a/n The reviews for last chapter...uhh...I just have no words for how much I love you guys. I mean, seriously, how much awesomeness can one fandom have? All of you seem unanimous on the fact that Casey needs a guy (she SO totally does) but we'll have to wait a little for that, okay? Believe me, there'll be a role-reversal soon! :) And I loved hearing about what you think is going to happen. Keep telling me, it gives me some wonderful ideas for continuation! (Cruel Intention reference alert).
And the rating might go up in the next chapter and beyond. Still have to decide!
(She wishes. A lot. The thing about her is she's always been a little too contradictory. Wonder and logic, they've always come in the same breath. Like, she knows the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering of light, but when she's looking at the sky, it's definitely not the first thing she remembers. Then it's just this awesome beautiful, powerful thing that defies any definitions and boundaries. Then the sky is blue just because...it is.)
_ _
She wakes up (and it's all different).
She's not exactly sure why it's different. It isn't like he'd been a saint before he'd met Sally. In fact she'd spent most of her senior year nights trying to drown out the sound of the constant banging of his headboard. And pretending (hoping) that the too visible marks on his towel clad body were the results of the working of a particularly poisonous spider.
But it is different. Because... (he hadn't looked like...that, when those other girls had left. Pizza hadn't been tastier with them. He hadn't ever written songs for them. He'd never told them he...loved them).
...Just because.
She gets up (and last night had to have been been a...particularly potent, 3-D, surround-sounded nightmare. There was no way… she...his sweatshirt. No. Freaking. Way.) and in all irony she had slept in his t-shirt on his couch while he had been in...banging (making love to) her roommate.
He's Derek but she's Casey (and if you think about it for a couple of years, it actually makes perfect sense) and it's always been a big deal to her ("I believe people shouldn't experience the act of love until they are in love"). Like in those movies that she and Emily used to watch in sleepovers. Where there was a prince and a princess and a happily ever after. Where the guy gave up his jacket for the girl when it rained (instead of dyeing all her clothes green) and saved her from the bad guys (instead of the girl doing the saving...but dysfunctionality was their thing anyway).
She's interrupted in her (non) thoughts by the phone.
"Hello?"
"May I speak to Casey please?"
She frowns, trying to place the voice, "Yeah, speaking."
"Case." The voice sounds more enthusiastic, "This is Richard. From Derek's hockey team." He adds in for reference.
"You mean from my English class," she's speaking a little faster than necessary (but everything in her life doesn't need to be tied to him. She knows Richard because he's the guy who reads Tennyson with more flow than she's ever heard, not because he's Derek's friend).
"Yeah," he laughs, "that too."
She waits for him to continue, already knowing his question.
He hesitates for a moment, "I was just wondering…if maybe, you know, the frat party on Saturday before mid-terms. It's very de-stressing. Of course there'll be a lot of outrageous displays of testosterone and Neanderthalism and prostitution of all forms of morality, but if you could ignore that…"
"I'd love to." She interrupts, (almost) smiling.
"You would?" He sounds surprised, like he hadn't expected that particular response, "That's great. I'll pick you up at…seven then?"
"Yeah," she's about to put down the phone, (but it's a date. She isn't totally undesirable, Richard likes her…and he's not her…whatever), "Refrain from wearing your superman underwear over you jeans, okay? Nothing personal, I just think that's where the moral degradation of today's society began."
(She has used the word refrain and degradation in one sentence to somebody who will actually know their meanings).
He laughs again, "You drive a tough bargain, Señorita, but for your sake I'll try to curb my baser tendencies for one night."
She can already hear Derek's scornful 'You guys are freaks.' But for once it didn't matter. Richard is a guy who isn't her brother. And she is going to be the girl who doesn't think about the aforementioned brother at all.
She stands in front of the mirror for moment and the flutter of excitement in her chest at the thought of a date with a guy she likes feels like a huge deal. She'll get Richard (and Derek'll get Sally)
…and maybe that's okay.
_ _
"You're eating," she says blankly, staring at the plate stacked with pancakes.
"Once again," Lyra looks up from her contemplation of her syrup, "your supreme observation skills have left me astounded."
"No", she says, slightly annoyed, "I mean you're eating. Instead of arguing about how a breath mint, if you look at it the right way, can constitute a balanced meal. And how alcohol fills in the necessary gaps."
"Yeah well", Lyra shoves another forkful into her mouth, "I figured watching my weight so that guys will ask me out is stupid. If the guy can't like me for who I am, then he's not worth the breath it would take to moan his name while faking an orgasm."
(Personality compatibility was obviously not a concern taken up by the dorm-issuing authorities of Queen's. But this was actually surprisingly...feministic). "Really?"
Lyra rolls her eyes, "No, not really. Sally's gone. Her cell's switched-off and I'm feeling something I've never felt before."
"Like...attraction or something?"
"No, you dimwit keener. Like worry or something."
She finally registers Lyra's words and her eyes widen, "Gone? What do you mean gone? Where could she have gone..." and just like a cartoon light-bulb moment, "...Derek's dorm."
"You might be right," says Lyra thoughtfully, "They did say that thing about this place being too over-crowded."
Her face burns with humiliation (her brain has obviously not been getting the strong signals she's been sending about a mind-wipe of the entire night). She takes down a plate and then promptly drops it, her hand trembling too hard to manage. She bends down to pick up the broken pieces (not that it means anything. Being a Psych major was messing with her head).
"You know," says Lyra dispassionately from her seat at the table, "I hated you when I first met you."
"No!" she says sarcastically, putting her hand over her chest "And here I thought 'keener' and 'klutz' and 'weird' and 'freak' were terms of endearment. You're breaking my heart here."
"Funny," says Lyra reflectively, "We both call you the same things and it's so different. I used to mean it and he just doesn't know how to speak without involving a word exactly opposite of what he means."
She doesn't ask about the both or the he, she doesn't want (need) to. It doesn't matter. Not anymore. Not after ("I'm going back to her, Case")... whatever.
"You were so perfect," she continues, "I mean perfect grades, perfect looks, scholarship winner. You even had parents who called every night. It's like people like you are only alive to show the rest of us just exactly how much of screw-ups we all are."
She makes a protesting noise somewhere at the back of her throat. (This isn't on her 'Top Ten Things You Want to Hear from Your Roommate' list).
"But you're really as fucked-up as the rest of us, aren't you?" And strangely enough, Lyra's voice is sympathetic, "You have a hard-on for your stepbrother who's dating your friend and is the soon-to-be brother of your mother's kid. It's like…you're the dictionary definition of screwed."
"I… hard on? That's not even biologically possible." (Because, of course, that's the important thing to focus on here).
Belatedly she realizes that the right answer would've been something like, 'Eww…gross. You have an overactive imagination and underactive brain cells.'
"Eww…gross! You have an overactive imagination and underactive brain cells."
Lyra looks at her in surprise (and that's impossible, ten minutes can't have passed since she last spoke. That clock was obviously on heroin or something) and then laughs, "…DING. Your time ran out…" she glances down at her watch, "three years ago."
The week passes in a flurry of classes and clocks and projects and life.
(He doesn't come back).
Richard has nice eyes. They're brown. Richard is a nice boy. She likes him. A lot. He's genuinely cute and sweet and funny (but not in the 'hey, look at me, I'm totally cute and sweet and funny' -Derek- kind of way. Who, by the way, is neither cute nor sweet nor funny).
The alcohol always manages to break her sentences down to the bare basics (if that) and she isn't really even drunk yet. Derek's the one capable of getting drunk on water. Not her.
She's deliriously happy that he hasn't been at the residence since a week. In fact she wishes he would disappear off the face of the earth entirely. It would definitely make her believe in 'Let There Be Light' rather than the Big Bang Theory.
It's with a start that she realizes she's kissing Richard. She's kissing Richard. She's kissing Richard. And it actually feels good. Very good. Like a she-could-get-used-to-this kind of good. And that has to be an epiphany because if she can get used to this then that means…
She realizes that, oddly enough, she doesn't seem to have closed her eyes during the wonderful kissing that she's participating in because she can see him clearly standing at the doorway. She squints to make sure, but that (crazy) reddish-brown hair and those (too familiar) brown eyes don't change. (This has to be some sort of extreme hallucination. This isn't a Lifetime Movie. It's her life).
The most unfair part in all of this is that he has to look that way. Like she's just told everyone that he failed first grade. Or as if…Marti has just called him Derek.
She looks at him for a moment and then slowly (deliberately) closes her eyes.
(She cheats a second later and opens them again. He's gone).
_ _
"Derek's looking for you."
Lyra kills the moment with the practiced ease of an expert in that particular field. Casey tries to ignore her; but the moment is so dead it resists all attempts at revivification through CPR. (Why had he looked like that, anyway?)
"Really," she asks politely, "I'm not looking for him."
"Casey." and it's Lyra's voice. It has to be Lyra's voice. This sudden urge to find him. Because Lyra has never yet managed to do that 'serious' tone very well. Until now.
She finally breaks away from Richard and she's almost out the door muttering a quick sorry to the pair furiously making out like a pre-apocalypse movie couple when the exact shade of the blonde hair of the girl strikes her eye and she turns back in sick fascination (like a train-wreck, she doesn't want to see but she has to). The color of liquid sunshine (which Derek had eloquently stated was like…"y'know, a...golden…trophy or something. It's like…not-yellow.")
(And the boy doesn't have reddish-brown hair. Or brown eyes.)
_ _
She finds him in the bathroom with a bottle of whiskey in his hands (and it strikes her that originality is definitely not a word he's ever looked up in a dictionary).
"G'way." He mutters without looking up, taking a sip of the bitter liquid (and she would've missed the grimace had she been anyone else except who she is).
"Who are you trying to fool with that thing," she snorts, "You can't hold a drink, Derek."
He takes another sip in defiance.
She sighs audibly while her heart constricts (because she's never seen him like this before. This is her whenever she believes her heart is broken. He...he's not allowed to look...he doesn't have a heart to break. Not without twenty tonne of nuclear explosives).
"Why'd you need me?"
He finally looks up and she takes a step back (stoplookinglikethat, you freak), "The day I need you is the day they put me in a straight-jacket and carter me away to the nearest asylum. So go away."
She's about to retort with a scathing remark about his intimate knowledge of straight-jackets (and how it'll definitely come useful in his future) when something catches her eye. It's just the way he's sitting there (no Derek-fucking-Venturi in the scenario) with that bottle in his hands attempting at setting his face in the usual sneer (and failing miserably). Like a little child who's scraped his knee and is trying (very hard) to remember that boys don't cry.
She's washed by a sudden wave of tenderness. The same feeling she gets when he does something stupidly endearing and pretends she doesn't know what she's talking about-- like leaving his assistant-managerial job for her and idiocy of the same kind. Except...different.
More like the tenderness she'd felt when Sally had left him (the first time) and she'd offered a hug (which he'd refused, and laughed at, and been all Derek-like in). The same girl shouldn't be allowed to make him look like that twice when the rest of the world (her) couldn't even manage to make him not leave them for four months.
"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" he asks, "Like playing tonsil hockey with the winger in the Gaels? I hope he's better at it than he is at the on-field variety of the game."
She feels a flash of possessive irritation, "Richard is as good at off-field hockey as he is on field."
"Which," he counters, "means not at all."
"Yeah, because my boyfriend is the one making out with my worst rival… (Sally? Paul?)… while I recreate a pathetic scene from a straight-to-DVD movie?"
"You're dating Ric?"
She stares at him blankly (because that was so the most important point in the whole sentence).
"Never mind," he's speaking fast, "I'm dreaming you up. It's like one of those nightmares which just never end. You're not actually here. You're just a… warped figment of my imagination."
"Der..."
"Shhh...No talking Princess, this is a silent nightmare, consisting entirely of your horrifying presence. Don't detract from it."
"De-rek."
"It's my fault, okay," he's speaking even faster now, till she actually has to come closer to make out the words, "It's all my fault. And now you can go and open up the champagne. Another royal fuckage from yours truly. Have they initiated the Nobel Prize in the category yet?"
(So damned insecure. Just like he's always been.)
"It's your fault that Sally's kissing Paul like there's no tomorrow? What did you do anyway; refuse to go down on her?"
(And just for a split second his face breaks into the impish grin at her actually having used the phrase without blushing. And she feels an almost vicious satisfaction, that even at this time, even now she can make him...)
She blushes (he laughs).
"Actually," he's not laughing anymore, "It's all your fault."
(She was the reason he'd looked like that). "The strawberries," she bursts out, panic-stricken, "I didn't remember you were allergic. I swear. I'll tell her, really. I'll just..."
"More like the champagne." He mutters.
"Oh my god. I knew it! You drunk it, didn't you? And got totally trashed. What did you tell her? That your favorite drink is milk? That you actually wore guy-liner for that D-Rock performance? That you play dolls with Marti when you think no one's looking? Oh God! You told her about the time you accidentally..."
"Casey," (when did he get so close), "Calm. Down."
(And it's déjà vu all over again).
She suddenly realizes that the air seems to have been electrified and then she plays her part, "I hate it when people tell me to calm down. It makes me very tense."
(Maybe this time it'll end...differently).
"And that," he murmurs, silently kneading her shoulders (and they're almost semi-hugging. Where's a camera when you need one?) "Would be disastrous. A frigid, prissy, princess..."
(Lyra is obviously not the ultimate word in mood-killers).
"Hello?" He's balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder, still holding on to her.
(She can tell the exact second when his eyes narrow and his replies become generic. It's the exact moment when his hands drop from her shoulder and he looks at her with something so close to revulsion it makes her stomach drop.)
"Dad," he says, briefly, "Nora's in the hospital."
_ _
"Derek, you are the most annoying brother."
"Step-brother."
"Same difference."
(Curtain Call).
The End...(okay, not really!)
Nora's not dying or anything. She's just going to have the baby! And don't hate Sally, what she did was knowingly and for the best probably (I know their break-up is kind of mysterious...if you haven't already guessed...but it WILL be explained!)
And I need some advice, what exactly is the procedure of taking leave from college? Because Derek and Casey need to go for a visit back to the fam... (DASEY ALERT!)