Yes, an upload. Here's a little snack for the season while I try to get back to work on Get In. As always, be honest but with your reviews and enjoy. Happy Halloween.
"If you don't like it Casey, you can move out," commented the man in the store aisle.
Covering the little girl's ears, Casey responded, "Like the hell I will Derek. The house is in my name."
"Our names, MacDonald," Derek shot back.
"It's still half mine, and I will not let you let you turn it into the set from Saw." She answered right back.
"It's Halloween Case, ease up."
"Which is why I will not let you traumatize my daughter," This time her voice loud enough to make other people at the Party Down to turn and look at them.
Derek forced a smile, reassured the onlookers with a calming gesture, and then gently slipped CJ out of her mother's hold. The one-year-old wrapped her arms around her 'step-uncle's' neck and held tight, her family arguing making her uneasy. Leveling his eyes on his 'roommate' he finally countered Casey's statement. "You had no problem with the Amityville Horror set last year, your highness."
"DER-EK!," Casey shouted. This made Derek smirk, fifteen years since they first met and he could still make her say his name that way. Casey suppressed her shared amusement and continued, now with a calmer voice, "There's a difference between spooky sounds and people being tortured."
"Fine, what do you suggest?" Derek asked, not listening. It was two weeks until October. Two weeks until Derek moved back into Casey's master bedroom and for one glorious month, the charade between them would end.
It had started so easily, Derek thought back. It had been their first year at Kingston and while out shopping, still confused how they had become roommates; when Derek had pointed to a poster promoting a Halloween party at the fraternity that had rejected him saying that he won't be caught dead there. Casey had surprisingly agreed, still annoyed that their sister sorority had found her not matching their ideals, landing her back with Derek. So a week before Halloween, on the night of the party, Derek went to work another shift at the restaurant and Casey stayed in to finish a paper. To this day, they still insist that was where they were that night.
An hour later, a guy covered in way too much glitter, wearing vampire fangs, and a black t-shirt that said, "I Suck" in big white letters ran into a woman wearing feral make up, wolf ears, and long gray fake nails. They circled each other and asked indirect questions, testing their recognition; but they never asked or referred to each other by name. He revealed that he was there on a sports scholarship and had an annoying neat freak as a roommate, who he had known from high school. She revealed that she was just that good, getting into QU on her skills alone, and that she had a complete slob for a roommate, who she also had known from high school.
They quickly started to debate various topics, actually debates, not arguments, from Canada's involvement in foreign affairs to whether men were put off by aggressive women. To prove her point, she had grabbed his shirt and pulled him into a long deep kiss. He let her, thinking she was drunk and wouldn't remember in the morning. She had done it thinking the same thing. Neither noticing that the other had just arrived when they had met, their drinks barely touched the whole night.
When they parted, or rather when she had tried to part them, he had held on and gone for another, even longer embrace. After that, things began to blur. Derek remembers dancing with the werewolf, then arguing with her at a hotel over who was paying; again calling each other anything but Derek or Casey, before settling on splitting the bill. The next memory Derek knew about was of the vampire playfully nibbling the wolf woman's ear while she tried to unlock the hotel door. After the third try, he had spun her around and while gently biting the crook of her neck, had guided her hand to the card slot. The she-wolf had then giggled, "Well that's Freudian", as sparkle boy turned the handle and the pair had toppled inside.
The next morning, the bloodsucker had awoken early, buying a breakfast for the sleeping werewolf, with which he had left a note thanking her for the passionate night, and left. The note was unsigned and its reader undisturbed. In fact, neither of them spoke of what had transpired when they met again, later that day. However, that didn't stop other people from asking; and why not? Casey, despite staying in to study had somehow gained hickies and bite marks on various parts of her body overnight. Derek had not escaped unmarred either. On the following day, in the locker room, his team mates questioned him on whom or what had given those scratch marks down his back and arms.
Finally on Halloween, nearly a week after the werewolf had kissed the vampire, a couple wearing cheap domino masks met at a restaurant just outside of Kingston and talked. After a few hours of talking, arguing, and flirting they had decided that they would met up next October and maybe the one after that too. It was just temporal; they were getting each other out of their systems. It couldn't last.
But it had lasted. Past their time at Queens University. Past her internship and through her becoming a doctor. Past him becoming a teacher at a local high school. Past them moving from one shared apartment to another, before buying a house in bother their names.
For eleven months of the year, they were Derek and Casey. The bane of each other's existence. Then October would come around and they were Edward and Karen, names that they had chosen for each other that first Halloween so many years ago, two lovers very much in love. The whole month planned so they could spend the most time together. Gifts for birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's Day would be exchanged and a future talked about.
They stayed this way for almost a decade. On their tenth year they decided they wanted something more. Their friends and families were getting married and having kids. So that year Karen misplaced her birth control, after talking to her doctor and figuring out when would be the worst time to; and Edward had lost his condoms and not bought more. The rest was simple, eleven months of denied desire plus the idea of having a baby together resulted in the two acting like horny teenagers. There wasn't a place that was safe. Every room in their house, their cars, anywhere they could be alone for fifteen minutes. The pair just couldn't get enough of each other.
It was only when Casey informed Derek that she was pregnant a month later that the two realized they had a problem. Edward and Karen loved each other, but Derek and Casey couldn't be in the same room without fighting; and it was them, not Karen and Edward that would be raising the child for most of the year. They tried, at first to talk about like it was something that was happening to people knew but eventually were forced to admit that Casey was pregnant.
While the pregnancy was admitted, the how was not. They told everyone that Casey's boyfriend Edward was the father. As Casey's roommate and a close friend to Edward, Derek was going to help out. None of their friends, siblings, parents, or coworkers believed them, just adding it to the growing list of things they had to deal with when dealing with Casey and Derek.
As they want further into the pregnancy, the line between their admitted and unadmitted lives began to blur. Derek purposely took on as much responsibility that Casey would let go and sometimes even more; dragging her out of work when she was clearly tired and tricking her into relaxing when she tried to take on more than she could currently handle. Casey quickly got in the habit of wearing one Derek's jerseys to bed; something Karen normally did in October. Casey was less than happy when they found that the baby relaxed easier if she could hear Derek's voice, 'forcing' him to sometimes talk to Casey's stomach in public. To their 'horror' they find themselves sitting closer, their hands intertwined with no conscience thought by them. Finally, last year Edward and Karen spend most of their time together fighting over how the two-month-old CJ, Cassandra Junior, would interact with her father. Edward wanting to be acknowledged as her father, Karen thinking it would only confuse CJ when they 'left' for the year.
Neither Derek nor Casey knew how the lovers would act around each other or if the pair would even show up this year. That was something they hadn't spoken about. From November to now, September they've been asking themselves whether it would be so bad if Edward and Karen never returned. Could Casey and Derek stop pretending? Could there be an official Derek & Casey?
It wasn't impossible to believe. Since the lovers had left to now, Casey and Derek had become more open with each other. Now when they fought it was normally over what was best for CJ, not who had the bigger office. Now they argued, debated, challenged each other openly. They sat beside, giving only token complaints about sharing the couch.
"DER-EK!" Casey shouted, this time the outburst drawing a crowd who could tell something was about to unfold.
Hearing his name snapped Derek out of his thoughts. "What!" He shouted back, and only now noticing the growing onlookers.
"What do you think of my Halloween idea?" Casey asked again. She ignored the gathering spectators. Life with Derek was and always would be out and very public. Casey wasn't the self-conscience keener she had been in high school, the jerk in front of her having helped her conquer it. Besides, the next part would have drawn them anyway.
Derek, having not heard a word of her plan, said, "Fine, we'll go with your keener idea instead. Just don't make it too boring." He was uneasy about the crowd. Life with Casey had taught him that too many witnesses could lead to misunderstandings between the two. He needed to downplay the attraction and hope that the people would walk away thinking it was boring.
Casey, making an annoyed face, but a trace of a something else, a grin maybe, responded, "You weren't listening, were you?" Yes this would work.
"Yes I was." Derek answered. He was getting confused. Normally Case would back off. If it was a couple of weeks from now, as Karen, she would keep going into security was called. But she wasn't, in fact she was slipping into her 'what's taking you so long' posture that she put on when he took more time than she liked noticing something she had done.
"So you have no problem with me picking out your tuxedo?" She asked as she showed her still honed dancer grace and closed the already small space between them, the movement so smooth that she seemed to glide over.
"My what?" Derek asked shaking. Two weeks. They still had two weeks before she could be this close and have that look of 'race you to the kiss' on her face.
"Your tuxedo for the haunted wedding theme." Casey explained, her voice taking on the tone of a seasoned doctor talking to a raw intern; knowing that the person was smarter than this, even if they didn't know it themselves. It was also the tone she did when she took over in the bedroom. Her 'my turn' voice. It was Karen's voice.
"Wedding theme?" Derek asked again. Who did they know that was getting married? Dad and Nora weren't renewing their vows for another five years. Edwin had gotten hitched to some super smart tech chick at his investment firm and Lizzie had made a life oath with some Green Peace hippie who came in her second hand shop one day. Emily and Ralph were heading towards their seven year anniversary and another kid. Sam had decided to play the singles game. Who was getting married? And was Casey really running her finger up his side
"Yes Derek, our haunted wedding." Casey responded as she took CJ back, said, "Your daddy's not so smart for an algebra teacher," and kissed Derek lightly on the lips. It was being this close that he finally noticed the lack of underclothing and the fresh tattoo of interlocking wedding bands and the words 'You're mine Derek and I'm not letting go' written underneath.
She had been planning this since January. She wasn't going to let two stubborn lovers ruin her family just because the truth was inconvenient. It was better to admit they were in love than let their masks keep them apart. Intertwining her fingers with the now stunned Derek, she guided him towards the exit and an awaiting Marti to look after CJ. It was past time for Casey to make Derek forget about the werewolf and remember who the real woman in his life is.