Chapter Text
one.
“I was going to ask her to see the new Paranormal Activity sequel with me, but I don’t know – is that too obvious?” Lizzie lets out a frustrated huff on the other end of the phone, and Casey can perfectly picture her younger sister reaching to play with the long brown hair that’s no longer there. She’d warned Lizzie when she’d first brought up the idea of getting a pixie cut that she wouldn’t know what to do with her hands, but had Lizzie listened? Of course not.
“I think it sounds perfect.” Casey punches in the five-digit sequence for the door to her apartment building, shoving her shoulder against the glass when it jams halfway open. The lobby smells like old carpet and stale coffee and Jennifer in apartment two's pasta primavera, and she scrunches up her nose and adjusts her cell phone between her cheek and shoulder. “It’s not obvious, if you get too nervous you can pass it off as just hanging out.”
“You think I’m gonna chicken out?!”
“No!” Casey attempts to dig the tiny mail key out from inside her gym bag, fumbling for it inside the special compartment she uses to keep it safe along with her wallet and chapstick, her phone slipping precariously off her shoulder. “No – crap, stupid freaking lock –“ The unladylike grunts coming out of her mouth as she struggles with the eighty year old metal mailbox would be embarrassing if she weren’t alone in the lobby, but as it is she just finished an intense hour of dance class and she’s past the point of caring either way. “I’m just saying it’ll be a good chance to gauge her response. Hopefully, she’ll show some sign that she feels the same way.”
Lizzie hums noncommittedly. “I tried asking Edwin, but he met his girlfriend at math club so he’s not exactly Casanova. Should I ask Derek?”
“Do not ask Derek.” Casey slams the mailbox closed, a move she’ll no doubt regret when it’s twice as hard to open tomorrow, and shoves the letters and cardstock junk advertisements into her bag before trudging up the stairs. Most of the time living on the fourth floor is nice, when the weather is good and the view stretches out over to Lake Ontario and she can drink her morning coffee and listen to the birds before the morning traffic gets bad, but today she curses every step of the ancient building. Her thighs are burning.
“But he’s got more experience than anyone I know! You want up?” The sound of Simon babbling interrupts their call, and Casey manages to smile despite her exhaustion. Their littlest brother has always shared a special bond with Lizzie, and while teenage Casey would have been jealous about that, adult Casey tries to be more understanding. Lizzie is with him 24/7 and she isn't - it's only natural.
“Ugh. Don’t remind me about Derek. I’ve had to live with that experience for the last year and a half.”
“Why did you choose to live with him – no, Simon, earrings aren’t toys - then?” Lizzie asks the same question she’s been asking every month since Casey and Derek made the announcement they were moving in together (not together, of course, just sharing rent money – not that anyone would have any reason to accuse them of the other thing), and Casey rolls her eyes.
“Budget cuts.” She quips. “Why don’t you just do what Lizzie would do?”
Lizzie snorts, which makes Simon giggle, so she does it a couple more times before answering. “Because Lizzie is only confident kicking a ball around a muddy field or kicking ass on a Tae Kwon Do mat.”
“So, channel that version when you’re on your date,” Casey suggests, before promptly tripping over her neighbor’s doormat for the hundredth time (she would kill Joel if he didn’t make the best banana bread she’s ever tasted), “You know – minus the wrestling.”
“I feel like Derek would make some sort of dirty joke there.” Lizzie’s smirk is practically audible, and looks a little too much like Derek in her head, and Casey groans.
He absolutely would.
“All the more reason not to ask his opinion.”
“Speaking of – when are you guys planning on getting here?”
Casey pauses to read the note taped to her front door inviting her a Derek to the building Thanksgiving dinner on Monday if they don’t have other plans, and she smiles with a twinge of regret. She’ll have to bake a pie and leave it with Joel to take, since they won’t be here to participate. “Derek wants to leave early on Friday and I only have one class in the morning, so we should get there sometime in the early afternoon.”
“Good. Then you’ll be here in time to help me pick out an outfit for my maybe-date.”
“Of course! I wouldn’t miss it.”
There’s clamoring on Lizzie’s end and the sound of Simon saying something before a loud thunk and the call drops, and Casey laughs quietly to herself while shaking her head. That kid might be half McDonald, but his Venturi genes run strong. Clearly he had grown tired of sharing Lizzie's attention.
Slipping her phone into her bag, she moves to unlock the door – already dreaming of the hot shower waiting for her on the other side. This key slides easily into the lock, the shiny deadbolt being the only new thing in the building and something Casey had insisted on when Derek had found this place, and she pushes the door open and drops her bag on the table with a sigh. Immediately heading for the fridge to get a glass of cold water and the ingredients for her favorite green smoothie.
First take care of your muscles, Casey, she reminds herself, then you can indulge in a long shower.
It’s late in the afternoon, so the chances of Derek being home are slim, and she intends to take full advantage of having the place to herself. She got all her homework for the week done early in preparation for the holiday weekend, so she fully intends to treat herself by ordering Indian from the shop around the corner and watching Pride & Prejudice again. She’d tried watching it the night before with Derek to disastrous effect. The attempt had ended after approximately fifteen minutes and three disparaging comments about Darcy’s looks.
“Why would Lizzie ever go for this guy? I mean, Kiera Knightley is a solid ten, and I’m supposed to believe she’s attracted to this guy? This guy, Casey?”
The ensuing argument had been heated, to say the least, and she’d been so irritated by his triumphant smirk when she’d let him switch the TV over to hockey that she’d locked herself in her room and written the first draft of an essay that isn’t due for another three weeks out of frustration.
“Looks aren’t everything Derek, and besides, Darcy IS attractive!”
“Are you saying you’re seriously attracted to this guy?”
“Stop calling him ‘this guy’! Besides, everyone is attracted to him. He’s Mr. Darcy.”
“Then you should go for someone different. Branch out and try something new.”
Psh. As if she wants to try something new. His version of new would probably be the exact opposite of the men she’s dated, just to trick her into going to a monster truck rally or something. She’s perfectly happy with wanting her fairytale romance, dashing hero and all, thank you. Even if finding said romantic hero has proven to be more difficult than fifteen-year-old Casey had once thought.
“Why did you choose to live with him?” Lizzie’s question comes echoing back, and Casey shrugs to the empty kitchen.
It's complicated.
What she’d told Lizzie, and subsequently their entire family for the last two years, was true. It is cheaper for two college kids to share a place than to pay two separate rent checks in a popular college town like Kingston. Especially when their parents want to help, but can’t afford much with four other kids still at home. But the other reason, the one Casey refuses to admit out loud to anyone but herself, is that she’d missed him. For all his obnoxious qualities – and he is obnoxious – he’d made high school more interesting. Exciting. And when that was gone, she’d found some of the color had gone out of life as well.
She’d been shocked when Derek had announced his acceptance into Queen’s University (stealing her thunder in the process), but ultimately not as upset as she’d let on. The truth was, she’d actually felt kind of relieved not to be moving so far away from home by herself and had hoped having Derek along would mean she wouldn’t get as lonely. But they’d both wanted the full freshman experience and that meant living in the freshman dorms, so Derek had found a rowdy place with a bunch of boys who were also on the hockey team, and she had found a nice triple room in Victoria Hall, and her initial hope that the two of them might find opportunities to hang out was quickly buried underneath coursework and tests and new friends.
It wasn’t that she and Derek had avoided each other, per se, they just… didn’t go out of their way to see each other. Ever. And once Casey realized he wasn’t going to make the first move towards friendship, she decided she couldn’t. If separation was what he wanted, then separation would be what he got.
Nobody had been surprised back home. “Of course you’d scatter the second you had the chance!” Lizzie had said. “Why would you want to hang out with him? He drives you crazy!” She rarely saw him, except for those occasional times when she’d catch him lounging about and flirting with random girls in The Lazy Scholar, and when she did see him she refused to make eye-contact, lest he sense her weakness and use it against her to pull another prank.
Okay, maybe she also saw him at one or two hockey games, but that was purely at George’s request, who wanted to know how Derek was getting on in a tougher arena.
(Not that Derek had known about those games at the time, of course.)
But it’s true what they say – absence does make the, well, she won’t say heart because hearts and Derek don’t go together, nor does the word fondness - but it does make you miss someone. Even the stupid things you used to hate. (The first time he’d called her keener on campus she’d nearly grinned and hugged him instead of picking a fight.) And while her roommates were great, she’d quickly discovered why living in a building with 900 people who all possess varying standards of cleanliness and academic commitment might not be the best situation for someone with a type-A personality.
So when George and Nora had sat them down the next summer to talk finances and how they were going to manage paying for more expensive off-campus housing sophomore year, she’d been shocked, but not altogether displeased, when Derek had groaned and rubbed his hand over his face and begrudgingly suggested they share a place – with the obligatory overdramatic sighs about how he was sacrificing so much by letting her cramp his style, and that she’d need to let him have the biggest room wherever they lived in compensation.
Casey had protested, of course, because that’s what was expected and it would have been strange and suspicious if she’d agreed right away. Not that there’s anything to be suspicious of, of course, just she and Derek have an MO to follow and the few times they did get along in high school it instantly made people more concerned than when they were biting each other’s heads off. After the requisite number of complaints, though, she’d gone upstairs to start apartment hunting online – only to be shocked for the second time when two weeks later Derek said he’d found the perfect place in the Student Ghetto.
Perfect might be too strong a descriptor for this place, but it was within budget and had two rooms (he took the biggest, as promised, but let her have the one with the bigger closet) and wasn’t so small they were constantly on top of each other, and it got a good amount of sunlight so overall Casey was satisfied.
And somehow, despite the very real bets their siblings had wagered on the situation, they were both still satisfied enough to renew the contract for a second year. Satisfied and, dare she say, happy. It’s not perfect, but over time their fights have mellowed, they’ve gotten used to each other’s habits and schedules, and – disparaging remarks about literary heroes aside – they generally get along fine. Especially once he offered to cook dinner a few times a week in trade for her helping with his homework (she didn't even know he knew how to use a stove, but he'd proven to be a pretty good cook).
It works, and that’s enough to bring a small smile to Casey’s face as she finishes her water and draws the kitchen curtain to the side to admire the changing color of the leaves on the big elm tree outside. They’ve become friends. Best friends, she might say if she’s in a particularly good mood and Derek’s been behaving. And she can honestly say she doesn’t regret moving in together one bit.
It’s quiet in the apartment – a nice sort of quiet that she finds relaxing after the upbeat tempos of her dance class – and she figures Derek must be out with one of his other friends or at practice. He’s rarely home after five, either busy with hockey or with dates - although, she realizes with some surprise, she hasn’t seen him with a girl in a while. Not since their disastrous double date a month ago. The one that started with Derek picking a fight and ended with Casey’s latest boyfriend, Arthur, dumping her. (“What a fucking dumbass,” Derek had said, offering no further elaboration.) Which is why she nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears him cry out her name.
Her glass clatters loudly in the sink (for once she’s grateful they settled for cheap plastic instead of splurging on nice glassware), carelessly discarded in her haste to make sure he’s not dying.
Honestly, Derek, what trouble have you got yourself into now?
There’s no malice in the thought, though, she’s too worried for that, and she rounds the table and runs down the hallway towards his room without a moment’s pause - noticing the door already slightly ajar and not bothering to knock first like she normally would before pushing it open.
There’s no blood. No broken limbs. No sign of intrusion. And yet, what she sees will be seared in her mind forever.
Derek is sitting at his desk, legs splayed out in front of him, pants unbuckled, his hand wrapped around his length (she refuses to think cock – the Derek in her head can’t have one of those), and his laptop screen is propped open to some rather vigorous, vocal porn.
Only, it’s not just any porn. While the lewd way the woman is draped over the man, his hips pistoning against hers, one hand rubbing furiously between her legs while the other plays with her breasts, would be enough to have Casey blushing for a month, that’s nothing compared to what she sees when the camera cuts to their flushed, sweaty faces and she finds her own image staring back at her.
The woman looks like her. Like her. Casey McDonald. Not just similar, but practically a doppelgänger. From her long light-brown hair to her blue eyes to the shape of her nose and curve of her lips.
He’s touching himself to a woman who looks like her.
Casey’s brain short-circuits, forced to default back to its base commands at the sudden lack of any higher thought processing ability, and she instinctually cries out his name. “Der-ek!”
His eyes fly open to find hers, but it’s too late – he comes hard, coating his hand and stomach with his orgasm – and Casey watches (god, why is she watching), wide-eyed, until he sags against his chair, utterly spent, before spinning on her heel and sprinting into the bathroom. Slamming the door shut and locking it behind her.
Derek just came. She just watched Derek come.
"My room is off limits." It was one of the first things he'd ever told her. Why doesn't she ever listen?
She sags against the wood, her chest heaving with every breath, and tries to come to grips understand what it is she just witnessed. Mentally working through the events of the last thirty seconds like it’s a question on an exam. Grasping at any stray wisps of logic she can find.
One: Derek watches porn when she’s not home. Okay, that’s not surprising. It’s not like she doesn’t know how much he likes sex. He’s a sexually active adult – it’s only natural for him to want to jerk off masturbate indulge himself sometimes. She can accept this.
Two: He does this little twist with his wrist when he –
NO! No that is not number two!
Two: Derek watches straight porn. That isn’t really significant, but it delays thinking of number –
Three: Derek watches porn involving a woman that looks like her.
Is this the first time he’s done it? Was it just a coincidence? Did he not notice the similarities – too caught up in her breasts or… other things to pay particular attention to her facial features? Or did he purposely go looking for - no. That's too much. It's not possible that he chose that particular video because of that actress, is it?
Almost robotically, Casey pushes herself away from the door and starts preparing for her shower, methodically stripping off her still-sweaty sports bra and leggings and turning on the water – checking the temperature with her hand before stepping into the cramped space and closing the glass door behind her.
With the water pouring down around her and the steam fogging up the bathroom, encasing her in its safe bubble, she can’t help but ask the one question she’d wanted to avoid above all else.
Why would Derek want to watch someone that looks like her?
No, she shuts that thought down hard, don’t go there. That’s the danger zone. That’s the line of thinking she swore to herself when they moved in together that she’d never go down. Nothing good can come of contemplating anything like that regarding Derek.
He’s your step-brother. Your step-brother. Your step-brother.
Casey. She can still hear him. How he’d said her name in a way he’s never said it before. The way he’d moaned – almost pleading.
Heat pools low in her belly, sparks tingling from her head to her toes, and Casey scrambles for the shampoo, squeezing out way too much and making a mess, but not really caring. Working it into a lather on her scalp with almost too much pressure.
He’s your step-brother. He’s off limits.
Except, he hasn’t been just her step-brother for a long time. If he ever was just that at all.
Her hands fall, trailing along her collarbones, dipping lower, before she realizes what she’s doing and snatches them back – turning around to rinse out her hair instead. (Instead of what, she doesn’t dare consider.)
Unbidden, the image of Derek’s face as he’d fallen into ecstasy comes to mind – the way his hand had clenched around himself, his breath hitching - and Casey shivers and involuntarily clenches her thighs together.
No! She berates herself. Watching him was a violation of his privacy and what you did was wrong, Casey McDonald! You’ve never thought about him like that before, you aren’t allowed to now!
Okay... so maybe that's not entirely true. She has thought about Derek and… and his cock okay, she'll admit it. But it’s not her fault! Sometimes after a shower he’ll step out of the bathroom with his towel slung low around his hips – low enough that she can see the V there and the happy trail leading down down down – and she’ll be just exiting her bedroom which is INNOCENTLY located across the hall from the bathroom and catch him like that. Water droplets still clinging to his freckled shoulders. And in those moments, her brain, which is an entity unto itself sometimes and also living inside the body of a healthy, red-blooded twenty-year-old woman, will sometimes dare to imagine what might be hidden underneath Derek’s towel.
But she’s never done anything with those thoughts! She’s certainly never gone to the internet in search of a man that looks like him to touch herself to. She’s never even watched porn at all – preferring to get her fill from trashy romance novels she picks up at the secondhand bookstore around the corner. (If she gravitates towards covers with smirking, curly-haired brunette men, well that’s purely a coincidence.) She likes a little more plot and foreplay and actual characterization – something she’s sure Derek would tease her for. “You’re such a keener, Space Case, of course you want to work for your orgasm.”
NOT that she’s ever discussed orgasms with Derek!
(Why oh why does his voice seem to live inside her head!?)
Finished with the shampoo, Casey reached for the conditioner and starts working it into the ends of her hair first – trying hard not to think about how Derek had told her just three days ago that he liked the smell. A sudden, unexpected compliment that had left her speechless and staring at him as he casually reached for another slice of pizza.
His hair products are there, too, on the shelf next to hers, a thought that gives her pause. It’s so… domestic. When did they become domestic? When did she start trusting him not to mess with her toiletries? When did he stop?
Why would Derek want to watch someone that looks like her?
There’s that question again, and Casey tears her gaze away from the bottles to finish what she’s doing. She can’t hide in here forever – pruney skin aside, the water would go cold eventually and no amount of embarrassment is worth that kind of suffering – but she has no clue what she’s going to say to Derek when she sees him. Or what he’ll say to her.
Will he laugh? Write it off as a joke? Apologize? She honestly has no idea. This is unprecedented ground for them, and while Derek usually avoids serious emotions or conversations like the plague, surely this one he won’t be able to casually shrug off like he does everything else, right?
They’ll have to talk about it. She needs to apologize for walking in on him, at least, and she needs to know why… she just… she needs some answers.
She rinses out the conditioner and quickly goes over her body with her body wash and loofa, refusing to linger anywhere too long on her oversensitive skin, before turning off the water and stepping out onto the bathmat. Grabbing her towel, she pats herself dry and wraps it around her body, fixing it securely underneath her armpits.
The mirror is too steamy to see herself properly, for which Casey is grateful (how is she ever going to be able to look at her own face again?), and she stands there for a moment in the humid bathroom practicing the breathing techniques she’s learned from so many mornings spent doing yoga in their living room.
She can do this. It doesn’t have to be a big deal if they don’t make it one. Deep breaths, Casey.
She can do this.
But by the time she’s dried and dressed and ready to face what may be a life-altering conversation, he’s gone.