My apologies beforehand. This is a crappy, blatantly filler chapter. But, it had to be done. For a lot of reasons, some literary and some entirely not. Like the fact that I may be without computer for an indeterminate amount of time soon, and I'm also (to be honest) a little iffy on exactly the where and the how of this story from this point on. I know sketchy details, but I'm having issues actually writing it. If anyone's got suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Or, y'know, whatever. I don't even know if anyone is still reading this, but I'm gonna keep writing it regardless.

So painfully obviously not mine.



Finally, Casey's tears abated. She pulled back from Derek, and looked around uncomfortably before hastily standing up. Derek watched silently as she quickly busied herself with cleaning up the utter mess she had made of the kitchen. Not a word passed between them, not even a scold for him to get off the floor and out of the way. While Casey scrubbed furiously at the pan the bacon had been in, Derek rousted himself up off the floor, and meandered towards his room.

He stood in the middle of the tiny bedroom for several minutes, before deciding a shower was the best course of action right now. Backtracking out his door and into the hallway, he could hear the faint sounds of Casey in the kitchen, still hard at working cleaning up. The weird little voice that sometimes appeared in his head (he was told it was his 'conscience,' whatever that was) murmured something about helping her, but Derek figured he had done enough for one morning, and proceeded into the shower.

Luckily the noise of the running water drowned out everything else.

When he stepped out of the shower almost a half hour later, the apartment was eerily silent. Derek all but tip-toed into his room, not wanting to disturb the quiet. He dressed quickly—jeans and a tee-shirt—before toweling off his hair and heading back to the bathroom to hang up his towels and do some primping. But when he got there, the door was closed and the hiss of the shower indicated that Casey had decided to take a shower herself. Well, that was a good sign, right? Shrugging to himself, Derek slung his towel over the door handle and headed back out to the kitchen.

It was spotless, of course. It looked practically like it had on the day they had moved in. One thing was for sure, Casey was thorough. Especially when she was upset. It if wasn't such a pain to have her crying all the time, Derek might make it so that she was upset more often. It was nice having things so clean. His chest twinged a little at that thought—guilt? Heartburn?—but he shook off the feeling and began to rummage around for something to eat.

He was shoveling his second bowl of corn pops into his mouth like they were going out of style, a little trickle of milk trailing down his chin, when Casey emerged from her room. It was truthfully, probably the quickest she had ever gotten ready, but it had still been almost an hour. She padded softly into the kitchen, wearing a nice pair of dark-wash jeans and a red Toronto Leafs tee-shirt that, while too big for her normally, was cinched at the waist with a rubber band to make it more form-fitting. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she had little or no makeup on. Derek's chewing slowed as he studied his step-sister. It was puzzling how she could make such a simple, boring outfit look so damn good. His eyes were captivated by the small sliver of creamy skin that was showing between the waistband of her jeans and the bottom of the tee-shirt. But then the bright red of the shirt drew his eyes upwards and he was even more confused. Since when did Casey have a Leafs tee-shirt? Come to think of it, actually, he had one just like it…

As if reading his mind, Casey blushed and looked down. "I uh, stole another shirt from you. I hope it's alright…"

Derek finally swallowed the fermenting cereal mush that had been sitting in his mouth and wiped his chin with the back of his hand before responding to her. "No, that's fine…no big." It kind of was a big, though. He couldn't quite place his finger on it, but something made him uneasy about the thought of his step-sister being along in his room, rummaging through his clothes. For the most part, they stayed out of each other's rooms. It was like the unspoken rule that while everything else in the apartment was common area, their rooms were their own personal sanctuaries. Under any semblance of 'normal circumstances,' Derek would have made a big fuss about this. Casey knew it. He could feel her eyeing him curiously as he suddenly found his cereal bowl very interesting, and resumed his earlier shoveling of food into his mouth. After a minute, Casey apparently gave up trying to understand the strange, strange species that was Derekus stepbrotherus, and started rustling around in the kitchen for something to eat as well.

She didn't find anything that seemed to her liking, however, and stood in the middle of the kitchen looking helpless until Derek looked up from his bowl. They just kind of stared wordlessly at each other for several minutes, neither one entirely sure what to say.

One this was for sure, this was the most awkward morning-after he had ever had—and there hadn't even been any sort of hanky panky. Derek did not like this, not one bit. The story of her relationship was finished, but he couldn't shake the feeling that his job wasn't.

"Ummm," he began, looking at some vague point behind her instead of at her face. "How about we go downtown and get us a proper breakfast? There's that great place in the Garden District that serves breakfast all day."

Casey raised an eyebrow. "You just had corn pops," she stated.

Derek waved a hand dismissively, "just an appetizer." Punctuated the statement with a loud belch.

Casey wrinkled her nose in disgust. Derek grinned.

Walking around to the other side of the breakfast bar, he tossed his empty bowl in the sink, and grabbed hisstep-sister by the arm, dragging her towards the door.

"Wait!" Casey shrieked, wrenching her arm from his grasp. "I'll come, alright, geeze, just let me grab a jacket and my purse," she said, trying to sound irritated but failing.

Derek allowed it, grabbing his own jacket off of the chair he had tossed it over the previous evening and scooped his keys off of the counter. A few minutes later, Casey re-emerged, hair now flowing around her shoulders and little bit of makeup enhancing her naturally pretty features. She finally looked almost human again. Without a word, the two left the apartment, Casey using Derek's keys to lock up before tossing them back to him, and headed down the stairs to the tiny parking lot where Derek's car was.

They climbed into the black Jeep he had bought himself (with a lot of help from his parents and the money they got for selling the Prince for parts) last year, and he quickly turned on the engine and whipped the vehicle around, speeding out of the parking lot. Casey gripped the arm rest like it was her lifeline, as always, but she managed to bite back her usual retorts about Derek's horrific driving. In a few short minutes, they pulled into the parking lot at Hanover Place Restaurant—better known as 'Hangover Palace.' Casey had been there a few times before with Derek, but never of her own volition. The place wasn't quite up to her standards of cleanliness—although it was hard to deny how great the food was. They slid into a booth in a back corner, out of the way enough to prevent most accidentally run-ins with people they knew. They didn't have to speak to know that was something that would best be avoided today.

Derek scanned the menu for a few seconds before tossing the dirty plastic sheet back onto the table top. He almost always ordered the same thing, looking over the menu was more an instinctual habit than anything. Casey, however, was reading the menu intently, eyes scrunched up in concentration.

"You know, there isn't going to be a test after the meal, Princess," he drawled with a smirk. Casey's eyes flicked up from the menu text for half a second in order to fix her step-brother with a death glare, before returning her gaze to its previous position.

The waitress, some burnt-out thirty-something sporting hot pink nails, came around and took their drink orders (coffee for Derek, orange juice for Casey). Almost ten more minutes elapsed before Derek lost his patience. With a commanding thwack, he slapped the menu down onto the table, forcing Casey to look at him instead of the menu.

"Alright Case. This is how it's going to go. You are going to order a Belgian waffle, with that strawberry fruit-goo stuff, and a side of fresh fruit," he told her firmly. Casey opened her mouth to protest, but Derek held up a silencing hand and, wonder of wonders, she obeyed. The two stared each other down for a moment, and Casey realized that what Derek had picked out sounded perfect. With a resigned sigh, she sunk back into her seat. When the waitress came around, Derek ordered for them both, and Casey just watched him in stony silence.

A short while later, their food was brought out. Derek dug into his southwestern omelet like he hadn't eaten in weeks. Casey watched in disgusted fascination for a few minutes, before picking up her knife and neatly carving into her luscious, fluffy waffle.

They ate in silence, until Derek had finished his omelet and moved on to the hash browns (Casey was still working on her waffle). He (gasp) stopped eating for a moment and looked up at her. Alarmed by his sudden stopping, Casey looked up, her blue eyes meeting his brown ones with a look of surprise and worry.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Derek cleared his throat and said, "So, now what."

Casey just continued to stare. Now what, indeed.


I google-mapped Toronto and it told me there was an area called the 'Garden District' which sounded cute so I went with it. The restaurant and name etc are entirely my fabrication, though general ambiance is based slightly off of a place near where I live. Again, I'm painfully American so if anything here doesn't jibe with Canadian culture, my apologies. I'm happy to explain anything if you're confused, be it about the scenery or the behavior of the characters. Thanks for reading :)