Dancing and... Other Things

By Abby1313

Summary Derek and Casey meet a band on the street. Fate steps in. One-shot, Dasey. If you have a problem with Dasey, then don’t read. If you like Dasey, then, oh, a treat for you! Enjoy...

Derek and Casey both jumped for the phone cradled on the kitchen wall. Casey grabbed it first, ripping it up and to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, Case. It’s Em. Mind if we catch a bite to eat with Sam?”

“Where? When? Why?”

“Shut up. Smelly Nelly’s. Now. Because we want to.”

“Sounds fine. I’ll be there soon.”

“Sam’s telling me to ask Derek too.”

“Whatever. Buh bye.”

Derek leaned into Casey’s ear and listened for a moment as if the conversation was still in progress. He lifted up, ran a hand through his hair, and looked into Casey’s puppy-dog eyes with his own honey ones. “What was that about?”

“We’re going to get lunch with Emily and Sam.”

“WE?”

“Yes, as in you and me.”

“Cool, let me get my jacket.”

Casey grabbed her purse and compact, brushing on some frosty pink lip-gloss and fluffing her curls before changing her shoes and earrings and wrote her mom and note about their whereabouts in the time it took Derek to get his jacket, and they set off for the café.

Since Derek failed his first driving lesson (along with his second) and Casey was still too young, they had to walk down the frozen sidewalks of Toronto by themselves with the wind whipping at their noses to Smelly Nelly’s. Casey shivered and wished she had grabbed her scarf too. With a look at her stepbrother, she could tell he was cold too.

She jogged up, careful not to slip on an ice patch, and felt Derek follow her, eager to get to the warm atmosphere of Smelly Nelly’s faster. When they’d reached the busier streets in town, it got warmer from body heat much to Casey’s delight. It seemed as if everyone in Canada was going to the mall or the little shoppes lining the streets for Christmas shopping. Oh joy, Casey thought. More people to make their trip slower.

Casey gripped Derek’s elbow and pulled him through a group of adults looking into their wallets. They turned to the siblings and let out a few curse words, but Casey kept pulling on Derek until he groaned and yanked his arm out of her reach. Smelly Nelly’s, the heaven of the day, was in sight. Only some yards away until they could snuggle up with some hot cocoa and a burger. Casey felt the mouth get damp just thinking about it.

Derek, behind her, stopped and reached for the faux fur coat on her back. He tugged lightly and she spun around. “What?” She had to yell to be heard over the crowd.

He pointed to a small band, two boys and a girl, all about 20 or so, cuddled up with a guitar, a small keyboard, and a book of music. Sweet notes filled the air as they started up their next song and the girl opened her mouth to sing. It was a song neither of them recognized, but loved none-the-less. Derek led her to the band, dropped a couple bills into the guitar case and started dancing next to Casey. He gripped her hand and drew her closer to his body with his hands in the small of her back. The air suddenly got warmer.

Casey was glad for the new heat, even if it was from her gross, lazy, annoying stepbrother, and didn’t step back like she should have. Instead, she put her hand on the forearm around her waist and stepped into the lead Derek was giving.

He leaned in as to be heard over the noise of Toronto and said, “My mom always danced with street bands before I was born. Then she dragged me into them when I could first walk. Before I knew it, every where we went we danced.” His breath was hot against her neck, and she crunched her nose up. He went on even though he’d seen her reaction. “The day before she died, she was in the hospital and I looked outside the window and saw a band on the sidewalk. Mom was asleep, but I woke her up, and she heard the music too. Even though she couldn’t stand for too long, she danced through the room with me, until she was gasping for air and her hands were shaking. When I came home from school the next day, dad told me she had died.” Casey leaned back and saw that Derek’s eyes were teary. The captain hockey player couldn’t cry, at least not in public, and DEFINITELY not while leaning onto his stepsister. To get his eyes away from hers, he took a longer-than-needed look at his watch. “We’d b-better go.”

He went to leave, and Casey stepped in closer, put her head on his chest and breathed in the cold scent of his detergent. “No. Emily and Sam can wait.”

Derek, quite beside himself at Casey’s change of mood, nodded and started swaying as the girl sang another song in her gentle, soprano voice. Casey closed her eyes and tightened the hold on Derek’s hand tangling her fingers in his. Derek bit his lip.

Casey smiled lightly before bringing her lips to Derek’s cheeks. She pecked him lightly, no more than she did to Lizzie, Marti, or her mom. But to her, now, as the wind

whipped her hair into her face, the little kiss meant more than a random act of kindness.

It meant more than she could ever explain.

Derek’s face paled and he quit gliding in time with the music. In one fluid motion, he dropped his hands, turned away, and dipped his head. Did she just do that? It took almost all his self-control not to touch the tingling spot on his cheek.

Casey’s face paled too, and in the warmth she’d felt seconds ago slipped away, the sensation tingling until her toes were so numb she couldn’t feel her socks against her purple flats. It seemed as if her heart had cracked, and the pain replaced the empty void where her soul used to be. Her cheeks grew warm from tears that froze in mid drop, and her breath was shaky as it fogged up in the air.

Derek felt Casey step back, the air changed, and his face colored again. Why should he be afraid of a kiss? He’d been the master of it since kindergarten. Casey could be the thousandth girl this year who’d pecked his cheek. Why did hers matter? He shouldn’t feel so...

How did he feel?

Derek was never good at analyzing feelings. That was a girl’s job, and he wasn’t going to do a girl’s job. But, now, as the dolls in the toy store stared back at him, he decided to decipher how he felt. Casey had kissed him. Her lips were icy, but her breath was sizzling against his cheek. The odd sense of opposites scared him at first. He’d backed away, fight or flight? Derek was usually a fighter. Why was he running away from Casey? Hadn’t he had some odd butterfly-in-his-stomach feelings every time she glanced his way? Sam, Scott, and Max weren’t good enough for her. The first wasn’t the “one”, the other cheated with three other girls, and the last didn’t appreciate her personality. The nights she’d primped, curled, and fluffed in her room, he’d always watched in her doorway when she wasn’t paying attention. Her hair was so shiny and full, how did she do that? Her face was velvet to the touch, he knew since his hand had “fell” into it enough times. Her legs that were crossed at the ankles seemed flawless and gorgeous. He wanted to run his fingers over the top of her calves and feel her flexed dancer thighs.

She would hum songs and mouth words along with her radio while applying eye shadow in corresponding colors to her shirts and shimmy to dance songs while she waited for her curling iron to warm. The movement of her shoulders and the tapping of her toes made Derek want to sweep her off her stool and swing her around the room, chest to bust, leg to leg until they were breathless.

Yet after all the princess-making experiences, he’d pull his bored face out of his pocket and act like her mere presence in mini-skirts and tight shirts didn’t plant him in a dizzy daze, and her eyes didn’t melt his heart. Sam, Scott, and Max put a jealous burning in the pit of the stomach as they’d take her hand and whisk her out the door and into their expensive cars or down the sidewalk. He would wave as if her out of the house was a blessing, and count the minutes until she would return.

The present hit him as a scurrying shopper hit his shoulder and threw him into Casey, quite roughly. Casey and the shopper both spun around, the shopper (a girl about 10 years old) gave him a guilty smile. “Sorry, sir.”

He nodded a ‘no prob’ as she rushed back out onto the road.

Casey blinked once, then twice. The blow from Derek had somehow knocked all the thoughts to fear, pain and the tears out. Now her obsessive-compulsive gears turned, and her brain whizzed with science, math, and logic. She thought she’d liked him. She thought he was her ‘happily ever after’. She thought that he would sweep her off her feet with a romantic date, roses, caviar, and horse-and-buggy rides through the parks. What was wrong?

Casey giggled at herself. She ignored Derek’s puzzled look. Everything was perfect. Maybe perfect is wrong, maybe wrong is perfect. Screw science. Screw math. SCREW LOGIC! Perhaps, if Casey was right, if any answer was right in this situation, then Derek was the ‘one’ who would whisk her heart away and off to the horizon. She bit her lip as the grinned.

Derek cocked his head at her expression. “Um... Case?” He waved a hand in front of her face.

Casey shook her head of all her thoughts and looked into Derek’s honey-hazel eyes. They were deep, passionate, and mysterious like all the romance novels she loved so dearly. But she wasn’t standing on a deserted beach in a long, white dress, her hair whipping around her face, and Mr. Right wasn’t wearing the raise-your-eyebrows shorts. This was no romance novel, and this was no fantasy. But why should she lean on ‘castle in the sky’ lives? After all, this was her life, and she could make it as interesting, or... not interesting as she wanted to.

The streets were enclosing the duo as they looked into each other’s eyes. Everything became silent in Derek’s mind, though he could see people talking and laughing and boom boxes blaring. Then he found Casey’s face, she was inches away, and then...

Fate stepped in.

The door of Smelly Nelly’s chimed as Derek and Casey walked into, relaxing their tightened muscles before the roaring fire. Emily gave Casey a one-armed hug and Sam held up his hand in a high-five. Derek sat down, choosing not to sit next to Sam, but to Casey. The latter lifted her eyes to the ceiling and chewed on her lip.

“What happened? You all took forever.”

“Oh, you know. Stuff.” Casey ran her tongue over her teeth, awaiting Emily’s answer. She usually didn’t like being out of the circle.

“Um, mind telling me about it?”

Derek glanced to Casey, Casey mirroring his movement. “Nah, it’ll be our little secret.”

“Well, we were dancing.”

“Dancing and...”

“Dancing and... other things...” Casey left the sentence to whatever Sam and Emily could concur up in their minds, but under the table, she gripped Derek’s hand, running her thumb over his fore-finger.

He appeared to be looking ahead, at the menu, but the same sentence rang in his mind. “Dancing and... other things...” “Dancing and... other things...” “Dancing and... other things...”

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