Chapter Text
In retrospect, Casey should have begun to suspect something when she saw the bag.
It was an utterly ridiculous bag; at least 60 liters, so large it took up the whole of Derek’s back from the nape of his neck to his hips. He practiced strutting around the house with it a few times. Her mother had complimented it with a patient smile; his father had suggested losing a few pairs of shoes to take off the extra weight.
Casey had snidely handed him his old school backpack. What else could he possibly need for a three week trip to Portugal to see his long-lost mother?
Derek had simply smiled that scheming smile of his and said that he needed the larger bag for all the condoms. “Safety first, Space Case. Who knows what the hotties in Portugal have been up to?”
She had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker; she had spent the rest of the evening utterly flustered and sputtering, instead of fixating on his bag.
But in the end, it was all the sputtering that did them in.
“Mom, George, you can’t possibly think that letting him go all the way across the ocean alone is a good idea! I mean listen to him, at this rate he’ll nail the first flight attendant he meets and miss his connecting flight completely, or something! He’s totally irresponsible, and his mother works constantly, it’s not as though he’ll have anyone to keep an eye on him-”
She keeps this up for two days. He’s just so infuriating. All the little smirks, and the angelic tones of voice, and the strange packages that arrive at the house which he immediately stores in that stupid oversized bag.
“He won’t keep to his workout schedule, and then he’ll lose his spot on the hockey team at Queens entirely-”
George, in the middle of his morning coffee, sighs heavily and places his mug on the table with an audible thump. “Casey, I appreciate your concern for Derek’s wellbeing. So much so, in fact, that I called his mother. She graciously agreed to host you both. If you’re so worried about Derek, go with him.”
Something expensive and metal crashes down the staircase; Edwin has dropped his brand new tuba in his shock. “ WHAT?! Casey gets to go with Derek and visit our mother in a beautiful European country, and I’m stuck at band camp? Are you serious?!”
“Well, Edwin, you could-” George begins, but Edwin has already stomped back up the stairs, no doubt to pout in Lizzie’s room.
Nora’s eyes follow him, ever-worried about the dynamics of a blended family. “George, if this is going to upset everyone-”
“Not at all, Nora. I think it will be a wonderful experience for Casey, and Derek could use some guidance. Think of it as a sort of graduation present. I know you weren’t keen on Derek traveling all that way alone.”
And, well. This is fine , she supposes. She can keep Derek out of trouble and ensure he stretches at least once a day with her for hockey while she practices dance moves. She’s not expected to be in New York for another month, at least, and that’s too short a time to get a summer job and save a little money.
When George tells Derek, he’s suspiciously calm. Okay, calmer than she thought he’d be. He only uses one expletive and throws his old school backpack against her closed bedroom door, suggesting she be the one to use it instead. Which of course she won’t; it smells like old gym socks and she’s got a pink duffle she’d been saving for New York, but Portugal will make a good test run.
Casey packs and unpacks and repacks at least three times over, adding bikinis and subtracting old textbooks until she thinks she’s landed on all that she could possibly need; she has bought three books in what she thinks is a show of great restraint. One on European history in general, one on how to be a streetwise traveler, and one on how to put together the perfect capsule wardrobe. She devours them in less than a week, and only puts the ones on traveling and history in her bag.
Her duffel isn’t even bulging, which she thinks is a great success. It zips and everything.
Edwin and Lizzie only make a few snippy comments and hug them both goodbye at the house. George and Nora are mostly silent on the ride to the airport, leaving plenty of silence for Derek and Casey to fill with their bickering about who gets the window seat on the plane. Casey pretends not to notice her mother’s tear-filled eyes and George’s frown lines marring his forehead with concern.
“Don’t worry Mom, George. I’ll keep Derek in line and we’ll be back before you know it,” Casey says with her best winning smile plastered in place. For some reason there’s a sinking feeling in her chest she can’t quite place.
Casey isn’t afraid of flying, but she’s quiet as the family walks them to the first checkpoint. She tries to keep her smile, but it falters and she feels her lip tremble no matter how hard she works to hold it still. Derek is busy crowing and peacocking his way through the airport, giving last-minute slaps on the back to George and scruffing Marti’s hair, who is incredibly affronted.
She watches him, eyes tracing the curve of his arm in his black t-shirt as he hugs Marti tightly against his chest, eyes screwed shut in a way that makes her stomach drop. It feels as though they’re leaving forever, not just for three weeks. Casey sort of is; when they return from Portugal, she’ll have two days and then she’ll be on another plane for New York.
Nora notices. Of course Nora notices. She pulls Casey aside, out of eavesdropping range, but Casey still drops her eyes to the scuffed tile floor.
“Casey. What is it? You’ve been excited for the trip. Think of all the history, all the beauty you’re going to see!”
“No, I know,” Casey says as noncommittally as possible.
Apparently she doesn’t quite hit the mark, because Nora quietly asks, “Did you bring your prescription with you?”
Casey’s eyes flash up from the floor to her mother’s forehead incredibly fast. She feels as though her ears are burning, steam rising up through her hair. “Of course! I’m fine, Mom, really.”
“If you don’t want to go…”
Nora trails off, and Casey moves her eyes again, this time to track the dark shape of Derek scooting closer to them. His eyes are unreadable, and doesn’t that just ratchet her heartrate up further, because when he shuts her out like that it’s impossible for her to tell if he’s irritated with her or not. She’s spent what feels like a lifetime ensuring she knows what he’s thinking.
“I want to go,” she says to him more than Nora, but for appearance’s sake, she turns back to face her mother. She puts on her most earnest expression, her most keener expression, the one that slips under Derek’s skin practically through osmosis. “Really, Mom, I’m just excited. Nervous excitement. Full of anticipation, if you will.”
Casey bites her bottom lip hard and adds, “Besides, I’ll be with Derek. He’ll take care of me. He always does.”
Nora blinks in unmitigated shock, but gives Casey a tremulous smile and says, “Of course he will,” and then Casey is numb but is slinging her pink bag over one shoulder and standing too close to Derek for comfort as the family rushes into a group hug and then their parents are leaving.
“Have a fun and safe trip, both of you. I just can’t believe you’re all grown up… send pictures! Make sure to check in! We love you,” Nora calls even as George drags her by the hand back toward the entrances and exits.
“Go to at least three museums,” George adds, tucking Marti under his arm, and then their heads disappear into the crowd and Casey and Derek are just… two adults standing in the middle of an airport, about to take a trip across an ocean together. There’s a beat where that registers, that they’re truy on their own for the first time in their lives and they’re on their own together and something about that returns the feeling to Casey’s fingertips.
Derek doesn’t spare her a glance and doesn’t say anything either, just turns on his heel and begins the security process.
Casey sighs but follows suit.
For perhaps the first time in her life, Casey doesn’t see romance coming.
She falls in love at first sight anyway.
Lisbon spreads beneath the plane like a quilt of golden threads, all the way to the cerulean sea. Casey takes one look at it and falls deeply, irrevocably. Her breath catches in her throat, and she nudges Derek awake next to her. He hadn’t put up nearly as much of a fight as she expected for the window seat, his eyebrows drawn together as he watched her hands shake during takeoff. He hadn’t said anything about it, so she figured one good deed deserves another and let him nap against her arm halfway through the flight.
She nudges him with her shoulder now, and he groans low in his throat. Casey doesn’t question the flip her stomach does at the sound; after years of living together, she’s used to the odd sensation. She’s felt it every morning since moving into his house, listening to the rasp in his voice in the mornings, staring at his bed-head across the kitchen table. The twisting feeling in her gut, it’s due to the fact that he has morning breath. It turns her stomach. That’s all.
“Derek, look!”
“Five more minutes,” he snuffles grumpily against her arm, but she shrugs him off and pokes insistently at his cheek until he’s leaning even closer, pressing his face up against hers to get a good look out the window.
“Ugh,” she grumbles on instinct, trying futilely to nudge him back into his designated space.
“You wanted me to look,” he snaps, but begrudgingly settles against his headrest, staring up at the ceiling as Lisbon rises slowly upwards to greet the descending plane.
They make it through customs, and Casey looks for his mother’s blonde head in the small group waiting to meet the plane’s passengers, but doesn’t see it. Derek points, and there stands a driver with Venturi plastered across a sign with the logo of a professional chauffeur service emblazoned above it.
“Oh. Um. Your mom didn’t want to greet you?”
“Why would she?”
Casey isn’t quite sure what to say to that, so she elects to busy herself checking the straps on her sparkly backpack that had operated as a carry-on and eyeing the luggage conveyor for her bright bag amidst all the blacks and navy blues. Derek pulls his massive backpack from it and she eyes him eagerly for a chance to mock him for stumbling, swinging the heavy thing around like that, but the words dry up in her throat as he effortlessly places the strap on his shoulder and pulls his aviators from the side pocket, sliding them through his thick hair.
The chauffeur leads them out of the airport and to a waiting black car, and Casey slides into the backseat without complaint. She got the window seat on the plane. Derek can have shotgun. She’s an adult now and so is he, she can be fair.
Lisbon slides by the window on the way to his mother’s residence, a wonderland of history and architecture. Beige, orange, blue, teal, cream, yellow, white, red, carved doors, shining mosaics, terracotta roofs, yellow trams, flashes of the ocean between streets. Lisbon had been built on seven hills, like Rome. It had a history of knights and pirates and the noble Moors, complete with medieval alleys and gleaming museums. Casey thinks it’s perfection.
Derek mutters an address in a haphazard, half-assed style of Portuguese to the driver, and Casey would normally roll her eyes but she’s too busy watching everything go by. There are no expectations of his mother’s home; she hopes it’s not an intrusion to host her as well. She doesn’t know Derek’s mother well, only remembers the tension and struggle between the two of them years ago, and doesn’t fancy being caught up in that for the next three weeks.
Apparently, she needn’t have worried. Derek’s mother lives on one of the most expensive streets in Lisbon, in an ancient villa overlooking a large portion of the city and the sea. Casey’s breath catches in her throat, staring up at the stone facade that shines brilliantly against the blue sky. She could get lost in Derek’s mother’s home and never find her way out. He and his mother could murder each other on the opposite end and she’d never hear a peep. Casey had known she worked a lot, but not to the extent that she could afford this.
“Derek. Der-ek! Um, excuse me, when did you plan to mention that your mother is filthy rich?!”
“To be fair,” he huffs, bending over to pick up the pink duffel Casey dropped in her astonishment, “I try not to mention her at all.”
His mother isn’t waiting to greet them at the door. She’s not in the astonishing foyer, nor on the spiral staircase, or in the office full of antique furniture on the immediate right. Casey looks at Derek, but he won’t look back at her when they find the envelope on a kitchen island that looks as though it’s never been used to hold a warm pot. The kitchen is done in old-world colors and woods, and Casey is afraid to even breathe in it for fear of breaking the china in the hutch that probably costs more than the impending lease on a New York apartment.
“Derek,” Derek reads out loud. “Sorry I missed you, had a client call. Your room is upstairs in the right wing. Casey’s room is in the left. I had Ana put your names on the doors. I’ll be home late and have to work tomorrow. Have fun exploring Lisbon until I see you at dinner tomorrow evening. Sincerely, Mom.”
He whirls around, body practically vibrating with frustration, and Casey reaches out a hand for his shoulder but stops herself halfway through because he jerks away from her almost violently. “We should get some rest anyway, Derek. It’s been a really long day. We need showers, and some quick food, and we’ll have a great day tomorrow and see your mom soon. Okay?”
“I just can’t believe I came all this way and she leaves a note and signs it with a fucking sincerely, ” Derek says flatly, and Casey blinks owlishly at his back. She’s heard him curse before, usually while they were home without adult supervision and while he was playing video games. She’s never heard this tone in his voice.
Hesitantly, she reaches forward and manages to curl her fingers around the crook of his elbow. His shoulders are tense and anger radiates through his tall frame, but he relaxes marginally at her touch and Casey tells herself it’s the heat of a Portuguese evening that sends waves of warmth through her entire body.
“Come on, Der. You stink. You wouldn’t want to meet your mom like that anyway,” she teases gently and it works. Of course it works. This dynamic between them is easy, familiar, ingrained as breathing, even in a foreign country.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he mutters and allows her to lead him by the hand up the spiral stairs, dizzying in their twirling.
When Casey wakes, Derek is already gone. Either that, or he’s playing the world’s most competitive game of hide and seek in this massive house. She’s on her own in a foreign city, and normally the thought would paralyze her, but instead she feels an unexplainable thrill deep in her chest.
It takes her days, almost a full week, just to get her bearings. The city is like a maze, twisting and turning in indecipherable spirals. She can’t really understand the road signs, so she starts looking for landmarks and comes to understand her way around by those instead; there’s the coffee shop she gets an espresso at each morning, there’s the corner market with the fresh fruits and flowers, there’s the tram stop she returns to each evening after riding all around the city, but especially on Tram 28, which takes her all the way to the domed towers of the Estrela Basilica.
The views of the city from the basilica take her breath away. She spends a long time just staring, face turned toward the light. Queen Maria’s tomb makes her cry. There’s something devastating, she thinks, about building such a large monument for yourself, something that screams I was here, I was important, my life mattered, don’t forget me don’t forget me don’t forget me.
She shocks herself by spending the majority of that first week on the beach, lying in the sand, doing absolutely nothing for the first time in her existence. Casey hadn’t realized how exhausted she was. Every second of every day striving, reaching so far, trying so hard to hide how anxious every small choice makes her… she falls asleep in the sun three days in a row and watches other carefree girls laugh in the surf and wonders if that could ever be her.
She rarely sees Derek, usually only when she makes her way toward his mother’s house for dinner every evening. The meals are stifled, unpleasant things, and she wonders why his mother continues to insist they eat at home when perhaps a restaurant somewhere would provide enough social structure for her and Derek to stop biting each other’s heads off before dessert. Casey doesn’t speak during dinner; she simply watches with her heart in her throat, eyes opened to the fact that for years, even during their worst spats, Derek had only been lightheartedly teasing her. The words he spits at his mother are bitter, full of venom. He sounds decades older than his years. If he ever spoke that way to Casey, she would simply curl up in a ball and never move again.
His mother is oddly kind to her; she knocks on her door every evening to make sure Casey had a good day, to ask about where she visited, to apologize for yet another show with dinner. Derek’s mother sometimes watches Casey as though she knows something Casey doesn’t. She doesn’t know how to respond to this dynamic at all, so she smiles and waves off the woman’s apologies and asks eager questions about her business.
Casey thinks it must be very lonely to live in such a large, silent home.
At the beginning of the second week, she’s expecting another day like any other, wandering around the city but never going into any of the enticing buildings, only to end up in the sand again, the day abruptly ended by an argument or seven over an awkward meal.
Instead, Derek is waiting for her at the front door in a white t-shirt and artfully torn jeans she wishes looked terrible and the sight draws her up short. He’s spinning a set of car keys around one finger. There are dark circles under his eyes and his hair is even messier than usual.
“Ran out of babes to watch at the beach?” she asks snidely.
“Shut up. I need to get out of the city for a bit. I could use a keener tour guide. Come with me?”
Casey tilts her head in fascination, because that was almost a kind invitation. “Where, exactly?”
“Sintra.”
Tingles shoot up and down Casey’s spine. Sintra is on her list of things she must do while in Portugal, the list she had tucked into her glittery backpack and never once pulled out since she arrived here. Sintra has three stars next to it and is underlined three times. It’s further down the list, though, something she was planning on doing as a last hurrah right before leaving Portugal.
“For a day trip?”
“Try a three-day trip.”
Her eyebrows shoot up her forehead. “Your mother is okay with us being gone that long? Isn’t the point to visit her?”
Derek sighs, and the sound is long-suffering. “Yeah, and look how well that’s going. She threw these keys at my head over yogurt this morning.”
Casey winces. “Um, alright. Just let me put some clothes in my backpack and I’ll be right back.”
Casey rushes through packing in record time, and is back down the stairs and practically skipping next to Derek as they leave the foyer. He smirks at her excitement, still spinning the keys, and presses a button on the fob to unlock, apparently, a vintage blue convertible.
“Oh my God. Holy sh- I mean, Der-ek! We get to take this?”
He shrugs, a tired grin stretching across his face. “Apparently it’s the least valuable of what my mother owns.”
Casey doesn’t even spend time contemplating that one, instead rushing forward to slide into the passenger seat and secure her backpack at her feet. She pulls out a silky headscarf and ties it around her head to keep her hair from whipping around.
For some reason, Derek’s eyes seem to linger on the scarf’s knot at her throat before he gives a small shake of his head and puts the key in the ignition. The drive is short, only half an hour, but Casey loves every second of it, enjoying being able to be in the open air, part of the scenery instead of only observing it. She’s used to Derek driving somewhat maniacally back in Canada, so it surprises her when he drives five kilometers less than the speed limit the whole way and seems almost relaxed for the first time since they landed in Portugal.
Five minutes out from Sintra, Derek slows even more and quietly says, “I really can’t stand her.”
Casey bites her lip. “I noticed. Why are we even here, then? I mean, Portugal is amazing, but… why put yourself through it?”
He grimaces, evasive as he says, “I needed to ask her for something.”
“Well biting her head off is definitely the way to get it.”
He huffs, looking away from her and out at the lush greenery that surrounds them, the rocky cliff faces, the brilliant sky. “Look, I know, okay, I just can’t help that she infuriates me! She just knows exactly what to say, and-”
Derek shocks her by pulling the car to the shoulder of the road. With the lack of wind, the day seems to almost stand still, silent except for Derek’s harsh breathing. His eyes meet hers, and Casey stops breathing.
“And I need a friend. Okay? Not an annoying, know-it-all stepsister. A friend. For three days, can you just be that? Please? Pretend we’re best friends. Pretend we’ve been planning this trip together forever. Piss me off by dragging me all over Sintra instead of pissing me off by sitting there in total silence while she rips into me at dinner. Don’t let me think about my mother or how screwed up everything has been.”
And wow, okay, Casey doesn’t quite know where to begin unpacking all of that. Voice shaking, she says, “The main hub is the historic city center, and the Palacio Nacional is right there next to it. It’s the most lived-in castle in Portugal. We should start there. And we are best friends, Derek. We are.”
Derek’s eyes scan her face, and for a moment he looks almost wild with vulnerability, and then he chuckles, turning back to the road and pulling off the shoulder again to drive on. “Most lived-in huh? By keener princesses like you? No shit. Okay, Spacey, we’ll start there.”
Sintra is beyond gorgeous, like something out of a fairytale. Derek parks the car in an unguarded lot on the outskirts and together they walk through the winding cobblestone streets and Casey is so busy gazing up at the buildings built into the cliffsides that she almost doesn’t notice Derek glancing at her out of the corner of his eye every so often.
They stop in a small bakery for travesseiros , and Derek cheers, “yes, dessert for lunch!” and Casey throws back her head to laugh at his antics when he orders three more. Her scarf slips off the back of her head, and seemingly without thinking, Derek reaches out to tuck her flyaway hair behind her ear.
“So, the castle,” she says, ignoring the way blood seems to be pounding through her cheeks, turning them red.
The Palacio Nacional gleams white and grand, complete with two odd dome shapes and a coppery roof that does nothing to lessen the glimmer that seems to shine from the building under the bright sun. Derek pays their entrance fee, and Casey tries not to balk at the large amount of euros she can see in his wallet. His mother must have really wanted him gone for a bit, Casey thinks with no small amount of sorrow on his behalf.
“Alright, tour guide, give me the deets,” he says around a grin, and her sorrow disappears in a flash.
She leads him through the Coat of Arms room, ceiling and walls glittering with gold detail, which he seems unimpressed by until she cajoles him into rounding his eyes comically at each and every painting on the wall. Casey rolls hers, and lingers long enough in the Magpie Room for him to wait by the doorway, tapping his foot impatiently and grandly gesturing for other tourists to go on ahead of them. She lingers even longer in the Swan Room to prove the point, but they’re both weirdly fascinated with the kitchens, the chimneys of which turn out to be the large domes they could see from the exterior. In all, the tour only takes them a little over an hour even with all her lingering, and then they’re back out under the hot sun for a moment, waiting to board the 434 bus to their next destination.
“Are we sure this thing is safe?” Derek questions, sliding into the small seat next to her and staring nervously over the edge of the cliffs as the bus climbs higher and higher above the rainbow city.
Casey sighs long-sufferingly. “We’re fine, Derek. Just focus on how amazing this place is going to be! Alfonso the First captured Sintra from the Moors in 1147, during the Crusades. They let the Castelo dos Mouros fall into ruins. It sits more than 200 meters above the city, even though it’s not actually that far from it. I mean, can you imagine? Built in the medieval times! Nothing in Canada is anywhere near that age.”
“Oh great, a bunch of boulders and the plague,” Derek snarks, but she hears the nervousness under his tone. Thinking of his fingers skimming her ear as he tucked her hair earlier, Casey reaches out hesitantly and strokes his wrist gently with her thumb, just barely refraining from grasping his hand as the bus rounds a particularly high cliff.
Derek glances pointedly down at her thumb and arches one sardonic eyebrow at her.
Casey flushes. She’s doing a lot of that today, and it’s annoying. “We’re best friends on this trip, remember? It’s okay for the cliffs to make you nervous.”
“Whatever,” he snaps, turning his gaze back to the window, but he doesn’t draw his hand away.
Clearly Derek thinks the harrowing bus ride is worth it; he dashes from battlement to battlement, is oddly quiet and respectful in the oldest chapel in Sintra- likely once a mosque or prayer room- and happily jogs up the more than five hundred steps, waiting every few dozen for Casey impatiently, unafraid of the views that expand all the way to the ocean.
It takes nearly two hours to explore the entire castle; Derek seems more than satisfied and nearly hops back onto the 434 bus before Casey grabs his arm, clicking her tongue in his general direction.
“Absolutely not. We haven’t even seen the highlight of the day! The Palacio Nacional de- ”
“What?! We were at the National Palace or whatever earlier-”
“That was the Palacio Nacional de Sintra. We’re going to “ Palacio Nacional de Pena.”
“I’m going to get national palace-sized blisters,” Derek grunts but allows himself to be tugged into the long line of waiting tourists for tickets.
The palace is truly grand, and Casey falls in love with the bright yellow facade against the brilliant blue sky, beckoning to her like a mythical tropical bird taking flight amongst the clouds. She holds her breath as she passes underneath the ancient-looking gargoyle that still guards the entrance, and clenches her fingers tightly into fists to keep from reaching out to touch the fairytale furnishings and paintings once inside.
Derek ambles along good-naturedly, interested despite himself in the odd spiral-shaped dining table and the set of gleaming copper pots in the kitchens, stamped to ward off thieves.
They take an extra hour to amble through the gardens, Derek taking his camera from his backpack and good-naturedly snapping as many shots as Casey wishes when she sings, “we’re frriieennnddss ” under her breath.
“Can you believe a place like this actually exists?” Casey breathes.
Derek doesn’t answer for another twenty minutes; despite his complaints of sore feet, they decided to leave the palace grounds and hike to the apex of the Cruz Alta viewpoint, and it doesn’t disappoint; Portugal spreads out underneath them like a medieval map of old, color bursting between hills and the faraway sea shimmering along the horizon.
“No,” Derek says quietly, back turned from the twisted stone cross that greeted their sweaty, splotchy countenances after huffing and puffing their way up the mountainside. “No, I can’t believe we’re here."
They’re too hungry to be wary of the bus ride back down the cliffsides to the city center. Turns out a lunch comprised of mostly chocolate, coffee, and pastries does not a hearty afternoon of sightseeing make.
“Come on, my mom told me about this one little place,” Derek says, surprising her by looping her arm through his and guiding her a short distance from the inner square, down a little side street and into a golden-lit, white stone-walled little restaurant with red booths called Romaria de Baco.
They’re seated relatively quickly, since it’s a destination most tourists don’t seem to have on their list of must-visits, and then Casey’s eyes almost pop out of her head as she watches Derek order, in near-perfect Portuguese, one bottle of port and one bottle of Portuguese vinho verde.
“You can’t give your mother’s address to a chauffeur but you can order wine?!”
Derek pours the verde with a flourish, handing her the first glass in a move that’s not-so-surprisingly gentlemanly, then tips his own stemmed glass at her in a way that’s damn-near suave, loathe as she is to admit it. If they were truly best friends, and nothing else…well. “Priorities, Case.”
“Fair enough,” she mutters darkly, mood plummeting with the realization of how far her thoughts have gotten away from her after one day of a fairytale setting. She buries her gaze in her lap and takes a sip of wine to distract herself, starting at the fizzy, lemonade-flavored burst of the drink.
“Good, huh?” Derek smirks, but it doesn’t quite reach his questioning eyes. “Now help me order, I’m hopeless with the food.”
Casey scans the menu. “Well, I’m sure it’s delicious, but I’d be careful ordering the sopa de pedra. Sometimes there are rocks in the bottom of it.”
Derek nearly drops his glass, eyeing her as though she might be joking. “You’re fucking with me,” he says, and she feels that odd swooping sensation low in her stomach at him swearing again.
“Nope. It’s based on an old tale; a friar on a pilgrimage was too proud to beg, but was starving. So he asked local farmers for vegetables to go with his rock soup.”
To her surprise, Derek gets the joke. He throws back his head and laughs, drawing the eyes of a group of young women off to their left. Casey glares at them half-heartedly and doesn’t question why she feels the urge to do so.
“Anything else on the menu have an origin story?” he asks, glass half-gone already.
“Mm… the alheira certainly does. At one point in Portugal’s history, Judaism was outlawed. So Jewish people had to publicly behave as Christians just to survive. They made alheira and called it sausage but it’s… not pork. It’s usually pretty garlicky and deep-fried. Should suit you just fine.”
Casey feels warmth deep in her chest and blames it on the wine when that’s the dish Derek chooses. She herself decides on bacalhau , a cod dish, surprised she hadn’t tried it before now after seeing it on so many menus back in Lisbon. Derek reaches across a third of the way through the wine and takes a bite for himself, and she only sort-of stabs his hand with her fork.
She’s going soft in the swell of a Sintra night. Clearly.
The port goes down smoothly after the bottle of verde, and Casey doesn’t ask how much it costs compared to the cheap nonsense she’d tried at house parties back home. She’s never really drank in a restaurant like this, like an adult, and it occurs to her that to outsiders they look like two young travelers enjoying a night out together, like a couple in one of the most romantic settings she’s ever been in.
Casey polishes off the bottom of the bottle at the idea, swatting Derek’s fingers away when he tries to fight her for it. He’d likely have won if they were alone, but as they’re in public, he has to concede.
“Better drink up now, Case,” he chuckles as he drops a handful of bills on the table. He guides her out into the night with a hand on the swell of her back. Casey swallows thickly. “In New York the drinking age is 21. No wine for you.”
“Damn,” Casey frowns, “I forgot about that.”
“You don’t have to go,” he says lowly; to her it sounds as though something is stuck in his throat, as though the words are fighting against the speaker to be heard. “You could… not. You know. Go to New York.”
“I’ve put my whole life on hold to go to New York, Derek. Queens has already given me a year’s extension. What am I gonna do, skip out on New York and then just… work at a gas station for a year in London instead?”
It strikes her, then, as the street lights blend together into one judgemental glare and the sidewalk lurches under her that her argument didn’t include the fact she wanted to go.
To counteract this revelation, Casey performs a mocking pirouette in the middle of the road, drifting out of reach of Derek’s grasping fingers. “Dancing is all I’ve ever cared about.”
Dancing, she thinks, and you.
“I think it’s a cop-out,” Derek says, unprovoked, but they’re the loudest shots he’s ever fired in her direction.
“It’s not. It’s what I want,” she says, just to make sure she has said it. She didn’t, before. That was an oversight, clearly.
Her tongue, her throat, her heart beating drunkenly inside her chest wants to claim otherwise. She won’t let them.
Derek doesn’t say anything else until he sighs, “This way, lushie,” and pulls her into the doorway of a cute little hotel. The streets here all look the same, Casey thinks, all cobblestones and arched doorways and sweet colors that she thinks must look out of place in the middle of winter instead of in the warmth of a summer night like this.
“I’m lucky to have you,” she says out loud. “To keep me from getting lost.”
The sound Derek makes, almost a clearing of the throat, is also almost a groan. Casey resolves at the reaction her stomach has- swooping, naturally- to keep those sorts of thoughts to herself and focus on finally setting down the backpack she’s had to lug around all day.
“Reservations were made ahead,” he says in English to the man at the check-in desk. “Under Venturi.”
“I love your last name,” Casey sighs wistfully, mouth apparently not on-board with the keeping-thoughts-to-herself plan. “ Venturi. I love it when I get to pretend it’s mine, too. Like now. And when they call in the morning to see if we want breakfast brought to us on a little silver tray, like in the movies; they’ll say Venturi’s , you know, all plural-like when taking our order, and I’ll say, yes, that’s us and it will feel so nice Der-ek. It used to feel funny when we were out with the whole family and they referred to us like that, you know? But not when it’s me and you. Like at your hockey games! I loved wearing your name on my shirt, you know? I was there as a Venturi because it was you, not because it was Mom and George and all of us-”
She also loves the look on his face when she says his name like that, like Der-ek, almost as though he’s in pain, but not quite. She’d never intentionally cause him pain.
Casey tells him that, all of that, as he drags her by the hand up the steps, and her ankles hurt badly but the stairs aren’t as bad as the hike to Cruz Alta, so all in all she doesn’t mind them, and then the stairs open up into a hallway that looks like some imagining from a medieval-themed bodice-ripper and there’s a doorway to their shared room that’s arched like in every fantasy she’s ever had.
Derek pushes her into the en-suite bathroom, small but elegant and clean, still jabbering about fantasies that the hotel room reminds her of. Casey didn’t think the wine had gone to her head that quickly; perhaps she’s talking more than she usually does, but would only two bottles really destroy every wall she’s ever put between her step-brother and herself?
She moans under the hot water, truly dizzy now under the effects of the alcohol. Dressing quickly, in only underwear and a large t-shirt- one that says Venturi on the back and bears their high school’s crest on the front, she notices with no small amount of satisfaction- Casey stumbles out of the bathroom and straight into something large and soft and solid all at once.
Derek’s chest.
He grumbles, and the sound vibrates against her cheek. “Just go to bed, okay, Casey?”
Casey stares outwardly at the room. Hardwood floors, plaster that doesn’t look very modern on the walls, double-doors that must lead to a balcony since they’re off the ground floor, one large king-sized bed with the most inviting white linens she’s ever seen to complete it. “But where will you sleep?”
“The floor.”
Casey scoffs. “Absolutely not, Der-ek. I know you’re too immature to recognize that girls don’t actually have cooties, but sleeping next to me for one night won’t kill you, you know.”
She hears him huff, “It might,” and then he’s gone, disappeared into the steam she left in the bathroom.
Room truly spinning now, and skin feeling both numb and pleasantly tingly where his hands had caught her arms, Casey slides under the fluffy bedding and closes her eyes. Portugal, she thinks, isn’t so bad after all. She’s glad she came.
From somewhere over her shoulder, she thinks she hears the pattering of the shower again, and Derek groaning almost silently around the shape of her name.
But she can’t quite make it out before she’s drifting away, entirely gone.