Note: Welcome to my second long TDI-fic! Someday I will write something for the fandom that's not Duncan/Courtney (plus the occasional special guest), but today is not that day. I'm expecting this one to run roughly eight to ten chapters, and I hope that I'll be able to get the parts out fairly quickly so y'all never need very long between updates, but this one is going to take a lot more research than Duncan and Courtney bouncing off each other in a resort does so it'll probably never be quite as fast as Sequesterville usually was.

Anyway, here's the prologue! I hope you all enjoy.

Two months ago:

It wasn't often that Courtney had a free afternoon, although that was mostly by design. She didn't like not having anything to do. She didn't like wasting her time lazing around the house, or hanging out at the mall, or going to the movies. People who didn't understand her thought it must be a miserable and boring way to lead her life, but as far as she was concerned they were idiots who didn't understand how satisfying her life could be. If she wanted to do something that made her happy, she could arrange her schedule so she had the entire afternoon for practicing her violin. If she wanted fun, she might go for a jog or to swim laps at the community pool so she could keep her body in shape even as she entertained herself. If she wanted to feel fulfilled, the gratitude she received after a day spent doing volunteer work would do it every time.

And if she craveed some other, less standard, form of amusement, well, Duncan was never more than a phone call or email away to help her come up with plans and pranks to scratch that itch. Even those she always pulled off on a tight schedule, something she suspected was the reason she seemed to be much better at avoiding being caught than he was. Somehow, so far as she knew, nobody had guessed yet that she was the one behind them, even after her fall from grace on Total Drama Island, and even though it was hard to hold back a satisfied smile every time she overheard awed whispers about the amazing practical joker who'd appeared in their town that fall.

In short, Courtney didn't like starting out a day without at least a vague plan for how she was going to spend it, to be solidified as it went on.

Which was why when she opened an email from Duncan that only contained one brief line--'Hey, Princess, keep three weeks open this summer and let me know when they'll be.'--her reply was instantaneous.

'No way.'

As far as she was concerned that was that, but he must have doing something on his computer because only a minute later, while she was trying to start researching a paper she needed to write, she saw that she had another new message.

'Be glad I'm giving you a chance pick the day, Darling. You don't, and I'm showing up when I want and grabbing you off the street.'

She frowned at the screen, wishing that there was some way that he could see her through it. It almost seemed worth digging up her digital camera just to make sure he'd know how annoyed she was, but she decided against it. It would probably only make him laugh anyway.

'Really, Duncan? Kidnapping? I'm fairly sure they'd try you as an adult for that.' Really, she had no idea, but it seemed likely. After a moment, she added, 'Not to mention that you'd be proving that my parents were right when they tried to convince me to cut off all contact with you before you could degenerate into worse criminal behaviour. Honestly, I thought you were less predictable than that.'

She could imagine his smirk when he got the email, the way he was always so annoyingly, charmingly, pleased when he remembered that every time she had even the slightest amount of contact with him she was going against her parents wishes. His own parents were apparently the exact opposite way around; overjoyed that he'd somehow gotten a straight-laced girlfriend and still hadn't driven her away. There had been a time when she was a little bit worried that he might break off contact with her just because of that parental approval, and his bad boy attitude rebelling against it. But as it got closer and closer to being a year since they'd first met one and other and he kept annoying her as often as ever she stopped expecting it to end at any time, even though she knew how bad the odds were against long-distance relationships even when the people involved weren't teenagers.

'It's not kidnapping when you want to go,' Duncan replied a minute later, and you're not gonna find anybody who believes that you'd rather be spending your whole summer at home than spending time with me.'

'Well, somebody's feeling creepy and egotistical today,' she typed back, rolling her eyes at the screen.

'Stop trying to change the subject, Princess. Just make some time and get back to me with when.'

'You'd better get comfortable, Darling. It's going to be a long wait.' She closed her email program entirely with a small frown before he could reply again and tempt her into continuing the ridiculous discussion, then went back to her homework.

It wasn't long before she caught herself absently tapping the corner of her notebook with her pen instead of taking notes, and staring blankly at the article she was trying to read without any of the information actually reaching her mind. "Oh, damn it," she muttered to herself before setting the notebook aside and reaching for her scheduler.

She supposed that it couldn't hurt to at least look at what days she still had free.

o 0 O 0 o

Halfway across the country, Duncan leaned back and grinned at her last message, pleased at how the discussion had gone. Sure, she was saying no, but he was expecting a few weeks worth of that; it was why he was getting an early start instead of waiting for summer to actually begin to bring it up.

When a couple of minutes passed without her getting back to the email he'd sent in response to her last one he realized she was done talking for the day and went back to what he'd been doing. He wasn't going to get behind on his plans just because she felt like being difficult.

He had a wide range of websites opened up--Mapquest in one tab, his bank statement in another, a wilderness supply store in a third, and more besides--and made an occasional note about one thing or another as he jumped back and forth between them. But, even as he got into what he was doing, he couldn't resist going back to her last email every now and then and smirking at it in a way that he knew would annoy the hell out of her if she could see it.

It was the 'Darling' that did it. The moment he'd seen it any doubts he'd had about his chances of winning her over in the end had vanished.

He might use pet names with her all the time, but she only used them back when her mind was shifting from its stick-up-the-ass default state to something more on his wavelength. And once that started, it was all just a matter of time.