AN: Another Life With Derek one-shot from the Mom who brought you "Common Ground". I do not own the characters, and do not wish any infringement upon those who do. I am writing this only --
Whew. Okay, the lawyers got bored and stopped reading... Read this with tongue firmly planted in cheek, 'cause that's the way I wrote it! I'm in the middle of avoiding my Feature Length, "Chess Game" and (stupidly?) participating in the NaNoWriMo (WhY? I dunnno...!) so this was something of a pressure release valve. Hope you enjoy. If you do, leave a comment, because I like 'em.
Oh, and this goes down greaaat with those vegetables! (stern look)
A Hair Raising Tail...
It started out innocent enough; he'd borrowed a text book for a shared English class and found it – purely by accident, no fault of his own – resting inconspicuously between a couple of pages as he flipped to the posted reading assignment.
One long, brown strand of hair.
Distracted, he worried at it with clumsy fingertips, trying to lift it off the page. No use; static cling frustrated his half-hearted attempts, ratcheting them up to near obsessive intensity. No longer an attempt to avoid his dreaded homework, this task had become something of a quest: get that hair – POSSESS it, dammit.
He'd worked at it for a few minutes with uncommon focus and single-minded purpose. Finally, on the point of giving up, he'd moistening his finger tips and managed to lift it off the page. He held it aloft and feigned 'crowd going wild' noises to no one in particular. At that point, it seemed a shame, an anti-climactic let-down to just toss it away. He'd worked hard for that damn strand of hair, so he did the only thing that made sense – if he didn't think about it too much, that is --
He kept it.
Yeah, as in the stupid piece of hair. Only, he didn't think of it that way. It was the prize, see, in a battle of wits between him and friggin' static electricity and he won, right? It wouldn't salve his ego to just trash something he won fair and square. Whatever; it didn't matter that it didn't make any sense, because what followed would defy even the tenuous logic he could construct around the whole beginning of the weirdness, anyway.
See… He didn't stop with that one hair. He had…well, he had a thin coil of it now. Shiny and dark brown, with just the hint of coppery highlights when the sun struck it just right. Oh, man. He's starting to feel like some kind of weird, 'Silence of the Lambs' kind of sicko, now. It really wasn't like that.
Really.
He had the one hair, right? And the hair… well, he'd be lying if he said he didn't know whose hair it was. It was hers. But that – that was beside the point. Just forget whose hair it was, alright? Only, whose hair it was…was the point. Shit. The single strand of hair was at fault. He knew it was hers…but the one strand was too small; he would easily lose a thing so small. So… he needed more of it, so he'd be sure not to misplace it, or throw it away by accident.
Anyway, that was how it started. See? It wasn't weird at all – he had the one… and he needed more, so he'd wait until she was done in the bathroom and then go raid her hairbrush. Or sometimes he'd get lucky and find a stray strand on the couch. And finally he had enough collected to make a thin ponytail, only…
An unexpected result of gathering those loose, forgotten strands of hair was that when he bound them all together… he could actually get a whiff of-
Look, he would call anyone a liar who tried to say that he liked the smell of her hair. He purposely went out of his way to actually insult the smell of her hair, for crying out loud.
But the truth was, he wanted to bury his nose in her hair… the, uh, hair attached to her head, that is. Not the ponytail he kept hidden in a special cd case marked 'Disgusting Bodily Function Noises.'
So what? He was a freak who liked the smell of his step-sister's hair; get over it. It didn't hurt anyone… And it's not like he went around like that weird freak from 'Charlie's Angels', whacking off pieces of hot chicks hair with a switch blade or anything...
Oh man. He was in trouble.
Derek planted his face into his open palms and rubbed hard at his eyes. This is crazy, D-man. This is the stuff of 'true crime' novels, dude… You gotta-
"Derek!" Casey's voice barely preceded her before she flung his door open, and he – guiltily, he thought – stashed the hair in its case and shoved it in his desk drawer. "Where is my Geometry book!?" she asked impatiently.
He sat back in his desk chair, affecting – rather badly, his mind warned – his customary indolent pose, "Up your butt, obviously – Knock, much, Case?" he groused.
"Stop it," she barked, "Just because you have no regard for school doesn't mean you can sabotage my efforts!" She marched into the room, "Give it, Derek. I mean it." She stood, nostrils flaring with her hand out, waiting.
He studied her a moment, then reached under his desk for the book. "Here-" he said sweetly, "I got it all up here, anyway," then poked his index finger at his temple and gave her a wink.
He'd already gotten what he'd wanted from the book anyway.
Oh, man… He was in serious trouble.