A/N: Yay! First off, I'd like to thank anyone who's taken the time to read and review, it's greatly appreciated. :) Second, I'm compensating for the long update last time by aiming to complete this story by Monday. Whoo-hoo for me. Also, I have absolutely no idea how old Derek is or if my guesstimating is even close. Ooh, and this one is mostly conversation driven, except for the...end.

Disclaimer: I am the owner of nothing.

--Week Four--

"You're a dumbass," Derek mutters as he threads a needle, holding it close to his face so he can see the eye.

"Sorry, I'll just get lasered across the stomach next time."

Derek grins. "We wouldn't want that, now would we?"

"No," she says, laughing into her elbow.

Allison Young's shirt is hiked somewhere up around her shoulders and she's lying face down on an army cot. An ugly laser burn stretches from her right shoulder to just above her bra strap. It's mostly a raw red mess, save for the part in the middle where it's bleeding something fierce. Once Derek finishes threading the needle, he reaches for a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. "This is gonna hurt," he says.

"I'd be shocked if it doesn't."

He pours a good amount of the alcohol on her wound, and when he does this, Allison's muscles tense from the base of her neck down to where the his calloused fingers rest at the small of her back. Seeing this, he moves his hand to between her shoulder blades, pressing down lightly. "Relax," he mumbles, immediately feeling his fingers rise from the deep breath that she takes. Her skin is smooth and soft under his touch, a harsh contrast to the gouge. "You'll make it worse." His voice is throatier than it is normally, but he doesn't have much control of that.

"Just do it," she says between gritted teeth as she firmly grasps the side of the cot. Once the needle touches her flesh, her grip tightens and the whites of her knuckles show. "Quickly."

Derek goes to work, her blood soon coating everything. "You wanna," he starts, "tell me how you got this?"

She inhales sharply. "Not really."

"Robue'll tell me anyways," he says coyly.

"No, he won't."

"Oh?"

"Reese, why do you want to know?"

"I just -- do."

"Huh," she says, her hold lessening on the side of the army cot seeing as how the pain sort of numbs all and she's concentrating not nearly as much on it.

"I take it that it's not from Running," he assumes, watching the black thread pull out of her skin.

There's a pause. "How'd you know that?"

"I'm smart."

"I don't wanna tell you," she says quietly into the crook of her arm.

They're silent for a while as he continues at his job. When Derek's already put a few stitches into her back, he breaks the quiet atmosphere with a question. "Allie..." he says, not quite knowing what to expect for an answer. "How old are you?" He reaches down and wipes his hands off on a roll of gauze, the stickiness messing up his stitching.

She's grinning even though he can't see it. "How old are you?"

"Thirty-one."

"I," Allison says with a strange waver in her tone, "am fifteen years your junior."

Oh.

Oh, shit.

He clears his throat. "Wow."

---

She makes a sound of disbelief. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Mmm, it's something."

"You're not sixteen."

"Sure I am."

"No," Derek says firmly, "you're not."

"You think I'm a liar, Reese?" A sigh. "I swear."

He grumbles a profanity of disapproval, more of the fact that he's disgusted with himself than of fact that he's stupidly slow at playing Operation. Allison makes a sorry attempt at turning to look at him, but that doesn't go too well. "Stop moving," he growls, pulling at the thread extra tight for emphasis.

She winces. "Christ, what's your problem?"

With the medical scissors, he snips off the remaining thread and continues to the next stitch. "I feel like a goddamn pedophile, that's all."

"Are you serious?" she asks, actually fighting off a laugh.

"Yes."

There's a momentary pause. "I've never heard that one before."

He narrows his brows, his mind telling him because it's from the poor lighting, but he changes the subject. "You gonna tell me how you got this, or not?"

"I'm not saying anything."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to," she says for what feels like the hundredth time.

"At first I was curious, and now you're dragging me along. It's your fault." He smirks, now able to tell that she's starting to get irritated.

Derek only has one stitch left to finish, but he's stretching it out because he knows that if he gets up and says that it's all done, she'll never tell him, therefore defeating the purpose. He decides, though, that if she still doesn't want to enlighten him to how she got herself lasered across the back, he'll just let it go.

"You know what...?" she asks slowly, sitting up because she's not entirely dim-witted. He's done. Allison's arms are bent at a funny angle as she tries to pull down her shirt, but her eyes flick up to Derek's. "Can you--?" Without thinking about it, he reaches forward, hastily tugging her tee over the stitched mess, ignoring the hot feel of her flushed skin against his rough palms. "Thanks," she mumbles.

"Yup."

She bites her bottom lip, her dark eyes no longer looking at him, but rather the dirty cement floor. "I made a mistake."

He lets out a deep breath. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah." She's wringing her hands and cracking her knuckles, her face pale. "At the time it was a...uh, good idea, actually."

Derek can hear his heart pounding in his ears. It kind of hurts. "Does this have anything to do with the burn?"

"It has everything to do with it," she says coldly, her jaw squared.

Not sure what to do, he moves his hand to her knee, laying it gently on the starchy fabric. Allison pulls back, abruptly standing up from the cot. Derek stands with her, the bones in his legs creaking. "Allie, what--?"

"I..." her voice is really scratchy, her eyes glinting, "...really fucked up."

He wants to yell at her and just grab her by the shoulders to shake the answer out of her. She's driving him crazy. The blood is racing through his veins, and he can feel his pulse throbbing in his neck. The reason why he's so tangled up escapes him; all he's aware of is this slip of a girl gradually steering him towards insanity. He walks around her, reads the expression on her face and brazenly reaches forward, resting his hands on the curves of her hips. Watching her swallow and her eyes cloud over in anger, he asks roughly: "What did you do?"

"I slept with Robue," she growls, taking Derek's hands off her.

---

He chases her down the tunnel, thanking God that generally everyone's asleep.

At first, Derek stood there for a while as she walked away, letting the information sink right into his brain and rot everything out. It caught him by surprise, but it certainly didn't shock him. He wanted so badly to go up to Jackson Robue and beat the shit out of him, to punch him over and over again until his gut didn't hurt anymore. Christ, here's this teenage girl wrapping everybody around her pinky finger and she doesn't even know it. But he just stood there.

That is, of course, until he realized that she was already in the other room and he couldn't see her anymore, and he started running.

"Allie!" he yells, finally catching up with her at the end.

She keeps walking, her hands shoved in her pockets. "There was a raid," she says quietly, more of a mumble than anything else, "and I didn't have my shirt on. If I did, I still would've still gotten shot, but not nearly as bad."

He rubs his forehead, keeping up with her pace. "I guess I shouldn't have asked, huh?"

"No," she replies darkly, "you shouldn't have."

"I'm sorry."

Allison shrugs, stopping so she can look at him properly. "I just wasn't thinking. It was a moment thing...not your fault."

"But you're a -- k--," he manages to get out, disbelieving.

"I am not."

Derek scratches his arm. "Were you at least...uh--?"

"He pulled out," she mutters and starts walking again like it's none of his business; which it's not.

Enough of that, he decides, not even bothering to wonder why he went of on such a tangent.

Shaking his head, he just lets her go to figure out what she wants.

---

With the others, Derek's on the ground, yet unlike the others, he's thinking about how he's falling for a girl.

Just a girl; she's nobody special.

He doesn't know what it is about her or how she does it, but it's starting to get a little ludicrous. Already, Allison has gotten under his skin by screwing another guy and trying to keep it from him. However, that's not the biggest thing making his reason twist, it's the fact she, essentially, doesn't want him. Sure, she likes the fact that he makes her feel secure and what-not, but Derek doesn't want to be the father figure. He hasn't gone out in the pouring rain to bury a dead kid, seen her off every week and stitched up her shoulder just for hell of it. Never does he go around doing stuff like that for people he's known for barely a month.

Lucid to the fact that he's being ridiculous, that he should do her and get it over with, to not even bother with the rest of it. She's a Runner. Roughly, she's only got a week left, so what's the point?

Just fuck her and fuck the rest.

Mulling this over, Derek rests his hands underneath his head and looks up at the rafters holding up the dirt ceiling in his habitual way. He's a cast away after-thought: That's what gets him.

In the bunker, it's darker than a witch's heart and he wouldn't be able to see if he was paid to do it, so when he feels a hand touching his bare arm, he jumps.

"It's me," says a familiar voice. "Allie." He can vaguely see her outline, but he can definitely feel her. The heat's coming off her body like she's a goddamn radiator.

"Jesus," he mutters. "Couldn't even hear you."

"That's my job," whispers, keeping her voice down. "…hence my staying alive for this long."

"Ah. So, what do you want?" he asks brusquely, her hand still on his arm.

"Frankly?" she asks, more to herself than to him. "Lots of things."

"Name it."

"To apologize." Allison takes away her arm and instead puts it on her lap when she leans against the cement wall behind them.

He almost laughs, but then realizes that he's in a room full of sleeping Resistance fighters that'd be none too thrilled to be awoken by their midnight jibber-jabbering. "For what?"

"Having sex with Robue."

Derek's eyes widen, surprised that she just blurted that out with all these people around. "You're...forgiven?"

"...Thank-you," she says quietly.

"You know, I don't really care about who you sleep with or why you do it. You can do whatever you want."

He can tell she's thinking about this. "That didn't aggravate you?"

A pause. "No," he says a little too quickly as he lies straight through his teeth. They then succumb to a silence, neither of which wanting to say much of anything.

---

Her steady breathing almost lulls him into a light sleep before she speaks, jarring him awake with her comment. "I have to go in a few hours."

Derek opens his eyes, the room still completely dark. "One thing...?" he mumbles, his voice a croak.

"Mmm?"

"Don't go," he blurts, the words falling right out of his mouth.

Removing his hands from behind his head, he sits up so he's supported by the wall beside her. He can almost hear the cogs turning in her brain and the quiet atmosphere makes him wonder if she even heard him. To falsify this thought, he reaches out his hand towards her, closing the two inches that separate them.

Allison's hand is small in his, her fingers itch his skin as she trails up to his wrist, tracing the bones that connect his hand to the rest of his body. Her index finger goes over the faded tattoo on his forearm and grazes along the scar the winds itself around his elbow. Derek hears her breath catch when the muscles in his bicep involuntarily flex as she lifts up the sleeve of his t-shirt.

"Make me want to stay," she whispers, her eyes shining in the dark.

His thumbs hook themselves in the belt loops of her pants, his palms secure on her hips as she lifts her up and settles her on his lap so she's straddling him, her knees digging into the concrete behind them. He can't see her all too good, but he can certainly feel her hands in fingers wander at the base of his neck and tangle themselves in his thick, brown hair. She pulls until it hurts so bad that silver sparks are dancing behind his eyes, and he leans forward, his lips pressing harshly against hers until she lets go, bracing herself against the wall with the heel of her hand.

She pushes back, though, fighting to gain control until she breaks, her mouth eventually giving away to Derek's force. Allison's lips part with a short, feminine gasp of shock, his tongue sliding between her teeth to meet with hers in a quick, practiced motion. The kiss is more than a word, but rather a feeling that's been shoved aside out of ignorance and disbelief. He feels his mind turn in its grave, her mouth hot as she presses up against him, a bold move that he acknowledges by bending his leg off the ground and sliding her closer to him, the inside of her thigh meeting with his heavy, metal belt buckle. Biting back a groan when they break apart with a suction noise, she arches slightly back into his hand when his mouth touches her collarbone.

"Allie..." He mumbles her name when she comes back to meet his lips again, this time more softly and in control, as if she knows exactly what she's doing. Derek lets her, the latent and genuine want in her kiss making him regret that he hadn't done something sooner. "We're gonna...they'll hear us—"

"Good," she breathes, her chest rising and falling in time to his. "Let them."

He leans back, his fingers playing with the hem of her shirt. "You wanna stay now?"

"You know I'm going to go," Allison says into his neck, conforming into the man's welcoming embrace. "I can't stay no matter--."

"Is that an invitation?"

"No," she whispers. "It's a subpoena."

"How long...?" he asks, taking that hem that's in his hand and softly slides it up her toned body, his knuckles brushing over her warm, smooth stomach and up her rib cage. Derek's careful with the stitches and helps her gently pull the garment over her head. They don't know, nor do they see where it lands as she reaches for his own tee, getting rid of it as quickly as possible. Question shoved aside, he runs his finger underneath the strap of her black bra, the satin fabric foreign against the callused tips. "You're beautiful," he mummers, the first dull light from the rising sun gracing her skin and showing off the slight highlights in her hair.

He can now see her a bit better; the curve of her breasts and the way she's biting her bottom lip as her hands run over the rough leather of Derek's belt. His gut clenches as he sees and feels this, the seeming innocence and the irony of it all.

As soon as he takes her hands away and puts them in his own, he knows that it's time for her to go off to Hell, to dodge the bombs and the bullets for the last time. Never before in his life has he ever seen a Runner last more than five weeks, rarely five at that. Roube and Allison Young are the rare exceptions. He looks up to see that her eyes are swollen in the rising sun and he knows that she's got to go. Even so, they're cutting it extremely close with time. Normally, they'd leave before the sun even thought about coming up.

---

Derek helps Allison lift the heavy pack onto her shoulders, the desire to tell her she'd better come back's now even stronger in his mind, but he doesn't have to say it because they both know.

In some strange, brotherly act, he reaches forward, clasping Roube's hand in his own. "Be safe," he says gruffly, letting go with a curt nod. The other man blinks before nodding in return.

Standing with the handle of the door in his firm grasp, Derek watches Robue leave, Allison tagging along behind. She holds his green-eyed gaze steady, her petite frame holding so much feeling with one look. However, her stance is square, her jaw solid.

"Allie," he says.

"Reese," she returns. For the first time since he met her, he hears her voice crack.

A/N: One left.