LIFE WITH DEREK, KINGDOM HEARTS | {derek/casey, riku/kairi}
He jerked. “… Sora, are you on helium again?”
She dropped her hands and smacked his shoulder. “You’re mean!”
He tried to smirk at her, but he was staring at something on the wall, and only the corner of his mouth lifted. “Sorry.”
She frowned and leaned over to see what he was looking at. It was drawing of her younger self and Sora etched into the rocks, both sharing a paopu - “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Riku deadpanned. “Oh.”
She cocked her head at him and blinked. “Are you mad?”
He tensed for a moment, then shrugged, bangs shielding his eyes. “No.”
“You’re lying,” she sang. “I’m sorry if you feel left out.”
He looked frustrated, then. “I don’t feel left out,” he snapped, fisting his hands on the ground. “I just… I’m always going to be second best to you, aren’t I?”
She sighed, not unkindly, and touched her fingers to his cheek. “Oh, Riku.” When he looked at her, his jaw was clenched. She sighed again. “You idiot.”
“What?”
“As if I could ever compare you and Sora to one another.” Her fingers brushed the nape of his neck and he shivered almost unnoticeably. “You’re different people, and you both mean the world to me. I don’t see why one silly little drawing would make you so upset.”
He stared at her blankly, but he was rubbing the hem of her skirt between his thumb and forefinger. “You do remember what sharing a paopu with someone implies, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course I do.”
“Well then, I don’t -”
“I was talking to Sora about it, earlier.” She dropped to her knees next to him and covered his hands with her own. “We’re drawing you in at the bottom. It’s probably going to look really odd, because we’re going to have to add extra hands going weird ways so there’s a three way paopu fruit exchange going on, but I’m sure everyone can overlook aesthetics for love.”
He blinked. “Love?”
“Yes, silly,” she smiled her pretty, gentle, Kairi smile and squeezed his fingers lightly. “Love.”
He squeezed back, almost hesitant, and kept looking at her. She sighed for a third time and kissed his cheek. “Stop looking so surprised. As if you didn’t know we loved you already.”
“… Right,” he finally said, lacing their fingers together. “So, uh… what now?”
She almost laughed at how unsure and un-Riku like he sounded, but managed to stifle it by biting her lip. His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Now,” she said, forcing back a blush, “now we go find Sora and see if his artistic talent’s improved at all.”
He snorted, and tugged her to her feet. “Sounds like a plan.”
TITLE | zombie pop
FANDOM | Life With Derek/Silent Hill
CHARACTERS | Trevor, Casey McDonald, Derek Venturi
PAIRING | light Casey/Derek
RATING | K+
NOTES | Okay, so, this is just a crack sort of thing. I am actually going to write a serious, horror/romance kind of thing using the exact same idea, but I had to write the crack first. XD
“This is so gross!” Casey shrieked, slamming the heel of her boot into the nearest zombie. It stumbled back, a gaping hole in its stomach, paused, then turned and began shuffling back to the town square. Casey leaned against the side of her car, eyes wide as she gripped the door handle. Derek came around from the other side and gaped.
“You just kicked a zombie’s ass,” he said. “Do you have any idea how badass that is?”
She made a small noise and covered her mouth with one hand. Derek raised his eyebrows. “You okay there, Spacey?”
“I don’t like blood,” she squeaked, and then fainted.
-
When she came to, she noticed two things: one, Derek was hovering over her, looking almost worried, and two, Trevor was hovering over her too, holding a metal baseball bat smeared with dried blood.
So, naturally, the first thing that came out of her mouth was, “I knew I should’ve listened to Derek when he said you’d grow up to be a serial killer.”
Trevor looked down at the bat. “Oh, this?” He shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “It’s for the zombies.”
“… makes sense,” she deadpanned. Derek snorted. “Where are we?”
“It’s a house… apartment… room… thing,” Derek said vaguely, gesturing with one hand. Casey fixed him with a bland look. “Okay, so maybe I have absolutely no clue.”
“What else is new?”
“It’s nice to see things between you two haven’t changed at all,” Trevor said dryly. “But, uh, we have bigger problems. Like the zombies.”
“Dude, don’t worry about that.” Derek smirked at her. “We can just have Casey the Zombie Slayer here kick them with her industrial strength death boots.”
They both stared at him.
“Industrial strength,” Casey began.
“Death boots?” Trevor finished.
Derek shrugged and scratched the back of his neck. “What can I say? I’m creative.”
“No, you’re an idiot,” Casey snarked.
“At least I’m not a pansy who faints at the sight of blood,” Derek shot back. “Seriously - I actually thought you were cool for a second. Then you went back to being a loser.”
Casey smiled sweetly at him. “You do know Trevor has a metal bat and likes me better than you, right?”
“Whoa, now.” Trevor held up his hands, placating. The effect was probably ruined by the fact that he was still holding the aforementioned bat. “I don’t know what you guys heard in high school, but I am most definitely not a serial killer.”
“It’s never too late to start?” Casey offered. Derek nudged her with his elbow. “Okay, fine. Derek can live.”
“As if you could survive without me.”
“Is this going to lead to eye sex?” Trevor asked no one in particular. “Because if it is, maybe I should leave…”
Neither one of them heard him. Or if they did, they pretended not to.
TITLE | the ventriloquist act
FANDOM | Life With Derek
CHARACTERS | Casey McDonald, Sam Richards, Ralph Papadopoulos
PAIRINGS | Derek/Casey, Sam/Casey, Ralph/Casey
PART | 3/8
RATING | K+
NOTES | WE ARE SLOWLY BUT SURELY GETTING TO EVERYTHING. God, now I know why I don't write multi-part fics.
Ralph is sprawled on the grass in the clothes he was wearing Wednesday. Sam starts running across the field, and Casey runs after him, their palms still pressed together. Grass and mud stick to their shoes, and she’s positive the stains on her knees are going to be impossible to get out as the two of them collapse next to him.
“Ralph,” she says, her and Sam’s fingers linked and pressing gently into the ground, “we’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Your parents are really worried, man,” Sam adds. “Maybe you should give them a call.”
Ralph looks up at them and blinks slowly. “Yeah, I guess I should, huh?”
She nods and stretches her legs out in front of her, her sneakers just brushing Ralph’s side. “How long have you been out here?” she asks, as Sam leans back on his elbows and tilts his head towards the sky. There’s dirt under her fingernails, and grass stuck to the back of his hand, but neither one of them let go.
“A few hours.”
“You’re going to get sick, you know.”
“I’d rather get sick than be in my house right now,” he replies honestly. Sam shifts so one of his legs is slung over Ralph’s knees. “Everything makes me think of D.”
“I know the feeling,” Sam mutters.
“I live the feeling,” Casey says. “At least you guys don’t have to sleep next to his room. Or see pictures of him everywhere. Or sometime go and knock on his door to call him down for dinner and then remember he isn’t there because he’s so freaking stupid.” She stops and takes a breath. “I’m sorry. I made it sound like you guys don’t miss him. I just. Um.”
“You lived in the same house as him for two years, Case,” Ralph says, folding his hands behind his head. “I think that’s pretty equal to knowing him for like… eight, or something, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Sam echoes, nudging her with his shoulder. “So welcome to the Derek Venturi Fan Club No One Can Ever Know About. Ever.”
“DVFCNOCEKAE,” Casey deadpans. “It has a nice ring to it.”
They stare at her in disbelief, and then Ralph says, “… that was pretty hot."
She laughs, something she feels like she hasn’t done in a month - and truthfully, she probably hasn’t - and smiles blindingly bright at them. “It was, wasn’t it?”
They spend the night staring at the stars. Casey falls asleep curled up on her side with Sam’s fingertips touching hers as he lies in front of her, and Ralph’s shoulder cushioning her head.
It’s the start of something, she realizes, as Ralph’s shoulder moves under her cheek and Sam moves his hand a bit higher to grip hers. She just doesn’t know what.
-
Things after that get a bit easier. She talks to Emily and Truman at school, but spends her weekends on the football field with her ex-boyfriend and his best friend. They talk about school and their futures and why some things just don’t work out. Mostly, they talk about Derek, and Casey still hasn’t cried over him yet.
“You loved him, right?” Ralph asks, three months after Derek leaves and a month after he stops calling her. “And not in the warm and fuzzy brother-sister way.”
“… yeah,” she says quietly, eyes closed. “At least, I think I did. I think I always did, which is so weird and I feel like some kind of… I don’t know. But yeah,” her lips quirk sadly, “I loved him. Or was in love with him. Or something.”
“He loved you, too,” Sam tells her. They’re lying in some kind of strange pattern, Ralph and Sam stretched out one way on either side of her, and her laying the opposite direction. Their heads are lined up perfectly, temple to temple. She thinks they’re like some sort of strange jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t look like it fits together, but manages somehow.
“If he loved me,” she goes, “why did he leave?”
“Because he’s Derek,” Sam replies, almost bitter, and says nothing else.
-
Four months after Derek leaves, it’s the beginning of December and Marti comes bouncing down the stairs, beaming. “Christmas is coming!” she sings, and Casey smiles from her spot at the dining room table, leftover spaghetti cold on her plate. She doesn’t eat as much as she used to, but more than she did in those first few weeks of Derek being gone. Marti runs over to her. “You know what that means, Casey?”
“What, Marti?”
“It means Smerek’s coming to visit!”
Her fork hits the plate as she stares at Marti with something like absolute terror. “What?” she asks, and then she remembers that first voicemail and all the ones after it. “Oh, God.”
Marti stands next to her, Sir Monks-A-Lot clutched in one hand, and looks up at her with big eyes. “Casey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Marti,” she forces out, already mentally dialling Sam or Ralph’s or both their numbers. “Why don’t you go tell Edwin the great news?”
“Okay!”
Marti bounds up the stairs, yelling and happy and bubbling over with joy as Casey grabs her phone with shaking hands and tells Sam to call Ralph and met her at the field with a tremor in her voice.
She dropped her hands and smacked his shoulder. “You’re mean!”
He tried to smirk at her, but he was staring at something on the wall, and only the corner of his mouth lifted. “Sorry.”
She frowned and leaned over to see what he was looking at. It was drawing of her younger self and Sora etched into the rocks, both sharing a paopu - “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Riku deadpanned. “Oh.”
She cocked her head at him and blinked. “Are you mad?”
He tensed for a moment, then shrugged, bangs shielding his eyes. “No.”
“You’re lying,” she sang. “I’m sorry if you feel left out.”
He looked frustrated, then. “I don’t feel left out,” he snapped, fisting his hands on the ground. “I just… I’m always going to be second best to you, aren’t I?”
She sighed, not unkindly, and touched her fingers to his cheek. “Oh, Riku.” When he looked at her, his jaw was clenched. She sighed again. “You idiot.”
“What?”
“As if I could ever compare you and Sora to one another.” Her fingers brushed the nape of his neck and he shivered almost unnoticeably. “You’re different people, and you both mean the world to me. I don’t see why one silly little drawing would make you so upset.”
He stared at her blankly, but he was rubbing the hem of her skirt between his thumb and forefinger. “You do remember what sharing a paopu with someone implies, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course I do.”
“Well then, I don’t -”
“I was talking to Sora about it, earlier.” She dropped to her knees next to him and covered his hands with her own. “We’re drawing you in at the bottom. It’s probably going to look really odd, because we’re going to have to add extra hands going weird ways so there’s a three way paopu fruit exchange going on, but I’m sure everyone can overlook aesthetics for love.”
He blinked. “Love?”
“Yes, silly,” she smiled her pretty, gentle, Kairi smile and squeezed his fingers lightly. “Love.”
He squeezed back, almost hesitant, and kept looking at her. She sighed for a third time and kissed his cheek. “Stop looking so surprised. As if you didn’t know we loved you already.”
“… Right,” he finally said, lacing their fingers together. “So, uh… what now?”
She almost laughed at how unsure and un-Riku like he sounded, but managed to stifle it by biting her lip. His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Now,” she said, forcing back a blush, “now we go find Sora and see if his artistic talent’s improved at all.”
He snorted, and tugged her to her feet. “Sounds like a plan.”
TITLE | zombie pop
FANDOM | Life With Derek/Silent Hill
CHARACTERS | Trevor, Casey McDonald, Derek Venturi
PAIRING | light Casey/Derek
RATING | K+
NOTES | Okay, so, this is just a crack sort of thing. I am actually going to write a serious, horror/romance kind of thing using the exact same idea, but I had to write the crack first. XD
“This is so gross!” Casey shrieked, slamming the heel of her boot into the nearest zombie. It stumbled back, a gaping hole in its stomach, paused, then turned and began shuffling back to the town square. Casey leaned against the side of her car, eyes wide as she gripped the door handle. Derek came around from the other side and gaped.
“You just kicked a zombie’s ass,” he said. “Do you have any idea how badass that is?”
She made a small noise and covered her mouth with one hand. Derek raised his eyebrows. “You okay there, Spacey?”
“I don’t like blood,” she squeaked, and then fainted.
-
When she came to, she noticed two things: one, Derek was hovering over her, looking almost worried, and two, Trevor was hovering over her too, holding a metal baseball bat smeared with dried blood.
So, naturally, the first thing that came out of her mouth was, “I knew I should’ve listened to Derek when he said you’d grow up to be a serial killer.”
Trevor looked down at the bat. “Oh, this?” He shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “It’s for the zombies.”
“… makes sense,” she deadpanned. Derek snorted. “Where are we?”
“It’s a house… apartment… room… thing,” Derek said vaguely, gesturing with one hand. Casey fixed him with a bland look. “Okay, so maybe I have absolutely no clue.”
“What else is new?”
“It’s nice to see things between you two haven’t changed at all,” Trevor said dryly. “But, uh, we have bigger problems. Like the zombies.”
“Dude, don’t worry about that.” Derek smirked at her. “We can just have Casey the Zombie Slayer here kick them with her industrial strength death boots.”
They both stared at him.
“Industrial strength,” Casey began.
“Death boots?” Trevor finished.
Derek shrugged and scratched the back of his neck. “What can I say? I’m creative.”
“No, you’re an idiot,” Casey snarked.
“At least I’m not a pansy who faints at the sight of blood,” Derek shot back. “Seriously - I actually thought you were cool for a second. Then you went back to being a loser.”
Casey smiled sweetly at him. “You do know Trevor has a metal bat and likes me better than you, right?”
“Whoa, now.” Trevor held up his hands, placating. The effect was probably ruined by the fact that he was still holding the aforementioned bat. “I don’t know what you guys heard in high school, but I am most definitely not a serial killer.”
“It’s never too late to start?” Casey offered. Derek nudged her with his elbow. “Okay, fine. Derek can live.”
“As if you could survive without me.”
“Is this going to lead to eye sex?” Trevor asked no one in particular. “Because if it is, maybe I should leave…”
Neither one of them heard him. Or if they did, they pretended not to.
TITLE | the ventriloquist act
FANDOM | Life With Derek
CHARACTERS | Casey McDonald, Sam Richards, Ralph Papadopoulos
PAIRINGS | Derek/Casey, Sam/Casey, Ralph/Casey
PART | 3/8
RATING | K+
NOTES | WE ARE SLOWLY BUT SURELY GETTING TO EVERYTHING. God, now I know why I don't write multi-part fics.
Ralph is sprawled on the grass in the clothes he was wearing Wednesday. Sam starts running across the field, and Casey runs after him, their palms still pressed together. Grass and mud stick to their shoes, and she’s positive the stains on her knees are going to be impossible to get out as the two of them collapse next to him.
“Ralph,” she says, her and Sam’s fingers linked and pressing gently into the ground, “we’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Your parents are really worried, man,” Sam adds. “Maybe you should give them a call.”
Ralph looks up at them and blinks slowly. “Yeah, I guess I should, huh?”
She nods and stretches her legs out in front of her, her sneakers just brushing Ralph’s side. “How long have you been out here?” she asks, as Sam leans back on his elbows and tilts his head towards the sky. There’s dirt under her fingernails, and grass stuck to the back of his hand, but neither one of them let go.
“A few hours.”
“You’re going to get sick, you know.”
“I’d rather get sick than be in my house right now,” he replies honestly. Sam shifts so one of his legs is slung over Ralph’s knees. “Everything makes me think of D.”
“I know the feeling,” Sam mutters.
“I live the feeling,” Casey says. “At least you guys don’t have to sleep next to his room. Or see pictures of him everywhere. Or sometime go and knock on his door to call him down for dinner and then remember he isn’t there because he’s so freaking stupid.” She stops and takes a breath. “I’m sorry. I made it sound like you guys don’t miss him. I just. Um.”
“You lived in the same house as him for two years, Case,” Ralph says, folding his hands behind his head. “I think that’s pretty equal to knowing him for like… eight, or something, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Sam echoes, nudging her with his shoulder. “So welcome to the Derek Venturi Fan Club No One Can Ever Know About. Ever.”
“DVFCNOCEKAE,” Casey deadpans. “It has a nice ring to it.”
They stare at her in disbelief, and then Ralph says, “… that was pretty hot."
She laughs, something she feels like she hasn’t done in a month - and truthfully, she probably hasn’t - and smiles blindingly bright at them. “It was, wasn’t it?”
They spend the night staring at the stars. Casey falls asleep curled up on her side with Sam’s fingertips touching hers as he lies in front of her, and Ralph’s shoulder cushioning her head.
It’s the start of something, she realizes, as Ralph’s shoulder moves under her cheek and Sam moves his hand a bit higher to grip hers. She just doesn’t know what.
-
Things after that get a bit easier. She talks to Emily and Truman at school, but spends her weekends on the football field with her ex-boyfriend and his best friend. They talk about school and their futures and why some things just don’t work out. Mostly, they talk about Derek, and Casey still hasn’t cried over him yet.
“You loved him, right?” Ralph asks, three months after Derek leaves and a month after he stops calling her. “And not in the warm and fuzzy brother-sister way.”
“… yeah,” she says quietly, eyes closed. “At least, I think I did. I think I always did, which is so weird and I feel like some kind of… I don’t know. But yeah,” her lips quirk sadly, “I loved him. Or was in love with him. Or something.”
“He loved you, too,” Sam tells her. They’re lying in some kind of strange pattern, Ralph and Sam stretched out one way on either side of her, and her laying the opposite direction. Their heads are lined up perfectly, temple to temple. She thinks they’re like some sort of strange jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t look like it fits together, but manages somehow.
“If he loved me,” she goes, “why did he leave?”
“Because he’s Derek,” Sam replies, almost bitter, and says nothing else.
-
Four months after Derek leaves, it’s the beginning of December and Marti comes bouncing down the stairs, beaming. “Christmas is coming!” she sings, and Casey smiles from her spot at the dining room table, leftover spaghetti cold on her plate. She doesn’t eat as much as she used to, but more than she did in those first few weeks of Derek being gone. Marti runs over to her. “You know what that means, Casey?”
“What, Marti?”
“It means Smerek’s coming to visit!”
Her fork hits the plate as she stares at Marti with something like absolute terror. “What?” she asks, and then she remembers that first voicemail and all the ones after it. “Oh, God.”
Marti stands next to her, Sir Monks-A-Lot clutched in one hand, and looks up at her with big eyes. “Casey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Marti,” she forces out, already mentally dialling Sam or Ralph’s or both their numbers. “Why don’t you go tell Edwin the great news?”
“Okay!”
Marti bounds up the stairs, yelling and happy and bubbling over with joy as Casey grabs her phone with shaking hands and tells Sam to call Ralph and met her at the field with a tremor in her voice.