I've looked over this quite a few times and I'm still not happy, but I can't seem to get any editing juices flowing and I've wasted to much effort on it to can it, so here you go. Hope it isn't too terrible

Disclaimer: Still don't own LWD

Chapter Thirty-One

I glanced sideways at Derek for what must have been the fifth time since we started driving.

"Casey, either say something or quit with the creepy sideways glances, you're freaking me out." Derek said impatiently.

I frowned. "I'm just trying to work out when you're going to get mad at me for not telling them."

He sighed. "I'm not going to. I know you Casey, I didn't really expect you to." He ran his hand back through his hair, squeezing his eyes closed when we came to a red light. "Why would you want to tell your Mom and sister that you're dating your idiot step-brother who barely graduated high school and-"

"Derek, no!" I cut him off, horrified. "I'm not ashamed to be with you, I was just worried they would find it weird. I consider Marti and Edwin my siblings, Simon is both of our brother, I just didn't want this to affect my relationship with them, or with George. They're my family."

He turned to me with a puzzled frown. "So maybe one day, if things go ridiculously well and you manage to brainwash me, they'll be your in-laws as well as step-family, what difference did you think it would make?"

I shrugged a little self-consciously. After George and Edwin's non-reaction followed by the fairly positive reaction of the whole family afterwards I was finding it a little difficult to remember how I'd feared they'd react. "I don't know, that they'd act like we were doing something wrong or disgusting. I obviously don't consider you my brother but in a way you are family. It's a little... Weird. To be honest, if I hadn't seen Cher and Josh and how they've found a balance between being family and being lovers, I'd probably think it was a little too weird."

Derek nodded, pulling the car forward as the lights changed. "Are you sure it isn't?"

I sucked in a sharp breath. Maybe this was it, maybe this was Derek figuring out what I'd figured out long before and maybe it wasn't a question of whether it was too weird for me but whether it was too weird for him."Derek, I..."

"I don't want to do this if it's going to be too weird for you; I don't want you to feel uncomfortable. With all that we've been through; hating each other, fighting, teasing, ignoring, everything, we've never been uncomfortable." He continued, his face pulled into a neutral expression and his tone slightly humorous but his eyes squinting slightly. Whenever I'd seen him do that he had claimed he had 'sun' or 'dust' in his eye.

I reached over to put my hand on his thigh, he flinched slightly at the contact but his lips quirked a little. "I'm not uncomfortable. I just... Didn't want our family to be."

He nodded again. "You do know there will be people who aren't okay with this, right?"

"Yeah, I know." Cher had told me quite a few stories about people calling her incestuous or a freak or some combination thereof, and her dad and Josh's mom were divorced, our parents weren't. "But the people who count are fine with it."

"Who are you and what did you do with Casey?" Derek asked, deadpan.

I laughed. "What, so I have to believe that you're completely okay with all of this and with possibly losing your awesome reputation, but I'm not allowed to disregard the opinions of a few a-holes?"

"Yeah, that's about it." Derek replied.

"So why can you suddenly become Mr I-Don't-Care-What-People-Think but I can't be the female counterpart?" I asked sulkily.

"Because too many people care what I think for me to worry what they'll think." Derek stated smugly. "You on, the other hand, have been fighting against klutzilla and keener labels since you were a little girl in pigtails."

"I actually didn't like pigtails, one always ends up just a fraction higher than the other." I mumbled.

He rolled his eyes. "Not the point." He sighed and checked his mirrors before swerving over to a small lay by and undoing his seatbelt. "Undo your seatbelt."

"Why?" I looked around, trying to see if there was something outside the car that had made him pull over. I undid my seatbelt anyway and looked at Derek for an answer. Derek had leaned in close and I shrieked a little in surprise at his sudden close proximity but it was muffled as Derek closed the distance to kiss me. Within seconds he was pulling at me, manoeuvering me into his lap and clutching me close. I pulled back a short distance, panting a little from the harsh movements. "Derek, we're on the road, people might drive past and see us."

He laughed a little and pulled me back in, speaking around the skin of my shoulder. "I thought we didn't care what other people thought?"

"I do if it gets us arrested for indecent exposure!" My fingers automatically tightened on his shoulder and in his hair as he slipped his fingers under my bra strap and kissed my skin right by my ear.

"Why Casey, I didn't realise we were going to be removing any clothing, but if you insist." His hand slid down to the buttons on my blouse.

"Der-ek! Stop it!"

He stopped and leaned back, hands held up either side on his smirking face.

I flushed. "I didn't mean stop all of it."

Derek moved his arms back to cross behind his head and relaxed into his seat. "How was I meant to know that? You want me to do some things but not others then you're gonna have to tell me which things I should be doing."

I glared at him but didn't climb back into my own seat. "No undressing and no below the belt stuff." I warned.

He raised an eyebrow. "And what's the stuff you do want me to do?"

I blushed darker. "Anything that doesn't involve losing clothes or touching stuff down there." I tried to maintain eye contact but couldn't help flicking my gaze away in embarrassment. I'd never really discussed what was and wasn't allowed during make out sessions before, I always just said stop when it went too far.

Derek leaned forward and kissed me again, hand sliding up beneath my blouse and gripping my hips, mouth slipping back down to my shoulder. He smelled like the mint he'd eaten as we drove away from the restaurant, with the underlying musk from the aftershave he only ever wore on dates. I hadn't even noticed he was wearing it until then. My head was full from sensation and the preoccupation of watching for passing cars, and I pulled his mouth back up to mine. I could taste traces of mint and ice-cream in my mouth from the kiss and realised I'd opened my lips. Why had I done that? Why wasn't I grossed out? His tongue pressed lightly and fleetingly against my own, nothing like the forceful thrusting Truman used to try or the slobbery licking Max had favoured, just a soft, small pressure that came and went almost teasingly, leaving my own tongue following it automatically. The next small flick of his tongue against my own, I pressed back, surprised by how good it felt. Why did so many people insist on the disgusting drool fest I'd been subjected to so many times when it could be like this? My eyes stopped scanning the road and closed, my chest relaxing against Derek's and our breathing starting to sync. Derek started to lighten the kiss, adding less and less pressure and barely using his tongue at all. I pressed in; I'd only just discovered this kind of kissing and was enjoying it too much to stop so soon.

Derek broke the kiss with a grin. "Thought you didn't like tongue kissing?" He taunted.

"Shut up." I leant back in but he caught my face in his hands and kissed the tip of my nose, prompting a scowl and a glare from me.

"Sorry Princess, we gotta get back sometime you know." He straightened up and urged me back into my own seat, giving me a completely out of character peck on the lips before he strapped himself back in and pulled off again.

I crossed my arms and stared determinedly out of the passenger side window.

"Aw, Case, don't be like that. You know we had to stop sometime, and you were the one who didn't want to give passing cars a show." He was grinning ear to ear with a look of triumph on his face.

"What's with the smug look?" I asked after a few seconds of pointed silence.

"Hmm?"

I narrowed my eyes at him, he knew exactly what I meant. "You have the same look on your face that you get when one of your stupid pranks goes well."

"It's nothin'. Just I'm a master kisser." Derek said mock-casually.

I gave a snort of derision. "It wasn't so great on new years."

His head snapped around to look at me, eyes a little wide and panicked before his smirk returned with such force I felt like I had whiplash. "I'm not at my best when I'm drunk. I didn't even know you remembered, you never mentioned it."

"Of course I remember! Just because you and Vicki got stupidly drunk doesn't mean the rest of us got alcohol amnesia." My lip curled at the memory of him kissing her all those years ago. I wished I'd never seen that stupid video; now that was all I was going to be able to think about when her name came up.

"Hey! I wasn't that drunk!"

"So why'd you french kiss me?" I shot back, still annoyed by the old memory playing in my head.

Derek's jaw clenched and he swallowed. "So maybe I was a little drunk."

"Nice memory for our first kiss, wasn't it." I deadpanned, bitterness seeping into my tone.

"Casey..." Derek pulled into the parking lot outside my dorm. "What's this about?"

"What's what about?" I asked snarkily.

"This! This sudden change from wanting to make out on the highway for the rest of the evening to sulking!" Derek let his head drop to the steering wheel.

"I'm sorry if remembering how you made out with my cousin spoiled my mood." I knew I was being more than a little unreasonable, it wasn't Derek's fault my brain decided to remind me of that little fact at this particular moment in time and it was years before I even considered him anything other than an irritating, inconvenient house-mate. It didn't stop the vindictive voice in my head chanting that he'd wanted Vicki, Truman had wanted Vicki, Vicki got to everyone I liked before they'd even looked twice at me since I first started liking boys.

"What are even talking about right now?" Derek hadn't lifted his head and his words were a little muffled.

"Vicki! Icky Vicki! My cousin, the one who you made out with, the one who kissed Truman." I squeezed my arms tight around my chest, curling in on myself a little.

"What about her? What does she have to do with anything?" He raised his head now, his voice becoming more and more annoyed with each word.

"She got you first, okay!" I snapped. "Along with Truman and every boy I liked when we lived in Toronto."

"So?" Derek still didn't get it. "You said people used to mistake you for twins. The only reason she got everybody first is she's a world class slut who doesn't think twice about approaching guys."

"Don't call her that." As much as I loathed her, I despised the word slut and all it represented. And I don't mean sleeping around.

"What? A slut? Why?" Derek clearly just wanted me out of the car, but he wasn't going to tell me to get out. Not yet anyway.

"Because it's a horrible, misogynistic word that no woman deserves!" I glared at him.

"But I'm allowed to be called a man-slut?" Derek asked.

I looked away. "That's different. It was a joke and-"

"And what? It's okay because I'm a guy?" Derek interrupted. "Casey, either be against people sleeping around or not, but don't decide that it's fine for girls but guys should be shamed. I know you think you're being feminist but you're just being a hypocrite. You can't have it both ways! Either both me and Vicki are sluts or no one is. Being man hating doesn't equal being feminist."

I was gobsmacked. Never had something coming out of Derek's mouth; especially in response to something I'd said; made so much sense and made me feel so stupid. "There's a difference between using it as a joke and using it as an insult."

"How about as a description? She sleeps around, has done since before she was legal. So did I. Why is it wrong to call us sluts? All you're doing by saying the word is bad is saying that the behaviour it describes is bad. So long as no one is hurt then everyone should be able to do whatever the hell they want in their own bedrooms and relationships! Neither Vicki nor I has had unprotected sex, ever caught or passed on an STD or STI, caused or had an unwanted pregnancy or did something the other person didn't want. Why should we feel ashamed of ourselves?" Derek continued his rant, face becoming focused and blazing. It was hot. A little too hot. I must have missed about half of what he was saying because I was too busy ogling him. I suddenly felt a little more sympathy for those boys who had clearly ignored everything I was saying in favour of asking for a make out session. His face softened without looking at me. "Her kissing Truman was wrong, that hurt you. Me asking Lucy out when I was still with Kendra was wrong too." He breathed in and turned to me to say something else but paused when he saw my expression. "Case?"

"Hmm?" I asked, still a little focused on his mouth.

He looked puzzled. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Just a bit... Tired after facing the whole family and everything. It was kinda stressful." I answered, a bit of heat rising to my cheeks at the thought of him figuring out why I was staring. "I should go inside. Get some rest."

"Okay, you want me to walk you in?"

I shook my head, "I'm good." I then realised that I was fine, all my anger and hurt about Vicki had gone as I'd been distracted. A mean part of me wondered if that was why he'd done it. It wasn't exactly like Derek to take a moral standpoint, and definitely unlike him to rant about slut shaming, but it was like him to deceive me in order to get his own way. My eyes narrowed but I decided to let it slide for now. I'd scrutinize him more later, when if it was a lie he'd have likely forgotten it.

For now I had to give Emily the phone call I'd promised her the day I told her I was telling Derek. I cringed at the memory of all the missed calls. Still, she'd bought that I wanted to wait until my family knew. The thought crossed my mind that I should probably call Cher too. Good thing it was a Saturday and my room-mate was at her parents', I was in for a long night of phone conversations.