Entitled: A Garden for Wallflowers
Fandom: Life With Derek
Length: 2000 words
Disclaimer: I do not own Life With Derek and etc.
Notes: Uh, I was actually writing a romantic comedy for Derek/Casey. And then this happened. It’s all very strange and mysterious.

“I hate him!”

Emily snapped her phone closed and turned her back on Casey, palm up and finger crooked. “Told ya. Pay up, darlings.”

“Of course, sugar muffin,” Sam groused, and dug through his pockets whilst Ralph sat about woefully. “Damn it. I should have known better than to bet on mankind’s latent kindness.”

Emily closed her fingers around the twenty, and eyed Sam speculatively, “This is Derek.”

Sam looked grumpy, “You’re right. Too optimistic.”

“Excuse me!” Casey shrieked, warbling, and Sam scuttled away. He had defiantly paid his dues when it came to lending the sympathetic ear. Emily watched him go sourly, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and treating him to a devilish glower.

“Traitor.” She looked at Ralph, who had somehow wrenched some kid’s locker open and was now hiding within, making a great show of shuffling through three lonely textbooks.

“Em,” Casey said in her best weepy voice, and Emily readied the tissues.

“What now?” she sighed tiredly, and Casey gave a great, Monday morning sniffle.

“I kept on trying to study for my math test and he wouldn’t let me.”

“Wouldn’t let you?”

Casey’s expression became pinched, her fingers tightening around her stack of textbooks, “He’d—he’d come in every single time I tried to study and—and set my homework on fire, or something!”

Emily was torn. On one hand, Casey was prone to fits of exaggeration. On the other, picturing Derek lighting Casey’s things on fire wasn’t all that hard to do. “Okay…so was he doing this just to piss you off, or was there some reason?”

“He’s a horrible human being! That’s the reason!” Casey cried dramatically. Emily glared at the crowd slowly assembling around them. Really, they shouldn’t be encouraging her. This was like enabling the insane. Casey spent a moment glowering at the floor, and then added in a sullen mutter, “And I think he might’ve wanted me to do his history project for him.”

“Which you still have not done.” Derek drawled, and reached over her shoulder to slam her locker shut. Casey gave a squawk of outrage. Emily was almost impressed; really, where did they get the energy?

“Maybe you should focus on doing your own work, instead of screwing with everyone else’s!” Casey lectured, waving her rolled-up math homework in his face furiously.

Derek snatched the paper from her hands and waved it about tauntingly, something mean in the corner of his smile, “Don’t make me screw with your variables!”

“Like that’s even—oh, Derek. Oh, ew.” Casey swatted her hands around rapidly, “Gross!” Derek crossed his arms smugly for a moment, before his expression became vaguely pained. Emily glanced between the two of them, then sighed and jerked on a lock of her curly black hair, checking for split hairs.

“Come on, you guys. And Casey, get over it. Like Derek doesn’t make an innuendo every five seconds—”

“In-your-endo.”

“They call it the slammer for a reason,” Casey hissed at him, and stabbed him in the chest with one lacquered fingernail, her expression faintly vicious, “Control yourself.”

Derek made a grab for her wrists, and she tripped backwards, actually slamming her head brutally against the wall. Casey’s eyes welled up with tears. “Owie.”

Emily ground her teeth. “Derek. Stop harassing Casey just because she’s an easy target. It’s hurting my rep. Casey, don’t over-react to everything Derek says.”

“I wasn’t over-reacting!” Casey whined. Emily arched an eyebrow. Casey looked almost adorably flustered. “It’s just—he—he did that on purpose! And I shouldn’t have to pretend not to smell it and—it’s gross!”

Derek prodded the back of her head. “Thanks a lot. That wasn’t me. Ralph just farted.”

Emily waited a moment for the universe to Act It’s Age.

Ralph emerged from the locker with an expression of wounded regality. “Hey, man. It’s a natural process.” He shut his locker with another, meaningful look towards them, and then trundled away. Derek looked delighted. Casey looked like she was about to throw up. Emily had already contacted her favorite hit man.

“A ride home? Sure, no problem,” Casey shrugged, and Emily relaxed. The day had worn on, with Casey somehow managing to cram in her math homework for the fifth time between second and third period—and things were brightening up. Or they were.

“Emily!” Derek smiled brightly when he saw her, and she reminded herself firmly that he was off limits. And a friend. And her stomach actually wasn’t fluttering at all, that was just the…tacos. His welcoming grin twisted when he caught sight of Casey, and he made a point of setting one hand at the small of Emily’s back and steering her to The Prince as quickly as her heels would allow. Casey trailed behind them, fuming, and Emily was suddenly rather tired of it all.

Derek opened the door for her with a flourish, and then spun around to face his step sibling, “What a shame, looks like you’ll be riding in the back.”

“Why don’t you walk home?” Casey suggested darkly, and made a dash for the driver’s seat at exactly the same time he did, then the two of them were wedged, hip to hip and halfway through the door. Emily watched for a moment as Casey struggled to grapple with Derek’s heavier frame, and reached down to release her seat belt. She got into the backseat quietly, toting her bag behind her, and both of them paused.

“Oh, Em—” Casey started, looking horrified, “Jeez, I’m sorry Derek’s such a butthead—you really don’t have to—”

“Casey,” Derek muttered, and gave her a little push. He glanced at Emily quickly, and she suddenly realized that he got it. “Just get in the car.”

Casey looked like she was going to argue for driving rights for a moment, but then ducked her head and crawled inside the passenger’s door. It took them three minutes to get the car started. Emily looked out the window, watching her classmates mill about the school doors, and thought about calling Sheldon. Maybe for just a minute.

The thing was, Emily knew everything. Or at least, everything that would later be useless, if you asked her parents. She knew who was dating who. She knew who was cheating, who was about to get kicked off their sport’s team, who was sneaking a smoke behind the cafeteria. And it wasn’t that hard, either. She was just really good at listening.

Take Sam, for example.

When Sam says, “You did that English assignment with Casey this weekend, right?” she knows that he doesn’t really care about the English assignment.

She tells him, “Yeah. It was a pain in the ass to finish, too, ‘cause Derek kept on sending us these spam e-mails. Casey was pretty pissed. I think she might’ve flushed his toothbrush.” And she feels good about herself, when the edges of his eyes loosen up. Because Sam’s like her in a way, in that they both know, they just don’t say anything.

And she knows that he still likes Casey. A little bit. Just a little bit.

“He take hers?” Sam will ask, and she’ll shrug, turn away, because they’re only sort-of-mutual-acquaintances-that’ll-say-hi-in-the-halls.

“Of course.”

She misses Sheldon.

Or like—

Not Sheldon. Of course not Sheldon. Sheldon was obnoxious and made it a mission in life to continually say the most awkward things she could imagine, even if he was sweet, and meant well and—yeah. But she doesn’t miss Sheldon. It’s more like—

(There are three things Emily knows to be irredeemably true. Number one is that Casey and Derek are not physically capable of cooperating unless under huge amounts of stress, and even then the results are usually disastrous. Number two is that she’s adopted, and doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of her respectable, high profile family, but they’re still hers. And number three is that despite all his flaws—his huge, unimaginable need to be a top notch keener, Sheldon really did love her with everything he had.

She misses that.)

“Are you free this weekend?” Derek asked her, all casual, and all friend. Her fingers slipped on the spines of her books, knuckles banging together. She told herself to get a grip.

“I might be.” She said calmly, words deliberately slow, and only tensed for a second when he slung an arm around her shoulders. She remembered him doing this to Casey—all the time. This wasn’t a big deal.

“Good,” he said, with a most winning of smiles, and Emily could already tell that this wasn’t what she’d hopped for. You don’t have to be cruel to exploit someone, and Derek wasn’t cruel, exactly, just good at pretending he was.

She’d already guessed what he’d say, and is very near the mark. “Casey’s got this thing on Saturday night, something super lame, and I think you and I should go so that we can...spice things up.”

She was dazzled, even as she resigned herself. “What sort of thing?”

“Her latest charity case,” Derek said distractedly, his eyes locked on some far off place. She thought it was a shame he didn’t care for school—he had a talent for long-term planning.

Emily was a good listener. “Her new boyfriend.”

“You could say that.” Because that’s what it was. Emily rolled her eyes, and wondered when the two of them would just grow up.

“Derek. I’m not crashing my friend’s date with you just because you’re…bored.” Bored wasn’t exactly the right word. His eyes skittered towards her, then away guiltily. He knew. He just didn’t want to admit it.

“Why don’t you find someone else?” she suggested, and adjusted the strap of her bag, though it didn’t need it, and didn’t let herself feel any hope at all when he frowned.

“But you’re my friend,” he wheedled, and it wasn’t as though she’d ever thought she had a chance of winning, really. She sighed. That was her—Emily, everybody’s friend. When they needed it.

“Yeah,” she smiled at him, because even if he was ruthlessly manipulative, cunningly obsessive, he was still pretty cute. And he still swam in her pool sometimes. “So, how should I dress?”

“Oh, it doesn’t really matter,” he said dismissively, and just like that, it’s over, because he’d spotted Casey coming around the corner, and her shoulders felt cold when he dropped his arm. He’d walked away from her then, hands in his pockets and back a little straighter, smile a little meaner, “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Okay,” Emily said, and felt like she was talking to herself.

She skipped fifth period and sat in one of the stall’s of the girl’s bathroom, thumb frozen over speed dial three for a very long time, until Casey snuck her a text—(I think Derek’s up to something. You know?) and she put her phone away.

Because she knew. She knew what this was about.