Summary: Nora said their summer trip to the country was going to be an adventure. She didn't mean it quite so literally, but when have Casey and Derek ever been any good at doing what they're told?
Rating: T for content, but M for language, so I'm hedging my bets
Disclaimer: I own nothing you see here. Big shock, I know.
What We Did On Our Summer Vacation
by: Hayseed
Chapter Nine: So They Went to Play in the Snow
This was bad. In a whole multitude of ways.
First of all, lately she'd gotten entirely too used to spending her days, well, not walking for hours on end. They had crossed out of the town less than four hours ago, and already, she was tired, her knees were sore, and she was pretty sure she had a blister on the heel of her left foot.
At the time, she hadn't realized Magic Man had spoiled them as much as he apparently had. She'd been too busy fantasizing about taking that stupid glass bottle and shoving it right up his...
Okay. Not productive. Thinking things like that didn't do anything to help her deal with the badness that was right now.
More to the point, it didn't help her deal with Derek.
Oh, he was doing a good job being all sly for now. He kept doing stuff like sticking his hands in his pockets and whistling as they walked along. Every now and again, he'd kick at a rock and give her a cheerful smile as it went skipping along in the grass.
He was acting so normal that it was going to kill her.
That was probably his plan, of course. He knew that she knew how mad he was at her. Honestly, how could he not be? She was furious with herself for messing things up in the town so badly; the tentative truce they'd reached all those weeks ago had to have gone the way of the dodo the second the latch closed on Magic Man's door.
Anyway, Derek was up to his old tricks again, being all sneaky and manipulative and making her feel guilty by pretending he wasn't enraged. Well, she'd show him. She didn't feel guilty at all. Not even a little.
At least when she got angry at him, she did it properly. Sullen silences and dirty looks, and Derek trailing after her like a kicked puppy. Well, maybe less a puppy and more a sarcastic, irritated wolf, but her point was still salient. She had the decency to treat him like shit in an obvious way.
This see-no-evil, telltale-heart crap just wasn't going to cut it.
If only she weren't so horribly sorry for what she'd done, she might have attempted to call him on it. As it stood, she just followed along as he all but skipped in the direction Magic Man had pointed toward, almost knocking him over when he came to an abrupt stop.
"I'm tired," he said, apparently not noticing the fact that she was trying not to fall flat on her face in her efforts to keep from bumping into him.
Or... he did notice and he was delighting in her misery. "Okay..." she replied quietly.
"I think we should bunk down here," he told her. "What do you think? There's only, like, an hour of daylight left or so, and the ground is pretty flat here."
She nodded. Tonight, what Derek wanted, Derek would get. It would be her little punishment for herself. "I'll go find some firewood," she said, letting her bag drop to the ground.
He gave her a confused look but was apparently unwilling to look a gift pack-mule in the mouth. "Yeah, you go do that," he said, putting his own sack down and starting to rummage through it. "I'm gonna see what Magic Man spent my hard-earned cash on."
It didn't take long to find enough wood to start a decent fire, and Derek didn't look ashamed at all as he tossed her the little book of matches. There were only a few left and she made a mental note to try and remember what Magic Man told her about starting fires. If anything. It all happened so fast -- it was hard to remember that they'd only spent a couple of weeks at his house; it felt like years in one way, but at the same time, everything he'd taught her blurred together into a jumbled mess.
"Hey, this jerky stuff isn't half bad," Derek said, chewing thoughtfully on something he'd pulled from his bag. "Wonder what it's made of."
She made a face. "You probably don't want to know."
"Good point." He kept chewing.
As she watched him eat, a tiny thought formed in the back of her head. It grew and grew, until it was almost screaming at her, and she couldn't bear to hold it in any longer. "Um... Derek..." she said carefully.
Oh, boy. This was going to make him furious.
"Yeah?" he asked, looking up from his food. There was a bit of jerky sticking out of the corner of his mouth, but if he was okay with it, then so was she. Tonight, at least.
"We should probably ration our food," she said all in a rush. "We don't know how long it's going to take us to find the Island, and we don't know if we'll be able to hunt along the way."
Narrowing his eyes, he just studied her for a moment.
He was going to blow up, and it was going to be bad. She could hear him now.
Well, if you hadn't gotten us thrown out of town, we wouldn't have to worry about shit like that. Besides, you don't need to eat much, right? We'll be fine, Case. At least, as good as we can be, given that I'm stuck with the biggest loser in Loserville. Maybe a bear will eat you and I won't have to bother letting you tag along any more.
His head tilted to the side.
She was going to throw up.
Jeez, why did he have to draw it out like this? He was killing her by degrees.
His mouth opened. "You know..." he said in that same contemplative tone from earlier. "You're probably right. Good thinking, Spacey."
And he put the little package of jerky back in his bag.
With a sigh, she just buried her head in a bundle of clothing from her sack. He wouldn't be satisfied until he'd reduced her to hysterics, would he?
"Boy, my own sleeping bag," Derek said, sounding satisfied. "Well, it's more like my own bunch of blankets, but it's the thought that counts, right?"
"Right," she agreed miserably.
She wanted to die.
"How much does it suck that it feels like a luxury, too?" He kept doing that. Just being... regular Derek. A pleasanter Derek, even. She was going to go insane.
"I am but mad north by northwest," she muttered to herself.
With a baffled expression, he looked up from his bedding. "What? Are you okay, Case? You've been acting weird all night. Well, weirder than usual, anyway."
Screw Hamlet. She was done waiting for him to jump all over her. "Why don't you just come out and say it, Derek?" she snarled.
He blinked. "What?" he asked dumbly.
"You're mad," she said.
"I am?"
"Furious," she confirmed. "You've been ready to murder me all afternoon. So just put me out of my misery and let me have it. It's the merciful thing to do, Derek!"
Slowly, painfully, he shook his head. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Casey."
Her hands curled into her own blankets, knuckles turning white. "You son-of-a-bitch!" she yelled. "Just admit it!"
"I wasn't angry before," he said with a frown, "but I'm getting there."
"You... but I messed everything up," she stammered in her confusion. "You said I blew our cover, and we had to run out of town and--"
He'd been staring at her, but now he started to laugh.
"You said you were going to get even," she finished lamely.
Tears were running down his face. "You mean you thought... and then I... oh, fuck, Casey..." he howled.
After a long minute, she sighed. "You weren't mad at all, were you?"
"Well, when I thought we were going to be chained up by our toes, I was. But we got out of town with no problem, and now we're on our way home," he said, wiping at his eyes. "But I have to say, that's the most awesome thing I've ever heard -- you totally did worse shit to yourself in two hours than I could have come up with in a month. I mean, look at you; you're a freaking wreck!"
And he was right, damn him. She was shaking all over, the tension that had been building since they started walking releasing all at once, and she couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. In the end, she just curled into a ball and pulled her blanket over her head.
"Hey, you should look at me when I talk to you," Derek said playfully, "I might get angry otherwise."
"I hate you," she said, closing her eyes and tuning out his raucous laughter.
"It's been three days," Derek whined. "What if Magic Man was wrong?"
"What if he wasn't?" she countered evenly.
He gave her a sideways glare. "Don't test my patience, young lady. I'm not done being mad at you."
Lips twitching, she just heaved a dramatic sigh. "Oh, whatever will I do? Derek Venturi is threatening me with his terrifying wrath," she said mockingly. "Derek, can't you just let it go?"
"Not when it's that damn funny," he said. "I'll be rubbing that in your face when you're on your deathbed."
"Oh, God," she said distastefully, "that means you'll be at my deathbed. Well... maybe you'll have the decency to die before me."
He huffed. "As if. I plan on heckling you into an early grave."
"Women have a longer average lifespan than men, statistically speaking," she said in a prim voice.
"Yeah, well, 78 of all statistics are completely made up," he retorted. "Besides, what have I said about Venturis always beating McDonalds? That includes living longer."
With a disdainful sniff, she gave him a nudge. "Given the number of head injuries you've sustained over the years, I wouldn't be taking any bets, there, D-man."
"My aggressive game is paying for my education, so shut up, Miss Priss," he said, dodging her elbow. "And what about you, anyway? If you haven't already developed a bleeding ulcer from freaking yourself out over nothing all the damn time, I'll eat my left shoe."
"If I have an ulcer, it came from spending three years putting up with your bullshit," she retorted with a mocking smile. "Where did you get that statistic about stuff being made up, by the way? I mean, how could they do an accurate study on that sort of thing?"
He snorted. "Typical Casey."
Oh. She got it. "That's... you suck, Venturi," she said, blushing.
"You just don't want to admit that my sense of humor is infinitely superior to yours," he replied loftily.
Shaking her head, she just sighed. "Why does everything have to be a competition with you, Derek? I mean everything. Do you realize we've just spent five minutes arguing about who's going to die first? Don't you think that's weird?"
"Duh," he said with a shrug. "I think every conversation I have with you is weird."
"De-rek," she drawled, only halfway meaning it.
"Personally, I find it kind of offensive that you would use my demise as a diversion from my original question. Given how often I've had the crap beaten out of me lately, it's sort of in poor taste, Case." He gave her a glare, but the corners of his mouth trembled.
She debated whether or not to ignore him, but in the end, she knew that he wouldn't shut up if she did. Plus -- and this was something she wouldn't have admitted out loud for anything, up to and including Chinese water torture -- she was kind of having fun. "What question? I got distracted by you threatening me with death by lame-ass jokes."
"Okay, first point? My jokes are always nothing short of awesome -- if you're too lame to see that, then that's your problem. And second point? You're doing it again," he said, waving an admonishing finger through the air.
"If you don't shut up and ask your damn question, I'm going to shoot you," she retorted, tapping the strap on her quiver warningly. "Someplace painful."
He smirked at her. "My, my, such violence, Miss McDonald."
Struggling to keep from smiling, she cleared her throat and started to unsling her bow.
"Jeez, Casey," he said, wildly flapping his hands at her, "this place has changed you. And not in a good way."
"I'm waiting..." she sing-songed, toying with the bowstring.
"Earlier, I was inquiring as to the possibility of Magic Man erring in his supposition that we would find cooler climes to the north," Derek said in a snobby voice.
"Wow... I can't believe you just used all of those words correctly. Climes?" she echoed teasingly.
"Mostly," he continued as if she hadn't spoken, "because it's so freaking hot that I haven't stopped sweating since two days ago. Do we really have to carry all this shit around?"
"And he's back," she muttered. "Let me put it this way... which is worse: sweating now and being okay later, or being comfortable now and dying of exposure when we do hit snow?"
Eyes narrowing, he hitched his bag higher on his shoulders. "Well... maybe what Magic Man thinks is snow isn't. Maybe his idea of snow is, like, cookies falling from the sky or something."
"Cookies?" she repeated in disbelief.
He shrugged. "You know what I mean. Language difficulties. We probably won't wind up using half of this stuff that he wasted our money on."
She couldn't believe she was actually listening to this. But she took a few seconds to think about it anyway. "Whatever it is in the magic that allows us to understand each other has been pretty accurate so far, though. And the weather around here isn't too different from ours, except for the two suns, obviously. I'd say that snow means snow."
"But--"
"No," she interrupted, shaking her head. "I'd rather be safe than sorry. Besides, it's not like it's that much extra stuff."
His shoulders slumped in a stunning impression of a much younger Marti at her most petulant. "But it's heavy," he whined.
She rolled her eyes. "You big baby. Here, let me carry your bag," she said, yanking it out of his hands. "There, does that make you feel better?"
Scowling, he snatched it back. "No way, princess. I'm not going to let you lord it over me the whole time because you carried everything. I'll do my share."
"Suit yourself," she said, putting her hand over her mouth to hide the smile.
But something must have given her away, because his scowl only deepened. "Oh, shut up, Casey," he said as he stomped off.
"I didn't say anything," she called toward his retreating back, unable to hold in the laughter for any longer.
"See, aren't you glad we kept all of the cold-weather stuff?" she asked chidingly.
He poked at the fire in an increasingly vain effort to keep it going -- it had been getting colder for the last few days, but today was the first time they'd had to walk through snow. Earlier in the day, it had just been on the ground, but some time during the afternoon, it started falling from the sky, and neither of them had any idea how to keep the fire protected.
The wood had been wet and didn't want to start, and once they got the fire going (using a five-dollar-bill from Derek's wallet that he still hadn't stopped pouting about), it kept hissing and smoking as the snow fell. They both huddled around it, but it didn't make much difference.
"Fat lot of good it's doing," he retorted through chattering teeth. "I've never been so cold in my entire life."
She tilted her head and studied him. "You lose most of your body heat through your head." After a split second, she smirked. "That's probably your problem -- your head has always been pretty big."
"Oh... oh, real nice, Case," he said, wrapping shaking arms around himself.
"We're Canadian, you know," she said pointedly, "although no one would know it from looking at you. Derek, you're out on the ice all the time -- aren't you at least a little used to the cold?"
"We're Canadians who live indoors," he spat. "You know, central heating? And when I'm on the ice, I've got fifty pounds of padding on and there's a fucking game going on. I don't have time to get cold."
With one last pathetic splutter, the fire died completely. Even the ashes were black with water.
"Shit," Derek said feelingly.
Sighing, Casey started pulling blankets out of her bag and piling them on top of herself. "Come here," she said before she could think better of it.
He blinked and she noticed that he had snowflakes caught in his eyelashes. "What?"
"If we're going to sleep out here in the open, we're going to need to share body heat. You have any better ideas?" she asked defensively.
His face split into a wide grin, but the bluish tinge to his lips somewhat spoiled the effect. "You know what they say is the best way to stay warm..." he drawled.
"To which I reply: you're a disgusting pig," she said. "Seriously, Derek, do you want to freeze to death?"
Gathering up his own blankets, he made his way over to her, managing to fling snow in her face as he plopped down to the ground. "Let's see... cuddling with Spacey or a slow death by hypothermia... man, that's a tough one..."
She thumped him in the back of the head. "We have to actually be in physical contact for this body heat thing to work, I think."
Together, they spread the blankets over themselves and curled up in the least uncomfortable position they could manage. "Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep like this," Derek muttered.
"Not a whole lot I can do about the no-bathing situation, Venturi, so don't start," she retorted. "And you don't exactly smell like roses either, you know."
"I didn't actually mean that, although now that you mention it, you are a little less than fresh, Case. What I was thinking was more about the fact that every time I breathe in, your hair tries to leap down my throat and suffocate me," he said conversationally.
"Smart hair," she said before she could help herself.
He puffed a sigh of warm air across her scalp and she shivered involuntarily. "What have I said about the constant death threats? They're just not nice."
"Well, hang on, then, Mr. Sensitive." As carefully as she could, she twisted around onto her other side so that she was facing him. "Is this better?"
"Define better," he said with a sarcastic air. "But I think I'm feeling a little warmer."
It might have been her imagination, but her toes did have a bit more feeling in them than they did earlier. "Me, too," she said. "So if we're going to do this, there have to be a couple of ground rules. Well, one, really."
"Let me guess: no wetting the bed. Because it would turn to icicles, and I don't even want to think about--"
"Oh, my God," she exclaimed in horror. "Have you lost your mind?"
She heard the chuckle in his chest long before it escaped his mouth. "Hey," he said defensively, "I think my point is valid."
"Anyway," she said in a firm tone. "What I was thinking is that we make a deal. You don't kick me, and I won't take away your blankets and leave you to die a cold, horrible death."
"Wait, we do all that in our sleep," he said, sounding sort of confused. "Doesn't that mean we can't help doing it?"
It was now or never. Inhaling sharply, she reached out and grabbed his shirt. "If we... tangle up, maybe we won't untangle and do our normal stuff."
His teeth flashed, even in the darkness. "Casey McDonald, are you offering to spoon with me?"
"No," she said through gritted teeth. "I am merely attempting to approach this in a rational, reasonable--"
Laughing, he wrapped his arms around her and tugged. "Well, I'd hate to freeze to death," he said, breath hot on her neck.
She closed her eyes. Even though she was warm and relatively comfortable, and Derek's breathing soon evened out as he drifted off, sleep did not come to her that night. She refused to consider why.
"This is pointless..." Derek moaned.
"Shut up," she said through gritted teeth.
He poked at her with a wrapped finger -- this universe hadn't learned about gloves, apparently, so they'd been forced to rip up a shirt and use it to shield their hands from the cold. "Seriously. I mean, you're the one who always bitches about losing all of the arrows."
"I haven't lost one today, have I?" she countered.
"Yet," he grumbled, prodding her again.
But something moved into her line of sight and she returned his prod with a sharp nudge. "I need to concentrate," she hissed, focusing all of her attention on the animal on the other side of the bushes.
It was possible that he said something, but she'd tuned him out completely.
Right now, there were only two things in her universe: her arrow and the furry creature that looked like a cross between Bambi and a teddy bear that was standing in the clearing, nibbling on an evergreen tree.
A movement to her left told her Derek was definitely trying to get her attention, but that was so unimportant she didn't even bother to tell him to stop it.
Her will was in balance with her need. Just like Magic Man said. Casey took even breaths, staring at the Bambi bear's forehead.
With a steady hand, she drew back her bowstring and let her arrow fly.
"...never hit anything before," Derek said loudly, abruptly coming back into focus. "Whoa!"
"Got it," she said, satisfied. "Come on." She pushed her way through the branches and started walking toward her kill, but when she glanced back, he was still standing there with a dumbfounded expression on his face.
"But you..." he stammered with a wild-eyed look, "you just..."
Casey put an impatient hand on her hip. "You have to help me, Derek. Now, come on."
"How the hell did you do that?" he asked as he climbed out of the bushes. "You can't hit the broad side of a barn."
That stung a little, but she wasn't going to let him take the wind out of her sails today. "Magic Man said that since I used my magic to hit the knight before, I could probably do it again if I wanted to. Although someone was kind of making it hard for me to focus."
As they approached the carcass, Derek paled. "Oh, jeez, you shot it in the head," he said, sounding disgusted.
She pulled her knife out of her pocket. "Help me get its legs -- you need to hold it upside down."
"It's like a smelly Care Bear," he said, grabbing the back legs and hoisting them into the air. "You're not actually going to make me eat this thing, are you? It looks like it ought to be named Fluffy and have a ribbon around its neck."
"Well," she grunted, slashing the animal's throat and letting the blood drain onto the snow. "Your alternative is exactly half a piece of jerky and one of those raisin-looking things."
He turned green at the sight of the blood. "What did you do that for?" he asked, gagging on the words.
"Meat's not edible if there's blood in it," she said. "Keep holding it like that -- I need to skin it."
His hands twitched, but to his credit, his expression stayed pretty calm. "I know I've asked before, but where the hell did you learn to do all this weird stuff, Casey?"
What harm could it really do to tell him? "Summer camp," she said with a bitter laugh.
"No way," he replied. "You were only, like, nine or something. They don't teach that kind of shit to nine-year-olds."
"They do when they're psychotic ex-military men who are convinced that the camp is going to be attacked by the Viet Cong," she said shortly, slipping the blade of the knife under the animal's skin and yanking.
"Dude..." he said in an admiring voice. "No kidding?"
The carcass slid out of its skin by degrees, and Casey impatiently cracked the joints so that only the torso came free. As much as she hated to be wasteful, that was all they could reasonably carry. The bloody muscle felt awful, but she wasn't about to let Derek know that she was just as horrified by what she was doing as he was.
"They fired him when they found out how batshit crazy he was," she said, mostly to distract herself from the task at hand. "But if he hadn't been, we'd be stranded out here with no idea how to do any of that kind of stuff."
"I can't decide whether or not that would be better," Derek replied, staring at the meat in her hands. "Do... do you need help with that?"
She took mercy on him. "Nah, I got it."
"I have to admit, Casey," he said, chewing as he spoke, "roasted Care Bear isn't half bad."
"Could you please stop calling it that?" she asked, rolling her eyes. "It's bad enough that I had to kill it."
Now that the meat had been skinned and cooked, Derek appeared to be much more casual about the whole thing. "Come on. It's the circle of life, Case. Didn't you see Bambi as a kid?"
"Says the boy who practically threw up as he just watched me skin it," she said sarcastically. "How can you be so flip about it now?"
He shrugged. "Just because I don't want to know exactly which animal my supper comes from doesn't mean that I don't get that meat comes from killing stuff."
"Then you get to do it next time," she said pointedly. "I'll even show you how to butcher and dress it, if you want."
"Now why would I do that?" he asked with a grin. "You're the hunting expert, princess. I mean, you've even got the magical archery powers; how can I possibly compare?"
Shaking her head, she fed a few twigs into the fire. "Flattery doesn't work when it's bullshit, Derek. Even you should know that."
Something rustled in the bushes, but both of them ignored it. Magic Man had been right when he told them that they were heading out into the middle of nowhere; no one was going to bother them all the way out here.
"Maybe I was being serious," he said. "Well, sort of," he amended when she shot him a disbelieving look. "But you have to admit, Case, I'm good when we're in town, but out here, I'm crap at stuff. I can carry my bag and walk in the snow while you go all deerstalker or whatever, but that's basically it."
"Oh, come on, Derek," she said. "That's not... true." But even as she spoke, she realized that she wasn't telling the truth.
He grinned. "You suck at lying, Case. But don't think I don't appreciate the effort."
"Shut up," she retorted, blushing bright red. "I'm not good at any of it."
"I'll deny ever saying this, but you're better at it than I am," he said, poking at the fire with a particularly long stick. "Just at this one thing. You can be good at outdoor stuff, and I'll keep kicking your ass at everything else."
"As long as you're so modest about it," she told him with a wry twist of her lips. "I've always found humility to be one of your more appealing character traits."
Abandoning the stick to the flames, he pointed triumphantly at her. "Aha!" he exclaimed. "So you do think I have appealing character traits!"
"Sarcasm, Venturi," she replied condescendingly. "I know you're intimately familiar with it."
A wide smirk crossed his face. "You said intimate," he said in a teasing voice.
"What are you? Four?"
Another rustle cut off his retort, this one too loud to ignore.
"Probably just a rabbit or whatever they call rabbit-esque things around here," he instead said calmly.
"Yeah," she agreed, not believing it for an instant. Rabbit-sized things didn't make that much noise.
His hand twitched. "We know it's not a person, though. There's no one for miles. And it's not really all that weird that an animal would be attracted to the smell of cooking meat."
"Sure." One-word answers were good; she could control her sudden and irrational fear a little better if she knew she didn't have to talk much.
The twitching hand came to rest on the hilt of his sword, and Casey wondered when he'd started wearing it again; somehow, she hadn't noticed until now. "Maybe I should..."
"Don't," she said quickly. "If it's an animal, maybe it'll just go away."
The fire popped and both of them flinched.
Derek laughed nervously. "We're both being stupid, you know."
This time they could actually see the branches move, and they froze in place.
What happened next, Casey remembered only in hazy slow motion.
Something hairy and enormous coming out of the trees and lunging toward their little camp.
Derek pulling out his sword and yelling at her to get her bow.
A hard paw on her back as she fumbled through her bag, claws ripping her shirt.
Derek shouting her name.
The paw flinging her through the air.
Rolling. Rolling through the snow, pain when her bleeding back made contact with the ground.
Falling and screaming and grabbing at anything.
Derek's name in her voice when it occurred to her that he was up there alone with... that thing.
And then darkness.
The only reason she woke up at all was because Derek wouldn't let her sleep. She was warm and comfortable and he had to go and yell...
Wait. She wasn't warm and she definitely wasn't comfortable.
Her eyes opened to dim moonlight and she saw that when she'd fallen off the cliff--
Cliff?
When she'd fallen, she'd managed to get wedged on a tree root. Which probably saved her life. She chanced a glance down into the gorge and almost passed out again.
But Derek was still shouting at her.
"I'm fine," she called up to him in a rusty voice.
"I thought you were dead," he said. Or that's what she thought he said, anyway. Everything was kind of fuzzy -- maybe she hit her head during the fall.
"Why were you shouting at me if you thought I was dead?" she asked, genuinely confused.
"Jesus, Casey," he said. "Can you reach my hand?"
She shook her head and then realized how stupid that was. "I can't even see it," she said.
After another few minutes, something hit her in the face. "Grab on," Derek said. "I'll pull you up."
It was a rope. He'd tied a loop at the end, big enough for her to get both her hands through. She settled for just one, though, pulling at the knot so her wrist was secured. If she slipped, her shoulder would be dislocated, but at least she probably wouldn't fall to her death. "Got it," she called.
"Okay," he said, and the rope went taut.
She was going to be stuck down in this hole forever. Derek was obviously working hard, but she was only moving inches. She wasn't finding many footholds, and her arms were getting tired quickly. "Derek..." she gasped.
"Just a little bit more, Case," he said.
"Liar," she wheezed, looking up at the impossible expanse of rock between her feet and safety. "My arms..."
"Don't think about it," he told her firmly. "Just keep walking."
Twenty eternities passed, and Casey was sure she was going to fall to her death at any second as she practically crawled up the cliff. In the instant before the muscles in her arms failed completely, she felt hands go around her waist and tug her back over the edge.
"Fuck," Derek muttered, pulling her back to camp.
His face was white. Why was he so pale? He didn't look injured.
"Derek..." she whispered. She needed to sit down -- her arms and legs were going to give out the instant he let her go.
"I'm sorry, Casey," he gasped. "You were... and I couldn't... and shit, Casey."
Baffled, she could only gape at him. "What?"
"You were almost killed," he said, still hanging onto her waist.
All she could think of saying was, "But I wasn't."
"Too close," he mumbled, shaking his head. "You were too close."
And then she was pressed against him and his mouth was on hers and she forgot that she was dizzy and she was going to shatter into a million pieces because Derek Venturi was kissing her.
Before she could even think of doing anything else, her mouth slipped open and her arms curled around his shoulders. Derek Venturi was kissing her -- what else could she do?
His hands were in her hair, his lips moved on hers, and she honest-to-God moaned.
It was like a switch flipped and they were back to reality.
She tore away from him and almost fell into the fire for her efforts.
Blinking, Derek just stared at her, his eyes full of emotion that she didn't understand and was definitely not going to ask about.
Her mouth formed around the word no, and he spun on a heel and vanished into the forest without a sound.
Casey finally allowed herself to collapse in the snow and hurt in earnest. Her lips tingled from their kiss, and she traced over them with a single finger.
What the fuck were they going to do now?
Actual A/N: Fear not... I have no intention of not updating for three weeks. I have a bit of a break in my schedule and therefore more time for writing -- I wouldn't have left it in a place like that otherwise :)
