For J Chapter 1, a glee fanfic

A/N: I'll try to keep it short. Basically, this fic is stylistically quite different from what I normally do, and I think that's because 1. It's very plot-focused moreso than character, like usual, and 2. Derek's voice decided to come out like this. xD I'm really not going to claim this is a Jogan fanfic- it does have elements of Jogan, and more of it later on, but mostly, this fic TURNED INTO a Dasey fic. I quite enjoy Casey too. Or at least, the Casey I made up in my head. ;) I hope her and Derek work out her issues in canon.

So uh yah, this will have chapters- not many. I'm going for three, four maximum, each chapter 2000-4000 words depending how I split it up. Thanks for stopping by to read it! Hope you enjoy yerself.

They found the note inserted inconspicuously between the pages of Logan's sheet music, six days after the actor had dropped off the face of the planet.

"Forgive me," was all the note said. "and I'll forgive you."

It was signed, simply, J.

It was obviously meant for Logan, addressed to Logan in its strategic placing, but Derek was the one who was bent over the desk, agonizing over the note. Logan, when he saw it, had thrust it into his arms and walked away; later, he simply spat that Julian was just looking for some attention. And yeah, Derek had to admit, Julian loved a good show. Julian was an asshole— a melodramatic, flamboyant, over-the-top asshole—but never had he pulled a disappearing act on either him or Logan just for kicks and giggles. And Derek knew what Logan did not—there was a stalker at large, and Julian had decided to stay put in fear of his life.

So the only reason he would have ever left the safety of Dalton was that it was no longer safe for him anymore.

"Fuck," Derek cursed low. "Fuck, Jules. Why the hell are you doing this to us?" He turned the note over in his hands, but there was nothing on the back, nothing scribbled into the margins. The side was ripped, from where Julian had quickly torn it out of his notebook. Julian had been in a hurry.

No other clues. No other words. Just some ripped-up, useless sheet of paper with a shitty goodbye not even meant for him. Derek crushed the piece of paper in his fists and felt like screaming.

What, Jules? Don't I get a fucking goodbye too?

Day Eight:

Hold on D, phone's ringing.

I know, I can hear it. Nice ringtone by the way.

Really? Do you have to comment on everything? Wait a second...

Who is it?

Casey. "Hello?"

CASEY?

"Uh…yeah, I'm okay…"

Casey Lambert?

"Yeah, I'm with him… sure, I'll put him on."

CASEY LAMBERT?

What other Casey would want to talk to you?

Not this one—what do I say?

Just take the phone!

Logan, what do I –

Just take the phone, D.

But I haven't talked to her in over six months! What does she want? Why the hell is she calling—

TAKE THE PHONE, YOU SPINELESS MANWHORE.

….

"…Hey."

"Hey, dumbass."

A sigh. "Why'd you call Logan?"

"Well, I deleted your number a long time ago. But I figured you'd be shadowing Logan like the good babysitter you've turned into. So this is the deal—"

"What the fuck? You can't just call me up to insult me—"

"I didn't, I called to pass along some stupid message to you from Julian."

"…Julian?"

Jules? Jules called her?

Yeah—"You've talked to him?"

What did he say?

"Uhm.. Not exactly. A while ago. But he said I wasn't supposed to call you for a week, but yesterday I forgot because of—well, stuff. And I didn't actually talk to him, I got a letter in the mail from him, along with a letter to you."

"…Me?"

Derek, what did Jules say to her? What's going on?

"You should come and get it. It seems really serious, Derek. I…I think something's wrong."

"Yeah…I'll come and get it right after class, okay? I'll come in the usual—uh, the way I used to."

"…don't you think that's a little risky? What if one of the girls sees you before I do?"

"Tell your crazy friends I'm coming over then and NOT to throw textbooks at me this time!"

"I won't guarantee anything. Your funeral."

"Mean."

"Asshole."

"Bitch."

"Slut."

"Common sewe-you hung up , didn't you? Casey? Casey…? Fuck."

Your love for one another moves me, Derek.

It been a long time since he had gone to Dobry Hall for any reason. It was weird that only six months ago he had spent the majority of his time sneaking there to see Casey, and though it was a long time ago and felt like a dream, he still remembered the way.

Logan was not with him. Logan had refused to come. Saying things like Julian was being an idiot and he wasn't going to indulge the primadonna in his petty games. Derek wanted so badly to yell at Logan all of Julian's secrets just to shut the blonde up. It was either that or Derek would have to punch him in his mouth. Whichever one came first.

He arrived at the Prima dormitory and easily located the tall oak tree, even though the sky was a dim, foggy gray. He rolled his eyes at himself as he began ascending its tall frame, pulling himself up, branch-by-branch, feeling like some absurd mix between Tarzan and Romeo, except Casey Lambert was no Jane or Juliet. She was more like…Xena: Warrior Princess.

He laughed at the comparison. Casey would love it if she heard it.

He jumped onto a balcony and made his way toward the last window on the far left, which was always open because of a broken lock. It led into one of the hallways on the second floor (there were two more above that), and many a time he had entered and been quickly chased out with one of Hope's wild war cries. But now as he peeked in, he couldn't see anyone there. Not even Casey, which was a bad sign, but if he could make it down the hall to her room, he would be fine.

He lifted the window open and climbed through, landing onto the soft Prima carpet with a light thud.

And immediately got a book hurled at his face.

"SHI—NO—" He put his hands up as Hope threw another one at him with all the strength she possessed in her arms. She marched toward him, her perfect curls disarray, bouncing with every angry step she took.

"What do you THINK you are doin' here? Get out RIGHT NOW before I call the police!" Hope yelled at him and began to viciously assault him back toward the window.

"Will you just calm down?"

"Calm down? CALM DOWN?" Hope screeched and swung her textbook at him. "I have been plenty calm and patient with the likes of you! I had to put up with you and Ms. Lambert's monkey business when you were datin', but I no longer have to put up with such inappropriate—" thrwack, right on his shoulder "—inexcusable—" thrwack "—downright immature and childish—" thrwack, thrwack—

"Don't forget loud and disruptive," Casey slid out from around the corner, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, smirking slyly at Derek with an actual twinkle in her brown eyes. Her Dobry blouse was unbuttoned completely, revealing her black undershirt, and her tie hung loose and casual around her long neck. Her hair was sloppily held in what was most likely a loose pony tail. Between Hope's swinging textbook attacks, every glimpse of her was like a glimpse into his own past. She hadn't changed one iota.

"Okay, Hope, you can stop now," Casey said, standing up straight and letting her arms fall to her side. "It's cool, I asked him to come over."

"CASEY, that don't change anythin'! Boys are not allowed in this house, if you remember!" Hope cried. "No boys! NO. BOYS. Am I speakin' the same language as y'all yet?"

"It's not that we don't hear you, it's that we don't listen. He'll only be a few minutes," Casey smiled sweetly. "I swear."

"You always say that, Casey."

"I cross my heart…" she crossed the room and gently extracted the textbook from Hope's hands. "He'll be gone before you even know it."

Derek watched as the Dorm Leader had a miniature spaz attack, wringing her hands and shaking her head, her curls bouncing around her vigorously. Eventually she let out a large, loud groan and stalked away, throwing her hands up in the air.

"Don't do anything stupid, Casey!"

"I never do!" Casey called after her. When she whirled back on Derek, her sweet smile was gone. She grabbed his wrist and dragged him down the hall, ignoring the looks from her fellow Primas as she shoved him into her room and slammed the door behind her.

"Was that really necessary?" Derek hissed at her, rubbing his wrists. "I can walk by myself, you know."

"I didn't know if you remembered the way to my room," she smiled witheringly at him. "Now sit down and I'll give you what you came for, okay?"

"Fine."

"Okay."

He slowly sat down on Casey's bed, and folded his hands awkwardly in front of him, staring down at his feet and the floor beneath it. The room, much like Casey, had not changed. Her bed was still a mess, covers ripped up, pillow on the floor. There were still clothes dropped here and there, though it looked like she had made some attempt to tidy up—he tried not to think about what that could mean—while her desk was covered in papers. On the other hand, her bookshelf was meticulous, and he bet that if he checked, it would still be organized in her funny little way—by the colors of the covers.

He watched her scour through her papers and after biting his tongue for a solid minute, he couldn't resist.

"I always told you you should get organized," he said.

She shot him a glare. "Oh shut up. Some of us can't be perfect Mr. I-never-lose-anything."

"If you had kept up with the filing system I showed you…"

"Ha, like I would have taken the time out of my busy day to indulge in that crap."

"You liked it when we were…dating," Derek smiled.

"Correction: I liked you when we were dating—FOUND IT!" she yelled and held up an envelope in her triumph. "See? I don't need your stupid systems."

"Sure you don't," he deadpanned. His eyes trailed her as she slowly (hesitantly?) came over to him and..sat down next to him, handling him the unopened envelope. She folded open another piece of paper as well and thrust it toward him as if it were on fire.

He took it and read it silently.

"Dear Casey…I hope you can forgive me for making you do this, but can you help me out, get this envelope to Derek a week after you get it? And not a day sooner? Don't call him and tell him about it. Please, wait. I really need your help. I know you barely know me, but if it's any consolation, I feel like I know you. Derek still talks about you all the time."

Derek was red by the time he got to the end, where he made a mental note to strangle Julian whenever he found that son of a bitch. He cleared his throat awkwardly and looked to the plain envelope in front of him.

"You didn't open it?" He asked, running a finger under the flap.

"No. It wasn't mine to open. I would never betray someone's trust," Casey's eyes flickered upward and caught his for just a moment. His face instantly got redder.

"R-right," Derek mumbled and then ripped into the envelope, trying to stop his fingers from shaking and his mind from thinking too hard.

Because what if this was it?

What if this was his goodbye? No one had heard from the actor at all in eight days now. He had not turned up. He had not contacted his mother or father or his castmates. And if this was all he had left of Julian…

"Goddamnit," he hardly breathed the word, mostly felt it, in each shaking bone in his body as he unfolded the single sheet of notebook paper, similarly ripped to the one Logan had found. It was blank on the back, nearly blank on the front—but at the very top, in crooked writing, there was a number.

"555 345 6793"

And that was all he got.

A reckless wave of anger overtook his entire body and a roar of frustration burst from his chest as he chucked the paper across the room.. Casey's hand gripped around his bicep the next second, stopping him from jumping up and kicking something, which is really what he wanted to do. He wanted to fucking kick and scream and strangle Julian for giving him a number, an impersonal, cold number.

"Derek!" Casey hissed. "Calm do—"

"No, FUCK that," he yelled at her and ripped his arm away from her hand. "I don't know what's going on, Casey! I don't know what the hell is wrong with Julian and I feel like something is seriously wrong—"

"What if it's not?"

"AND WHAT IF IT IS?" Derek yelled at her. "What if—what if he's lying somewhere dead and this is all that's left of him?"

Casey stared at him hard. "That's the most stupid piece of bullshit you've ever said, Derek. Julian is NOT dead, okay?"

"How do you know that?" Derek snapped.

"Because, I'm smarter than you and I just do. I have no idea what's going on with you boys, but…" Casey got up from the bed and crossed the room, lifting the crumbled up piece of paper from the floor. "…this isn't just a number." She crossed back toward him and slapped it into his hand. "It's a phone number. Call it."

Derek sighed for probably the hundredth time that night, but took his phone out nonetheless and dialed in the mysterious number. Underneath Casey's watchful hawk eyes, he listened as it rang and rang. And then:

"Hey it's Julian, forgive me for not picking up or whatever. I'm somewhere else obviously and I can't get to the phone, so call me back later unless you're Derek and Logan, in which case you're probably just too lazy to walk down the hall and look in my room, so you should probably get your asses moving. Anyway, I have to go practice lines or do some other shit that's more important than you. Leave a message."

The phone clicked, then beeped, but Derek did not have anything to say into the phone. He simply breathed, fingers clutching this literal last lifeline, though he knew that it was a dead end. Julian would not answer him. This wasn't even his real number. Whatever this was—some half-assed attempt at a joke or maybe his method of getting a message across (that they were no longer important)—it stopped here. Derek shut his phone and buried his face in the palms of his hands.

"Who was it...?"

Derek took a long, full breath of air into his lungs and squeezed his eyes shut. "No one."

Casey's hand hovered gently on top of his but he could not bring himself to look at her and could barely feel her there, making the gesture more bittersweet than it should have been.

Even Casey couldn't fix this.

Day Ten:

When Derek opened the door to Julian's room, he found Logan there, tearing through it like a tornado, ripping the bed apart and shoving things on the floor, things breaking, crashing, shattering—Logan not caring. He moved with a singular purpose: to destroy.

"Logan!" Derek slammed the door and sped to his friend's side, but was instantly shoved away as Logan attacked Julian's desk, flinging his things everywhere. He took several sheets of paper and tore them in his hands, took Julian's laptop and hurled it to the side, pushed the books onto the floor. Logan only paused when he came to a tiny little snowglobe—a souvenir. With an animalistic scream, he grabbed it and flung it at the opposite wall. It smashed and for a split second, the air shined and sparkled, before the pieces all settled in a dejected pile on the carpet.

It was the smash that sent Derek into action again.

"Logan—goddamn it, what the hell are you doing?" Derek shouted and launched himself at Logan again, gripping his shoulders and hauling the blonde away from Julian's personal things.

"GET OFF OF ME!" Logan elbowed him in his chest—hard. Derek stumbled back with a hoarse rasp, breath knocked out of him. Gripping his chest for just a moment, he hurled himself back at Logan, yanking the boy away, gripping both his arms as tight as he could.

"LET ME GO!" He kicked and scream liked a fucking toddler and got a hand loose.

"Stop acting like you're insane!" Derek screamed back

"LET ME GO!"

"Why are you so DIFFICU—" Derek was blindsided with a fist to his face and he stumbled to the side, bumping into Julian's desk. His hand steadied himself against it but his eyes only saw stars—stars and Julian ripping out pieces of paper and Casey peeking around the corner and a number written in ink and Casey's knee socks and loose tie and sloppy room and hair and smile—

The anger inside him bubbled, overflowed and he clenched his fist.

Derek opened his eyes and flew at Logan, shoving him straight into the wall, feeling nothing but satisfaction as the insane blonde crumpled to the floor. Fuck him. Fuck him and his anger. Fuck him for not noticing Julian. Fuck him for not caring when Julian disappeared. Derek was done taking this all on himself and he watched, satisified—even happily—at the sight of Logan on the floor.

Then Logan's face began to contort with pain as his anger subsided and the shock rattled him out of his fit of rage. Derek stared as Logan turned shell-white and empty, staring at his shaking hands in disgust.

And then Derek wasn't so angry anymore. He was just tired.

He went to Logan and sank down in front of him.

"Logan, what's going on?" He asked his friend softly.

"It's my fault," Logan immediately said, voice trembling, running those shaking fingers through his hair. "I don't even know what the fuck I did, D. But he…he's not responding to any of my calls—texts—emails—all of it. He's gone and it's my fault."

Derek swallowed and looked down at the carpet. "Of course it's not, Lo."

"It is. The note says so. He wrote that note to torture me, that goddamn prick, and it's working—it's getting to me," Logan wiped at his eyes. "I tried not to care, to just ignore the fact he just got up and left, but I…I can't, goddamnit," Logan again wiped furiously at the tears, but they were coming faster than ever. "Where the hell is he?"

"I don't know," Derek shook his head. "I don't think there's anything we can do—look. Take your meds, okay? Put this out of your hea—"

"NO!" Logan practically shouted. "I don't want it out of my head. I've spent the last ten days trying to pretend it was nothing, but fuck, there has to be something, some clue...something he left behind in here, just—something."

Derek's eyes widened. "Wait…you..might be right."

The message replayed itself in his memory-

Fuck, the message was a clue. Derek sat straight up. He should have known! It wasn't just a phone message, it was directions to look in his room and to do it as quickly as they could, because he was somewhere else and couldn't get to the phone. He was unable to.

The room grew colder as if Julian's ghost had suddenly descended. Derek instantly banished the thought. Julian wasn't dead—yet

He jumped up and began pacing. "God, you're right Lo. Holy shit, you're right! Get up! Julian left us something."

"What—"

"I'll explain everything, just—his scripts!" Derek cried and threw up his hands. "OF COURSE! Logan where the fuck does he keep all his scripts?"

"Hell if I know!" Logan was scrambling up less-than-gracefully, eyes still red. "What's going on?"

"A phone message—" he tore out the drawers in Julian's desk and dumped out the contents, flipping through the papers and throwing them over his shoulder. "—Julian left me a number on a sheet of paper, I got it from Casey—you said you didn't care at the time, that's why I didn't tell you, so don't bitch at me, okay?"

Surprisingly enough, Logan did not say a word, only nodded and joined Derek in his haphazard search for who-knows-what. They pulled out drawer after drawer, looking for the old scripts that Julian had hoarded in his room and had practiced obsessively for hours. With each paper that passed through Derek's fingers, he felt himself grow even more desperate, yet closer still, to the answer—or the next question.

Twenty minutes into the search, Logan froze and his breath stuck in his throat.

"Derek," Logan said his name hoarsely. His body was rigid. Derek stared at the blonde, waited for him to show him whatever it was, but Logan didn't move. Derek reached out and took the current script that was clenched in his hands.

He turned it over. Across the page, in blood red ink, Julian had written FORGIVE ME.

"Is this it?" Derek stared at the words, hating them intensely in this stupid moment. "This is all?"

"No," Logan murmured. "This was in between its pages."

And Logan held up a CD. It was labeled, simply, Beautiful.

A/n: don't worry, this is continued. I have most of it written, but I need to figure out how to break it up. Unfortunately I didn't get to heavily edit it, but since I am going on a CRUISE for a week (WHOOOO) I wanted to get something new out, especially for all of you who follow me on tumblr and were askinb about what I was up to. :) Well this is what I'm up to!

If you would like to, leave me a review! I love getting them. 3