Title: Queen of Tarts
Chapter 2/?: It Was Only a Kiss
Rating: PG-15
Summary: He always wanted to know what was really going on in her head and when she leaves he's more baffled then ever. Sometimes we all go a little mad, but Derek wants to know if he's really gone crazy. My take on a simple concept. (I'm toying with the idea of a different point-of-view and explaining her reasoning in the future.)
A/N: I'm sorry for this not being BETA'd I looked over it the best I could. As for all of the assumptions, well... I'll verify those in a future chapter. : ) Sorry it's so short, but future chapters will be longer. Hope you enjoy. Disclaimer: Yeah, I don't own a single thing.
Despite the pounding in the back of his skull from lack of sleep the early morning had been rather uneventful. He'd easily avoided his stepsister when she dodged their daily morning battle for the bathroom. He hadn't gotten a word in edge wise when he caught his Dad, Nora and Marti rushing out the door when he'd come down the stairs, his stepmother shouting an apology behind her for not cooking breakfast.
He grimaced against the unforgiving sun that streamed in through the kitchen windows and lit the island where the youngest MacDonald and his brother were eating breakfast. He had a direct order for Edwin on the tip of his tongue when his feet stopped short and it suddenly died.
Unlike himself, she looked well rested. She was standing by the centre of the island casually drinking her coffee and reading the newspaper busily filling that brain of hers with even more useless crap to whine about. She didn't look up when he walked up to the counter, but he saw her thin eyebrows arch when he ordered a bowl of cereal.
One hand propping his head up he watched her over his cereal as he slowly shovelled spoonful after spoonful into his mouth. If she was going for casual indifference, she was doing a pretty good job. She had successfully talked around him all morning, as if he didn't exist as if he wasn't sitting two feet away from her.
He glared at her. He wanted her eyes to catch his, but they always seemed to land on something inches before they reached their mark. He wanted her to direct an insult his way so he could spit something back at her, but she refused, being extra polite to everyone with her ridiculous top-of-the-morning bubbly attitude. He found he wanted her to do a lot of things, but typical Casey seemed to do everything but.
His eyes moved to Lizzie and Edwin but they seemed to be oblivious to the tension that he felt could be cut with a knife. The two were discussing some random kid in one of their random classes. Not something that stirred much interest in him. However, Casey appeared to be giving them half-an-ear. She seemed to be quite enthusiastic about the subject, but she was pretty enthusiastic about anything that gave her a reason to open her mouth.
She was really laying her needless advice on thick making a conscious effort to keep her mouth moving and her opinions flowing at all costs. He had the annoying feeling that she was trying to stop him from talking. He could wait her out though. He had way more patience than people gave him credit for.
A car horn honked outside and he watched his breakfast as Lizzie and Edwin grabbed their books and coats and ran for the designated car pool mother.
It was the first time they had been alone all morning. He'd expected her to round on him and lash out or to dump her coffee and leave, but she did neither.
"You may want to take a picture," she said accusingly, her big pale eyes never leaving the newspaper that she kept beside her breakfast.
"I'm sorry, what?" he asked feigning confusion. He was particularly good at that well that and lying.
"It would certainly last longer," she mumbled, turning and setting her half-filled mug of coffee into the sink.
He gave an unamused chuckle despite the pain still pounding behind his eyes as he rounded the corner and slid his half-empty bowl down the counter."You're so very original, Casey. Do you blow all the other guys away with your amazing wit or am I special?"
His back to her and the sink he readjusted his sleeves at the elbows as he waited for her inevitable retort, but only silence answered him. When he looked back up the kitchen was empty.
On his way to school his mind drifted to it. Maybe it was all a dream some strange waking dream that made no sense. That had to be it, there could be no other explanation. Miss Priss would never have come to his room and done those things. She was too damn good to do something even remotely close to that. Too dorky. Too moral.
He was able to put the imagined incident out of his mind for most of the day, but it managed to squeeze itself into the forefront of his thoughts at the oddest times. When he'd felt Emily's dark eyes on him and he'd been compelled to glance at the two of them eating lunch it had vividly flashed across his inner-eye. It lingered in his mind at hockey practice when Sam had nonchalantly mentioned her name. Suddenly he was five seconds too slow for every pass, every block, and worst of all every shot. He'd been successfully checked and lost possession more than a dozen times before his coach had finally ordered him to go home and get some rest.
He'd nearly forgotten about the terrible marks he'd made on some test, he barely remembered taking that day when he opened the door and heard her voice. She was standing by the washroom counter methodically folding her laundry and separating it by colour and relevance.
She was too organized. Everything had its time and its place and God forbid anything were to go amiss in her little World of Perfect Order. She ran her life like a freaking military sergeant and expected everyone to just fall in line behind her as if actually knew what she was doing. She was so damn arrogant.
"Where's Emily?" he asked, kicking the door shut behind him. It was the second thing he'd said to her all day and he managed to make the strange enquiry sound casual.
"At home I suspect," she answered, never looking up from her perfect piles of clean laundry. "Why do you want to know?"
"Just making conversation," he answered, shrugging a single shoulder as he unceremoniously dumped his dirty padding and uniform by the washer.
"Since when do you care to make conversation with me?" she asked, her pale blue-eyes still fixed intently on her task.
"I'm hurt," he said mockingly, "Now you're trying to ban me from being polite to my least favourite stepsister."
He watched her eyes quickly cut to the side for a moment before they rested back on her own hands. Taking in a breath and shoving his hands into his back pockets, he took a step forward standing uncomfortably close behind her. He was hoping to gain more of a response, but she continued to ignore him. Her indifference was infuriating. She made him want to tug her ponytail or thump her earlobe.
The invasion of her personal space must have hit a nerve because she swung around so suddenly he didn't have time to react. Her dark hair slapped his face and their heads barely missed colliding. They were nearly touching noses when she faced him, her thin eyebrows beginning to knit and her cheeks pink.
"What do you want?" she demanded, leaning into the folding counter and away from him.
"Who says I want anything?" he answered, reluctantly taking a step away from her and casually leaning back against the dryer as he crossed his arms.
"What other reason could you have for annoying me?"
"Who says I need a reason?" he answered, smirking. "But really, what would make you think that I'd take the time out of my life to bother you? Are you really that self-absorbed?"
Her pink lips twisted into a disgusted sneer at this comment, but she didn't return to her laundry, so he counted it as a small victory. She looked toward the door for a minute before facing him again.
"The washer is free. If you need to use it, then use it. If you don't then you should just leave."
He chuckled mirthlessly turning his head to the side as he scratched the back of his neck. "If there is one thing that living in my house should have taught you by now Casey, it's that you can't tell me what to do. You just don't have that kind of power."
"So," she said, waving her hands as if she was clearing the air between them.
Confusion gripped Derek making his mouth droop and he just stared at her and her pathetic response. 'So?' What in the hell was that supposed to mean? 'So?'
"What in the heck do you mean by that?" he asked, keeping his voice even as he searched each one of her large eyes.
Casey was usually as easy to read as one of Marti's story books. She wore her emotions not on her sleeve but on her whole damn shirt. It's what made teasing her easy fun, and really cutting her down to size as simple as connecting the dots. At the moment she was trying to stay calm and keep her breathing even.
He could see it now. He could see that she was uncomfortable. He could see that he was making her uncomfortable. That fact brought a smirk to his lips.
"Nothing," she answered, quickly turning toward the counter again. She slammed her neat piles into stacks and clutched them to her chest as she stomped away from him.
Letting out a deep breath, he rubbed the back of his head letting his fingers curl around his short hair.
What in the hell is wrong with you, Venturi?
She kept herself locked inside her room and he didn't see her nor did he care to until dinner. Too tired to entertain his younger siblings with a narration of his day and too embarrassed to discuss his performance at practice with his Dad, the meal was rather boring. He pushed the food around his plate and listened to Casey drone on for what felt like forever about some silly posters she wanted to order for some silly club that she'd joined.
"I was hoping as a family we could really support this cause."
He couldn't help but snort and roll his eyes at the idea looking back down at his meal. He'd assumed that his reaction had gone unnoticed but he felt her eyes staring daggers into the top of his head. Raising his head, he instantly saw the disgust that was already distorting her face. She was going to lay into him. He could see that she really wanted to, and he would have quickly put money on her calling him a neanderthal or a cad, but she didn't. She didn't say anything, just sneered and turned away from him.
"Come on, Casey. Not everybody wants to jump in a line for penguins rights just because you do. The world doesn't revolve around how Casey MacDonald thinks it should be. It doesn't work that way."
He could hear his Dad's exasperated sigh, but he couldn't bring himself to stop. He wanted a response and she didn't disappoint.
"That's easy for you to say. You've never had to work a day in your life for anything and yet the world just falls in your lap. Well here's a news flash Derek. One day you're going to drop it."
"Seriously, who says 'news flash'. And drop what?" He paused, leaning away from his plate as he dropped his fork. "Wait a second here, you are aware that the words that come out of your mouth don't actually make sense."
She opened her mouth, but his father's voice cut her off.
"Can't we have one dinner that doesn't end in you two fighting?" he asked, resting his elbows on the table.
Casey snapped her mouth shut, but her eyes were saying it all. He hoped his eyes were unreadable and his expression cool as he stared back at her. He wanted to see that glint, that spark that had paralysed him the night before. But he couldn't find it. He couldn't find it at all, not even a trace.
Casey MacDonald could run the gambit of emotional basket case to a cold-hearted bitch faster than any female he knew and what he saw was typical bubbly know-it-all Casey. Her pale eyes were full of nothing but warmth and hatred. Disappointment unexpectedly washed over him, but he shrugged his shoulders and it vanished.
After dinner, having been grounded from television for a stupid infraction, he went straight to his room. Sitting against his headboard, he ran a hand across the back of his neck, trying to rub out the tension that had begun to accumulate there.
So it really had been all a dream, some weird part of his subconscious that had fired off at the wrong place and the wrong time. Impulsively he imagined that Casey's dreams were probably well organized too. She probably even scheduled her nightmares in for a pathetic checks and balance's system. Once every fourteen good dreams, she'd pencil in a bad dream just to keep her head level.
God, he was stupid. How in the hell would he have thought that his stepsister, Casey MacDonald, Grade-Grubber Extraordinaire, would have come and tried to seduce him. It was ridiculous. No, it was incomprehensible. Correction, it was preposterous.
He hit the back of his head against the bed's head board. He didn't want to think about what the interpretation of a dream like that meant. Did that mean he was attracted to her? And if he was attracted to her what in the hell did that mean? Was that incest? Was he some kind of sick-o whack-job? Was he going to have to check himself into some kind of clinic that dealt with people like him?
No, he commanded himself crossing his arms against his chest.
He just wouldn't tell anyone. Nobody had to know. It was in his head wasn't it. He could keep it a secret. His secret.
His secret that he would forget. Hell, he'd almost forgotten about the entire incident before he'd gotten to school. It would be easy to forget. It wasn't that great a dream anyway.
Frustrated he threw his legs over the side of his bed and went to the bathroom. He just wanted to avoid his step-sibling, change, climb into bed and forget that the day ever happened.
Safely back in his bed and having avoided Casey while doing it, Derek pulled his covers up to his T-shirt clad chest. Having had a combined total of two hours rest the night before it was going to be easy for him to fall asleep. The bright green numbers on his clock told him that it was barely passed eight-thirty, but he didn't fight his lids as they drifted shut.
He didn't want to dream about her. But even he wasn't arrogant enough to think that he could choose what he dreamed, so like every other hurdle in his life he devised a plan to deal with problem. He turned all of his energy into concentrating on the Victoria's Secret model that adorned the cover of the catalogue between his mattresses.
He couldn't recall dreaming or if he even actually fell asleep, but the soft feel of something grazing his lower back brought him out of that dark place. His eyes flew open as he felt something moving beneath his T-shirt and he turned over. He heard a small yelp of surprise and he crawled backward into his headboard. His breathing was quick and he didn't let his eyes move off of the figure that was sitting on his bed until his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
A déjà vu like feeling washed over him. She was sitting on the exact same side as the night before, her hair held back in the same severe braid. Everything was identical except for the pajamas that covered her from finger to toe. However, their pattern was still just as sickeningly lame.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he quickly glanced at the clock and the green numbers flashed two-thirty back at him. It was too damn early. All of his muscles felt too tight and he tried to swallow the lump that had risen in his throat.
"What do you want Casey?" he asked, his voice was gruff to his own ears.
The look on her face was all the answer he needed. His body was suddenly alert and he leaned into her. She was digging into her bottom lip again, but he found that his eyes couldn't look away this time.
TBC...
