and she twirls a bunch around her finger in a nervous tic.
“Yes, Case,” Rachel reassures her. “In fact, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you see him.”
“Hm.” She is pretty positive that she won’t be. She’s extremely picky when it comes to dating.
“They’re coming,” Rachel warns her in a low voice, knowing that Casey will need a moment to mentally prepare.
She’s facing the inside of the restaurant when she sees two masculine-shaped blobs approaching in the reflection of the glass, though she can’t tell who it is. It’s too dark outside to tell. She only turns when Rachel nudges her, and then—
Oh, fucking shit.
“Fuck,” Derek says, quite strongly, with wide eyes.
“You?” Casey says, voice pitched higher than it’s ever been before.
Derek is equally as shocked, so she knows he’s not in on this as some stupid joke. She wouldn’t have put that past him. The surprise is written all over his face, and it would normally be amusing, but she can’t possibly laugh at this. She cannot believe she was so stupid to forget that Jason and Derek were friends. He usually brought along other friends when visiting Rachel, but how could she forget that she saw them together only two weeks ago?
“Surprise!” Rachel says happily, oblivious to the fact that the two people she just set up are related by marriage.
“Um,” is all Casey says, beyond words at this point.
There’s a very obvious silence which follows, where she and Derek do nothing but gawk at one another. Eventually it becomes too much, and Jason decides to add, unhelpfully: “I know you two knew each other, but Rach and I were talking, and—”
Rachel finishes his sentence, because they’re the kind of couple that does that. “—we thought you two would be so good together!”
“Oh?” Casey squeaks.
Derek remains silent. She contemplates if he’s gone into post-traumatic shock.
“Yeah, you kind of balance each other out?” Jason says, although it’s a little more timid now, like he’s unsure of how they’re reacting. “Opposites attract and all?”
Jesus Christ.
“I need to speak to Derek alone,” Casey blurts, before grabbing his arm and taking him outside. She waits until the door shuts before she pulls him to the side, in a corner where no one can see them, and then she begins to pace. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God…”
“Oh, my God,” Derek echoes, agreeing with her for once. He sits on the bench outside the restaurant, putting his head in his hands. “I don’t know whether to laugh, or…”
Or what, Derek? Or what? Cry? Barf? She doesn’t think she wants him to finish that sentence, because she doesn’t know what her preferred response would be.
Instead, feeling snarky, she says: “Found your voice, eh?”
He shoots her a look and hisses, “Excuse me for being surprised that I just got put on a date with my step-sister.”
“Be quiet!” Casey whispers angrily, looking back to make sure they’re not listening. “I cannot believe this. What are the chances?”
“They think we’d balance each other out,” Derek recites faintly, like his brain still isn’t working, running a hand through his once-tamed hair. Oh, God, Derek had put effort into looking good for this date. A date with her, although he hadn’t known it. He’s wearing a freaking dress shirt and nice jeans. Holy shit.
Casey laughs humorlessly, wringing her hands anxiously. “That is definitely… one way to look at it.”
“We should go back.”
She turns to him sharply. “What?”
Derek shakes his head, and gestures toward where they left Rachel and Jason standing. “They’re going to think we’re being weird.”
“Because it is weird!” she hisses at him, gesturing between them obviously.
“Only if we make it weird,” he replies, sounding pensive. He’s getting that look in his eyes, the one he gets when he’s cooking up a master plan. “We can’t tell them the truth.”
Casey scoffs, bundling her coat closer. “Of course you want to lie. That’s your solution for everything.”
He narrows his eyes. “Then you explain why we omitted the details the first time around.”
Clenching her jaw, she tries to think of alternative solutions, but she comes away with nothing. He’s right. She doesn’t know why they did it in the first place. He chose to, but she had gone along with it. Why had she done that?
They have to do this.
“Fine,” she mutters, reaching forward to pull him upright. She points a finger at him and adds, “We will never speak of this again.”
He tugs on her arm, directing her back to the lobby. “Trust me, I’m gonna need to bleach my brain when I’m home.”
Rachel and Jason are talking in low voices when they return. “Sorry about that,” Casey offers. Rachel gives her a worried look, so she feels an obligation to explain. “It’s just kind of weird. Y’know. With us.”
Rachel and Jason exchange a glance, before Rachel asks in a hesitant voice, “Why?”
“Uh,” Casey says, shooting a panicked look at Derek. Help!, she tries to say with her eyes.
Derek gives her the same look for a split second, before blurting out: “Because I dated her best friend.”
Casey pauses. Actually, that does work. Shit! Why didn’t she think of that before?
“Oh!” Rachel says, in surprise. “Is that… a problem, then?”
Yes, it is! Casey’s brain shouts at her to say. She could easily say yes, and then they’d get out of this. They wouldn’t have to deal with this date. They wouldn’t have to pretend like it’s okay for two step-siblings to be on a date with each other, casually, like nothing is wrong with it.
Instead, she glances at Derek, and she catches him staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face. He’s expecting her to say yes, and the jig will be up. His eyes are soft and his hand is still on her arm, but he’s letting her take this one. He’s putting the decision in her hands; it’s her choice.
Derek doesn’t usually give her a choice.
(She hasn’t seen him in nearly three months.)
For that reason alone, her mouth replies: “Not at all.”
She’s still looking at him, and she can’t quite place how he’s feeling about her choice. She can usually read him like a book, but right now she can’t tell. His eyes scan hers to make sure she’s sure, and when she nods, he turns to Jason and adds, “The friend dumped me when we went off to different schools.”
Casey takes a breath, then explains to Rachel, “Yeah, like, she and I are still friends and we catch up sometimes, but she’s already dating this other guy. I don’t think she’d care.”
That is a total lie. Emily would definitely care—in fact, she’d throw a hissy fit.
Derek shrugs, nonchalant, even though he knows Emily would likely rage if she ever found out. “Yep, what she said.”
“Oh, okay,” Rachel breathes in relief. “That’s great.”
“Great,” Jason echoes, like this has changed absolutely nothing for him. “So can we eat now, or…”
Everyone laughs. “Yeah, sorry about that,” Casey mumbles, and she lets Derek lead her inside the room, his hand burning a brand on her back.
So, Derek and Casey go on a date.
It’s weird.
Correction: it’s very weird.
But it’s also an unexpected type of nice, getting to spend time with Derek and him being forced to be nice to her. He can’t be an ass to her in front of their friends, so he’s been oddly pleasant since the date began. It almost feels like she’s on a date with an actual respectable human being.
If she forgot it was Derek, of course.
God, ‘pleasant’ is not how she would’ve described Derek before this, but here they are.
“—and that’s how Casey got our RA fired for negligence.”
Jason laughs loudly and Casey does as well, albeit more sheepishly. Derek, on the other hand, is silent after the story, the only indication that he was listening being the small smile playing at his lips.
Casey nudges him with her elbow. “Is the great Derek Venturi speechless?” she says, teasingly.
He shoots her a smirk. “Nah. Sounds like classic Casey McDonald.”
She snorts before taking a drink of her water. He’s not wrong about that.
“See, I knew you two would get along,” Rachel points out from under Jason’s arm.
Derek stuffs the garlic bread in his mouth unattractively, probably to push the responsibility of replying onto her. She shakes her head at his transparency. “He’s not being a tyrant for once.”
“And you’re not being lame,” Derek adds, but he nudges at her leg under the table with his foot to make up for it.
“I didn’t know you two were so close,” Rachel comments, and Jason is nodding beside her in agreeance. “So much for a blind date. I mean, Jason did say you seemed familiar with each other, but—”
Her and Derek? Close? Casey snorts. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Derek laughs shortly. She can’t place the kind of laugh it is, exactly. “I mean,” he starts, “I am well-acquainted with Nora and Lizzie—”
She kicks him under the table. What is he playing at?
“Oh,” Rachel says, surprised. “You’ve met her family?”
Casey grits her teeth, smiling through it. “I suppose you could say that.”
“Casey knows mine too. Don’t you, Case?” Derek supplies happily, clearly set on making their backstory as complicated as possible. He puts another piece of bread in his mouth and says with a full mouth, “We spent a lot of time together in high school.” He swallows his food and grins cheekily.
He’s annoyed her now, so she inputs a little meanly, “Not by choice.”
Rachel gives her a look that says be nice, this is going well.
She’s expecting him to give her a mean comeback to match, but instead he’s quiet. When she turns to look at him closer, he’s tapping his fingers on the table nervously.
“What?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Maybe we should change that,” he says, voice more tentative than it’s been the entire meal.
He’s not looking her in the eye as he says it, either.
And Casey is so thrown that she can’t help but simply stare in response, surprised that he’s being so… welcoming. Is that the right word? He’s being nice. Is he kidding around? Is this some kind of bizarre joke for him?
The thing is: Derek, for once in his life, doesn’t look like he’s joking at all.
That’s why she forgets to reply. Rachel nudges her with her heel under the table, and then Casey remembers that they’re in company, and that she’s supposed to grace Derek with a response. “Oh,” is all she ends up saying.
Rachel pokes her again, a little harder.
“You… want that?” Casey asks, equally as hesitant.
“Sure,” Derek murmurs with a nonchalance she knows is a farce. “Could be fun.”
She coughs. “Yeah, maybe.”
He shrugs again. “Maybe,” he agrees.
As a gift from the higher deities, their server comes by to offer them the dessert menu. Jason, who has been quiet for most of the meal, speaks up. “No, thanks,” he tells her, “just the bill, please.”
When she leaves, Rachel, nosy and lovable and obvious as ever, asks, “So, does that mean you’re going to see each other again?”
Two beats, and then: “If she’s up for it,” Derek responds, still staring at Casey with an unplaceable expression. She doesn’t know if he’s being serious. He can probably tell, so he adds, “Seriously, Case.”
Casey swallows. “Okay,” her mouth responds before her brain can process what is happening.
The smallest, most minuscule smile appears on his face. “I’ll give you my number,” he says, with a hint of humour.
She muffles a laugh, unsure of what has transpired, but not hating it one bit. “I’ll call you,” she jokes, although it goes way over the heads of their companions.
Derek grins at her, and she grins back, feeling giddy and nothing like she expected to have felt after a fake-date with her step-brother.
<<<<<
“I’m going out,” Casey says when she finds Derek in the kitchen, shoving chips in his mouth. “On a date,” she adds, although it’s probably obvious from her outfit.
“You look terrible.” His eyes skirt over her bare legs, burning her skin with every glance. “Uh, don’t you think your dress is a little…” he trails off, and raises an eyebrow in question, like it’s obvious what he intended to say.
She glances down at her dress. She wore it for a reason—because it made her legs look nice—so Derek and his comments can take a hike. “What?” she goads, knowing he’s got something to say that will piss her off. “It’s no different than what the girls you go out with wear.”
Derek rolls his eyes and leaves the kitchen. So he can dish it but not take it?
“Am I wrong?” she asks darkly, following him as he moves to sit in his chair.
“Shut up, Casey,” Derek replies as he sinks into the recliner. He won’t look away from the television when he continues, voice even lower than before, “You’re nothing like the girls I date.”
She crosses her arms. “Thank God for that.” Derek ignores her, flicking through the channels instead. “You’re insufferable. Leave me alone, Derek.”
“I’m doing that, but you’re here being a pest. Maybe you should leave for your date,” he says, almost mockingly.
Don’t let him get to you, don’t let him get to you, she chants to herself. “Fine.”
“Fine,” he says back, like a twelve year old boy.
“Fine,” she grits out, grabbing her coat and keys before she opens the front door.
“Remember your curfew!” Derek yells loudly, before she’s fully out the door.
“One of us has to,” she retorts, and finally shuts the door.
God, she can’t stand when he’s like this, when he’s looking at her like he—like he might—
Shit. Shit!
(His mouth might have said you look terrible, but his eyes had said something else entirely. She isn’t sure of what.
Or maybe she is, but she just doesn’t want to admit to it.)
>>>>>
She’s only going because Rachel told her Jason is there.
That’s the only reason. It’s the only reason she’s approaching Derek’s dorm right now. She wouldn’t step foot inside if she didn’t know that someone else would be holding her accountable.
She can’t believe she even agreed to this in the first place. It’s not like it’s another double-date; it’s a study date, of all things, as much as that might seem like a joke. And it was set up, once again, by Rachel. That sneaky little matchmaker.
She’d cornered her after class, relaying some sob story about Derek needing help in biology. Casey didn’t know he was taking biology. Actually, Casey doesn’t even know why he’s taking that course—Derek never struck her as a science type, and it’s not like he got into Queen’s in any specific program. He’s an Arts major, from what she could recall—program undeclared. Regardless, apparently Derek needs help and couldn’t ask her for it himself, so Rachel and Jason conspired to set them up yet again. And that’s fine. She’ll show her face, make sure Jason sees her, then leave. Easy-peasy.
It just unsettles her that this is the second time she’s seeing him in a week, and she’s choosing to see him on her own accord.
If Casey is very, painfully honest with herself, she knows the reason she’s going.
(She just can’t say it. Not yet.)
So, this is how Casey finds herself outside Derek’s room, working up the courage to knock on his door and offer her support in a nice way, because she’s supposed to be nice, according to Rachel. And then hears him, through the walls, speaking to a girl.
“I’m sure you looked great,” she hears Derek saying from the inside of his room, and she can practically hear the smile in his voice. “The best of the bunch.” Which—in the past, Derek has spoken to girls in front of her, but not really like that.
She can’t help but feel curious, so she moves closer to the door, not knowing why she’s so interested in eavesdropping on this particular conversation. There’s a muffled sound, then he murmurs, so quiet that she needs to strain to hear it: “I miss you, too.”
She sucks in a breath, and—oddly enough, her heart collapses within her chest.
It’s silent for a few moments, she imagines for the reply, and then she hears his voice again. “I’ll figure it out, don’t worry. I wanna see you soon.”
Her ears burn. He’s never sounded so soft-spoken speaking to a girl before. She should leave. God, she feels ridiculous standing out here, knowing that Rachel thinks that they’re on a date, but instead he’s in his room talking to another girl like he loves her. Fuck, what is she doing? This is a new low, even for Casey.
“Sure,” he’s saying, but it sounds louder now for some reason. She pulls back from the door. “Hey, I gotta go. Yeah. Okay. Bye, Smarti.”
Oh, shit.
She is an idiot.
Of course it was Marti. That’s his Marti-voice. Wow. She is truly dense and oblivious and she should really leave.
But then the door flies open.
Derek’s forehead scrunches like he didn’t expect her to be here. “Casey?” he asks, confusion in every syllable. “What’re you doing here?”
She tries to find her voice, needing a moment to take in his appearance. Pointing at his head, she says stupidly, “You got a haircut.”
Derek runs a hand through his hair. “Um, yeah?” he responds, looking surprisingly self-conscious about it.
“It looks…” nice, she thinks, but she could never find the courage to voice that.
His lips part, and he tilts his head in question. “What?”
She swallows. She could insult him, but—“Nothing,” she says instead, pushing her hair behind her ears.
A brief, awkward silence comes between them, until Derek repeats, “Why are you here?”
“Jason didn’t tell you?” Briefly, she curses Rachel for blindsiding her. She peeks past Derek into the empty dorm, as if Jason might magically pop out of the closet from behind him. “Where is Jason? I thought he was over.”
Derek shrugs. “Left,” is all he says in explanation.
So she didn’t even have to come? She internally curses Rachel even harder.
Casey could leave now that she knows she’s no longer obligated, but instead her body forces her to push past him and set her backpack down inside.
“Yeah, make yourself comfortable,” Derek says from behind her, voice dripping with sarcasm.
She ignores it, shrugging off her coat and looking around. Hockey posters, hockey gear, dirty laundry—albeit not thrown around haphazardly, but instead restricted to a specific area of the room—and a bed that’s actually made. Then, she looks to the desk and sees the piles of papers and two open textbooks.
She turns back to him, feeling oddly caught when she finds that he’s been watching her observe his room. “Why are you taking biology?”
Derek blinks, confused. “Eh?”
“Bi-o-lo-gy,” she says, enunciating. “Why are you taking it?”
He squints at her. “How’d you know I was taking bio?”
She bites her lip. “Rach.”
Raising a single eyebrow, he asks, “Rachel sent you?” Then, a realization comes over him. “Oh, fucking Jason.”
“What about Jason?”
Derek clenches his jaw. “Nothing.” When she gives him a look that says she’s not budging, he relents with a sigh. “I was complaining to him. Y’know how it is. Stress.”
For some reason, this frustrates her more. “Maybe if you were more focused, you wouldn’t be stressed.”
Now that she’s looking closely enough, she can tell that he’s wound up tight and can see the exact moment she’s pushed him over the edge. “Well, maybe if you were less focused, you’d be more fun,” he snaps, brushing past her to sit on his bed.
She shouldn’t be hurt by it—she practically asked for it, she pushed him to the point of saying it—but she is, despite it all.
She twists her body toward him. “Do you really hate me that much?” Casey blurts out before she can help it.
Derek looks at her, clearly taken aback. “What?”
She shrugs, feeling vulnerable about what she’s admitted to: being bothered by Derek’s opinion of her. “Just… we’re getting a little old for all the comments, don’t you think?”
A tense beat, and then: “What comments?”
She scoffs, not buying his ignorance for a second. “The rude ones, Derek.”
He’s quiet for a bit, before saying, “You’re the one who’s been ignoring me.”
“What?” Her mouth goes dry; the accusation makes her feel like he’s seeing right through her, calling her out for something she didn’t want him to ever acknowledge.
He locks eyes with her, then looks away, picking at the bedspread he brought from their house in London. Something about seeing it reminds Casey of their family, and she suddenly feels a bout of homesickness. She’s been suppressing her feelings since she left, and seeing Derek so much is beginning to get to her. He reminds her too much of home.
Derek scuffs his foot against the carpet. “You’ve been avoiding me since we got here. I thought things would be different.”
Different, how?, she wants to ask, but she’s too terrified that he’ll answer with the truth. Things had changed between them before they went off to university. Not that much, and they weren’t bad, but they had been different. Different in the way he’s trying to relay to her right now.
She had thought things would change, too, and then she’d arrived in Kingston. And the lack of a safety blanket between them, the lack of family, had caused her to bolt, to hermit into herself. She’s been avoiding him on purpose, out of pure preservation. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to explain that to him.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she tells him, in a hoarse tone, “I thought you were just trying to annoy me.”
Derek’s lip twitches, but his eyes look sad. “Well, I was…”
She crosses her arms. “I would have replied if you didn’t treat everything, including me, like it’s some huge joke.”
Derek breathes through his nose slowly, the only sound in the room. Shaking his head, he says, “It isn’t like that, Case.”
“Then what is it like?” She pushes it, despite knowing he can hear the hurt in her voice. Right now, she couldn’t care less.
Instead, he murmurs, “We’ve always been like this.”
There’s so much she wants to say to that. Maybe we should change it, she doesn’t say, maybe I want to be your friend, if you’ll have me. She could never bring herself to say it, but that doesn’t change how desperately she wishes for it. Instead she admits, in a small voice, “Maybe I don’t like it.”
(Maybe I never did.)
Derek, for once, is speechless. The silence that enters the room is suffocating, so Casey decides to try, yet again, to have an open and honest conversation with him.
“Derek, can we cut the bullshit for once?” she asks, exhausted by their runabouts. When he raises his eyebrows, she keeps going off the momentum of it. “I miss home. Don’t you miss it, too?” Playing her trump card, she continues, “Don’t you miss Marti?”
His eyes go even sadder, and he raises a shoulder in acknowledgement. “Yeah.”
Casey softens. “We’re all we have out here.” She feels more willing to be honest, now that she’s certain he won’t fight her. “Can’t we, I don’t know—”
“What,” Derek asks, then beats her to the punch, “be friends?”
Casey throws her hands up. “Can’t we?”
“We aren’t friends,” Derek replies, but his voice sounds weak in his disagreement, and it’s the only reason why she doesn’t feel upset by the statement.
She steadies herself. “No, we aren’t friends.” She feels more exposed than ever when she continues, eyes burning, “We’re family.”
And it’s true. Even if she doesn’t think of him in the most traditional sense—he’s family to her, he’s someone she feels this unwanted, unconditional, reluctant affection for, and that’s not going away. It’s never going to go away. He’ll be there for the rest of her life, and avoiding him had been the wrong move to make when they left home.
The ties that bind you forever, et cetera.
His face goes intense, the same way it does when they talk sometimes. She had missed seeing him look at her like that. Fine, she’ll admit it, she will: she missed him. She missed his face and his voice and she missed them.
Derek looks equally exhausted from this conversation. He stands, moving closer to her, until she’s forced to raise her head to look at him. His eyes flicker over her face, reading her, and then he says: “Okay.”
“Okay?” Her heart jumps into her throat. “Okay, like…?”
“Okay, like,” Derek begins, “let’s… I don’t know, have a truce. Be ‘friends’”—he says it with air-quotes, but she’ll take it—“or whatever.”
Casey is quiet for a moment, then agrees, meeker, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Derek agrees, for the millionth time. “So, now that we’ve established that…” he trails off, then gives her a teasing smile before reaching up to ruffle her hair. “Can you help me with this course? As a friend?”
He’s so close that she can smell him. Did he finally figure out how to do laundry? “For a friend,” Casey tells him, her eyes bright, “I can do anything.”
It goes well.
She might even go so far as to say that she’s having fun. She knows that’s in part due to being neurotic and liking schoolwork, but on some level, she also realizes that the fact that she enjoys teaching Derek in particular.
“My brain is fried,” Derek bemoans, on the floor.
“Hm.” She checks her watch, stretching her legs out in the desk chair. “Ah, right on time. You always get like this around hour five.”
He rolls over the carpet to look up at her, huffing a small laugh. “I almost forgot that you’ve done this before.”
“What, saved your ass?” she asks with a smirk. “Countless times.”
Derek rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Not like I’ve never returned the favour.”
She smiles to herself. “Never said you didn’t.”
He raises a leg and kicks her in the calf, but it’s much too light to be anything but playful. “I appreciate it,” he says, eyes crinkling.
She grins at him, because that right there is the reason she did this in the first place—for his gratitude. Derek’s appreciation is of a special brand, to her; it’s something she didn’t get often, but that she always treasured while on the receiving end.
She watches as he sits up, stretching his arms above his head. A sliver of his hardened stomach comes into view, and her mouth goes drier looking at it. When her eyes return to his, he’s already looking at her.
Wanting to get up and move around, she clears her throat and asks, “Want a break?”
He exhales, before standing. “Yes, please. Let’s grab food in the caf.”
“You’re paying,” she teases, getting up to put on her shoes. She likes this: being friendly with him, not having to wonder if she’s giving a part of herself up by being nice. It’s exhausting having to fight with him all the time, so this change is much appreciated.
“Ha,” Derek says as he searches his backpack for his wallet. “Just this once, I can make an exception.”
As they make their way down to the cafeteria, she can’t help but question him again. “So, why are you taking bio?”
Derek chews at his lip. “Not sure what I want to major in. So I took stuff I found interesting, to figure it out.” He shrugs. “It was the only science course I cared for.”
“Is your grade in it good enough to take bio stuff next year?” she wonders, knowing she’s being invasive. But she and Derek have never been good with boundaries, so she doesn’t feel weird asking about it.
“It’s fine. Stop worrying,” he tells her, because she is and he knows it. “The Undeclared Major Program won’t kick me out. My grades are decent.”
“Well… okay, fair,” she says. “But you should decide what you want to do. It’s important.” She says it as gently as she can, not wanting him to see it as her nagging him. It really is something she believes in.
They’ve arrived at the food stations, so she goes to grab the most appetizing but also healthy lunch, Derek following close behind. He doesn’t reply to her for a while, but once they’re in the check-out line, he shifts the conversation back to her. “And what are you going to do?”
She waits until he’s done paying, then walks with him to find a table to eat at. “Graduate with a double-degree in Literature and PoliSci. Then, Law school.”
“Of course,” he laughs, before sitting in his seat. He sounds almost fond. “Always gotta show everyone else up.”
“Mm, it’s not all that impressive,” she mutters. Grabbing her fork, she stabs a bean sprout. “My dad’s a lawyer, your dad’s a lawyer…”
He gives her an scrutinizing look then, like he’s trying to figure something out by means of reading her face. “So… you’re doin’ it to make your dad proud?”
“No,” she protests, too quickly, knowing that it’s only half-true and that Derek will be able to see the lie for what it is. She resents that he was able to read her so easily. She does want to make her dad proud, and she knows he’ll be impressed by law as a career—but she also enjoys the idea of going into it. It’s just an added perk.
Derek studies her, then moves past it. “Hey, at least your dad cares,” he mentions like it means nothing, before shoving his burger into his mouth.
She takes in the implication of that comment. “Your mom cares,” she tries, gently, knowing it’s futile to poke try in the case of this particular demon.
Derek shrugs and she can’t say anything more, because she knows how he feels—this is something they both share, the feeling of abandonment and sadness over parents they don’t see often. She knows just as well as he does that while their parents might care, of course they care, they should probably spend a lot more time caring. Preferably in their presence.
She hums noncommittally. “Have you heard from her?”
On a full mouth of meat, Derek informs her, “She called for Thanksgiving.” Which neither of them went home for—Kingston is five hours from London, and they’d both given the excuse of exams and promise of being there next year.
When she’s done swallowing her rice, she tells him, “Dad forgot to call me for that.”
Derek’s eyes meet hers again, and he doesn’t say a single thing, an unspoken understanding passing between them. A silence falls over them for the remainder of the meal—not necessarily sombre, but somehow comfortable in its essence.
They finish and dispose of their trays, deciding to return to Derek’s room to finish studying. As they wait for the elevator, Casey spots Jason in the lobby chatting with someone she doesn’t know. “Jason is here,” she whispers to Derek, internally panicking.
Derek, however, doesn’t get the big deal. “He lives here,” he says, giving her an obvious look.
Casey elbows him as discreetly as possible. She fixes her hair quickly, like that will somehow add to the romance of the scenario. The very romantic scenario of waiting by an elevator together. “No, I mean—do we look, uh, romantic enough?”
Derek chokes on air, sputtering a cough.
Casey shoots him a worried look. “You okay?”
Clearing his throat and nodding, he tells her in a tone of nonchalance: “Casey, chill out. I don’t think Jason is expecting to catch us making out.”
Her face goes hot. “No, I mean—we should probably do something, right?” She pauses, then adds hastily: “Not that. Obviously.”
Then, she eyes him, and Derek immediately catches onto her thought process. It’s like he can read her damn mind.
“Don’t come near me,” he warns, but she can hear the joking lilt within the sentence.
She gives him her best begging eyes. “Please?” Briefly, she shoots a backward glance at Jason. “We have to sell it. He’ll tell Rachel if he sees us!”
Derek sighs very loudly. “We should really stop befriending gossips,” he complains, but he wraps an arm around her shoulders anyway, pulling her in close into him.
When she curls against his body, her own arms going around his waist, it’s almost a hug. Sort of a hug. Not really, but it’s so close to one, so close to what she’s always wanted from him but he only gave her on the rare occasion. Now, he’s willingly choosing to initiate it—she did have to beg a little first, and it might be under the pretense of fooling someone else, but he could’ve just told her off and pulled the I Don’t Do PDA card.
And he didn’t.
(He didn’t.)
Instead, she can feel the warmth of his skin seep through his clothes, the softness of his sweater against her cheek. She can almost feel the pound of his heart, despite being nowhere close to it, reverberating through his body. She wonders if he can feel hers, too.
“The elevator is here,” she whispers against his chest, when she hears the ding and he still hasn’t let go of her yet.
He squeezes her once, and she pulls away with reluctance. When their eyes meet, he’s looking at her in a way that makes her feel like she’s standing in front of him, completely naked.
“Sorry,” she mumbles, although she’s not sure what she’s apologizing for, not sure what he can see on her face, not sure of if he knows.
He shakes his head, wordless, and they both get into the elevator. It closes, and a tension envelopes them in the small space. Her mind is whirling when she hears Derek speak up again. “You free next Saturday?”
She licks her lips. “What’s next Saturday?”
“Party,” he says, not looking at her, as if the moment before never happened. She wishes she was as good at him at pretending things didn’t happen. “Sam’s joining a frat and they’re throwing one, so he invited me. Want in?”
It does not sound like her scene, not at all, but she remembers what he said to her earlier about being fun. She can’t forget it, even if it was a slight that he didn’t intend to hurt her. She wants to try and loosen up, as both Derek and Rachel seem to be intent on making her socialize, and she can’t help but also want Derek to think she is fun. She should go.
Plus, he has also never willingly invited her to go to a party before. It feels like an olive branch, almost. Like he wants her there.
So she says yes.
<<<<<
“Derek.”
He was about to leave the kitchen, but now he’s paused in his movement. “What?” he asks, voice quiet. The house is silent around them; everyone else is fast asleep. They’re the only ones awake at this hour, the darkness surrounding them like a warm, protective blanket.
She moves closer to him, and he lets her. “I know I made a big deal out of us going to the same uni, but…”
The bone in his jaw jumps, like he’s holding something back. “But what?” he murmurs.
“Just that—I don’t know, I’m just—” she stammers, then tilts her head up at him, “I guess I’m—proud. Y’know?”
Derek breathes out an amused sound, eyebrow twitching. “You’re ‘proud’ of me?”
She straightens her spine, not wanting him to poke fun of her in a vulnerable moment. Nodding twice, she explains, “For getting in.” Then, she repeats it with more resolve, to make sure he knows. “I’m proud of you.”
His eyes bore into hers. “Jeez, Case,” he mutters, and then he swallows loudly.
She licks her lips, goosebumps rising on her skin. “What?” she asks, echoing him.
He shakes his head at her, like he’s lost on ‘what’ himself. “You’re just—”
Casey holds her breath. “I’m what?”
“You’re so—”
“What?” she says again, heart beating faster.
He exhales, and the moment drops between them. “Nothing.”
He’s lying, he’s lying, he’s—“Tell me,” she whispers, pushing it, wanting it.
Derek’s eyes get like this sometimes. They do this thing where they stare into her soul and she can barely feel herself breathing anymore. She doesn’t know how to feel when he gets like that. It makes her feel lost, too.
His hand reaches out, and he wraps a hand around her wrist. She wonders if, when he touches her, he can feel how hard her heart is beating. She wonders if he can hear it.
Derek shakes his head again, looking remarkably sad. “Nothing,” he whispers, and she feels an obscure combination of disappointment and relief overcome her. “Thanks, I guess. And—”
She blinks. His fingers are still on her forearm. “Yeah?” she prompts.
He looks away, and drops her wrist. He opens his mouth, then closes it like he’s changed his mind, and mumbles, “Goodnight.”
She holds her breath until he leaves. And when he does, she almost feels that somehow, during their conversation, when she wasn’t looking, he took a piece of her—one that he’ll keep inside him forever, and she’ll never get back.
>>>>>
This is how Casey ends up at a frat party one weekend later.
It’s at one of the houses in walking distance from Derek’s dorm, so she’s in familiar geographical territory. Social territory, however, is a completely different story. She doesn’t even have someone to ease her into it when she gets there, because Derek had told her he’d meet her there.
She’s in the kitchen when she gets poked in the hip.
“Case!”
Casey turns around, drink in hand. “Rachel?”
“Hey!” Rachel says, grinning. She’s dressed more casually than Casey is, and she suddenly wonders if she overdid her attire of a sparkly, shiny, backless top and dark jeans. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“I didn’t know you would, either.”
“Got ready at Jason’s,” Rachel explains. “He brought me.”
Casey hums, and hopes that Rachel won’t ask. So, of course she does.
“How come you’re here?” Rachel asks, suspiciousness creeping into her voice.
“Derek invited me,” Casey explains, knowing her cheeks are probably heating up.
“Oh?” Rachel raises her eyebrows, a smile gracing her lips. “Derek invited you, did he?”
Casey shrugs, distracting herself by making a drink. “Yep.”
She can hear the clink of Rachel’s nails as the tap against her cup. “When I invite you out you don’t want to go, but when Derek does you come running, hm?”
“Rachel…”
“Okay, c’mon, Case,” Rachel begs. Casey looks at her and regrets it, because Rachel is giving her the sad eyes. “Spill, please. I’m dying here! Do you like him?”
Rachel looks so pathetically hopeful that what comes out of Casey’s mouth turns out to be, “Yeah, I do. A lot.”
After saying it, she can’t help but notice it’s not a lie. Not nearly as much of a lie than she had expected before saying it. Suddenly, she feels overwhelmed.
Rachel, blissfully ignorant to Casey’s inner turmoil, dials up the teasing. “Are you two going to have kinky sex now?”
Casey gives a shocked laugh. “No way.”
Rachel smirks and tells her, “Hey, who am I to judge? You know I don’t give a shit about that stuff.”
“I know, Rach, but it isn’t like that.”
Rachel smiles. “Yet?” she asks, teasing her further, but Casey goes hot, realizing that she’d been thinking along similar lines. Rachel, noting how uneasy Casey feels, backtracks. “Not to be pushy. All on your own time and everything. Whatever you feel comfortable with.”
And it’s that, more than anything, that makes Casey feel impossibly guilty. Because Rachel has been such a good friend to her during their first semester, helping her balance her social life and school so that she doesn’t go crazy, and comforting her when she has panic-induced breakdowns. She even set Casey up because she wants to see her happy.
Is she a bad friend, lying like this?
Maybe she is.
Rachel snaps her fingers in front of Casey’s face. “Hell-o, Spacey.”
Casey breathes a laugh. “Only Derek calls me that.”
“That’s an interesting choice of pet name.”
Casey flickers her eyes down. “Mm.”
There’s a beat before Rachel speaks again. “Is something wrong?”
Her mouth feels dry. She doesn’t know how she’s meant to reply to this very valid question—in truth, or otherwise.
She settles for the middle. “Maybe.”
“That’s a yes,” Rachel comments, more nervous now. “Want to talk about it?”
In lieu of answer, Casey grabs Rachel’s arm and drags her to a corner of the kitchen far away from the pounding music and other listeners.
“Casey, you’re worrying me.”
She nods. “Okay,” she begins, not knowing if she’ll end up regretting this. “What would you say if… there was a chance that I’ve omitted a certain detail that had to do with how Derek and I knew each other?”
Rachel gasps. “I knew it! You have hooked up before!”
Casey blinks. “Uh.” Not really what she had been going for, but it’s shocking they give such a strong impression that both Rachel and Jason had believed it happened. “No.”
Rachel falters. “No?”
Casey shakes her head. “No.” She bites her lip. “It’s worse than that.”
A line appears between Rachel’s eyes. “Did you—”
“We were never together,” Casey cuts in, wanting to end that line of speculation. “It’s more about… how we met, I guess.”
“You can tell me,” Rachel says, the rumblings of the party falling away to background noise. “You know I don’t judge.”
“I know.” She does. It’s why she’s even contemplating telling her in the first place. “I’m trying to figure out how to word this in a way that makes it less weird, because I know it’s weird.”
Rachel’s eyes flicker between Casey’s, but she says nothing, waiting for her to begin.
“Okay,” Casey mutters, “okay, okay, I’m just gonna—we met when we were 15.”
Rachel hums.
“But—the only reason we know each other at all is because we started living together.”
Rachel seems thrown. “Like, you were roommates?”
Casey takes a breath. “More like, my mom and dad got divorced, and then my mom got remarried—to Derek’s dad.”
Rachel takes a moment to understand the gravity of what she’s just revealed, brain clearly working a mile per minute. “So, you and Derek—”
“He’s my step-brother.”
“Oh, fuck,” Rachel curses in understanding.
“Yeah,” Casey whispers.
“I… I set you up.”
Casey nods, shamefully.
“And…” Rachel trails off, and her voice gets softer. “And, you like him.” It’s not a question; it’s a statement, and one that Casey cannot dispute.
She pleads the fifth.
“A lot, you said.”
She stays quiet. What she had said, and what Rachel was reiterating to her, was a blatant understatement that lacked the nuance that existed in how she truly felt about Derek. It was surface-level at best.
“Casey,” Rachel says, gently. “Do you?”
She swallows, then nods—very slightly, but the admittance is there, it exists, and there was another human being around to see it for the first time.
“Oh, wow,” Rachel breathes out, eyes wide.
Her hands are shaking. “I know.”
Rachel takes a few beats, then asks the dreaded question: “How long?”
Casey shakes her head, then shuts her eyes tightly. “I don’t know. It happened when I wasn’t even paying attention.” She lets out a shaky breath. “I swear, one minute I hated him, and the other—”
The other—the other—
(But she can’t say the words; she can barely admit them to herself.)
Suddenly, Rachel pulled her into a hug, warm and unsuspecting and protective. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” Her voice cracks when she says it. She suddenly wants to cry.
“You don’t think of him like that,” Rachel tries again, in a gentle tone. It’s true, but that doesn’t change the facts. They are related. “You met when you were teenagers. You never thought of him as your brother. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” Casey chokes out, tears flooding her eyes. God, it’s been so long since she cried—she feels like she’s been living in apathy for months. “It’s so fucking messed up.”
“Shh,” Rachel soothes. “I’m sorry, Case.”
“I hate this.” She lets out an ugly sob, burying her head in Rachel’s shoulder.
Rachel strokes her hair. “It’s unfair.”
“‘S’my fault,” she whimpers, tears collecting under her waterline. “It’s disgusting, my parents will hate me—he might—”
“He won’t,” Rachel whispers. “Casey, he cares about you. Trust me. I can tell.”
“Not like—”
There’s a loud thud, a distinct change in music. Some yelling in the background. Casey focuses on it to forget the mess inside her own head, but as she’s doing it, she hears his voice through the crowd.
“Hey!”
Casey sucks in a breath. Shit, how is she going to explain this away?
“Casey!” Derek yells again over the music, closer now. He says something else, but she can’t hear him, so she lifts her head toward him. In three seconds flat, she sees him come to the realization that she’s been crying. “Shit, Case, what’s wrong?”
Rachel gives her worried eyes, glancing between them uneasily.
“Nothing,” Casey tries, wiping her eyes quickly and trying to shake herself of the distraught. “Seriously.”
“It’s not nothing,” Derek argues, and his voice sounds harder. She looks at him closer and his eyes look dark, but his pupils aren’t blown—thankfully, he doesn’t seem drunk in the slightest. “Who did this?”
Her shoulders tense at his tone. “No one, D.”
“Casey,” he says, stronger, moving closer to her. His hand goes to her chin, tilting her head so she can meet her eyes. “Please tell me.”
She’s silent for a moment, overwhelmed by their closeness, of how good he smells, of how good he looks. He made an effort to look nice again. God, she doesn’t know what to do with that at all.
“Hey,” he says, quieter, just for her. “C’mon. You can tell me anything.”
Casey’s eyes drift to find Rachel, and when she does, Rachel is staring at Derek with an obscure look on her face, like she’s figuring out the answer to a question she’s not even sure she should ask.
Derek follows her gaze, and pins Rachel with his own. “Rachel, what happened?”
Rachel seems like she’s thinking for a moment, then comes to a decision. “Casey told me everything.”
Derek drops his hand from her face. “What?”
“She told me,” Rachel confirms again, eyeing him closer. “You’re related.”
He steps away from her, creating space between them now that someone else knows the truth. “Related by marriage,” Derek clarifies, as if she’s going to create an argument with him over it.
Rachel blinks. “I know.”
Derek, momentarily, is at a loss for words.
When the energy between the three of them becomes strained, Rachel says, “You two should talk. I’m gonna find Jase.”
Casey swipes a hand under her eyes to check that she’s gotten rid of the tears. Derek looks like he’s glued to the spot, but he can’t dare to look at her. He clearly didn’t anticipate this for the night. Turning toward her, he scans her face before setting his jaw, jerks his head once, then grabs hold of her arm and utters, “Come.”
She follows.
He brings her to the bathroom, of all places, and locks the door behind them. She leans against the door, feeling the music vibrate off the wood and onto her skin.
Leaning against the counter, he looks at her and asks the question at hand. “Why did you tell Rachel?”
She tries to breathe. “I needed to.”
He purses his lips. “Why?”
She sighs and crosses her arms, wishing she’d brought a cardigan. She feels cold. “I needed to tell someone,” she says to him, voice low.
A pause, and then he pushes it further. “Why?”
Casey wants to rip her hair out. “Because I needed to talk to someone about it, Derek.”
His voice shakes when he asks, “About what?”
There’s an uneasiness in the air now; it’s thicker, the urgency of the mood making Casey want to run. She should just leave—she doesn’t need to be here. She doesn’t need to explain herself. He doesn’t have to know.
“Jesus, Derek,” she snaps. “You know what. Can we fucking drop it?”
His body is still, as if she’s slapped him by saying this. Maybe she has, in a way.
“Casey.”
“Please,” she whispers, shaking her head, knowing what’s coming. The heaviness of her heart grows as the atmosphere shifts between them. “We can’t.”
Sometimes she and Derek spoke like this. In little half-sentences, unspoken truths hidden deeply within them, too difficult for the average person to find. But they both knew—they knew where to find them, and they knew what they’d find.
He shuffles closer to her in the bathroom, until he’s so, so close—she doesn’t want to look at him, but she can’t help it, she can’t look away. All she wants to do is look at him. She can count his eyelashes like this, can see the tiny laugh lines by his eyes, imprinted from his countless mischievous smiles. He’s in her space; he’s always in her space.
(She’s never hated it as much as she wanted to.)
She puts a hand out, intending to push him away, but the hand makes contact with his waist, the button-up shirt he’s wearing, and she clings to it instead, holding onto him even tighter. Derek, as he always does, resists, pushing against her hand.
And then—terrifyingly, so slowly that she can count the milliseconds as they go by, he leans down, even closer than he had been before. He’s breathing against her face. In any other scenario, if he was this close to her face she’d crack a joke about his breath. But it smells like peppermint. He smells like the shampoo he’s brought from London. He smells like home.
She can’t joke. She can’t bring herself to speak at all.
Derek’s breath ghosts her cheekbone, and then his lips brush against it—gentle, soft, barely there, once. It’s so light that she could pretend it never happened.
She doesn’t want to pretend it never happened. She’s so tired of pretending.
Instead, she feels all the fight dissolve from within her in an instant, and she melts against him. He pulls back to look at her, and when their eyes meet, she never wants to forget how he’s looking at her. She presses her palm against his torso and then, in the same spot as he did before, he presses his lips against her face with more intent. It’s no longer a brush of the lips; this is a kiss.
Derek kissed her cheek.
And then he kisses her jaw, and her chin, and her other cheek, and his lips are so soft against her skin and she can feel his breath, hot, and it makes her want to jump him. But she doesn’t—she just lets him kiss her, it’s all she can bear to do, stand there breathing heavily as he reinvents the very nature of their relationship.
She’s trembling. She wonders if he can feel how hard she’s shaking. She can feel him shaking against her, too.
“Derek?” she asks in a whisper. She doesn’t know what she’s asking; she just knows that she wants to hear his voice.
She hears him swallow. He doesn’t speak for a while, simply breathing close to her, and then she hears him ask, quietly, “Are you scared, too?”
She shudders, and in a small voice, admits, “Yeah.”
His hand trails up her arm, over her shoulder, until it’s resting gently against the column of her throat. At her admission, he presses a kiss right next to her mouth—not on it, not even at the corner, just deliberately next to it. His other hand travels up until he’s cupping her jaw, and she wonders if he’s finally going to kiss her properly.
But Derek doesn’t kiss her on the mouth at all.
He pulls back, instead, away from her so that there’s breathing room. The hand on her throat comes up so that he can hold her face between his hands, thumb caressing her ear with a gentleness she didn’t know he possessed. “Let’s leave,” he murmurs. “My dorm?”
And Casey, feeling inebriated off of nothing but the power she’s gained just from being in his presence, does.
So they end up at Derek’s dorm. She doesn’t exactly know how. It flashes by quickly, involves cold air outside that she can’t feel because she’s so warm from what she’s experienced, and they get in without issue. Somehow, she ends up on his bed. Just sitting there, but she’s on it. He is also there, not doing anything.
They are not touching at all.
It is awkward.
Casey does not know what she’s supposed to say to him. Are they to address the fact that they just crossed countless lines despite not really doing anything? She can’t seem to find her voice, and neither can Derek.
“This is too weird,” she says. They were stupid to think they’d be able to—she’s not sure what. What were they going to do, here?
She turns to look at him, expecting him to agree with her or joke about it, but instead he looks hurt by her admission. He’s silent, and she instantly falters, regretting speaking without thinking.
Casey doesn’t know how to fix this between them; she’s so good at fixing things, but she doesn’t know where to begin to fix this. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she tells him, honest and bare.
Derek breathes out, and speaks again. “Neither do I.”
“So what do we do?” she asks, feeling at a loss. “Maybe I should go home.” His head shoots up, and she realizes how he might interpret that. “No, I mean—back to my dorm. Not home-home.”
He speaks again, voice rougher. “You want to leave?” He instantly goes flush, like he didn’t mean for anything to come out. Within it, she hears: you want to leave me.
Not you, she wants to reply. “I’ll have to go eventually,” she tries, attempting reasonability instead.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Derek tells her. The room is so quiet that she can hear people outside his window, laughing, cheering, an entirely different universe compared to Derek’s bedroom. “Casey, it’s your fucking choice, okay? It’s always been your choice.”
I never had a choice, she thinks. How she felt about him was laced with an inevitability that she couldn’t fight. It was indisputable, something that she wanted to run from but never truly could, always faster than she was. An even bigger part of her never wanted to run to begin with.
“Look at me. Please.”
She does.
He moves closer, until their legs are touching. “What do you want?”
You, she thinks. You.
She exhales, unable to voice it aloud.
He swallows thickly, then tries something else. “If you want to, you can stay. This can be weird. It is weird. But.” He takes a breath. “Case, do you want to stay?”
She does, she—“Yes,” she tells him, because she does. Casey turns to him, looks him in the eye. “Do you want me to stay?” she asks, and holds her breath.
She can feel his relief inside the word when he breathes, “Yes.”
And Casey goes still, because in all her time around Derek, he’s never wanted her to stay. She might’ve wanted to, but she’s never believed he wanted her around. She never thought he might admit to it.
“So I’ll stay?” Casey asks, softer than she means to.
He reaches for her, fingers wrapping around her wrist. Her skin goes hot where they connect, and she can feel his thumb against her pulse, feeling it race.
Derek nods. His eyes are dark—comforting in their intensity, the same way he looks at her when he’s feeling sentimental. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to them, but she wants to give in. “You’ll stay,” he confirms, in a whisper.
Casey licks her lips. She can’t stop looking at him, staring, remembering, hoping. She’s usually smarter than this—God, she doesn’t know what’s going on with her anymore, but she wants this. She wants it so desperately that she can feel the want in her teeth.
The hand he has on her wrist trails up her arm steadily until he reaches her bicep, then her shoulder, then her neck. He rests it there, shuffling closer to her. They’re on his bed and he’s touching her. Innocently, but he is. His hands are on her. And she doesn’t know the hell is going on, but then he rests his forehead against hers, closing his eyes, and the moment feels so tender that she barely knows what to do with it.
“Case,” Derek breathes, so quiet that it’s barely a whisper. His thumb rubs at a place beneath her jaw, making her shiver.
“What?” she whispers back, even though she knows better than anyone. Her eyes are still open, and she’s watching him. It would be creepy if he knew.
He shivers. “It’s your choice.”
He wants to kiss her. She knows he wants to kiss her. But he’s letting her do it instead, putting the decision in her hands, allowing her to choose him if she wishes to. And she does. She’s not going to pretend she doesn’t anymore. She does.
This is crazy, Casey thinks, and kisses him anyway.
They both gasp when her mouth touches his. She wonders how many nerves are in a pair of lips—a million, a billion, she can practically feel them moving as her lips brush against his. They aren’t even kissing yet, just pressing their lips together, breathing against each other’s mouths. She feels as if she’s suspended in the air. The touch is so unusual, but so oddly intimate at the same time, in a way that makes her heart want to burst.
God, she wants him.
She pulls back to look at him once, then closes her eyes and moves in to kiss him properly, with more intent and deliberation. She gives herself to the moment. He moans as their lips slip together, his bottom lip caught between both of hers, and she kisses him harder, rougher, her tongue reaching out to taste him. Their mouths open against each other and when his tongue touches her lips, she groans. She grasps onto his shoulder, pulling him against her, arching her body against his. She’s lying on the bed now, with him hovering over her, but she’s kissing him. She’s kissing him. He’s letting himself be kissed, and she feels a strong determination to destroy him for everyone else, to be the best kisser he’s ever had in his life.
“Casey,” Derek says against her lips, between deep kisses. She ignores him, kissing him harder, wanting him to feel how much she wants him through the force of how she presses her lips against him. “Casey, Case,” he says between breaths.
Her hands go into his hair, grasping tight. Pulling away to kiss his jaw, she asks against his skin, “Yeah?”
“You drive me crazy,” he murmurs, and she can feel the blood rushing through her ears. She feels so unbelievably pleased by the admittance, by the knowledge that she affects him the same way he affects her.
She breathes against his neck, her nose against his pulse. She can feel his heart, the thudding. She snakes her hand along his body until it’s pressed against his chest, until she can feel it for herself—the pound of his heartbeat, unmistakeable.
“Derek,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Kiss me,” she requests. “You kiss me, now.”
So he does. They kiss for a long time, bodies against each other, tangled and warm, hard kisses turning into soft ones, into sleepy ones, into gentle ones. They kiss until they fall asleep, and then there’s nothing else.
<<<<<
They’re at a graduation party and it’s different. Everything between them is different.
She drinks knowing he’s watching her. She doesn’t know why he’s watching but he is. He watches her all night. She catches him looking at her between songs, she dances knowing she has his attention, and she watches him in return. He’s the same guy she’s always known, but something is different, something between them has shifted since that night. They might be on an unspoken truce. She doesn’t understand it, but she likes this so much more than fighting him all the time.
They keep meeting each other's eyes and looking away. But as much as they look away, in the end, their eyes always find their way back to each other.
In the kitchen, as she’s grabbing another drink, he brushes past her. “Having fun?” he asks, in a low tone. As if they’re having a private conversation.
“Just as much as you are,” she tells him, eyes more alert now that he’s here.
He places a hand on the island, an arm trapping her. She could leave from the other side—she could, but she doesn’t really want to.
Derek is gazing at her, his eyes pitch-black. The kitchen feels like a whole other world away from the party. “Your lips are all red from the cranberry juice,” he tells her quietly, not hiding the fact that he’s staring at them.
Her breath hitches. He’s been watching what she’s drinking. He’s looking at her lips.
“And,” she starts, then glances down at his shirt, “your shirt is unbuttoned halfway.”
“Does that bother you?” he asks instantly, like he didn’t intend to say it. Derek never has a filter when he’s drinking, and he’s always been the more impulsive one between them.
“No,” she replies, because she’s much more careful than he is. It’s not bothering her in the way he might mean, at least. “I just don’t need a peek at your hairless chest,” she continues, in a teasing tone.
He smirks. “The ladies like it.”
“This lady doesn’t,” she counters, tilting her chin in defiance.
“Yeah, well,” he says, “you’ve always been a special breed.”
She licks her lips, and his eyes flicker down to them again, his tongue visible at the corner of his mouth, and she wonders if he’s thinking about—
No.
Fuck.
God, she needs to get out before something happens. Her chest tightens in panic, and she comes to the realization that she’s afraid. She’s terrified that something might happen, something irreversible. Because she knows that if it were to happen, she would never come back from it.
Before she can make the choice herself, he takes a step away from her, breathing shakily. “I’m gonna go,” he whispers, looking like he’s had a fill of the same fear she had, himself.
Yes, go, her head says. No, please don’t go, her heart says.
In the end, she can’t find the words to reply, but he leaves her regardless.
A few months later, when they’ve departed from home and she has the choice, she leaves him, too.
>>>>>
In the morning, as the sun peeks brightly through his curtains and she can hear the sounds of song-birds and laughter mixing together in the distance, she does not leave.
It’s a foreign concept to her: staying. She tends to run. She’s a runner, both athletically and emotionally, and she’ll cop to that. But she’s trying, this time. She knows she’s going to try.
And if she’s honest, she doesn’t want to leave him ever again.
In his sleep he’d begun to spoon her, and she woke up like that, her back pressed against his front. She’s awake for a while after she settles in consciousness, listening to the sound of him breathing behind her, and she uses the time to think—not about how she should run, but about how she’s not going to, and what that means for their future.
After thirty minutes, she hears his breathing patterns change, and he shifts against her, pulling her tighter against him. She doesn’t mind; she welcomes it.
He breathes slowly for a while, and then mumbles: “You’re still here.” He says it against her back, right by her shoulder blade. His arms wrap around her midsection, pulling her in closer to him, moulding her against the shape of his tired frame.
“I’m still here,” she confirms, quietly. They’re so lucky that he has a single room.
Derek nuzzles into the nape of her neck. “Wan’ breakfast?”
She snorts. “Of course you go straight to food.”
He makes a disagreeable sound. “You’re so needy,” he grumbles.
“I’m not!” she protests, even though she definitely is. He already knows that, though, and she doesn’t have to pretend otherwise; he knows she’s full of shit, he knows all her secrets, and she can never hide a single thing from him if they do this.
He makes another sound, like he wants to laugh at her. “Relax, princess. The first thing I noticed was you.”
Casey can’t help the dumb smile that graces her face at that. She’s only human.
His hand splays over her stomach, her shirt bunching up a little from the motion. In the middle of the night she’d gotten up and changed into his shirt to sleep. She wonders if he can tell, and if he likes it. His thumb caresses the skin at her hip within his reach, absentminded. Her heart speeds up.
“When do you wanna get food?” she asks, to distract herself from the way his callous fingers feel against her bare skin.
“Mm.” She gives him a moment to think—it’s early, so his brain probably isn’t working yet. “Later. Let’s stay like this for now.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, melting into his embrace. She can feel the curve of his smile when it forms, right against the nape of her neck. He kisses her there twice, humming against her happily. I can stay a while.