Liquid Courage

Pairing: Casey MacDonald x Derek Venturi

Casey stumbles through the door at 2 in the morning with her heels in one hand and a bottle in the other. Derek is right behind her, shutting the door to their shared apartment and locking it behind him.

After a victorious hockey game tonight (technically last night), Derek's teammates decided it was time for a party. This usually ended in Derek being the drunk one and Casey being the ever-responsible designated driver. However, Casey had been really stressed over her classes and her internship and her general keener things, and Derek had decided she needed to loosen up (something he'd been preaching for years, really). Therefore, their roles are reversed.

And Casey is absolutely smashed.

She'd only drank one other time in the year they'd been at Queens, but it goes without saying that she's a total lightweight. She is stumbling around, knocking into things, and hiccupping like a distressed toddler. She's always been a Klutzilla, Derek rationalizes to himself.

Casey throws her shoes on the floor, collapsing on their lumpy couch. He's half-afraid he's going to have to carry her to bed, but then she shifts and he realizes she isn't sleeping. She probably doesn't even realize they're home.

"Der," she slurs his name, but he doesn't hear her because he's gone to get a washcloth. She's got puke (thankfully not hers) on her shoes and he knows she'll freak in the morning if she believes her shoes have been ruined by some drunk sorority girl.

Derek comes back to the living room, shifting her legs so he can sit on the couch with her (George refused to let him take the recliner when he moved to uni). He gently cleans each of her heels, throwing them back on the floor when he's done. He feels he owes her this much as it was his idea she come to the party in the first place.

He rests his head against the back of his couch, eyes drifting shut.

"Derek," Casey says his name again though softly. He hums in answer, too tired to open his eyes. "Why do we fight so much?"

He frowns for a moment, eyebrows pinching together. He doesn't open his eyes. "Just something we do, I guess." He nudges her leg with his elbow. "It's not so bad now that we're away from home."

It's true that while Derek and Casey fight over who left the cap off the toothpaste and who finished the milk (and of course who was that guy, Casey? and why would you care, Derek?) most of their fights have lost their thunder since they moved to Queens. Perhaps because they both realized they have no one to put on a show for.

"Why do you think that is?" Casey asks him seriously.

He rolls his eyes to himself. "God, Case, you're one of those philosophical drunks."

"I'm not," she hiccups, "drunk." Derek shakes his head to himself, a slight smile on his face. They're still laying like that – Casey on her back with her knees bent, Derek sitting with his legs spread and his head resting on the back of the couch – but he looks at her sleepy, drunk face and smiles more.

He's glad she's kept her eyes closed, or she'd know he's staring at her like a doofus.

"Uh huh. Whatever you say, Spacey." He can hear the smile in his own voice.

No one knows the reason he calls her "Spacey" (except him). They all just assume it's Derek being Derek, calling Casey a "space case" because he's a little boy pulling at her pigtails. Derek knows that it's because he did that same with his youngest sister (he reminds himself to call her). It's the way he shows affection.

She's his second-best girl.

Right after Smarti.

He doesn't even have to correct himself to know that there's a big difference between Casey and Marti. A huge difference, even if he's the only one that realizes it.

Casey sighs contentedly, stretching her bare legs out in Derek's lap. "I'm glad we don't fight as much anymore. It was exhausting to act like I hated you all the time."

"That was an act?" Derek jokes, but he knows that every joke holds a bit of truth and he really wasn't aware that it had only been pretend.

"Jerk," she calls him but now there's a smile on her face too. "Maybe it wasn't an act for you, but I hated it. I know our family hated it. Mom and George wanted us to be the perfect little siblings." Her tone turns mocking when she says the last three words.

Derek can't help but cringe. "We're not siblings, Case. That's the one flaw in their logic. I never saw you as my sister." His throat constricts, heart thumping wildly in his chest. I want you to be so much more. You are so much more.

Derek Venturi isn't one for feelings because he's never been able to share his.

"And I never saw you as a brother!" She shouts, throwing her hands in the air as her eyes snap open. Derek thinks her buzz is slowly wearing off. "But it didn't change anything! It still doesn't because our parents are married for Christ's sake! I never saw you that way and now I'll have to spend the rest of my life pretending."

He can see how heated she's getting, and he's scared. Because she's passionate about whatever she's thinking, and he knows Casey can never keep her thoughts to herself.

And it excites him because maybe she's passionate about him the way he is about her.

The only thing he can think to say is her name.

But Casey's ranting now and she's not stopping this time.

"Pretending that I don't care about you. Pretending I haven't spent the last two years dreaming about you. And I'll just keep pretending, pretending, pretending until I'm able to move on and forget about you." The tears are welling in her eyes, and Derek hates the people who put them there (his dad, her mom, him, her, who really knows for sure?).

The first tears roll down, and none of the ones after that stop. "But it'll only work for so long because I'll come home for Christmas and you'll be there. You'll be there with your hot supermodel wife and your son who will look a little like her but mostly like you. And you'll be happy and the whole family will be happy except me because I'll live in Quebec with thirty cats because how could I possibly move on when you're always in the back of my mind?"

Casey's voice is fanatical now, and Derek doesn't have it in him to stop her. He needs to hear it as much as she needs to get it out. They've waited too long.

"And it's killing me because I don't know if it could've gone differently because we never got the chance," she's sobbing now and Derek's rubbing her leg and it makes her cry harder and talk faster and he's so close to saying those words he can taste it, "So we'll always be this: stuck, an unfinished sentence, a what if? Because I've never been able to tell you that –"

"I love you," he confesses because he's unable to hold himself back. It's like a weight lifts off his chest and he can finally breathe for the first time since they met. She sits up, stunned into silence (finally) and their faces are inches apart but it's his turn to rant now. "God, Casey, I've loved you since we were fifteen. And I was never able to say it, you know why I couldn't. But now I can and I never want to stop."

He kisses her with such passion she feels it in her toes. He can taste the liquor on her lips and feels her tears on his face like they came from him. Maybe they did.

She pulls back too soon, always too soon. "But what about our family?" He kisses her again, whispers I love you. "And our friends?" Another kiss, another I love you. "And you?" She's making no sense now so he does it again. "And me?" Kiss, I love you.

"Us," Derek whispers, staring at Casey's pink lips and tearful eyes. "It's about us. We've spent too long worrying about them. It's about us now."

And it is. Because now there is an us and there always will be an us.

Derek thinks There has always been an us.