Chapter 2! Hope you enjoy, please review and let me know! (Also I have a multi-chapter I'm outlining and beginning to write right now and reviews will definitely motivate me to keep working!)

As much as she wants to, because things are about to be insanely awkward, she just can't let him run around town alone in this state (and she's only referring to the drunkenness, because there's no way she broke his heart or anything.)

So she heads towards the door. It's not like she was having fun at the party anyway (until he showed up), and she has a familial obligation to make sure he doesn't get run over or pass out in a ditch somewhere.

The cold air hits her and she's seriously regretting following her friends adamant advice not to wear a jacket. Even though it's April the temperature is chilly at best as soon as the sun goes down and right now her arms and a thin section of her waist are bare.

She disregards her physical discomfort in favor of dealing with something much worse. Looking down the road she sees the figure of a man, but back on and from this distance it's impossible to know if it's him.

"Derek!" she calls loudly and a couple of people who are hanging out on the front step give her a funny look so she begins walking in that direction. When the figure doesn't turn around it only makes her slightly more confident in her assumption that it is indeed Derek, because she assumes anyone else would turn around if a girl was following you down the street yelling, at least to clarify that you aren't Derek.

While in pursuit she sees the figure hold a large bottle up to their mouth and then she sprints the remaining distance to catch up.

"Derek-" she says, and is almost pleased when he cuts her off because she wasn't sure what to say next.

"I don't need a babysitter Casey. Go back to the party." He says angrily before taking another long swig from the bottle.

"No you're not in charge of what I do, and clearly you do need someone to take care of you cause you're not responsible enough to do it yourself. It's illegal to drink in public you know." She rants. This is easy, scolding Derek is a common occurrence.

"Thanks for that nifty public service announcement Miss McDonald." he snarkily replies and things almost feel normal again, so in the spirit of getting along she grabs the bottle from his hand and takes a sip. He gives her a look of surprised approval but when she exclaims "Ughh" loudly he begins to laugh instead.

"It's gross" she says, and he nods before adding, "But it does the trick." She isn't sure what exactly the trick he's referring to is.

"So where are we going?" she asks as they continue to walk down the dark residential roads.

"I don't know, just for a walk." The music from the party is fading into the background and their only company comes from the odd car pulling into a driveway. They stay quiet for a while, sharing the slowly emptying bottle that passes between their hands. Then they come across an old playground and, being the child he is, Derek approaches immediately. He climbs to the top with little difficulty, considering he's a good two times taller than the children it's built for, even though he doesn't use any of the ropes or ladders, instead opting to pull himself up the side of the structure. She watches, closely, because she's a little concerned about him tumbling and falling to his death but also because his shirt slides up and his muscles are all tense and… sexy. She notices he somehow still has the bottle in has hand when he looks down at her. She smiles, because there's something kind of picture perfect about it (in a college teenage rebellion sort of way). She surveys the playground to find a relatively safe way to get up. She steps up the ladder and he approaches, pulling her up when she's near the top. She looks at him carefully while his hands are still on her and then sits on the cold metal.

"Do you really like me?" she asks.

"You want me to repeat it so you can tell me again how it's not gonna happen? No thanks case." He says rolling his eyes and turning to look anywhere else.

"No I just… I don't know, I was just thinking maybe you were right." She says and he quickly turns around at the sound of Casey admitting she was wrong. Regardless of the subject matter that's the kind of thing Derek would supply his full attention to. "Maybe I've been missing something that was pretty obvious all this time." she continues when she sees, and for once really acknowledges, the way he's gazing at her and she rationalizes that she must be looking at him pretty similarly considering that she'd noted the way the moonlight is shadowing the features of his face.

"And by missing you mean purposely ignoring?" he quips.

She knows this, all of it, isn't new. It's just taken her a while to see the fights and conversations and little moments for what they really were.

"Yeah, maybe. It's just, you know it's going to be messy, right?" she says and her voice has gotten quiet and serious.

"Yeah. I know." He answers looking directly at her.

"And you and me, it's gonna be hard. Even when it stops being messy with everyone else, us, it's not gonna be light and breezy." She says when she's realizing the weight of this revelation. This is so much more than Derek having a crush on her, and those fluffy (or maybe kind of deep and fiery) feelings being returned.

"I know." He repeats, because if she thinks he's gonna shy away she's completely misjudged the situation.

"And you're really committed to this? I know we aren't even an anything yet, but this isn't something you can be indifferent about. I can't be one date and a "call you later" that you never call Derek. It has to be-" she starts to ramble because she knows how he is with girls. She's seen brunettes in the house one day and then blondes the next and since this is a world altering event she needs to know this is different.

"I'm all in Casey. I'm drunk, sitting in a park, with you." He says as if that's a full convincing argument.

"Yeah." She says in state of confused awe, because somehow it is, and she's met by a slow realization that this is exactly what they had been heading towards for the past 3 years. Derek Venturi is more committed than she's ever seen him. He's completely lacking that flash of panic that generally accompanies him talking about feelings, or that hesitance to admit to any deep emotional attachment.

"Are you?" he asks, and it's not a joke. He needs her to say yes before he kisses her. And as soon as she does his lips are on hers, because she's Casey and he knows that she's all "in tune with her feelings" and that she would never have said that without meaning it considering all the scary realities and consequences that would follow that single word.

And she's still cold, and she's scared, and her mind is racing and swirling from this complete paradigm shift that she's experiencing, but it's not so bad, because the feeling of Derek's body pressed against hers is fairly distracting, and she feels safe, and a little bit warmer, and for some reason it all just feels right, even though she's at a children's playground drunk at two am with a boys hand up her shirt. She chooses for once not to over think it, and instead lives a little bit dangerously. She can (and will) deal with the rest in the morning.