And here's the thing—they're on her bed and he's moving against her and for once they're totally on the same page and getting along and it feels a little bit like high school almost, because she has this really tiny inkling in the back of her mind that maybe they shouldn't be doing this—
Then there's also the small matter of him swatting her hands away every time she reaches for his belt buckle. After the third time, she lets out a groan of frustration. "Stop trying to be a damn saint!"
Derek had diligently been working on feeling her up, but at her words he stops abruptly. He's breathing hard as he holds himself above her, but he still manages to throw her an incredulous look. "A saint? Now there's something I never thought I'd hear you say."
She reaches for him again but he shakes his head once and lowers himself onto the other side of her bed. "Come on, Case, don't make this harder than it is."
Casey doesn't move for a full second, too stunned to do anything. "You can't be serious."
She turns to look at him, but he's lying next to her now, arms folded behind his head. As she watches him, a dull flush creeps up the side of his neck. "I deserve some kind of award, I think," he says to the ceiling. "For being the fucking good guy."
"What," she says, because she honestly truly has no idea what is even happening right now.
He heaves a sigh. "You said you didn't want anything to happen with us until this contract was over. You said you had morals."
"But I—"
"And I respect that," he interrupts.
"What," she repeats, because...what?
He turns to face her, a slight grin pulling at his lips. "Okay, maybe not," he admits, "But I know you'd find a way to blame me once the heat of the moment is over and you've gone and made charts and lists of pros and cons and realized that you regretted what happened." He pauses, "And I don't want to fight."
Her mouth opens and closes several times. "Since when?" she demands, "You love it when we fight, in fact you go out of your way to make sure we fight!"
"True," he acknowledges, "But not about stuff like this." Then he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and gets to his feet.
And she hates herself a little bit for the mild rush of panic she feels. "Wait! You're leaving?"
He turns to look at her, and she has a sudden strong desire to wipe the smug expression off his face. "I'm gonna shower," he informs her, "So we can avoid the morning after argument about how I messed up your precious clean sheets."
"Oh," she flops back down, feeling faintly embarrassed. "How…considerate of you."
"Yep," he says wryly, "That's me. Considerate."
She can hear his footsteps begin to leave the room and she sits up suddenly, staring at his retreating back before blurting out, "I wouldn't have regretted it."
He stops at the doorway to look back at her, and she can tell he wants to say something but she can't read his expression—and that irks her because she used to be so good at reading him and now she just...can't. "It's late," he says instead, "Go to sleep. I'll be right back."
Casey stares after him, listening to the spray of the shower head from the next room. Then she slowly lies back down, brushing her hair out of her face. Her skin is still too hot, and even though he isn't physically there, she can still feel his fingers imprinted against her skin. She blows a strand of hair off her forehead and groans to herself. Figured he'd find a way to get under her skin eventually.
And maybe, just this once, he's not entirely wrong—maybe she would have resented him for making her throw her moral compass out the window just by showing up. But that's the way it had always been. She broke rules for him, always. Because he was the exception.
Her eyes are just beginning to drift shut when she hears him return to the room. "Hey," she murmurs sleepily as she feels the bed dip next to her. "How was your shower?"
"Cold," he says, and her eyes flutter open just as he switches off the night lamp next to her bed.
She waits a second but he doesn't do or say anything else. With a small frown, she twists around to look at him. He's lying in the same position as before, both arms folded beneath his head. He's also lying above her sheets.
He glances at her and seems to take stock of her expression. "What?"
"Why are you being…" She gestures wordlessly at him, "Weird."
"I'm just trying," he grumbles, and then slides under her sheets. "Happy?"
She shrugs, turning back around to face the wall. Her heart is thudding abnormally fast, which is a little bizarre because they aren't even doing anything. He wasn't even touching her—which, okay, is strange in itself. And then she realizes she can't feel his body heat at her back, which means he's lying as far away from her as he possibly can.
For some reason, this annoys her more than it should.
She hears Derek heave a sigh in the darkness, because—much to her chagrin—he's always had some sort of signal beacon for her emotions. "What now?"
"Nothing." Then after a minute of silence, "I don't know why you didn't just sleep on the sofa."
Derek mutters a few choice swear words under his breath. And then he abruptly slides towards her, throwing one arm around her waist.
Casey feels her lips tug into a smile, and she shifts a little so that her back is pressed against his chest. He sighs into her hair. "I'm going to be such a disappointing boyfriend."
And just like that, she's wide awake.
She feels her shoulders tense, and knows he can probably feel it too. His lips are at her neck when he speaks again, "Go to sleep, Case. Forget I said anything."
"N-no, I just," Casey's cheeks heat, "I don't think you will be." After a second she adds, "Disappointing, I mean."
His arm tightens around her waist in response.
She places one hand over his, stroking his fingers absentmindedly. She doesn't know why she says it, and can only blame sleep deprivation. "I bought all your movies."
"What?"
"Yeah," she mumbles, "From the plane. I didn't watch them yet."
He doesn't say anything for a moment, and then she feels him move closer behind her. "Just so you know," he mutters, ""You're making it really hard not to sleep with you right now."
She grins into the darkness. "We are sleeping together," she says amicably, to which he grunts.
A few more minutes go by and then he asks casually, "So there aren't any hot doctors I have to worry about, are there?"
His tone is off-hand enough, but the edge in his voice tells her he'd been racking his brain for a way to bring this up. "There is one guy," she says thoughtfully, "We actually did go out once, but it was awkward to say the least. We're much better as friends." She pauses, "You remember Tinker, right?"
"You work with Tinker?" Derek sounds vaguely outraged, "And he asked you out?"
"Yes and yes."
"But..." And then Derek falls silent, and she has the impression he's attempting to reconcile his image of Tinker from high school with whoever he might be now. Then he scowls, "I said hot doctors. Not dork doctors."
She shoots him a look. "Very mature, Derek. You'd be surprised, he's quite the eligible bachelor now."
Derek makes a dissatisfied noise. "I'll believe it when I see it."
Casey raises both eyebrows, even though she isn't facing him anymore and he can't see her expression. "I'm not bringing you to work, so forget about it."
His tone is petulant. "But how else will I meet all the hot nurses?"
"De-rek!"
He laughs and this time it's teasing, "Knew I could get you to scream my name in bed tonight."
"You're incorrigible."
"This trip was kind of a spur of the moment thing, you'll have to forgive me if I didn't bring my thesaurus."
"Dictionary, Derek!"
"That, too."
"Ugh, you are so—"
And it's much easier than she would have thought, to fall back into old habits. Bantering was kind of their thing, and because there's clearly something very wrong with her, she had actually missed it. Because no one else got her riled up like he could, and she knew no one challenged him like she did.
It's all very familiar, except this time—this time, their frustration has an outlet. As their argument somehow dissolves into Derek moving on top of her again, she doesn't know whether to be annoyed or impressed that he's clinging steadfastly to his 'no sex' rule.
"Too bad we didn't have this in high school," she says without thinking—her brain has apparently decided to take a short vacation because his hand has made its way up her jersey and his fingers are so close to where she wants him to be, but he seems content to merely be a tease.
Derek chuckles against her skin, "I was just thinking the same thing."
"Where did you channel your frustrations?" she asks curiously. "After our fights, I mean."
He gives her a strange look, but his voice is bland when he replies, "Hockey." He climbs off her, but leaves his hand splayed on her abdomen. "What about you?"
"Dance."
"Right," he coughs, "How could I forget."
"You loved that dance competition," she says, not having to look at him to know it's true. "I know you did."
They settle back into their original position—his arm across her waist, her back against his chest. "Only because I finally got to hold you."
Casey blinks, not sure what to make of his confession. "But…" she twists around to look at him uncertainly, "You never wanted to hug. Ever."
He's frowning at her, "Because you were looking for a feel good family moment." His eyes darken, "That's not what I wanted." At that Casey promptly turns back to her side, because this is a lot of information to digest and she can't very well digest it if he's looking at her like that.
"Case?"
She swallows, feeling unaccountably nervous. "How long?"
He tenses behind her, and she knows that he probably understands what she's asking. But he plays dumb anyway, because that's kind of his forte. "How long what?"
Casey chews on her lip. "I told you on the roof," she reminds him, her voice small. "When exactly I realized I might be in love with you." It was when my life fell apart without you in it.
There's a long moment of silence, so long that she thinks maybe that he's fallen asleep, but that can't be possible, not when her heart is beating so fast but she wouldn't put it past him to do it just to spite her—
"Come on, Case," he finally says in a low voice, "Not tonight."
She frowns.
After a few minutes, he sighs, "This is going to keep you up for the rest of the night, isn't it?"
"No," she says unconvincingly.
Derek's grip tightens around her, whether on purpose or unconsciously, she doesn't know. "I always…" he hesitates, "I was always attracted to you, you must've known that."
When she doesn't answer, he pushes her shoulder down so that she's forced to turn and look at him. "You did know that, right?" He gazes at her in disbelief when she shrugs and shakes her head once. "How could you not know?" He sounds genuinely shocked.
And she finds that she maybe hates him a little bit, too. Because how could HE not know? She glares, "You were mean, Derek. A lot of the time."
"But—"
"And then you weren't," she interrupts, "But I could probably count on one hand all the times you actually had a freaking heart." And okay, maybe that isn't true, maybe it was more than a handful of times, but still.
Derek is still looking at her with mild incredulity.
She finds herself getting annoyed that he isn't quite getting the picture. "Your pranks, they—"
"Hey, I put a lot of effort into the pranks," he protests.
"I know," she says icily. "And if you'd spent even half that time on, I don't know, schoolwork then—"
"Then I wouldn't have had you to tutor me," he smirks at her, but it drops off his face quickly. His gaze moves away from her and begins darting around the room. "I kinda wished you were there…in college, I mean." He definitely won't meet her gaze now, "I guess, I kinda needed you there."
And just like that, her irritation ebbs away.
They both don't say anything for a long moment. "The pranks," he says again, and she can't believe he's harping on about this. "I spent a lot of time on those."
"Yeah," she says, rolling her eyes. "So you've said."
"No," he insists, reaching out to grasp her wrist. "I didn't spend that much time on any other girl."
"You didn't prank any other girl," she points out.
And then, yeah, she kind of gets it.
"Oh."
Her eyes widen while Derek watches her warily. "That long?"
He squints at her. "You're really going to make me say it?"
Casey considers him for a second. Derek—who didn't do feelings. Derek—who had entertained this conversation for far longer than she'd thought was possible. "No," she decides, reaching up to kiss him softly on the corner of his mouth. "You're right, it's late."
She turns back to her side and smiles when she feels his arm reach across her waist to pull her closer. "I was attracted to you from the moment you showed up at my door and started yelling at me," he whispers in her ear. "I don't know when I started to like you, but I think I only realized it when you started making eyes at Sam."
Casey freezes, but then Derek is kissing her neck and she forgets what she'd been about to say. "Sam knew, I think, even back then. But he didn't say anything. And he knew for sure in college. Because my life, it, uh, sort of fell apart too."
Her heart is doing weird little backflips and twists, and she's finding it rather hard to breathe.
"Then I definitely started to like you when we became…friends-adjacent," he continues, his lips grazing a path to her ear. "Otherwise known as the Truman era." She feels him shudder slightly.
Curiosity gets the better of her. "What did he mean," she asks quietly, "On the roof?"
Again, he plays dumb. "Which part?"
She huffs.
Derek's lips leave her neck, and she feels him press a kiss onto the top of her head. "He might have said a few things when I showed up to give him a piece of my mind."
"What things?"
"Er," Derek's voice becomes muffled as he buries his head into her hair. "Said that the two of us had an unhealthy obsession with each other and that we deserved our trainwreck of a relationship because no one else would ever come close."
Casey's chest feels oddly constricted and she pushes Derek's arm off her without thinking. He freezes behind her almost immediately. "This is why I don't tell you things."
She's still mad about what Truman said, and is wondering if maybe that's why he broke up with her—but he had no right to say those things about them, and suddenly she's realizing that Derek probably should've given him two black eyes after all.
Anger is coursing through her veins, but Truman isn't here and it's only Derek—so she snaps in response, "Yeah, you've certainly been keeping a lot of things to yourself."
Derek's answering silence is the only indication he gives that he's upset by her reply, and she's half hoping that he would just kiss her and they can pretend this conversation never happened, but he doesn't because when the hell has he ever done what she wants?
She turns to face him, but he's lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. She studies him carefully. "Is that why Sam was acting weird when he saw me at the reunion?"
"Because he knew I was in love with you and that we hadn't spoken in years?" Derek's voice is bitter, "Yeah, probably."
And then she remembers suddenly, and panics. "What about Emily?"
He looks at her sharply.
"You guys were openly glaring at each other," she points out, "Everyone could see."
"Bad breakup," he says offhandedly.
Casey narrows her eyes, "I don't believe you."
Derek rubs his hands over his face. "It's 4 in the morning, Case."
"Fine," she says, and abruptly reaches over to grasp his T-shirt and pull him towards her. He gasps in surprise as she presses a hard kiss onto his mouth and clambers over him.
"What—" He struggles to sit up, his hands finding her hips almost reflexively. She only pushes him back down, not caring as her jersey rides up in the process. And then she shifts her hips so that—yes, right there. Derek groans, his eyes slamming shut. "Case—"
And this time when she reaches between them to pull his pajama bottoms down, his hands don't leave her hips to stop her. Instead, she only feels his fingers tighten around her.
She can feel the victory just within grasp, so close, but when her fingers skim down to his boxers, he suddenly reaches out and grabs her wrist in a vice grip. Her mouth drops open in surprise, but when she looks at him, his eyes are still screwed shut. "What are you doing?" she asks, a little miffed. Couldn't he let her win, just this once?
He unscrews one eye, then the other. Then proceeds to stare at her. She stares back, and after a few moments of silence, the high is wearing off—and she realizes how utterly ridiculous she's being. "Sorry," she mutters, moving off him and sliding back onto her side of the bed.
He pulls her into his arms immediately. "Don't apologize," he says, and she feels a little thrill in her stomach when she hears how hoarse he sounds. His nose nudges her cheek, "This take charge version of you is kinda a turn on."
She smiles, but her eyes jump to his shoulder distractedly. "Derek, do you think..." She hesitates, "Was Truman right? About us?"
Derek eyes her and then asks carefully, "Which part?"
"That we're too...messed up...for anyone else." She knows she's paraphrasing but she figures that pretty much covers the gist of it.
He's still looking at her. "Probably."
Casey nods, because they kind of are. "We spent too much time being entwined in each other's lives, didn't we?"
"Until we weren't." His voice is quiet now.
"Until we weren't," she agrees. "That's why it hurt so much, you know." She isn't sure why she's still talking, except that she needs him to understand. "Because it felt like a part of me was...gone."
When she meets his gaze again, his eyes are blazing. "My breakup with Emily," he says suddenly, "It was about you."
Whatever she'd been expecting him to say, it hadn't been that. "What?"
He scratches the back of his neck, and she has the feeling he hadn't been planning on telling her about this. "Er...did you and Emily...I mean, did she tell you when she and I...broke up?"
Casey doesn't have to pretend to think about the answer. She remembers that day clearly. "It was the second semester of your freshman year." She pauses, "You lasted longer than I would have thought."
Derek gives a short laugh, though he doesn't sound the least bit amused. "You mean she lasted longer than I would have thought." At Casey's confused look, he shrugs, turning away from her. "I was a shit boyfriend," he says bluntly. "I didn't...okay, I know this sounds stupid, but I didn't know how to..." His brow furrows, "I guess I'm trying to say, without you there, I was..." He trails off, shaking his head. "What did Emily say to you about the breakup, anyway?"
"Nothing much," Casey answers slowly, a little surprised at how much trouble Derek—who's always had a witty comeback at the ready—was having with spitting out whatever it was he was trying to say. "She said you guys gave it a try for a year but the long distance thing was too much and that it wasn't fair to either of you."
Derek looks disbelieving, "That's all she said?"
"Yes, why?"
He visibly cringes. "It was a terrible fight, when we ended things. She said a lot of things—most of them fair, I guess." He pauses, "And I said some pretty horrible things, too."
Casey has a sort of deepening dread in the pit of her stomach and wonders if she wants to know any of this, after all. Derek looks at her and seems to guess what she's thinking. "I can drop this whole thing," he says hopefully. But she shakes her head, making a motion with her hands for him to go on.
He grimaces. "She came to campus in April, a month before the end of the semester. Said she couldn't take it anymore—that even when you were an ocean away, you were still my first priority. That she thought it would be different this time, especially with you gone, but that it was more of the same. That I was a coward for never telling you how I felt—and an asshole for never breaking it off with her when clearly I didn't love her and never would."
Casey wonders vaguely if this is what an out of body experience feels like. Sure, she hears everything Derek has just told her but she has the oddest sense of not being grounded in reality. Because there's no way this is her life.
"What," she squeaks eventually, "That's not...that can't..." Then she realizes she's only heard one part of the argument and her throat grows dry. "What did you say back?"
His jaw sets with anger. "I told her it wasn't my fault she was a psycho stalker who's been fucking obsessed with me since grade 6, and maybe if she was any good at studying me then she would've realized I was never into her and it was all for—" He stops abruptly, and looks at her warily to see how she's taking this.
Casey quickly tries to rearrange the shock in her expression, but judging from the annoyance that flashes across Derek's face, she isn't sure she's succeeded. "I, ah," she says weakly, "I understand now, why the two of you seemed so...mad at each other at the reunion."
Derek snorts under his breath, "Right."
And her heart breaks for him a little, because while she'd never made it a secret how much her friends and family meant to her, he'd never acted like he needed anyone at all—always the stupid cool guy, above feelings and attachments.
She opens her mouth, but he suddenly leans over and kisses her. "Don't," he mumbles against her lips, "Please don't apologize." He pulls back to search her gaze, "That's not why I told you. I don't want you to feel sorry for me." Then his mouth quirks into a half grin, "Besides she was hardly the first or last girl to dump me because of you." He taps his chin, appearing to think. "I think that blonde cheerleader back in high school was the first. What was her name? Max's ex?"
Casey ignores him, thinking of the stream of guys she'd tried dating when she had moved to New York and how all of them ended in some variation of 'you're clearly still hung up on your ex.' Then she sighs and reaches across him, placing her head on his chest. "We really are ruined for anyone else."
He nods above her. "Yeah, I think so." His thumb is absentmindedly making circles on her shoulder. "What do we tell the fam?"
"I'm not," she yawns, "While you're..." She can feel sleep pulling her under, and tries to get out the word "engaged" but then she's fallen asleep.
Derek brushes a kiss on the top of her head and pulls her closer. "After Christmas, then," he mutters. He listens to her breathing even out, feeling his own eyelids drift shut. And then he falls into the first peaceful sleep he's had in ten years.
*the follows & reviews have been amazing, thank you so much!
