I tried to sell my used 'Minoans' textbook back to the university store today, only to discover that they wouldn't take it because I'd written this drabble on page 58.
In permanent marker.
Totally forgot about it 'til I was denied the $6.84 I was owed from the initial $30 purchase.
(I returned an hour later and sold it back to the store via a newbie cashier who didn't bother to check for miscellaneous defilements. Some lucky kid is going to get more than he/she bargained for --an authoritative hystory of palatial Crete AND a particularly meaningless bit of LwD-verse fiction.)
*ahem*
Oh, look at that.
It's everyone he's ever known.
Reflecting varying degrees of revulsion, horror, and disgust, --or conversely-- delight, amusement, and sick gratification, what appears to him to be the entire population of London is hovering in silent (stalker-ish and intrusive) appraisal of the Sensational Event that is Derek-and-Casey waging a wholly new sort of war backstage.
Maddeningly, not one of the (many, many) faces demonstrates anything even remotely resembling surprise.
Peripherally, he sees Edwin slap an undisclosed amount of money into Lizzie's palm. (The wad is very nearly the size of her fist, and Derek experiences a moment of irritated wonder that Ed's managed to keep such a substantial sum hidden from him.)
Sam is wearing a rueful smile, shaking his head faintly from side to side. Two of his (eight-hundred) sisters flank him, a pair of huge, disgusting twin grins stretching out with obscene languor on their faces.
Nora looks somewhat shell-shocked, and his dad's face is even now as he's watching falling resignedly, exasperatedly into his hands with an audible groan. Marti, attached at the skirt to Casey's mother, is beaming like only little girls can, in the bright, face-splitting sort of way that portends an imminent explosion of giggles and song. He estimates that he has precious few seconds before she starts twirling in giddy circles to the tune of 'k-i-s-s-i-n-g!'
Ralph looks happily confused, which in truth is more or less his perpetual reality, but even the Papadapolis Singularity does not appear to be at all astonished at what Derek's planning to remember as The Great Calamity.
Emily's expression says something vaguely along the lines of, 'I told you so,' and is aimed explicitly in Casey's direction. Then the Conniving Miss Davis slides him a sly look and winks at him.
Eyes narrowed, suddenly suspicious, he turns back to the girl whose ass currently owns both of his hands. Casey smiles up at him sheepishly, and it dawns on him that her (horrifying) 'spontaneous' solicitation had in fact been…premeditated.
Casey McDonald had just tried to seduce him!
(The minx!)
This unhappy intelligence is going to complicate his unfortunate attraction to his (preposterously hot) step-sister exponentially.
"Derek," she begins, backpedaling in desperation.
In response, he grins affably down at her, dusts a chaste kiss across her (problematically soft) lips, and then unceremoniously drops her, springing away in the next instant and pointing down at her in accusation,
"She started it!"
On pg. 58, this drivel was entitled: 'what chicanery through yonder window breaks?'
Menagerie and Chicanery were forced to duel to the death in a no-holds-barred cage match and...well. Obviously one of them had to lose.
(thanks much for the many glorious reviews, chums. ^_^)