Most of their friends from Queen's were over at Casey and Derek's joint apartment on campus for a small holiday party. It was supposed to be the last hurray for the semester before packing up and heading home the next day.

About half way through the party as they were all sitting in the living room area, evenly spaced out on various chairs and couches, they started talking about presents.

"I wanted to get you all something, but I'm way too broke to get something for everyone," a friend of theirs, Ashley lamented.

Dan, Derek's first roommate at Queen's, agreed. "We should have done a Secret Santa. That way we'd only have to buy for one person, but everyone would have gotten something."

"Maybe we still could…?" Casey chirped in. "I mean, we can all send packages via the post office, right?" she asked with a laugh, causing everyone else to laugh too and comply.

Casey wrote everyone's name on a small piece of paper, folded it, and then placed it in a ski hat that someone had left on the table.

The hat began its way around the room. Each of his friends picking one before passing it on. When the hat finally reached Derek, there were only a few left to take. He quickly picked one and shoved the hat to one of his hockey buddies next.

"Alright," Dan said, picking out the last slip for himself. "Take a look at who you got."

All at once everyone opened theirs. Derek easily opened the paper up, but it revealed the name he was dreading the most: Casey.

"Casey, huh?" a hockey teammate, Jaxon said, looking at Derek's slip over his shoulder.

"Hey, you weren't supposed to be looking."

Jaxon's shrugged. "I'm trying to find who has me so I can drop some hints about what I like."

Derek chuckled at his friend's logic, but was quickly interrupted by Casey's laugh permeating through the apartment's chatter. He looked up to see her lounging on the couch, talking freely. Why did she have to be so beautiful doing everything and nothing?

"So…what are you going to get her?" Jaxon asked.

Derek crumpled the slip in his hand, stuffing it in his hoodie pocket. "I have no clue," he responded stoically, finally tearing his eyes from his stepsister.

"What do you usually get her?"

"Socks…" he admitted within a cough.

"Socks?" Jaxon repeated incredulously. "Did I hear that correctly?"

Derek sighed. "First Christmas I did it because I didn't know her enough to know what she would want. It annoyed her so much though that I decided to get it for the next Christmas and the one after that. Then it kinda became a tradition," he explained, snickering slightly at the silliness of it.

"No wonder she hasn't fallen into your arms yet, Venturi," Jaxon joked, ribbing him. Derek rolled his eyes, not feeling that the comment dignified a proper response. Apparently everyone in their group of friends knew Derek had a thing for Casey, except for Casey, of course.

"I've gotten better. I add gift cards now," Derek added with a smirk.

Jaxon only shook his head at his friend's weird ways. "Well, maybe this Secret Santa can be used to get the ball rolling."

Derek looked over his friend in confusion. "How so?"

"Get her something nice," his friend added simply. "Something that is not a sock."

"I don't know, man," Derek said unsurely. The mere thought was sending his stomach into massive waves of nausea.

"Dude, we're doing Secret Santa. And because we're just mailing them out, you can 'forget'," Jaxon said, air-quoting around the word forget, "to say who it was from. Use that to your advantage. Get her something nice, and then it's be up to you to tell her or not."

"It's our last year," Derek began, grimacing.

"Exactly! Next semester you're graduating. After you graduate, you guys might end up going different ways, meaning your chances of telling her are going to get slimmer and slimmer. Soon enough, she's going to show up with a fiancé and your chances are going to be completely gone," his friend told him imploringly. "Take the chance, man. Be the Italian Stallion we know you are."

Contemplating, Derek looked up at Casey from across the room. She was listening to their friend Ashley drone on and on about God knows what. Her smile was growing wider and wider, which only meant that Casey was getting more and more bored.

Her eyes drifted off to the side as she glanced around the room fleetingly, before they met his. Having his attention, she smiled serenely at him. Derek used his hand as a puppet to mock Ashley's never-ending diatribe, to which she giggled at.

Derek sighed, his stomach rolling and twisting. Maybe it was finally time.

…

"It's so not fair," Casey said, pouting from her spot on the couch a week later. "You got your Secret Santa present the day after we got home!"

He had. It had been a Maple Leafs' T-Shirt.

Derek chuckled from his recliner. He leaned back leisurely with his hands behind his head as he smirked smugly at his stepsister. "Maybe your Secret Santa forgot about you. Or, better yet, maybe they don't like you enough to get you one."

Casey blanched. "Do you think so?" she asked worriedly. He could see her mentally going through her interactions with all of their friends to see where she might have went wrong.

He probably should have stopped her, but seeing her freak out still amused him to no end. Plus, he knew her gift was coming that day, having paid the postman to deliver it, specifically, the day before Christmas Eve.

Not even an hour later, the McDonald-Venturi doorbell rang. Casey got up from the couch to answer the door, where she then greeted by a delivery man.

After she wished the delivery man a good holiday and closed the door, Derek's stepsister squealed happily in delight. "This has to be my Secret Santa present!"

She excitedly sat down on the couch as she ripped open the post office box. From there, she took out another box, this one much smaller and wrapped in wrapping paper.

Derek leaned forward in his chair, anxious to see her reaction, despite not knowing whether he was ever going to own up to being her Secret Santa or not.

Casey carefully opened the present, only to still when she saw it was a jewelry box. She furrowed her brow before slowly opening up the lid. When she did, her breath hitched.

"What's the matter?" Derek wondered. Did he she not like it?

"This is so…," Casey started but stopped as she took the charm bracelet out, holding in her hands delicately. "It's so beautiful. But, it must have cost a lot!" she said, shaking her head.

Casey immediately scavenged the two boxes for her Secret Santa's name, but came up with nothing. She frowned, extremely disappointed that hers hadn't revealed themselves.

"I just wish I could say thank-you," she whispered.

Derek swallowed nervously. His heart was racing. His stomach contents were tumbling. He wanted to owe up to it. Wanted to tell Casey it was him. However, he knew she would then ask why he went through all the trouble and spent so much money, and he wasn't sure if he could answer those questions without feeling like an idiot.

Shrugging, Casey put on the bracelet and admired it for the rest of the evening.

…

It was Christmas Eve night. The whole family had just set out all their presents for each other under the tree for easier access the next morning. But after everyone had retired to their rooms besides Derek and Casey, the latter was still by the tree, making sure all her gifts were accounted for.

"I can't find Lizzie's gift," she murmured, looking in all the piles once again to double check. "Yeah, it's not here."

"Maybe it's still in the car," Derek suggested as he channel surfed.

Casey pursed her lips. "I guess I'll have to go check," she said, moving over to the key bowl near the door to fish out the Prince's. "Grr, and I left my coat upstairs," she complained. "Can I just use your hoodie, Der?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said, distracted, having found something mildly interesting on TV.

Casey was back within a minute, Lizzie's present in hand as she walked back inside. "So it was there!" Derek said.

"Yeah…" Casey let out absentmindedly, laying the present under the tree with the rest of Lizzie's stuff. She continued to stand in front of the tree, while both her hands and feet started fidgeting

Derek instantly noticed her weird behavior. "Is something wrong? Was it damaged or something?"

She turned to Derek sharply. "You are my Secret Santa?"

Derek noticeably paled. "Wha? Why would you think that?"

She fished her hand inside the hoodie pocket and showed Derek the slip with Casey's name on it. Derek cursed under his breath. He never threw it away.

"So?" Casey let out impatiently.

Derek sputtered. "What? You obviously already know."

Casey groaned. "Derek, why didn't you tell me? Especially when you saw how upset I was when I didn't know!"

"I just wanted to get you something nice. Something to show you how I…how I…f-f-feel…"

"How you feel?" she repeated softly.

Derek threw his head into his hands, trying to hide his embarrassment. "I told Jaxon this was going to be bad idea," he mumbled.

"What does Jaxon have to do with this?"

Derek sighed, facing Casey and taking in her presence. She was still wearing his hoodie, though she looked like she was actually swimming in it since it went down to her knees. She looked so huggable, so that's what he did. He went over to her and hugged her.

It took her a moment, but eventually she wrapped her arms around him too, holding him just as tight.

"Derek?" she said into his shirt puzzlingly.

Derek closed his eyes, relishing the feeling of her finally in his arms. "Jaxon thought it would be a good idea to get you something worth wile. To impress you," he told her apprehensively.

"Why would you want to impress me?" She sounded so confused.

Derek nervously chuckled. "Because…I'm kinda crazy about you, and Jaxon and the rest of our friends are tired of seeing me not do anything about it."

Casey pulled back, but only enough to look at Derek properly. "I love the bracelet, Derek, but you didn't have to buy that to impress me."

Derek smirked. "No?"

She shook her head, smiling. "You could have gotten me heart patterned socks," she said, and Derek let out a hearty laugh, "and I would have reacted the same if you just came out and told me how you felt."

Derek's heart was racing like he'd just ran a marathon. "And how do you feel?"

Casey smiled and lifted her hands to hold his face gently in her hands. Derek could feel the cool metal of the bracelet against his cheek and it made him smile. "Crazy about you too," she admitted before leaning in to give him a long-awaited kiss.

A/N: Not one of my favorites, but I still thought there was a good batch of cute moments. The problem with doing daily one-shots and writing them the day of is that I don't have enough time to perfect them to my liking. Lol. Oh well. Big thanks to othfan67 (Adie) for the prompt idea though! :)

PLEASE REVIEW with your thoughts!

Happy Holidays!