Odd Behavior
Casey thought it was rude to not laugh when someone said something they thought was funny. She believed it was only manners to laugh at what was intented to be a joke--whether you found it funny or not. So, Casey would laugh politely to save someone from embarrassment.
Casey would laugh loud and hard when something was funny and she felt obligated to laugh. She might not find the statement hysterical, or even appropriate, but she would laugh anyway. If it had some humor to it, she would laugh for the benefit of the person telling the joke--as well as for the other people who were laughing at it. She laughed because she felt she had to.
Casey would laugh lightly to herself when she found something truly funny. If she thought something was genuinely hilarious, she would chuckle quietly as if it was her own personal secret. The softer the laughter, the more she meant it.
Sam noticed that Casey never laughed quite the same as she did around Derek.
She seemed to have a laught that was all his, one that personally belonged to Derek. It was quiet and loud all at once. Soft and hard at the same time. Short and long. It was unique in all ways, belonging only to him. It came out only in his presence, and disappeared in his absence.
Sam had started to pick up on it when they were dating. It rather put him out that Derek got a special part of her, even if it was something so very small and innocent. It was a part of her that he didn't get, and that made him resent Derek a little because of it. He resolved to make her laugh that laugh for him. He tried so very hard to be at the receiving end of that laugh. But it never worked, nothing he did ever worked. He learned that no matter how hard one might try to draw it out, it would always result in failure. Because it was completely, utterly, wholly, solely Derek's and nothing would ever change that.
It became more apparent to him once they broke up. At first, he hated the fact that Derek got that special piece of her when he couldn't have any part of her anymore. He would admit that it was a bit out of jealousy. Derek, the annoying stepbrother she hated, got a part of her no one else could ever have. And Sam, her boyfriends--well, now ex-boyfriend--never really had any of her. It tore him up inside and it put a dramatic strain on his friendship with Derek.
Sam couldn't understand it. The relationship between Casey and Derekw as very complex and quite literally the essence of confusing. He didn't understand the laughter that was Derek's alone. But then it didn't seem like Casey or Derek even realized what was going on. And that seemed to be a very good reason for Sam to think that maybe he didn't want to understand. So he never said anything, he just kept it to himself--for the most part. Both Derek and Casey would have thought he was crazy if he said anything about what he suspected anyway. Because suspicions are suspicions, not facts. And Casey only dealt with the tangible and logical. Derek would only laugh at him either way. He didn't realize that him might be seeing something that they couldn't yet see for themselves.
Casey had a thing about looking people right in the eyes. To her it was polite, only manners. It showed a person that your focus was on them. You knew she was paying attention to you, and only you, when she met your eyes. In class, she never took her eyes off the teacher. When she took part in a conversation, she always watched, the person speaking, intently. It was her way of showing respect to whoever she was listening to.
Casey found it rude to look away from someone that was speaking to her. She took to never looking away until the person was done speaking. Some people found it refreshing and admired her display of respect. And some people found it intimidating.
Emily noticed that Casey always held Derek's gaze longer that what could be deemed normal.
It wasn't even just when he was talking to her. It was all the time. Every time she met his eyes, she held the connection. Everytime. But he didn't break it either, so it might not only lie with Casey. It was something between both of them. Emily could see it in both of them.
Everytime one of them would step into the room their eyes would find each other. As if they were drawn together by some mysterious force. Emily had seen it happen too many times to count, but enough to make her suspicious about how unconscious the actions were. It was so common that she was surprised no one else had seen it before.
It wasn't just about them maintaining eye contact, either. It was also about the way they looked at each other. It was one thing for Emily to see Casey look at Derek that way, but for Derek to look back at her the same way. Emily had to choke down the flare of jealousy she felt everytime she saw it. There was more to it than a mutual display of respect, she was sure of it.
That's why she said something to Casey. She mentioned it casually, but Casey could tell it wasn't a casual issue. Casey wasn't even aware that she was doing anything out of the ordinary. Emily tried to make her see, but you can't make someone see something they don't want to see.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Casey responded, crossing her arms and shrugging.
"Come on, Casey." Emily shook her head. "You can't tell me you don't notice that there's something off in your behavior toward Derek."
"Unless you mean the annoyance, irritation, and anger, I don't know what you could be referring to." Casey replied.
Emily decided to try a different tactic. "Okay, you know that I've liked Derek for, like, ever, to the point of being borderline obsessive. Right?"
"Yeah, but I don't know what that has to do with me." Casey frowned, looking confused.
"The way I look at him, is the way you look at him. The way he looks at you." Emily concluded. "The way I wish he looked at me."
Casey's mouth fell open, but she collected herself quickly. "That's absurd. You're mistaken. It's as simple as that."
And that was the end of that conversation. Emily just shook her head and let Casey think whatever she wanted to think. Emily could see it clearly laid before her. She couldn't understand why it didn't look so clear to Casey, why she couldn't see it at all. Casey just denied it. She wouldn't let herself believe she saw anything that might not really be there.
Recently, Lizzie and Edwin had discovered some out of the ordinary behavior from both Casey and Derek. It hadn't seemed out of place at first. In fact, they hadn't even seen it. It wasn't until they overheard a conversation between Emily and Casey, that they even started looking.
At first, they hadn't found anything that seemed unusual. They didn't have Sam's ear for her laugh, or Emily's eye for the way they looked at each other. But they did know they used to act around each other, and eventually they saw how much it had changed. How much Casey and Derek had changed.
They used to put all their energy into avoiding contact with each other. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, Derek acted as if Casey didn't exist. And the other point-one percent, they were at each other's throats. They could barely stand to be in the same room together, and when they were forced together they always found themselves in opposing corners. They were opposites in so many ways, it was only expected that they would butt heads at every turn.
No one seemed to think they might eventually start to attract...as the saying goes.
That's exactly what they began doing. Once Lizzie and Edwin started to really look, they started seeing things that weren't there before. It took awhile and a lot of investigation and observation. But they started to see. They watched their siblings' behavior change before their eyes--moving from one extreme to the other. Where they once avoided each other at all costs, they now found ways to get as close as possible.
When they came into the same room, Lizzie and Edwin had started to notice that they always sat close, or stood close, or touched in some way. In fact, just the other day, Lizzie caught Derek foregoing his chair to sit next to Casey on the couch. It had been that way a lot in the most recent times. Everytime someone came into the livingroom Derek was on the couch, right next to Casey. And when they weren't sitting, they were huddled close together standing.
Then there were the "accidental" touches: slight brushes of the arms as they passed each other, a rested hand on the shoulder, or a ruffling of hair. They weren't accidental or coincidental, but they could very well be unconscious. That was what Lizzie and Edwin had determined. Subconsciously, Derek and Casey wanted to be close to each other and in small ways they were fulfilling that desire.
Now once they had come to this conclusion, they tried to settle on what motivated these urges Derek and Casey had. They could have passed it off as brotherly-sisterly closeness, but they were too smart for that. The conclusions Emily had drawn seemed to be accurate. There were feelings there that were not familial. They were sure of it.
Both Edwin and Lizzie had tried to say something to their brother and sister, respectively, but they only got blown off. Casey's only response was that there was nothing there, that they had grown a little closer when the fighting stopped. Lizzie could only sigh at her sister's obvious state of denial. Derek denied he had done anything to be close to Casey intentionally. Edwin rolled his eyes because he knew Derek had. Yet, Lizzie and Edwin could not prove something to Derek and Casey if they didn't want to believe.
When someone has five children running around the house, a strenuous job to do, and a busy schedule; it is normal to be oblivious to some of the things that goes on right under their nose. It was very much like that in the Venturi-MacDonald household. Nora and George were frequently blind to half the things that went on in their house. So it could only be expected that they wouldn't see what was going on between Derek and Casey. The only thing they knew was that it had gotten a lot quieter since the fighting died down--they didn't really care how or why that had happened, just that it did.
It wasn't until everyone else had noticed it, that Nora and George picked up on the odd behavior of their children. Be it the comment dropped from Edwin to Lizzie, they overheard, about Derek and Casey acting strange lately or the odd way Emily had confronted Casey about a Derek-related issue that had brought it to their attention, they were now aware of it. Yet they wouldn't let their awareness travel to the possibility that they could be...No, they wouldn't go there.
Nora could see the way Casey had grown to care about Derek, but she credited it to growing closer as a family. George could see the affection his son felt for Casey, but he passed it off as brotherly affection for his new sister. They had explanations for everything. They were close. Siblings were close. They hugged each other a couple times--though Nora and George couldn't remember when they had started hugging. Brothers and sisters hug all the time. The arm over the shoulders, the light squeeze on the hand. It was all innocent. They had no other choice but to believe it as so. They wouldn't go there. They refused to see anything but what they wanted to see--even if everything was telling them they were wrong.
No matter what anyone said or believed about how she felt abou Derek, Casey had a certain opinion of him that she believed could not falter. It would not change, would not evolve, would not be distorted in anyway. It was absolute, set in stone, definite. It was against her belief system to ever think that anything that solid could ever be changed.
Derek, on the other hand, wasn't as convinced on his opinion of Casey. He was usually confused by her and couldn't quite straighten out what he thought of her. But he was sure it would never be anything more than tolerance. He used to feel distaste and dislike for anything that involved her, but that changed. He could tolerate her, he was sure, but it would never be anything more than that. Never.
It seemed to both Casey and Derek that everyone around them had taken up on watching their every move. Sam, Emily, Lizzie, Edwin, Nora, George, everyone. They didn't understand what all of them could be looking for. To Derek and Casey nothing had changed--at least nothing they were aware of. Then the looking turned to commenting. They all had a part to say.
It started with a comment that slipped from Sam. Derek had cracked a joke while Sam was over. Lizzie and Casey were watching the game with Sam and him. Casey started to laugh as they all had. When she walked away a moment later to get a fresh soda Sam turned to Derek.
"You don't hear it do you?" Sam questioned.
"Hear what?" Derek responded nonchalantly, not even looking away from the TV.
"Nothing." Sam shook his head. "Forget I said anything."
Derek had been confused by that when he remembered that short conversation later. He was pretty sure it had something to do with Casey. Everything anyone had to say seemed to be about him and Casey recently. It didn't make things anymore clear, though. It actually made the fog thicker.
Casey had taken the conversation with Emily to heart. While she still thought Emily was crazy to suggest there was anything between her and Derek, she knew Emily wouldn't say anything she didn't believe was true. Okay, she had to admit that she might, but Casey did start to look for what Emily said she saw. And at first she didn't see anything, but she did eventually pick up on the subtle changes in her behavior and Derek's. Still, nothing to the degree Emily said.
Then Lizzie and Edwin came into the picture. Lizzie played toward her sister's logical side and tried to lay out all the evidence for her. But she came up with no significant reaction from Casey. Casey barely listened after the subject of Derek was brought up, as per usual. She didn't much like discussing anything that involved Derek.
When Edwin came to Derek, he cut right to the point. He wasn't subtl in his accusations. Derek couldn't believe that Edwin had the nerve to accuse him of liking Casey. It was the biggest, most impossible impossibility. He was sure of that.
Of course their parents had to get in on it as well, though they seemed to be a little more subtle than Lizzie and Edwin had been. Nora was the one who vocalized the thoughts she and George had. It was in passing, and Casey wasn't even aware of the events her mother brought up.
"So, you and Derek have gotten closer, haven't you?" Nora replied casually, as she started dinner.
Casey was flipping through a magazine, sitting at the island. "Yeah, I guess we have."
"You haven't noticed?" Nora said, taking in the shrug of Casey's shoulders. "Not at all?"
"Well, you're not the first to say something about it. I just figure everyone's reading into it too much." Casey responded casually. "We're not fighting anymore, I thought everyone would be happy."
"Oh, we are." Nora blew out a breath. "We definitely are."
"Then leave it at that." Casey replied, closing up her magazine and leaving the kitchen.
Casey and Derek, both, didn't want to see what was going on between them. Whether it be blatantly obvious or incredibly insignificant, they didn't want to see it. It would mean admitting they were wrong--wrong from the beginning. They didn't want there to be anything there. It didn't matter what anyone said about it, they were too blind to see it anyway.
It had been a week since anyone--family, friend or foe--had mentioned anything to Casey about Derek. At first it was quite refreshing to get back to normal, but then she started thinking. Without the constant denying she had gotten used to doing to fill her time, she started to think about all the things people had been saying. And instead of holding tighter to her solid opinions, she wound up doubting them. Which only confused her more when it came to Derek.
She started to think that maybe everyone had a point, and a valid one at that. Maybe the behavior she had been exhibiting recently was somewhat odd. And instead of disspelling her doubts and confusion, it loaded more onto her. She resolved to talk to the one person she had yet to talk to on the matter: Derek.
Derek would have been fine with denying every comment and accusation sent his way. He could do that forever--he had become a very talented liar over the years. But for some reason all the things people had said kept nagging at him. He couldn't escape them, no matter how ard he tried. So he did the only thing he could do. He gave into them
It was then that he knew they were right, in some sense. Okay, maybe in all senses. That didn't mean he would stop denying it. He just realized that it wasn't just everyone else that he was lying to. He was lying to himself as well.
When Casey came to Derek, it didn't seem out of place to either of them. They had been spending more time together recently. They had even talked a little recently. But when Casey came into his room and closed the door behind her, Derek knew this wasn't going to be a conversation about the weather. He knew what the conversation was going to be about, he sensed it, there was no question about that. The only questione he had was: would he be able to lie to her too?
"What's up Casey?" Derek asked, sitting up on his bed and looking up at her.
Casey stood right by the door, she didn't dare move further into the room. She wanted to be able to make a quick escape if she needed to. "I'm sure you've heard the clatter that's been going around this house about us."
"Some, yeah." Derek nodded. "Hard not to."
"Well, I've been thinking about some of the things that have been said."
"Really? I usually ignore the things people say." Derek responded.
"I'm aware of that. You always seem to ignore what I say." Casey pursed her lips.
"Nah, I listen to you." Derek shrugged. "I'm listening right now."
"I guess I just wanted to ask, have you ever thought that some of the things they've said hold some truth in them?" Casey asked.
"Like what? That we've been deliberately albeit unconsciously finding ways to get close to each other? That we might actually have feelings for each other, other that hate? That I might actually have feelings for you that are non-brotherly?" Derek ranted, his voice a mixture of sarcasm and sincerety that Casey couldn't distinguish between. She nodded slowly and Derek responded casually. "I might have thought about it a little."
"I think they may have been a little more observant than we have. They're more kean on the situation." Casey replied. "They're right, I have no doubt about that."
"So you're saying..." Derek started.
"I like you, Derek. And it took every single person in my life saying it for me to realize they were right." Casey answered.
"Yeah?" Derek smiled. "I didn't think that was possible."
"Neither did I." Casey agreed. "Believe me, neither did I."
"I like you too, Casey." Derek paused for a moment. "What does this mean?"
"It might take my ex, my best friend, my sister and my mother to make me realize something that is staring me right in the face, but I sure won't let it get away once I can actually see what I have."
Derek nodded slightly as he stood and walked toward Casey. "It might take my best friend, my neighbor, my brother and my father to show me what's right in front of me, but there's no denying that it's something real."
Casey smiled as Derek came to stand right in front of her. He reached out to stroke her cheek He leaned forward and placed a light kiss on her lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer to kiss her deeper. Now that was some odd behavior they could get used to.