At long last! I'm FINISHED. (victory is so mine.) This one-shot ate my brain. There are like...four different versions of it, and this is the only one that didn't end in Porn. (I'll probably try to make something of the other versions eventually, because who doesn't like the sexitiemz?)
Anydiddle.
Thanks for the patience, loves, and the many, many, many spectacular reviews. Lots of you have commented on every chapter, constructively and faithfully (WLS, Chica, Frogster, fire, Pennie, shangri-la, mayfair, and on and on and on), and I LOVE YOU GUYS LIKE BURNING.
*ahem*
I'm gonna Get On With It Already and shuffle off to do something (un)important and (un)productive.
Warnings: UST leaking out of pores, gratuitous tickling, slips galore (of the Freudian variety), unabashed drunkination, etc.
[must i really make this (depressing) declaration every chapter? need i remind everyone (including myself) that i DON'T own Michael or his Sex Eyes or his Swishy Hair or his...his VOICE...? *weeps*]
::in which alcohol is -not for the first time- an excellently convenient plot device::
Derek doesn't think she's been sleeping much in between all the studying they've been doing. There's no way to confirm this, of course, and he doubts she'd admit it to him if he asked (not that he ever would, lest she mistakenly assume he cares), but he has his suspicions all the same.
"—but that's the third one in a row I got wrong! What am I goinna do if I totally space when it comes time to take the test? What sort of future am I going to have if I can't even…if I can't even pass my freshman midterms! What's that gonna mean for the rest of my university career? How am I ever going to get an internship with these sorts of grades? I'll…I'll be lucky to be a foot doctor!"
This, in addition to the fact that she's been generally twitchy and shaking like a Parkinson's patient for almost a day now, in between downing more coffee and candy and energy drinks (and the occasional packet of Pure Cane Sugar) than he was aware a single person could ingest without undergoing some sort of nervous breakdown.
He's beginning to worry, in this state, that her (many, many) death threats may eventually become attempts.
Luckily, he has a Plan.
"Derek," she mumbles dreamily, her face scrunched up thoughtfully, and doesn't wait for the answering echo of her name, "I think I'm drunk." She rolls him a Suspicious Glance (or at least he suspects that's what it's supposed to be –he's in no position to judge one way or the other, but he's familiar enough with that particular tone of voice to know it's usually accompanied by a Suspicious Glance) that takes a few seconds to finally settle into place. "Did you make me drunk?"
He considers his answer carefully, wading through a bothersome amount of unhelpful, inebriation-inspired comments which keep popping around in his head like so many jumping beans, needing only the slightest push to go tumbling gracelessly out of his mouth (things like: 'why are your legs so long?' and 'why is your hair so shiny?' and even, 'just out of curiosity, what is the Canadian policy on incest?').
"That depends," he wonders if he can make the world stop spinning if he closes his eyes. (Nope. If anything, that makes it worse.)
"It can't 'depend.'" She says forcefully, and then makes a strange face, like maybe there's logic behind why that's true, but she's having a difficult time puzzling out what that logic might be. Which is fine with him, actually, since he's having a difficult time keeping track of which direction the floor is. "You either did or you didn't."
"In that case, then." He squints to see if that helps his perspective issues at all. It does, a little. "No." He has trouble discerning the expression on her face (what with the squinting and all), but he has reason to believe she's glaring at him.
"I don't believe you." She says, rather sourly, and he hears her crossing her arms (yes, he hears it; the alcohol has apparently given him supersonic auditory powers –it's either that or he just knows Casey so well he can practically act out her part in all of this, and he's not sure he's comfortable with that scenario).
"Laudable desirability." He burbles eloquently, and then cracks one eye open all the way to see her furrowing her brows at him.
"What?"
"Plausible deniability." He amends, and thinks that sounds more right than whatever it was he'd said before. (He's having a lot of trouble keeping track of this conversation, and the really irritating thing is that it's more funny than it is irritating.)
"You don't even know what that means." She sounds quite sure of this, and he spares a thought to marvel insanely at how shapely her toes are.
"Doesn't mean I don't have it." He decides to stand. It does interesting swirly-type things to most of the shapes and colors in the room. (It doesn't affect his image of Casey, however, who is even now as he realizes it standing up right beside him, gazing mistrustfully at the unlabeled beverage in her grasp.) He wants to challenge her to prove him wrong, maybe watch her trip and stumble her way into his kitchen, but she's close enough he can smell the pineapple of her lip gloss, and he loses his train of thought.
Feeling the sudden need to defend himself (when he finds himself bafflingly unable to drag his gaze away from her lips-eyes-chest),
"Do you have no idea about how many times I hafta tell people I'm not dating you?" He glares at her critically. "I am not dating you, Casey."
"I know that, Derek." She says, clearly humoring him, because she's still intensely focused on the bottle in her hand.
"I don't even like you." She frowns indignantly up at him and sways a little on her feet. Almost unconsciously, he wraps a loose arm around her and plants a hand at the base of her spine to steady her.
"You're not my favorite person either, ya know."
"Why don't they believe me?" He asks her pleadingly. And then, unbidden, "Do you know they have a pool?" Her mouth juts into a soft pout and he's not sure why it suddenly occurs to him that life is simply Not Fair.
"Who has a pool?" But he's already moved on, primarily because there's no way he's going to let her know that most of his hockey team has a running wager concerning when he and Casey will 'finally just have sex already.' Granted, he's yet to set them straight on the whole step-sibling issue (or even so much as bring it up), but the very idea that he and Casey would ever…would ever…
(No. Never.)
"Talk about lobbable definability." Just as he's considering that that probably hadn't come out quite the way he'd intended, she starts giggling, really giggling, and as she tips left, his other arms snaps out automatically to brace her at the shoulder –'automatically' because most of his mental faculties are currently occupied memorizing the bewildering sound of pure merriment coming from…from Casey. (Now currently in his arms.)
(They are definitely drunk.)
"Plausible deniability, you retard." She's still smiling when she finally looks at him again, and when she cocks her head experimentally to one side, the entire planet tilts in that direction and balance quickly becomes an issue. With the twinkle of epiphany shining in her (horrible, awful, no-good-very-bad) eyes and a devilish smirk (that he knows spells Impending Doom) cutting across her face, she leans right precariously, toward the sofa, and he careens powerlessly where she's steered him, releasing her at the last second so as not to pull her down with him (the last thing he needs right now is to be wearing his sister).
(Script Edit: Step-sister.)
He regrets the decision immediately, though, when she tucks her hands against her stomach and starts laughing at him. (The witch.)
"I…" She staggers, catches herself with a wide, goofy grin. He doesn't appreciate how much she appears to be enjoying herself at his expense. "I think you're drunk, too."
"I don't get drunk." He lies, because it pleases him to do so. "Certainly not on chick liquor." He adds as a reflective afterthought, inadvertently focused on a sliver of skin peeking at him from where her tiny shirt has ridden up (and her sweatpants have ridden down).
"A-HA!" She crows in triumph, startling his gaze guiltily away from where it'd been mere seconds away from being permanently glued. "I knew there was alcohol in these things!" Casey reels slightly as she wields her empty bottle at him, and he watches her in amusement as she flailingly recovers herself. Then she throws him an accusatory glare. "That means you did get me shrunk!" He has absolutely no chance of stopping the goofy grin that curls his lips. Her glare develops a sinister aspect. "Why did you get me drunk?" He blinks innocently up at her.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." He maintains, and thinks he might try to stand again in a moment if the room will just stay still for five seconds.
"De-rek!"
(Cue: Out-of-Body Experience sequence.)
When he was five or six or seven (sometime before his voice dropped to its current Raspy-Sex-God timbre and girls became fascinating in ways beyond their mysterious cootie infestations), his mother had taken him to an outdoor market to see how saltwater taffy was made. Derek remembers standing before the towering machine, hypnotically transfixed as two long, thin, spinning robot arms pulled huge, thick gobs of the stuff in opposing directions at –what seemed to him to be—the precise instant they met in the middle to fold the candy back over itself.
This memory comes slamming back to him in this moment because, as Casey's voice cracks his name into halves (in his new Bose Inebriation-Enhanced Surround Sound), his mind requires an appropriate visual to explain the way his stomach suddenly feels. He imagines the taffy must've been suffering similar turmoil. (He starts mentally ticking off the name of every deity he knows, sending up short, desperate prayers that this unfriendly stirring is wholly and completely the fault of the liquor.)
"You're paranoid. And delusional. And loud." Furthermore, "Why in the world would I want to get you drunk? It was bad enough when there was just one of you." (Is he even making sense anymore?)
"I…what?" (Apparently not.) In hindsight, she probably can't tell he's seeing three of her. In irritatingly perfect detail.
"Don't say like that to me. Look at me. Like that. To me." He shakes his head and concentrates very, very hard. "You've been awake for like, three days straight. You've probably just…finally cracked or something."
Oh, look. The highly anticipated sequel to the Suspicious Glance: Menacing Skepticism.
"I have not been awake for four days."
"Three, Case."
"Three days, then." She corrects, unflinching at the eyebrow he lifts in her general direction. "I sleep." She asserts with a sort of wibbling conviction, and then proceeds to exhibit every tell for deception in The Book. (Someday, he's going to learn this girl to tell a proper lie.)
"Even if that were true," he begins, carefully, "which it isn't, that doesn't eliminate the possibility that you've been moving steadily toward full-blown Crazy since you were born, which you most definitely have." He's pretty sure that'd all been coherent. (The mental applause for this stunning feat is deafening.)
"You weren't even there when I was born! You're not my real brother." She slurs, rather non-sequitur (Casey has clearly been at the mind probe again, slipping strange words into his vocabulary while he slumbers) and off-topic, in his opinion.
"…what?" He fumbles, trying to follow her. (Had she just completely skipped over the whole part where he'd called her 'crazy?' Weren't they focusing on the wrong issue? Why must all three of her have such blue eyes?) "Obviously I'm not your 'real brother.' Us, sharing bodily fluids?" There has to've been another way to phrase that question, he thinks; a way that doesn't involve all the air in the room heating uncomfortably. (Foot, meet mouth. You are going to be fast friends, most definitely.) "Gross." He finally croaks, and wonders impatiently why the couch won't just get to swallowing him already.
"Disgusting." Her echo of agreement comes several, several beats after he expects it, and just as the alcohol is preparing to manufacture some creative explanations for the obnoxious 'WHY?' banging around in his skull, she starts yelling again. "Stop changing the subject!"
"What subject?" He demands in frustration, genuinely lost. Why can't she just stick with one topic at a time? Is it really so difficult?
"I'm not crazy!" (Aaaaaand now, he has whiplash.)
"Says the crazy, shrieking person." She stomps her foot in what looks to be Nuclear Frustration.
"YOU got me drunk! I am NOT crazy! I –WE are underage!" Saying it out loud seems to make the realization real for her. "Oh, GOD! Derek, we're criminals! We're going to jail!" She regards him anxiously. "We can't take our midterms in JAIL!"
"Case—"
"WHY must you always do such horrible things? Why must you sabotage everything! Like my…my birthdays! And my proms! And my love life!" (…what?) "And my…life life! Why are you so…evil?" He's not totally certain anymore, but he's pretty sure all this hysteria is the opposite of what he'd been going for when he'd decided to get her drunk. "And why do I always end up paying for your stupidity! How do I always get pulled down with you!"
Casey punctuates this accusation-inquiry by losing her balance, clumsily smashing her knee against the couch frame and then –bodily—smacking into him. (Emphasis on 'smacking' –her hands, held out instinctively to catch herself, slap into his face as she collapses into a sprawl on top of him.)
"Ouch!" His own hand flies to his right eye, where she'd accidentally struck him. "Case, what the hell—" Then (of course, because what good is injury without mortifying insult?) she's scrambling to sit up in his lap, thighs wrapping loosely around him, knees locking into the sofa cushions behind him, and it takes him one long, senseless moment to realize she's frantically apologizing (amidst comforting avowals that 'even if he deserved it, she still didn't mean it—'), horror speeding her breath and widening her eyes while her fingers wreak cool, tentative havoc at his jaw and cheeks.
And then, several seconds later, he remembers, oh yeah, he's in a bit of pain here, and Casey's fingers (good intentioned though they may be in the aftermath of their bout of violence) flying into his eyeball would hardly be therapeutic, so he clamps the afflicted eye shut and reaches up to wrap his hands around her small wrists, pulling them slowly back and down into her lap, holding them there when she tries to lift them again.
"I'd prefer to keep that eye, Klutzilla." He teases, and starts blinking experimentally. She watches him in silence while he adjusts (to the dimming pain in his eye, as well as the feeling of a Casey melding so perfectly against him). Then, at long last, when he's on the verge of Something-That-Definitely-Isn't-Panic, trying to decide what he's (NOT) going to do when she starts to shuffle off of him (not that he wants her there –he doesn't),
"I hate it when you call me that." She says, subdued. Her hands rotate smoothly in his, and her fingers splay delicately against his abdomen (which tightens painfully in response).
"Well, that is why it's funny…" She glowers unthreateningly at him. Then she smiles softly. (And good god, this girl and her mood swings!)
"I'm sorry I hit you in the face." She reiterates, and then starts laughing again, at least attempting restraint before she gives up and falls against him, shaking with mirth. If this wasn't all so very surreal (to the point where he's having to consider seriously the possibility that he's slipped into an alcohol-induced coma and is simply having a horribly disturbing nightmare), he figures he'd probably be dissolving into hysterics right along with her. "But it felt…" She pauses to take a couple of deep, trembling breaths, "really good."
"I will have my revenge." He vows dangerously, but she just squirms playfully in his lap and jabs him in the stomach. He jerks involuntarily in surprise, and suddenly Casey's got a maniacal gleam in her eyes to match the smirk curling its way across her lips.
"Awww…is Der-bear mad?" She leans forward and his fingers tense convulsively around her wrists. "Poor, poor Der-bear." Whisper-soft, her lips brush over the shell of his ear (-what the hell is she doing?-), and the slow burn that begins in his belly flares suddenly into his brain and renders him incapable of speech.
(Is the air…throbbing?)
Almost unconsciously, he feels his grip relaxing where he holds her, and then he's just improvising, moving where the sleepy persuasion of the alcohol bids him, sliding over thin arms and curling under elbows, making the jump from arms to hips in one smooth leap, and if he falters, suddenly unsteady when his palm encounters the same bare flesh he'd been eyeing earlier, it's only because an important synapse has been detonated in his brain.
After that, his mind makes the decision to detach itself from the moment, lingering nearby only to make casual observations about the slow, heavy quality of the world; the way time stretches and curls its toes, in no hurry allow him to move past the (horrifying) brush of sharp, tingling awareness that accompanies exploding nerve endings when his fingers carve soft, shallow valleys into the skin of her hip and her own hands roll into fists against his stomach.
And he has no idea where this is going or why (his mind is still just there, on the sidelines, watching things play out, showing discouragingly low interest), but he wants to touch more of her, so he does. (Magically, the room stops spinning.) His heart is slamming so hard in his chest that his fingertips have a pulse, and he feels his stomach muscles knot and tighten (with something familiarly primal and frighteningly dark) as his hands pull up along her sides, gliding over lean curves and displacing fabric and—
—his pants are starting to chafe.
(Oh, fucking damn it.)
"Casey," he bites out, trying really, really hard to care about the fact that there's probably nothing okay about what's happening here.
Luckily, as it turns out, a smashed Casey is not the most brilliant or perceptive Casey, and her response (following with merciful haste in the wake of his…budding development) is to retaliate to what she takes as an innocuous assault:
"I'm not the ticklish one here, Venturi." She gifts him with a devious grin (which lasts long enough for his brain to pop back into his head with a frantic cry of alarm) and a sinister chuckle (which sets the room to twirling again), and then (oh-dear-god-no-no-NO) she's tickling him.
It's nothing like being tied to a chair by a twelve-year-old and torture-tickled by Smarti; at least there he could pretend control over himself, at least there he'd had the presence of mind to attempt some semblance of dignity, at least there his sister had actually been his sister –but now? Now Derek's the one giggling uncontrollably, and Casey's fingers are dancing clumsily –albeit with aggravating effectiveness—over his ribs, skittering over his abs, sweeping down, across his stomach and tripping over his belt while he spasms beneath her, helpless and completely at her mercy. He feels himself collapsing sideways, clawing at the arm of the sofa to try to escape the onslaught, but she only follows him over, legs fastening around his hips while his gut clenches with laughter and something else entirely; something wilder and harder to define or resist –something which must be immediately and violently smothered, his mind urges, through the thick fog of inebriation.
So he launches his counter-attack, flailing and twisting until his superior weight tumbles them over the lip of the sofa and onto the floor, where they land hard enough to steal the breath from both of them. Derek recovers first and retrieves Casey's wrists, dropping his weight slowly until her hands are trapped between them, and after that he's just breathing heavily against her, waiting.
(What for…? He's got no idea.)
Eventually, she recuperates, and then they're just a couple of drunk people staring at each other on the floor (except they're not: they're Derek and Casey and their parents are married), and he keeps waiting for the wrongness to settle in and send him rocketing away from her, but it…it doesn't, and what the hell is he supposed to do with that? How—
Casey leans up and buries her nose in his neck.
"When was the last time you bathed, Derek?" There is a brief –though intense—battle waged in his mind that ends with him closing his eyes and trying to imagine that the (very warm and soft) person beneath him is…well, anyone other than who it actually is.
"I'm tellin' you, Case, the ladies prefer my natural aroma."
"I think you're confusing aroma with stench."
"Same difference." He says, and doesn't open his eyes to see if she's picked up on the meaning he'd accidentally packed into the statement. They pop open on their own, anyway, when she starts wriggling against him, and before he knows what's happening, she's tucked snugly into him, murmuring something mostly unintelligible (although he thinks she mentions something about 'vengeance for drunkinating') while her eyes drift shut and her breathing gradually evens out. Maybe fifteen seconds after this brand new inexplicable turn of events (one of the very, very many that've taken place this evening), she's snoring softly, leaving him lying there, curled around her, wondering what the hell is wrong with his head and vowing earnestly to never touch alcohol ever again.
Derek doesn't recall making any sort of conscious decision to fall asleep in this unspeakable position (in fact, he's fairly sure he meant to Evacuate Immediately), but there's something (morbidly) fascinating about watching Casey sleeping (because who knew this lunatic girl actually ever rested?) beside him, and the gentle rhythm pulls him under before he has the chance to stop it.
Derek wakes to three separate (and equally worrying) horrors the next morning: first, someone has apparently taken a sledgehammer to his skull (because even breathing makes his head throb painfully); secondly, he doesn't remember a damn thing about the night before (though he has the distinct impression, distressingly, that he's probably forgotten Something Important); and finally…he's so tightly-fitted against Casey he may as well be a part of her.
Panicking, doing his best to ignore the Massive Hangover merrily driving ice picks into his brain, he slowly, carefully disentangles himself and stands, breathing hard, assessing the state of their clothing (all still there –thank god), clenching and unclenching his fists while he tries desperately to remember if he'd said, done, or even so much as thought anything last night that he might need to now go vomit over.
While he paces (and tries to ignore the way the sunlight slanting through the blinds is making his eyeballs throb), Casey makes a small noise at his feet, and (because these are just the sorts of thoughts she inspires) he immediately considers snapping a photograph of her drooling for blackmail material –or better, finding some way to rudely awaken her. Ultimately, he decides his head hurts too damn much for such an effort, and moreover, that his head hurts too damn much to remain conscious and terrified over events that may or may not have actually transpired last night, so he abandons the Scene of the Crime in favor of his bed down the hall.
He does first lift her onto the sofa and find something to cover her with, however. (This doesn't count as effort. She weighs like, two pounds.)
I know plenty well what it's like to be this drunk (motor skills FAIL, speech and vocabulary FAIL, curious, rambling, jabbering-mad thoughts...), but writing about it sober was an…interesting exercise.
The point is, trying to string together a coherent story while both of the protaganists were totally knackered was awfully difficult. 'S why it took me so long, probably, and even now I'm not sure it's entirely comprehensible...oh, well.
ALSO. Just a note: I actually did (half-a-minute's worth of) research and discovered that the legal drinking age in Ontario is 19. I'm pretty sure they're both 18 at this point, but if that's inaccurate...well. Oops.
AND! This is officially the last of the mid-terms continuum.
NEXT TIME! The one-shot I was writing (and trying to wrangle into cooperating) when I got frustrated and then drunk and churned out 'Head Case.' You'll probably be able to tell where I drew the inspiration for that fic. ^_-
And now. I am le tired.
I'm going out for more coffee.