Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. I'm just using them for my own amusement.
Casey waited.
For the shock to finally hit her.
The shame.
The regret.
The panic.
She knew it was only a matter of time before reality sunk in.
She was naked in Derek's bed, after all. And they'd just committed several acts of debauchery in it.
It was the logical next step.
Or, so it should have been.
The thing was Casey had been lying awake for rather a while now, and the only thing she seemed to be feeling was the lingering effects of an afterglow.
That, and the eerie sense of contentment that seemed to stem from studying Derek's sleeping face as he lay beside her.
Casey found herself considering things she hadn't before.
Like the tiny scar at the corner of his right eyebrow.
The faint dusting of freckles that scattered across the bridge of his nose.
The high arch of his eyebrows and gentle slope of his nose. The sharp edge of his jaw and curve of his bottom lip…
Lips Casey now knew exactly what felt like pressed against her own.
Knew how they felt trailing over her neck and exploring down her body. Down, down, down …
She knew now what the width of his shoulders felt like gripped in her hands. The warmth and heaviness of his body over hers. How his muscles flexed and moved, his breath turning heavy and his eyes molten. And the way he said her name …
Yeah, Casey took a deep breath pulling her thoughts back before they delved in too deep, she knew all of that now.
What she didn't know was when things - feelings - had changed.
That was the most baffling aspect of it all.
Because try as she did, Casey just couldn't seem to pinpoint a single seismic event that had led them to this.
As in, there were just so many.
So many little moments over the years.
Some so small and seemingly inconsequential they hadn't even really registered at the time.
It seemed nearly impossible to try and pinpoint just one.
If Casey had to choose though, if she had to select one particular moment as a turning point, then it was undoubtedly the phone call with her mother.
It had been several months into Casey's move to New York, after a particularly bad day had left Casey wallowing in the depths of self-pity and questioning every decision that had led her to deferring from the higher academics to pursue dance, in the midst of the worst bout of homesickness she'd experienced yet, somewhere in between the sobbing and the nonsensical babbling, that's when she'd said it.
Well, more like wailed it.
"I - even - miss - Derek!"
To say that admission had caused alarm was an understatement.
In an instant, her mother's calm soothing and gentle sympathies had turned into genuine concern. And swift action.
Getting in contact with Casey's father, who it turned out had been on his way to catch a flight to Tokyo for a business meeting, Nora had demanded he turn the taxi right around and go straight to Casey's apartment instead to check on their daughter.
Impossible though it seemed, it had been the truth. Casey had grown to miss Derek.
Her annoying, pain-in-the-ass, selfish, arrogant, childish, immature stepbrother.
Derek, who was also - inexplicably - capable of some of the sweetest acts of thoughtfulness during some of Casey's lowest moments.
Even the times he'd been the very cause for those lows in the first place.
Derek, who challenged her at every turn and brought out the very worst in her unlike anyone else.
And yet, brought out the best in her too.
It was ironic that the toothpaste to her orange juice would turn out to be the ying to her yang also.
Not that Casey had been thinking any of that at the time she'd made her confession.
All she'd known then was the simple fact of her statement: She missed Derek.
It was only now, in hindsight, Casey was beginning to realize the full depth of it.
As if he could hear his name on her mind, or maybe the gears in her head working overtime had just been too noisy, Derek began to stir.
It was then, finally, Casey began to experience one of the feelings she'd been waiting on.
Panic.
Only her overwhelming need wasn't to leap out of the bed and make a run for it, like she might have expected. Instead, it was the swift and sudden realization she'd yet to consider what Derek might do that sent her pulse skyrocketing into overdrive.
How would he react in the aftermath of their coupling?
Would he feel shame?
Regret?
Panic?
Would he shut down on her again? Like he had after their first kiss?
Maybe he would run from her.
Fuck.
For all of her thinking Casey realized she hadn't been truly thinking at all.
Blinking his eyes open, it took a few extra moments for the haze of sleepiness to dissipate enough for him to focus on her.
And when it did, he smiled at her.
And Casey's heart did a little flip in her chest.
She exhaled a breath she didn't even know she'd been holding.
And she blurted it out -
"I missed you."
- just like that.
A beat of silence followed this admission.
Before Casey had the sense to tack on, "When I was away. In New York, I mean."
Lest Derek be led to think she'd meant she'd been missing him while he'd been sleeping.
Like some kind of crazy, lovesick stage-five-clinger or something...
Casey felt her face steadily reddening the longer the silence stretched on.
Oh god. What had she been thinking? Why had she said it?! She's just handed him loaded ammo on a silver platter to make fun of her for the rest of her -
"I know."
Amidst the onslaught of rising embarrassment, it took Casey a moment to realize Derek had spoken.
"You … knew?" she repeated haltingly, not really understanding.
"Your mom told me."
"My - " Casey faltered, bewildered.
"When I found out you were moving back," Derek said. "My dad and Nora were dropping all these hints about you having a hard time finding a place in Queens and ... Y'know," he shrugged, "it was classic guilt trip stuff."
"And here I thought you were immune to such things," Casey quipped, still struggling to reconcile with the newfound knowledge her mother had been blabbing about their - so called, or so Casey had assumed - private conversation.
"Oh, I am," Derek assured her, his signature smirk breaking out across his face.
The sight of it though - of all that confident smugness - didn't seem to pack the same annoying punch it usually did for Casey. For reasons she didn't care to consider right now, as she was far more preoccupied with more important things.
"So then," Casey asked, as the question struck her, "why did you wind up saying yes to letting me move in?"
Because she'd always been under the impression it was only parental pressure that caused Derek to finally crack.
Well, that and the prospect of making up for lost time in pranks and other childish antics had presented too good an opportunity for him to pass up.
"Did you miss me too, Der?" Casey teased. Fully expecting a scoff or a snort, or sarcastic comeback in response to lighten the mood.
She was drawn up short when Derek's eyes flickered from her cheshire cat smile to run over the planes of her face, like a slow, gentle caress, his eyes somehow softening as he did, before he murmured, "Something like that…"
Casey could hardly believe her ears.
"You missed me?" she whispered.
She didn't mean to, but that's how it came out.
Derek met her wide-eyed stare straight on with his own steady.
"Yeah, Case," he said, "I missed you."
Stunned wasn't quite a strong enough word to describe how this admission left her.
It wasn't just the words itself, but the openness in which they were acknowledged that shocked her.
I mean, this was a pure statement of fact. On feelings. From Derek. To Casey. About Casey.
Considering they were lying in bed together, naked, having just had sex multiple times only a short while ago, it stood to reason some feelings were involved.
One might have even considered the act itself, at the very basic level, admittance enough itself.
But still, Casey couldn't seem to wrap her head around it.
Maybe because this was different.
This was … profoundly different.
Before Casey could fall much further down the rabbit hole of analyzing all that meant though, Derek started talking again and she had to reign herself in.
"I didn't think I was going to," he admitted, thoughtfully. It sounded as if he was speaking more to himself than to her really, but Casey responded all the same.
"I didn't think I was going to either," she agreed, because she understood exactly what he meant.
"Two years…" Derek's hand, the one that had been tucked under his pillow, reached out and caught the end of one of her long locks of hair, playing with it absently between them. "That's a long time, Case."
Maybe it was the slightly sad way he said it, that made it feel like the first time she truly realized it.
"I didn't mean for it to be that long," she confessed. Feeling the need to explain. "I really thought, in the beginning, I was only going to be gone those first six months. I wasn't expecting that offer for the next show. Or the one after that. I mean, people struggle their whole careers just to get that one shot, you know? People who've got way more experience and talent than me. People way better -"
Casey cut herself off as Derek suddenly tugged the lock of hair he'd been twirling in gentle admonishment.
"Not possible, baby. There's no one better than you."
Whether it was the pet name, the compliment, the genuine sincerity, or the combination of all three, Casey didn't know. But her heart skipped a beat all the same.
"You only say that because you know nothing about dance," she laughed, trying to play off the moment.
Only she couldn't, because Derek double downed on it.
"I know you," he said simply. "That's why I said it." And if that wasn't enough, he went on, "It wasn't a surprise that you wound up staying out there for as long as you did, Case. Honestly, the surprise was that you came back." Then he smiled at her, softly, and said, "I'm happy that you did though."
And it was too much.
It was entirely too much.
"What are you doing?" Casey heard the confused laugh in Derek's voice as she suddenly pulled the blankets from around her chest, up, over her face.
"Nothing," she said, though it came out more like "muwfahing".
"Casey …"
She just needed a minute, that was all.
One little solitary minute to pull herself back together.
To get a grip on the rollercoaster of emotions she'd just undergone in the last few minutes.
Of course, Derek couldn't give her anything without a fight. So after a minor tussle (wrestling with Derek was far more distracting when they were both undressed), after Derek finally managed to get the upper hand - in the most underhanded way - and bring the blankets down enough to expose her face, Casey blurted out instantly, "It's too much!"
"What?" said Derek, half laughing again as he hovered over her.
"You're being nice! It's too much! It's too weird!" she declared.
Derek smirked down at her.
"Are you sure?" he checked slyly, "Because I don't remember you thinking it was 'too much' when I was being nice - really nice - to you earlier… In fact, I'm pretty sure you were enjoying it …"
Casey tried to roll her eyes and scowl at the low suggestive edge to his voice as he teased her. Which was precisely the reaction she'd been trying to avoid and knew she'd get from him.
Only, hadn't she mentioned before he played dirty?
The hand that he'd sneaked onto her body earlier to brush over the ticklish spot on her side, was on the move again, only this time it was drifting in a different direction. A downward direction.
Casey's thighs seemed to widen apart of their own accord. And the sigh that escaped at the first brush of his fingers over her (suddenly very eager) center, was completely unsanctioned.
Unfortunately, it didn't really matter if it was intentional or not. Derek's point had been proven.
If his responding grin was any indication, he'd declared victory to himself.
"Uh!"
Casey let out a sharp gasp as one, two of Derek's fingers suddenly slid into her, all the way, without any further preamble.
"Too much?" he asked innocently, as he flexed them, letting her feel the slight stretch.
"Derek," she chided. Protested. Moaned.
"Yeah, baby?"
He bent down and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her lips as he started working his fingers in earnest for her, building up a slow, steady rhythm.
"Want me to stop?" he teased, his eyes glinting wickedly as she writhed. Obviously not wanting that at all.
"That wouldn't be very nice of you," she managed to hit back at him, grinding against his palm.
Derek laughed.
"True," he agreed.
Then he proceeded to demonstrate to her - twice - just how truly nice to her he could be.
Just a little something that's been running around in my head for a while.
Hope you enjoyed ;)
GoddessoftheMaan