The Games Closet

A/N: Two stories in just one day! I am so made of win right now. Hehe.

This is just pure, fun fluffiness. And a one-shot. Hope you enjoy. :)

--

The closet was definitely too small. Her palms had grown sweaty, so Casey paused briefly in what she was doing to wipe them on her jeans. Then, she returned to poking the bobby pin from her hair into the lock of the closet door, which was giving her far too much trouble for its own good.

"Any progress?" growled her step-brother from somewhere near the board games.

"Not with you pestering me every five seconds, no." Casey didn't even try to keep the edge out of her voice; the last twenty minutes stuck in such a confined space with Derek had been enough to rub her the wrong way in every possible sense. He was nearing the point of driving her mad with annoyance.

"Well, maybe if you hadn't slammed the door shut, we wouldn't be in here, klutzilla."

Casey huffed, giving the jammed lock an extra shove with her pin, and snapped, "I wouldn't be in here if you hadn't pranked Max in the first place."

"Yeah, well, he needs to get a brain," was Derek's curt reply.

Casey stopped what she was doing and glared up at Derek. The dim lighting of the light bulb threw odd shadows over his eyes so that she couldn't quite read his expression. "Derek, please refrain from making snide remarks about my ex-boyfriend. I didn't complain about the many faults of Kendra, did I? So cut it out!"

On the word "out" she gave him a brief shove, sending him stumbling against the shelves. "OWW!" Derek cried, straightening up and shoving her right back.

Casey fell against the door, gasping at his impertinence. "Der-EK!" she screeched as she slipped all the way onto the ground (being much clumsier than he was). "You're not supposed to hit a girl! It's completely against the rules of chivalry!"

Rolling his eyes, Derek stepped over her and started working on fixing the lock. "You already know that I don't follow the rules, Case. And you totally deserved that shove anyways. Those damn board games hurt when they dig into your back."

Casey harrumphed and managed to get back on her feet to stare on tip-toe over Derek's shoulder as she watched him work on the lock. Her mind wandered, and she thought back on how they'd ended up locked inside the closet together in the first place….

--

Thirty minutes earlier….

The moment Casey entered the front door of her house, she stomped upstairs and burst into Derek's room, bellowing, "Derek, what did you do?"

He was sprawled out on his bed, reading a magazine. "Hmm?" he asked, not bothering to look up from the pictures.

"I said, 'What the hell did you do?'"

Now Derek did look up. "Casey, Casey, Casey. What foul language!"

"Shut it, Derek. Just answer the question."

Putting aside his magazine, Derek smirked up at her. "I had to teach old Maxey a little lesson. I heard him insulting hockey, claiming that football was the better sport or some sort of crap like that. So I pranked him."

Casey groaned and sank onto Derek's computer chair. "But Derek… blue hair? That's just cruel."

"No it's not. If he's too stupid to notice that his shampoo is no longer white and sure as hell doesn't smell like lavender-mint anymore, then he really deserved what he got."

Derek had put the hair dye into Max's shampoo in the guy's locker room. Casey shook her head at the level of Derek's cruelty of his pranks, but she couldn't help wondering why Max didn't notice the blue color or the weird, chemical smell of the hair dye. Casey pinched the bridge of her nose, hoping to clear her inner doubts about her near-perfect ex-boyfriend. If only they could get back together….

"You didn't use permanent hair dye, did you?" she demanded.

When Derek just smirked, Casey glared at him and stood up. She marched over to his bed and pointed a finger at his face. "Derek Venturi, you're not going to get away with this!"

Derek whacked away her hand and actually had the tenacity to laugh. "Yeah, I think I am. There's no proof, anyway. And even if Idid get caught, it would be worth it." He smiled, standing up directly in front of her, and added, "Besides, you really need to get over Max, don't you? I heard you telling Nora last night that you were hoping to get back together with with him."

Casey gasped, and shot a look of daggers up at him. "You were listening in on my private conversations?" Her eyes narrowed and she jabbed Derek in the chest with her finger. "How dare you!"

"Well," Derek drawled with a smirk. "If you weren't so loud and obnoxious when you cry, I wouldn't be forced to listen in."

Appalled at what he was saying, Casey reached out and gave him a huge shove. Derek fell backwards onto his bed. "I'm going to rip your hair out!" she screeched, feeling close to tears with her frustration. She leaned over to grab his hair, knowing that she should just ignore his insults, but also realizing that her ability to rationalize no longer had any effect on her actions.

Derek actually looked a little bit afraid. "Woah, Case. Calm down. I didn't hear that much, I promise." He smirked again, unable to refrain from adding, "But what I did hear was pretty juicy." Pausing, he gave her a falsely innocent look, and asked, "So does he actually have to tell you that you're too controlling? Isn't it obvious even to you?"

Casey didn't even try to muffle her shriek of anger. She didn't even bother to speak; she simply grabbed his hair and started pulling on it.

"OWW!" bellowed Derek, grabbing her wrists and trying to stop her. "Dammit, Casey, that HURTS!"

He stood up and pushed past her out of his room. Casey knew exactly where he was going: the closet was the closest place with a lock on the inside. Lizzie and Edwin had put it in so they could have their "top secret" meetings and not worry about anyone bursting in. Casey had thought it was a bit extreme at first, but she had hidden in the seclusion of the closet on more than one occasion herself. She was sure that that was where Derek was headed now. So she flew out of his room to follow him, barely making it in time before he shut the door and locked it. Forcing the door open, she burst into the closet with him and slammed the door shut behind her, locking it.

"Now no one can stop me from pulling every last hair out!" she hissed, reaching up to yank on his hair again.

"Wait, Casey! Stop!" Derek cried, grabbing her hands and lowering them. "I really, really, really wish I wasn't saying this, but… I think the lock might be jammed."

Casey stopped, taking deep breaths to calm down. She knew that she had overreacted, but all her pent-up frustration at Derek seemed to have erupted from her in this one moment. She didn't even know why she cared that what Derek thought, but for whatever reason she did.

"Feel better?" Derek asked, still holding onto her wrists.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"Okay then. Let me check on the lock." He reached over to the doorknob and tried to turn it, but instead of opening, the doorknob just went around and around. "Yeah, it's definitely broken."

"Well," Casey said, feeling a new sort of panic bubbling in her stomach. Trapped with Derek… again? Hadn't that one time in the bathroom been enough? She paused, remembering the supposed bonding time they'd spent. She'd been so naïve to think that Derek would actually mean those things about feeling pressure to behave the way he did because people expected it of him. Ha.

"I can use a bobby pin and see if I can open the lock that way," she suggested.

"Sounds good." Suddenly there was a click, and the light bulb had turned on.

"Thanks," she murmured.

"No prob," came his response. He almost sounded… chagrined. Could he possibly regret saying those mean things to me? Casey wondered to herself. She doubted it.

She worked at the lock for awhile, but with no luck. "God, this thing is so annoying!" she cried. "Why don't we bang on the door and see if anyone hears us?"

"Good idea. Anything to get me out of here…"

They slammed their hands onto the door for a couple of minutes, but no one seemed to hear them. "Well, I guess it's back to using the bobby pin, then." Derek grabbed a small bouncing ball from the shelf and started tossing it into the air as he watched her. Casey groaned, and went back to fumbling with the lock….

--

Present time….

"I can't believe you, Derek Venturi," Casey snapped suddenly, having watched Derek fiddle with the lock for the last ten minutes to no avail. "It's all your fault that we're in here. I wish there was a bottle of shampoo that I could squirt in your face like the last time we were trapped together somewhere."

Derek chuckled as he turned around to face her. "I'll never forget how you looked with that shaving foam all over your hair."

Pausing to give him a glare of annoyance (and repressing the amused smile that his comment brought to her lips), Casey sighed. "Well, you looked pretty ridiculous yourself with shampoo all over your forehead." Her glare melted into a smile. "I can't believe how slippery that floor was! I guess it could be worse, huh?"

"Yeah, I could be stuck with a polar bear." Derek was grinning, too. "You sure you don't want any help with that?"

Casey put her hands on her hips. "You know, Derek, women are perfectly capable of doing things themselves and without the help of men."

Rolling his eyes, Derek laid a hand on her shoulder. "Of course, Casey. I just offered to help."

But Casey barely heard him. All her senses suddenly seemed to hone in on how close Derek was to her. The warm pressure on her shoulder where his hand rested; the soft sound of his breathing; the intense gaze of his hazel-brown eyes as he looked down at her; the tension that almost crackled between them; and the tingles that danced from his fingertips and all the way down her body….

"Um," she whispered, not really aware of what she was saying, "Derek?"

"Hmm?" he asked, his eyes locked on her own.

"Are you—are you going to fix the lock, or do you want me to now?"

"I don't know," he mumbled back, his eyebrows furrowing slightly. He lifted his hand from her shoulder and the tension receded a bit. Casey gave a soft sigh of relief and reached for the doorknob to continue working on it.

For awhile, the tiny room was silent, although Casey felt the gaze of Derek's eyes on her back the entire time. Then, she heard Derek speak: "Hey, Case, I—I really didn't mean those—things that I said, earlier," he was mumbling, looking supremely uncomfortable. "You know, about your crying being obnoxious and stuff. That was—that was pretty low, even for me." He sighed in exasperation. "Do you accept my apology or what?" he asked.

Casey looked up from the doorknob. Derek had a hand behind his head, rubbing the back of his neck, and wouldn't meet her eyes. She stood up and beamed at him. "Aww, thank you, Derek!" she gushed. "Of course I accept it!" She reached out to give him a hug, but he took a step back.

"No hugs, Case. You know the rules."

"Oh, come on, Derek. Who's going to see it now?"

He thought to himself for a brief moment, then shrugged and flashed her a grin. "Eh, you're right. I s'pose I can afford to have a sappy moment just this once, if you promise not to tell anyone, klutzilla."

"Promise," she replied, her smile growing. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, her chin resting on his shoulder. She soon felt his arms go around her back, and she closed her eyes, inhaling the scent of his aftershave. It smelled really good. And his arms around her made her feel… safe, for some odd reason. Maybe it was the fact that she knew he wouldn't prank her when he put his barriers down for a moment.

"You know," she said, lifting her head to look at him. "You smell really good, Derek." She paused, and smirked. "For someone who lives in a pigsty, that is."

"And you don't smell too bad yourself," he said, grinning down at her, "for someone who douses herself with cheap perfume."

"Hey!" she exclaimed, annoyed. "My perfumes are not cheap!" She whacked his shoulder, and he laughed. Soon she joined in with his laughter.

After a moment, she realized that their hug had lasted a long time, so she pulled away. As she did so, she could have sworn that Derek resisted for a brief, flickering moment, but then he was leaning against the shelves and tossing the ball up and down again. Casey stared at him, and blurted out, "Derek, did you really dye Max's hair blue because he insulted the hockey team? That doesn't sound like something he'd do."

For a long, long time, Derek was silent. He continued to toss the ball into the air, and his brow furrowed as his gaze focused somewhere past her left shoulder. Finally, he spoke up, "I overheard Max saying some… things… about you in the locker room. They weren't very nice, so I told him to cut it out. When he didn't, I put blue dye in his shampoo later that afternoon."

Derek looked up and met her gaze, as if daring her to laugh at him or make fun of him. But Casey was far from wanting to do either. Instead, she just gazed back at him. "Derek," she whispered at last.

The ball fell to the ground, bouncing away and under one of Edwin's old stuffed animals. In the span of a heartbeat, Derek's lips met her own. He kissed her fiercely, passionately, opening his mouth and parting her lips with his tongue almost immediately. His arms snuck around her waist and pulled her as close to him as possible. For a fleeting moment, Casey felt surprised that he could be so bold to kiss her at all, but then she realized that she was kissing him right back, that her arms were wrapped around his neck. As Derek deepened the kiss, she found herself being pushed back against the door, and his hands reached under her shirt, sliding up the skin of her back and sending tingles all over her body. She groaned and tangled her hands in his curly auburn hair. His mouth left hers and went to the corner of her jaw, moving down her neck as he continued to kiss her, and his hands started to unfasten her bra strap before Casey stopped him.

"D-derek," she whispered, panting, and laying her hands on his arms to stop him. "What are we doing? We can't—"

"I don't know," he replied, his voice husky with desire.

"Well, whatever this is, we're taking it way too far," she protested.

Derek pulled back a little, and smirked down at her. "You know, Casey," he said, tugging playfully at a lock of her hair, "You're not nearly as much as a goody-two-shoes as I thought."

His words and expression sent all her desire to pool in her stomach, and Casey decided that for once in her life, she would be reckless. To hell with it all, anyway. "And you're not nearly as good of a kisser as I'd imagined," she teased, grinning, as her hand snuck back around his neck.

"Well, at least you were thinking about it," he replied as he leaned closer, before pressing his lips to hers once more.

--

"Great," Lizzie grumbled, spinning the doorknob of the closet around and around. "The closet lock is broken." She turned to Edwin. "Did you get too carried away while practicing on Marti's monkey?"

"What?" Edwin gasped, feigning hurt. "Liz, how could you accuse me of such a thing? You know I gave up monkey make-outs long ago."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, at least you're past that point, then."

"So…" Edwin ventured, taking a step past her. "Should we move this to the bathroom, then?"

Lizzie snorted, reaching out and grabbing his sleeve. "Wait a minute," she whispered suddenly. "I think someone's inside." She paused. "Isn't there?"

Edwin listened for a moment. "Nope, don't hear anything."

Lizzie narrowed her eyes, but heard no other noise. "Hmm, must have been my imagination." She thought for a moment, and asked, "How good are you at climbing through windows?"

Raising an eyebrow, Edwin replied, "Pretty good. You thinking… the roof?"

A smile crept onto Lizzie's mouth, and she nodded. "But after dark, of course."

"Of course." Edwin held out his hand, and Lizzie shook it. "I'll see you at 10 o'clock tonight, Liz."

"Looking forward to it," she replied, and gave his hand an extra squeeze.

They returned to their rooms (until the appointed hour, of course) just in time to miss hearing the closet door burst open. Had Lizzie and Edwin remained longer, they would have been surprised to see that they weren't the only step-siblings who had found other uses for the games closet than just for the storage of games.

--

A/N: I love throwing some Lizwin into my Dasey stories. They're totally adorable when Dasey is hot. Haha. Anyway, hope you enjoyed. I know the Games Closet idea has probably been done a lot, but my brain wouldn't stop nagging me to write my own rendition. :) Oh, and please review. Thanks!!