A/N: Just a random little idea. Dasey, natch. Also, sugar shock on the horizon; consider yourself warned.

Summary: There comes a time in every young man's life when his father needs to have a very important discussion with him. George gives Derek The Talk, but not the one Derek was expecting.

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Duh. As if.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell
by: Hayseed

"So, son..."

Derek raised an eyebrow and tilted back in his chair. "Dad. What can I do for you on this fine Saturday evening?"

"Well, you see, that is..." Trailing off uncomfortably, George craned his head in an obvious effort to check out the room. "Is there anyone else in here?"

The eyebrow went higher. "Okay, I can't even begin to tell you how many things are wrong with that question. Short answer: no."

With a sigh of what was probably relief, he sat down on the bed. "I thought maybe we could have a little talk, Derek. Just between us guys."

"Shoot," he said, pulling off his headphones and dropping them on his desk.

"You see, son, sometimes a man is attracted to a--"

Whoa. He threw his hands up in the air. "Hang on, there, George! Are you trying to tell me about the birds and the bees?"

A deep blush spread across his cheeks. "Uh... I wouldn't have... it's not fair to..."

"Because I have to tell you, Father of the Year, the boat sailed on that little conversation a while back," he drawled with a small smirk.

George's eyes flew open. "Just how far has that boat sailed, Derek?" The stammer was gone and there was a hint of sternness in the question that prompted him to be truthful.

"Not that far. Not, like, trouble far," he said quickly. "I just meant that seventeen is a bit late to be finally getting to that special father-son talk. And we pretty much covered the basics at school. The Internet filled in the rest of the gaps."

"Should I be worried?" he asked with a frown.

Grinning, Derek folded his hands behind his head. "Probably. Although I can safely say that I'll never look at a spider monkey in the same way ever again."

"I don't even want to know," he said, shaking his head.

"No, you don't," Derek agreed. "So, can we bring this Very Special Moment to a close? I've got stuff to do."

With a sigh, he pushed himself to his feet. "Sorry to have troubled you, Derek."

"It's okay; nothing that years of therapy won't fix." He offered George a sarcastic smile.

"I just... it's kind of silly, but you haven't been going out much lately," he said sheepishly.

Derek shrugged. "Busy hockey season. College recruiters in the crowd, that sort of thing. Doesn't pay to get distracted."

"And you and Casey have been getting along better than usual," George continued in a hazy sort of voice, propping himself on the doorjamb. "Nora and I just thought maybe... well, it's stupid. Shouldn't have bothered you with it in the first place."

The smile never left his face, but he felt all the blood drain out of his cheeks. "What did you and Nora think, Dad?" he asked, keeping his voice level.

"Oh, you and Casey know better," he said, flapping his hand in a dismissive gesture. "You know how much trouble it would cause for the whole family when the inevitable break-up occurred, and you know what sort of bad example you'd be setting for the others. I mean, how could Nora and I justify making Marti go to bed by nine-thirty if we were letting you and Casey crawl into each other's beds at night?"

He grinned and Derek swallowed audibly.

"Like I said, Derek -- stupid of us to even think about it in the first place. Because you and Casey just wouldn't do brainless things like that. Casey's a good girl, and you're a... well, you have a good self-preservation instinct, anyway. You know what would happen to you if you hurt her, which is why you would never do such a thing," George said, finally looking straight at him.

Derek blinked and lowered his head. "Well, what if good ol' Spacey broke my heart, Dad? Why do I have to be the home-wrecker in your little hypothetical whatever?"

The pause was short, but long enough that his feelings were kind of hurt. "Casey wouldn't get off any easier, son, which is why I know you two are both too smart to start such a thing."

"Yeah, Dad," he said, mouth dry. "Good thing, huh?"

George's expression was solemn as he nodded. "Very. Well, I think this has been a productive discussion. Enjoy your evening, Derek."

The door closed behind him and Derek finally allowed himself to start shaking. "Fuck."

"We are so busted," he said quietly.

"Derek, what--"

He bulldozed right over whatever it was she was going to say. "Damn it, I forgot he was a lawyer! I mean, he's usually just goofy Dad, the guy who thinks mesh shirts are cool and gets in trouble for letting Marti fingerpaint on the walls. But he just waltzed in here and played me like a freaking violin!"

"Derek--"

His voice was getting louder, but he didn't really care. "They know! I don't know how they know, but they do! And they want us to--"

Apparently fed up, Casey just leaned over and clapped a hand over his mouth. "Derek," she said firmly.

He grunted against her palm.

"I'm probably supposed to think your freaked-out babbling is cute or something, but mostly you're just annoying the hell out of me," she said. "So I'll let you go, but only if you promise to shut up!"

In response, he licked her hand.

"Ew," she said, shooting him a fierce glare and wiping her palm on his shirt.

"That's not what you said last--"

"De-rek!" she cried.

He grinned in what he was pretty sure was a disarming way. "Jeez, Case, you're acting like I'm not the sexiest guy you've ever seen in your entire life."

Sighing, she just folded her arms across her chest -- his gaze drifted downward as if of its own accord. "Do you really want to hear my response to that?"

"Probably not," he admitted. "My self-esteem is already at dangerously low levels."

"As fun as it is to discuss your overblown opinion of yourself, I thought you wanted to talk about what George told you," she said impatiently -- by her tone, he could tell he'd been caught staring. He could also tell that she really didn't mind where he was looking but he wasn't about to bring it up.

"Is there anything we can do about it?" he asked, looking back up into her eyes.

With a shrug, she flipped her hair over her shoulder. "We have... options. Number one, we could come clean and deal with the fallout."

"While the thought of listening to Nora have an apoplectic fit about how I've defiled her darling, precious daughter is appealing, the fact that we would never be left home without adult supervision again is unacceptable. It's not like we start fooling around the second the door closes," he said.

"We usually give it fifteen minutes or so, to make sure they're actually gone," she agreed with a straight face. "Okay, so one's a bust. Number two, we could try to pretend nothing's going on."

He thought about it for a second. "Which means that we'd go nuts trying to figure out the double blind. Who knows, who doesn't know, what are we fighting about today? I'd give it maybe two days before the whole thing blew up in our faces. Three, tops."

"Yeah..." she said, sounding defeated. "You're probably right. Well, there's number three."

Expression unreadable, she fell silent.

"What's number three?" he asked, trying to keep the apprehension out of his voice.

"We could actually stop," she whispered, wide-eyed.

Before he could even begin berating himself for being a gullible sap, he was out of his chair and on the bed, wrapping his arms around her. "Yeah, so not even a possibility," he muttered into her hair. "Why would you even make that an option?"

"I was just saying," she exclaimed into his shirt -- he could feel her lips moving against his chest.

"Well, I'm gonna call it temporary insanity," he said pointedly. "Moving on."

She leaned away slightly, just enough so that she could look back up at him. "Before you start telling me how much this one sucks too, let me just say that it's the only other one I've got. So if you don't like it, you're going to have to figure something out on your own."

"Are you going to suggest we sneak off and elope or something?" he asked quizzically. "You're kind of freaking me out, Case."

"Ditto," she said with a raised eyebrow. "I'm not even going to ask about that one. No, what I was going to say was that option four is the tried-and-true Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

"And if I didn't know what that meant, you would say..." he drawled in a lofty voice.

Shaking her head, she gave his cheek a condescending pat. "I mean that Mom and George know but obviously aren't going to call us out on it until something goes horribly wrong."

"I can see what you... wait, what do you mean until?" he asked, offended.

She laughed. "You big idiot. You know what I mean."

He dropped it and actually thought about what she'd said. "That's not too bad, Casey," he said slowly. "Especially because we're so going to prove them wrong, and then they'll feel all bad that they disapproved of our true love and so forth."

"You've been watching chick flicks again, haven't you?" she accused him with a wry smile.

"Hey," he protested, "you try telling Marti that you don't want to watch The Princess Bride ten times in a row and see what happens. I triple-dog-dare you."

"Gosh, I wonder who gave her the idea in the first place," she said, eyes sparkling mischievously.

With a mock-growl, he tackled her and pushed her down onto the bed. "You!" he hissed. "I ought to... I had freaking dreams about that Spanish guy for, like, three days afterward!"

She wriggled in his grip, but only slightly. "I wouldn't have pegged you for an Inigo fan," she said. "But he is pretty hot."

"All right, that's it!" he cried.

And then they were kissing and he couldn't think of anything witty to say because that's what Casey did to him. He could hear the blood buzzing in his ears and her skin was so warm and all he could think about was her and him and how much he...

"Did we ever reach a consensus?" she asked against his mouth, lips curving slightly.

It took him a bit to come up with something coherent -- he knew she noticed, but he also knew she wasn't about to say anything because with a little effort, he could do the exact same thing to her.

"Boy, secret sex is tough," he said. "All this covert behavior."

"Sex?" she asked skeptically. "You'd think I'd remember that."

"Okay, so I was being optimistic," he replied in a defensive tone. "Sue me."

She grinned. "We can consider our options."

As it turned out, she had several ideas that were quite promising.

The next morning, George kept clearing his throat and staring at him.

Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. "What?" he asked irritably, dropping his spoon in his cereal and scowling.

"How'd you get that bruise there, Der?" This was accompanied by a pointed look at the obvious hickey on his collarbone.

"Hockey, probably," he said, seeing his father's glare and raising him one innocent expression. "I lose track of my numerous injuries. But it'll all be worth it when I get that full scholarship, right?"

"Ri-ight..." So he wasn't buying it; Derek didn't particularly care.

In fact, George had just given him exactly the opening he was hoping for. "Hey, Dad, I was thinking about what we talked about yesterday," he said casually.

"Thinking? Is that what they're calling it these days?" He wasn't even trying to hide his anger.

"You're right, Dad," he said, straightening up and giving him a serious look, "Casey and I aren't dumb. We know about all that stuff you said. And if we were considering... doing something stupid, it would only be because we thought it wasn't, you know?"

George sighed. "Derek, you're seventeen. Of course you don't think--"

"And we'd be willing to do a lot more stupid things to protect this one stupid thing, Dad. If, of course, we were thinking of it at all. Because we have long-term goals and stuff. Well..." he said as an afterthought. "Casey does, anyway. And I wouldn't..."

Maybe George would understand. Maybe.

"I wouldn't think about stupid things with anyone who didn't... make the world go fuzzy," he said before he could think better of it. There. Let his dad think he was a complete and total sap. Never mind that it was probably true.

Tilting his head, George studied Derek. "My reasons still stand," he eventually said.

"They're pretty good reasons," Derek admitted. "But they don't apply in this case."

Another long pause. "See that they don't, son," he said, jerking his head in a quick nod.

And that was okay. Derek returned the nod and resumed eating his cereal.

After another few beats of silence, they heard loud footsteps on the stairs and Casey emerged into the kitchen, yawning and scratching at her side. "G'morning," she mumbled. She looked like she'd just woken up about three minutes ago.

"You look like 'Night of the Living Dead,' Case," Derek said conversationally. "Ever heard of this new thing called a hairbrush?"

"Ever heard of deodorant?" she shot back, equally casually. She plucked the spoon out of his hand and took a big bite of his cereal.

Rolling his eyes, he just got another bowl out of the cupboard and poured himself some more. Her hand slid toward his fresh bowl but he blocked it with a clean spoon. "No, Casey," he said in the most condescending voice he possessed, "in this house, we finish what we steal out from under someone else's nose."

George had been watching the entire exchange with obvious interest. "They're excellent reasons," he said to no one in particular. "It's going to be a train wreck."

Casey stared at Derek with dawning horror, barely even noticing when George walked out of the room. "You... you... what did you tell him?" she hissed as soon as they were alone.

"Nothing," he said breezily. "It's secret sex, Casey. Telling my dad about it would not only be weird and creepy, but it would defeat the whole point of it being a secret."

"Keep it up, buddy, and your cautious optimism regarding your sex life will seem like mere delusion," she warned.

Grinning, he looped an arm around her waist. "Withholding non-existent sex isn't very effective, you know," he told her. "You might want to come up with a better punishment."

"How about this?" she asked, returning his smile with a sweetly devious one of her own. "I'll go out there and tell my mother exactly what we've been doing for the last two months in loving detail."

"You want me to get you another bowl of cereal?" he asked quickly. "How about a back rub? Or a foot rub. Or I'll... I'll go to the mall with you. I'll even go into that damn candle store!"

She laughed. "I can think of better ways to occupy our time this afternoon."

"Oh, thank God," he said, heaving a fake sigh of relief.

And after George went into the office for some last-minute briefing and Nora took the kids to the movies, she did just that.

FINIS