For the Best

And as he rushed out of the room, Casey couldn't help but note that he still had her lipstick on his cheek.

Turning back to the mirror to get ready for her date, Casey decided to give up on trying to figure her stepbrother out. If Anna wanted to date him so badly, the universe would just have to arrange things by itself, with no help from Casey. Fixing her hair in place, she sighed. Somehow, she hadn't quite expected things to turn out this way all those weeks ago, when the idea of setting her friend and her stepbrother up had first been proposed...

ooOoo

"My friend, Anna," Casey began one night, glancing up from where she'd been studying on the living room couch in the family's living room in London, "You remember her, right?"

"The blonde ditz in the tight blue sweater?" Derek asked, even though he was ostensibly deeply invested in the hockey game playing out its third period on the television. Casey wondered briefly if Derek would even notice if she didn't say anything further. Only the prospect of having to face an impatient Anna again before completing her assigned task kept her from testing the possibility.

"She doesn't always wear a blue sweater," Casey said quickly, and then, as an afterthought, "And she's not a ditz; she's majoring in engineering."

Derek made an impatient noise. "The blonde non-ditz who was wearing the tight blue sweater that one time when I brought the cellphone you lost back to your dorm?"

"Yes," Casey said, "And that cellphone wasn't lost, you stole it!"

And if the resulting argument – which lasted the length of their visit home and more than halfway into the car trip back to Kingston – distracted Casey from her attempt to set Anna up with Derek, well, that wasn't Casey's fault, as she later explained in detail to her friend. Some things could not be avoided, and fights with Derek were high on that list.

Such fights, Casey insisted, could probably be included in that old adage about death and taxes.

ooOoo

Derek was getting twitchy, she noted, which reminded her to look at the timer she had set. "Okay, it's been forty-five minutes," she conceded, "That's probably long enough to study for your quiz tomorrow."

"Great," Derek said leaping off her couch and yanking his jacket back on and grabbing for his textbooks all at once. "I'm out of here."

"Where are you going?" Casey asked, suddenly recalling an obligation.

"To see Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Derek said as he headed for the door, "They're showing the original every night this week."

"My friend Anna loves that movie," Casey lied as the door slammed behind Derek, "You should take her to see it tomorrow."

ooOoo

"You need to settle down with a serious girlfriend," Casey suggested when Derek flung a handful of peas at her in the dining hall.

And okay... even she knew that that had been a weak effort on Anna's behalf.

ooOoo

"Reason number 38, he plays hockey, which is a terrible violent sport that you'd probably be forced to watch as his girlfriend," Casey explained to her blonde companion earnestly.

"I like hockey," Anna disputed. "Displays of testosterone are a major turn on, Case!"

"Okay, if you say so," Casey responded, "But reason number... um, what number was I at?"

"Thirty-eight," Anna filled in with a laugh, "But seriously, Casey, I don't think you're going to convince me not to date your brother, if reasons thirty-nine and on are anything like the first bunch. I know you can't properly appreciate this, but Derek is hot!"

"Step-brother!" Casey stressed, wishing that Anna hadn't barged into her room that one time when Derek had broken in to use her shower. If only her friend had met Derek when he was fully clothed, they might not be having this conversation. "And, reason number thirty-nine why you shouldn't want to date my step-brother, he throws food on an alarmingly regular basis!"

"Casey," Anna said, laughing despite Casey's best attempts to appear very serious, "Set up the date, would you?"

ooOoo

"Grab your coat," Derek instructed as he walked into her dorm room.

"Why?" Casey asked, even as she pulled on the coat that Derek had tossed at her.

"I agreed to have dinner with a bunch of my teammates and their girlfriends, and I need someone along to distract me from what a colossally terrible idea that was," Derek explained as he towed her out the door.

"Wait! You locked my keys in there!" Casey protested.

"Don't worry about it; I'll let you in with my set later," Derek reassured her. Or attempted to reassure her, because the thought of Derek somehow having managed to get a copy of her keys wasn't all that reassuring.

"I don't have my wallet," she told him as he propelled her through the lobby and towards his waiting car.

"You don't need it," he told her, apparently suggesting that he was prepared to pay for her meal. Casey lost track of the next several minutes in shock.

In fact, she was in such a complete state of disbelief that the obvious thought didn't even occur to her until he was already parked in front of the restaurant. "You know who would be a great distraction from making a mistake?" Casey asked, "My friend Anna."

"The one you borrowed the sweater you're wearing from?" Derek asked, making Casey glance down at her shirt.

"This is my shirt," Casey argued, "Anna borrowed it from me that one time."

"You should have let her keep it, since she clearly stretched it all out of shape," Derek observed, and Casey's attempt to broker a date with him for Anna had to be put aside in favour of delivering a blistering lecture about not staring at her chest, thank you very much, that somehow concluded with the pair of them at one end of a table full of Derek's teammates, mocking the cooing couples around them.

Casey considered suggesting that perhaps Derek might enjoy becoming a cooing couple with her friend Anna, but frankly, the transition felt forced and so she decided it would be better to wait for a more organic opening in the conversation.

ooOoo

Casey, now determined that her task of setting Anna up with Derek would only be completed when it was naturally meant to be, was content to let it simmer in the back of her mind. She saw Derek frequently, and even managed to drop Anna's name a few times, but the precise circumstances to propose he date her friend had yet to occur.

When Dale, one of Derek's few single teammates asked her out, Casey even said yes, knowing that the task of pairing Anna and Derek up was in the capable hands of the universe, and that she could probably take a night off to enjoy herself. Everything would happen as it was meant to, in the fullness of time.

Unfortunately, Derek failed to see the genius of this plan, or at least one particular aspect of it.

"You cannot date Dale," he flat out stated as she carefully applied her eyeliner and he lounged on her bed.

"Sure I can," she said, "We have dinner reservations and I called ahead to order tickets to the movie."

"Um, no, I meant you cannot date Dale, as in, I will not allow you to date Dale," Derek said, glaring at her a little harshly, considering all she was doing was applying lipstick.

"Why not? We've dated each other's friends before," Casey pointed out reasonably, "I'm sure we will again. In fact, my friend Anna-"

"Dale is not my friend! He's an asshole with a terrible reputation and an even weaker pass completion ratio!" Derek yelped, sitting up and looking extremely offended, so far as Casey could make out in the mirror over her shoulder. "And besides that-"

"Oh!" she gasped suddenly, standing up and rushing to where Derek now stood in unnecessary agitation. "I understand now!"

"You do? Good," Derek responded, "Because even though I have like a dozen other reasons why you can't date Dale, there's really only one that matters, and-"

"And it's because you're worried about me, Derek," Casey said, crushing him in a hug and planting a kiss on his cheek before he could manage to break loose, "Now, I appreciate the concern, but I won't condone this overprotective older bother stuff-"

"I am not your brother!" Derek screeched, storming towards the door. "And you look terrible! That sweater is all stretched out and ruined!"

Casey looked down at herself as Derek slammed out of the room. Maybe Derek was right; the sweater she wore sagged in places it certainly hadn't before. Perhaps it was time to stop lending her clothes to Anna.

ooOoo

Derek fled; there was no other word for the way he turned and ran out when Casey looked at him with those gentle eyes of hers, the perfect picture of the tolerant sister.

He hated that she'd gotten her feel-good-family-moment, almost as much as he hated the way her lip print burned on his cheek, reminding him that she still owned a lot more of him than the area covered by that innocent smudge. He wanted to scrub it off, but he didn't want to give her the satisfaction of such a typical brotherly response.

He wasn't her brother, god damn it.

But if Casey couldn't see that, then, well... he'd go find someone who would see it. That is, he'd find a girl who didn't think she was his sister. Or... well, okay, the logic sort of broke down at that point.

All that really mattered, though, was that Derek was determined that in a matter of three seconds or less, he would find a girl willing to blot out Casey's lip prints with marks of her own.

At this juncture, he was lucky enough to trip across a blonde girl walking towards Casey's door. Helping her to her feet (because he had been serious about the tripping across her part), Derek apologised and followed it quickly with his most charming grim and a casual, "I'm Derek, by the way."

"Anna," the breathless blonde replied, topping it with a return grin that struck Derek as oddly eager.

"The sweater thief," Derek heard himself say before really stopping to think about it. His eyes dipped down, and yeah, he confirmed that she could definitely have been the one to borrow Casey's sweater and stretch it out.

"What?" the girl asked, still smiling in a way that made Derek faintly wonder if he should ask if she was all right.

"Nothing, nothing," he replied, not wanting to get in to accusing her of taking Casey's sweater, "I just realised, you must be the Anna that's friends with my stepsister. She talks about you a lot, actually, like, weirdly a lot, now that I think about it."

"I have a confession, actually," she giggled, still managing that unnerving smile, "I actually asked Casey to set us up on a date, and she's been doing a very thorough, very slow job of it. Isn't that just- Derek? Where are you going?"

Derek didn't bother to answer the sweater thief's questions, though, because he was already bounding back towards Casey's dorm, using his key to let himself into her room.

"Derek!" Casey shrieked in protest, possibly because she had been in the middle of peeling the ruined blue sweater over her head. Derek didn't stop to find out for sure though, because he was pretty angry, really, and it wasn't like he hadn't seen Casey in pretty much every compromising position already over the years.

"Why were you trying to lend me to Anna like some sort of sweater?" he demanded, noting even in his outraged state that Casey quickly forgot that she was half dressed in favour of a quick retort.

"That's the entirely wrong way of looking at it! I was just trying to set you up on a date with my friend because she asked me to!"

"Well, what if you had and I was all stretched out and ruined when you got me back?" Derek asked, "What would you have done then?"

"Derek, you're a person, not a sweater!" Casey shot back in what appeared to Derek to be unwarranted exasperation, "It's not as if you can really be stretched out and ruined, and besides, it's not as if I'd be getting you back, anyway. That implies that I have you to begin with."

"Well, of course you have me, Casey," Derek told her, in what he felt was a case of pointing out the obvious. "We've been dating for months!"

"That's- uh, what did you say?" Casey asked, descending rapidly from exasperated to flabbergasted, which, interestingly enough, brought Derek down from enraged and into the territory of exasperated himself.

ooOoo

Casey thought she might be having an out of body experience, then she wondered if perhaps she was confused about who she was entirely. Maybe she was Anna, and that's who Derek was having this conversation with...

"Yeah, like a month ago in the cafeteria, you said I needed to settle down with a nice girlfriend, and I said the only one for me was you," Derek reminded her, settling on the edge of her bed. And Casey saw the purple comforter and realised, that yeah, she was herself, and she must be firmly within her own body because otherwise she was pretty sure she wouldn't be struggling to catch her breath.

"Oh, sure, but you were flinging peas at me at the time!" she finally managed to shoot back, but only after she was forced to fall down on the bed beside her clinically insane stepbrother/the-boy-who-apparently-thought-he-was- her-boyfriend.

"Well, yeah, but then you said that you were pretty sure you were the only one who could put up with me, so I thought we were on the same page," Derek explained. "Which is why you can't also date Dale. He's an asshole, and I don't share."

"But I was trying to set you up on a date!" Casey protested, not bothering to even object to the way Derek lay down next to her and held her hand.

"Well, that still doesn't mean you're free to go out with Dale. All it means is that your matchmaking was a success," Derek offered, "Because I've been dating you ever since."

Casey considered protesting again, but decided that it wouldn't do any good. Instead, she stood up and retrieved her sweater from the ground where it had fallen when Derek had startled her earlier.

"I don't know why you keep that thing," Derek protested.

"Oh, well, I don't mind that it's a little bit ruined, really," Casey replied, wondering whether or not it was a good idea to be ascribing this much sentiment to a piece of clothing she'd never even particularly liked until Anna had borrowed it one day. "And in the end, I like to keep all of my things, once I get them back."

Derek grinned and Casey gave up on being confused.

"I guess that I should call Dale and tell him I can't make it," Casey sighed, sitting down beside Derek once again.

"I think that would be for the best," Derek said, taking her hand again.