Entitled: Synonymous With Hell
Fandom: Life with Derek
Length: 2,000 words
Disclaimer: I do not own Life with Derek and etc.
Notes: I cannot believe I am the first person to think of this. WhenLighteningStrikes, your racy fic is coming. No, really. Really. SHUT UP IT WILL HAPPEN.

Derek woke up to screaming.

It was sort of soothing, actually.

“This!” Casey sort of threw herself on him, and snatched his pillow from beneath him. His head connected with the headboard rather painfully, and he was just getting ready to wake up and form a coherent reply when he abruptly realized that he couldn’t actually breathe. In the next two seconds, it occurred to him that Casey was possibly attempting to suffocate him with his own pillow.

The injustice.

“How are you going to fix this?!” Casey shrilled, “How?!”

Derek floundered weakly. He was so telling on her.

Casey seemed to realize that she couldn’t shout at him very well if he was dead, and so eased up on her death lock slightly. Derek wasted no time whatsoever in kicking her onto the floor.

“What’s your problem?” he yelled, at exactly the same time she wailed, “They didn’t even give me Most Likely to Succeed!”

Derek stared at her. He did a slow count of ten and managed to make it all the way to four.

“Get out.”

“What?”

He stooped and grabbed her by the elbows. She didn’t get up. He started dragging. “Get out of my room!”

“Not until you fix this!”

“It isn’t my job to make sure you maintain your status as the school district’s ultimate loser!” he snapped at her, and strained to gain those last few inches. Casey clung onto his bed post desperately.

“It’s not that! It’s not what I didn’t get, it’s what I—” she abruptly broke off, looking horribly embarrassed.

“It’s what?!” he yanked at one of her flannel pant’s legs, and she let go of his bed with a screech, her hands flashing to yank the hem back up. He took the opportunity to pull her out in the hall and smash the door closed.

At last, peace. Derek let out a long, relieved sigh.

And then Casey stormed right back in. “That is so rude!”

“You didn’t even knock!”

“Oh, like you ever do! Shut up, Derek, this is important!”

“Fix your own stupid problems!”

Over Casey’s shoulder, he could see a door cracking open, and a disheveled head poking painfully outwards, “You guys,” Lizzie moaned, “I don’t want any concerned neighbors until noon—”

“We got voted as cutest couple!” Casey yelled, her face flushed with horror and mortification.

From somewhere above him, there was a heavy banging noise, like Edwin had just fallen out of bed. There was a distant crashing noise from the kitchen, and just after that, a rap on his window. They both turned to look. Emily stared at the two of them, her dark eyes glittering and keen.

“…I’m just gonna go back to sleep now,” Lizzie mumbled, and shut her door with a quiet snap.

Derek seriously considered moving to Nebraska.

“So, who got Most Likely to Succeed?” he asked, sounding rather hollow. Casey sniffed.

“Sheldon. Sheldon Shlepper.”

“…Isn’t he in—”

“Iceland?” Casey’s voice was very high, “Yes. He is. He campaigned over the internet.”

“Wait. Wait. You’re telling me I didn’t get best hair?” Derek was peering over Emily’s shoulder, trying to glimpse the Holy Bible of high school: the yearbook. “What is this crap? Who got best hair?”

“Derek,” Emily reminded him piously, “We have other matters of concern.”

“This goes way beyond concern!” Casey wailed, “I lost to a guy who doesn’t even go to our school anymore!”

Emily had a very strange expression on her face, like she was tempted to either burst our laughing, or into hysterics. “And the couple thing, Casey. The couple thing too.”

“I have set aside my hysteria, for the time being,” Casey said quite imperiously. She very obviously considered the entire thing to be Derek’s fault. She narrowed her eyes at him. He stared back woodenly.

“Oh.” Emily said, her voice only quavering slightly, “Well. It looks like Sheldon won best hair too.”

Derek’s insides abruptly went into deep freeze. “WHAT.”

“He, uh,” Emily’s hands were shaking, the corners of her mouth straining upwards despite her best efforts. “He won everything, actually. Except for the couple bit, I guess. Maybe if he’d had a clone. Still, he did come in second.”

“Clearly a grievous error in judgment,” Casey said, although her voice was progressively becoming both faster and shriller, “I mean—I mean, Sheldon as a single entity is obviously better equipped to be a couple than Derek and—and—”

Derek had snatched the yearbook away and was furiously flipping through it, “Who photo shopped Sheldon into all these pictures, and—why does he have my hair?”

“Don’t be so—oh.” Casey glanced at him, squinted, and tilted her head over his shoulder. “Oh. That is your hair.”

Derek reached up to pat it and make sure it hadn’t somehow deserted him.

Emily quietly excused herself. The sound of furious laughter couldn’t help but leak beneath the bathroom door.

“Could you keep that pose? I need to take a picture.” Tinker asked hopefully, fingering the camera strap. Derek and Casey stared at him. They had started out with a careful three feet between them when they’d exited the car, which had steadily dwindled to…no space at all. Casey sent Derek’s arm a dirty look, until it dropped guiltily away.

She put on a smile, “Sorry, Tinker, but there isn’t really anything to photograph—”

Tinker’s bottom lip shook. He sniffed. “I—I just want you to know that I voted for you two!” he hiccupped, “If I couldn’t then—just make sure you take care of her, man! You don’t know how good you’ve got it!”

Derek’s expression politely suggested for Tinker to go throw himself in front of a bus.

Casey spent the rest of the day failing to avoid Derek. It turned out to be rather impossible. He was simply everywhere.

It also seemed like the entire school was torn between killing her and cooing over how adorable it was when the two of them fed each other food. (Casey relieved the day’s stress by smashing Derek’s face into her lunch. It was deeply satisfying until he stuck gum in her hair.)

“I think we should break up tomorrow.” Derek told her in the car. She scoffed.

“Stupid, we weren’t even together in the first place.”

“Do you want this to go on?”

Casey sulked. Derek gloated. She pointed out that his current girlfriend probably wasn’t going to like his very much. Derek sulked too. Edwin and Lizzie were waiting for them at the curb in the junior high’s parking lot. Edwin hopped happily into the car. Lizzie took one look at her elder sibling’s faces and abruptly decided she’d rather walk.

Six miles. In the rain.

One of her many admirers offered to accompany her. Lizzie got in the car.

Derek and Casey managed to keep up their mutual shunning until halfway into dinner, when George abruptly set aside the potatoes and said, in a voice that was entirely too loud, “Okay, you two, there’s no point in pretending anymore.”

Nora sighed. “I thought we were going to talk to them about this individually, George.”

Derek sawed vengefully at his steak. Casey mashed her potatoes into oblivion. Neither of them appeared to have heard a word either parent had said.

“Look, it’s okay if you’re embarrassed,” Nora tried, soothingly.

George blurted out, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Casey looked up, somewhat strained, “Tell you what?”

The second the yearbook was pulled out, both teenagers froze, and exchanged covert, panicked glances.

There they were, in all their captioned glory. Never mind that Derek was attempting to throw Casey into a garbage bin, the fact remained, the two were obviously locked in a passionate embrace. Casey’s attempt to claw his eyes out was really just a loving pat on the cheek.

“I knew it!” Edwin cheered. Lizzie dug into her pockets sulkily, an fairly threw the wad of crumpled money in his direction.

“WHAT?” Marti bellowed. George knelt beside his youngest daughter delicately.

“Well, you see Marti, Derek and Casey are going out.” He added air quotations to the “going out” part. Derek stared at his steak knife in deep contemplation.

Nora put her face in hands. Casey was tempted to follow suit. Marti started at her father incredulously. “Well, DUH.” She yelled, and crossed her arms, “Can we have dessert now? This sushi sucks!”

“Actually, it’s a pork chop—”

“I think it’s a Furbie.”

“Actually,” Derek said loudly, “We broke up a while ago.”

Casey stared at him, as did everyone else. Their heads swiveled towards her for confirmation and she blurted, equally loud, “Yeah. I mean. I mean, yes, actually, we did! It was horrible. I was a—wreck. For days.”

“I wasn’t.” Derek coughed. Casey faked a loud, breathy sob, and everyone immediately glared at him.

“Oh!” Nora broke the silence, “Oh, well that’s just…terrible.”

“OH, YEAH, RIGHT,” Marti screeched, and left the lot of them in favor of ice cream. George heaved out a relieved breath.

“Well, thank God. I was going to have to convince Derek to sleep in the shed, if you were.”

Derek looked rather menacing, “Why would I have to—”

“You know why.” George said pointedly. He winked. Nora, Cassie, and Lizzie were all deeply repulsed while the male half of the table sniggered.

The matter now apparently settled, the conversation turned to politics, the weather, and Edwin’s budding sex life, (much to Lizzie’s dismay.) Casey’s leg stretched out under the table, and gave Derek a nudge.

They grinned.

The house was very dark, and very quiet. There was a slight whine of floor boards and door hinges, as one individual stole into the other’s room. A flash light clicked on. Casey waved, and Derek made a face.

“You’re late,” he whined. Casey ignored him. She was quite clearly giddy with her own sneakiness.

“We were pretty good.”

“Always go for the preemptive strike, young grasshopper,” Derek whispered. Casey beamed.

“…Except Shlepper. We have to get Shlepper. He stole my spot!”

“He stole my hair!”

Casey swatted him, “You have an unhealthy fixation on—”

The door swung open, and both of them abruptly froze. Marti put her hands on her hips, her face highly exasperated. “I knew it! Jeez, you guys, make up your minds already, this is so confusing!”

“I was just.” Casey stammered. “I was. He was checking me for—cancer. And. And genital warts.”

“You are forbidden from talking,” Derek muttered darkly, rubbing his temples. Marti crossed her arms.

“I am going to ace sex ed,” she said quite brightly, and took great satisfaction in the sheer horror that flashed across their faces.

“Deal or no deal!” she continued vindictively, her voice dropping several octaves. “I’ll keep quiet. But I want—candy. And when your supply runs out—” she drew her finger across her throat menacingly, but smiled when both of them nodded frantically.

“Have fun!” she chirped, and shut the door behind her. Both of them remained quite still.

“Well, that killed the mood,” Derek mused. Casey hit him.

“Does your family have—like, evil genetics or something?!”