AN: If you've read the teaser on Facebook…don't hate me by the end of this chapter! There's still a long way to go.

"…those two times were favours and I will be calling them in."

Plink!

Casey stirred in her sleep as the sharp sound echoed round her room. But she had been studying until late and had taken a dance class earlier in the day, so she didn't wake.

Plink! Crack!

"FUCK!" Someone hissed.

Then she woke. She opened her eyes cautiously and looked around the now familiar room. In the darkness, everything looked normal. But there had been a noise, she was sure of it. She switched on her light and blinked at the clock.

2.33am.

Casey swung her legs out of bed, and went to the door which opened onto the main corridor. She pulled it open and looked out. Nothing. So she went back inside, crossed to the window and opened the purple drapes.

A large crack crazed across the glass. Her eyes widened. What the…?

Peering out into the darkness, she tried to see what had caused her window to break. Below, two stories down, was a rough shrub border which had clearly been based on a tropical garden. The borders were spiky and the ground gravelled, and… She frowned. There was something moving around in the bushes.

A normal person would quickly start screaming for assistance from her roommates or the security team who had an office in the next door building. Casey didn't: firstly, because she didn't get on with said roommates, and secondly because since Derek's words all those weeks ago about just living her own life and ignoring everyone else's, she had made an effort not to rock the boat. She reasoned that the movement could be an animal or a person, and that even if it was the latter what they were doing in the large spiky broom plants below was very much their own business.

Until she heard the hiss.

"Casey!"

Derek.

She took a deep breath, shaking her head…and went back to bed switching off her light. Derek had broken her bedroom window. Derek was standing in the spiky plants below – okay that was quite amusing. Derek was up to something – less amusing.

Casey lay in bed, determined to ignore him because she figured her new "live and let live" policy applied equally well to her step-brother.

Unfortunately, her mind took that opportunity to remind her of his "favour" comment. Strictly speaking, she supposed, she owed Derek.

Damn!

Her room key was tucked into her bathrobe pocket, the garment itself tightly wrapped around her over her pyjamas because it was a extra cold Fall this year. She let herself out into the frigid night air using the fire escape which ran straight into the small garden.

"J-J-Jesus woman! You t-t-took your f-f-f-ucking time!" a voice hissed by her ear.

"Talk to me again like that, Venturi and I'm going. What the hell are you doing out here?" Casey's voice was barely above a whisper but he heard every word.

"I'm l-l-locked out, I need somewhere to st-st-stay for the night."

"What? Are you kidding me? You broke my window, Derek! You do realise I'm going to have a long and horrible job explaining that to my boss don't you?"

Casey had been supplementing her meagre funds by doing part time admin work for the Accommodations office.

"I'll pay for the f-f-fucking window just give me your bathrobe."

"Are you insane?"
"No. I'm naked. Now give me your robe."

There was silence. "Please tell me you're joking." Casey said in a small voice.

Derek rolled his eyes, fixed his mouth into a grimace and stepped out from behind the bush holding his hands in front of his groin.

"Oh My God!" Casey's eyes bugged. "Derek you haven't got a stitch on!"

"Keep your voice down, lamebrain! And give me your bathrobe."

Casey was still staring.

"Casey…" Derek warned. She snapped her eyes back to his face, blushing.

"Sorry…I…erm…" She hastily removed her robe and handed it over, rubbing her arms against the cold. Her pyjamas were little protection. She watched as Derek turned around and then slipped his arms into the dressing gown.

His back was smudged with marker pen and in some places she thought there was even blood.

"What the hell happened to you?" She asked, concerned. Now decent, Derek grabbed her by the arm and pushed her towards the door she had just emerged from.

"I'll tell you when we get inside." He promised.

"Atishoo!" Derek sneezed.

He was sitting in Casey's bed now in an old t-shirt of his own which Casey had liberated from the laundry pile a year ago, and a pair of Casey's shortie pyjamas bottoms which looked very similar to boxer shorts. Where it was visible, his skin was raw pink from the cold air outside and the vicious scrubbing it had endured moments ago in the shower. He was drinking hot chocolate and tucking into a sandwich.

Casey might be severely pissed at him, but she also knew her first aid and she had started to see the beginnings of a chill settling in to his body.

Hence his current position.

"Consider us even, Derek." Casey said.

"Definitely." He said, sipping the warm drink. For once he wasn't about to bite the hand that fed him. He was grateful to Casey.

"What happened?" She asked.

"Hockey squad initiation ceremony." Derek told her. "They jumped me on the way home from a club. They made me strip and tied me to the back of a pickup with "Derek Venturi Hockey God" in lipstick across my chest and a box covering my groin. Then they drove me round campus."

"A box?"

Derek took a deep breath. "A box, Casey. It's part of the hockey uniform; for protection."

She blushed a deep red which would have made him laugh except he couldn't bring himself to laugh at her when she had just saved his naked butt. She was frowning.

"I saw your back, Derek. It was bleeding. That's not an initiation. That's hazing. That's forbidden."

Derek shrugged. "Whatever…the senior hockey squad do it every year to the newbies. I should have known it was coming. They'd caught everyone else."

"But that's horrible, Derek. Seriously, you should…" Casey broke off. She wasn't going to finish the sentence because she knew what his response would be. Act don't react. There was no point in involving the authorities because that would kill his hockey career.

"They're evil." She said, sadly.

"Yup." Derek put his empty mug and plate on the side and then leant back, wincing as his sore back touched the headboard. Casey stood up and went to her bedside cabinet and opened the door. She pulled a small first aid kit out and retrieved a tube of antiseptic cream.

"Turn around." She ordered and then proceeded to spread the cold cream on the myriad of small cuts.

They sat there in an awkward silence for a while.

"Thanks Casey." Derek said when she finally finished touching his back.

"I owed you." She said. She sat back on her haunches on the bed. "What are you going to do?"

"Do?" Derek looked confused.

"Oh come on, D. I know you. If you aren't going to report it, you'll still do something."

"Yeah. I guess so." He admitted. "I'll have to think though. It needs to be something good."

Casey nodded and glanced idly at the clock.

"We need to go to sleep." She said. "I've got to work first thing. Do you need me to get you a new key?"
"Nah. They told me I could have everything back in the morning. I'll just wait it out up here."

"Okay." Casey pulled back the covers beside Derek. The bed was very small, but if they were careful there was enough room for them both to sleep. Derek sighed.

"Great. I definitely need to get them back. Not only have they embarrassed the fuck out of me, but they've made me go to bed with a keener."

Casey was in a bad mood at work the next day. She had a crick in her neck from sleeping at an odd angle and from her body being so tense. Both she and Derek had hovered on their respective edges of the bed to avoid touching each other.

She looked grimly at the pile of letters she was stuffing into envelopes. They were letters about a proposed visit by a specialist cleaning team to deep clean all academic and residential buildings to rid the university of a bad bout of stomach flu that was going around. The letters informed each dorm, building administrator and even the privately owned frat/sorority houses in the area of the dates that the team would be visiting their building. It explained the need for the buildings to be vacated at that time and the duration of the exclusion.

As Casey worked, she pulled up a letter addressed to a particular frat house – that populated by the senior hockey team.

A very Venturi idea floated across her mind, and she started to smile.

"You know, I'm impressed." Derek said, grunting under the strain. His muscles pushed against the fabric of his t-shirt which was stained with sweat and for some reason, Casey was fascinated. "I never would have thought you capable of this."

His step-sister panted with the effort she was putting in. Women don't "sweat", but her well-formed body was doing amazing things with the fabric covering it too.

"I've done this before, Derek. You know that."

"Yes, but I never believed you were this good at it. And you were right to make it just us. A clean in and out simplifies things. Fewer distractions."

"Do you think we'll get caught?"

Derek chuckled. "I hope not. Nothing worse than getting caught with your pants down."

"Shh! I heard a noise."

Derek froze. They listened for a moment.

"It's okay. It's just the contractors leaving. Right. You move to your left and we'll take this down the stairs."

And they continued their furniture removal.

Later, they stood together on the doorstep and surveyed their handy work.

"Not bad, Casey. Not bad. Of course the idea wasn't original."

"No. But the opportunity was too good to miss. And it was a much bigger project this time."

Laid out in front of them on the lawn of the Senior Hockey team's frat house was the complete interior of the Senior Hockey team's frat house. If a guy and a girl could move it, it was now on the lawn. But they hadn't just dumped the items, they had arranged them exactly as they had looked inside. Should you choose, it was now possible to sit on their three couches and look at the television – although of course it wasn't plugged in.

The idea had come from Casey when she realised that whilst the cleaning crew would only take two hours to complete their clean of the premises, the residents would not be allowed to return for five hours, giving them a clear three hours to work. Of course, Casey had missed out on her study time and Derek had skipped an extended lecture but it was worth it.

"Lassiter, eat your heart out. Just promise me you didn't leave your ID card in the rolodex this time." Derek said, leaning up against the door frame.

"Nah. I left something better." Casey said with a smirk.

"Which was?" Derek asked cautiously.

Casey didn't answer, she just stepped back into the house and into the now empty living room. Except that it wasn't empty. Over the fireplace was a very large mirror which Casey had refused to move in case it broke and gave them bad luck.

And then he saw it…scrawled across the mirror in lipstick.

"THE Hockey God was here! Long live triple D!"

He turned to his favourite step-sister and grinned.