Running had always been the plan. Derek never meant to stay anywhere for very long. He'd once told Scott that once he started running, he would never stop, and that statement had come from experience. It started with the fire over a decade ago...and Derek was always running.
She's everything he's afraid of getting attached to: a white woman who appears to be human; they've only ever hurt him and the people he cares about in the past. She's everything Derek's never wanted, in some ways very much a polar opposite of him while, in other ways, a little too much like him. She somehow manages to bring out both the best and the worst of Derek and he hates her for it. ...but he likes her a lot for it, too, and maybe that's why, even though he keeps telling himself that they're two ships passing in the night, he still hasn't left Alabama. There's nothing keeping him here, except that he keeps running into her and call it kismet or call it a disaster waiting to happen, but Derek can't make himself leave, because then he'll be leaving behind the one person who's managed to make him smile in the past several years without also surreptitiously stabbing him in the back. Yet.
The hotel he's been holing himself up in is nothing special, but it doesn't need to be. He grew up wealthy and pampered and while he's still wealthy, God knows he's lived in worse places. The burned out shell of his family home after Kate Argent trapped damn near everyone who ever mattered to him all inside and lit it on fire, killing them all, comes to mind. The train depot, too, springs to the forefront. Even his loft in the warehouse district — the first thing he ever actually owned on his own that hadn't been handed down to him or inherited — was dingy and unloved, empty for lack of effort to make it look like a home. So he doesn't mind staying in a hotel. It's not the hotel that's the problem. It's his apparent inability or unwillingness to leave it in his wake and move on that bothers him.
And whether she realizes it or not, that's Lucy's fault entirely.
He doesn't like sports — except basketball — but he finds himself frequenting the local sports bar because he's run into her a few times there. Tonight, he's hoping for another run in and that both exhilarates and infuriates him because he should know better by now. Women are powerful. Women are leaders. Women are deadly because he's been cursed with terrible character judgement abilities and he's too easily won by a pretty face with a nice smile.
Derek settles on a stool, ordering a beer he doesn't really want and that he won't really feel, and a side of cheese fries. Why he's here is still largely a mystery to him, because it's stupid to think that she'll be any different from anyone else and, quite frankly, he doesn't know her that well. For all he knows, she's just a social butterfly who'll chat up whoever feels so inclined to look in her general direction when she's in a good mood and that's all this has been; that the spark he thinks might be there between them is all in his head.
So now he's just going to wait and see if she shows up and he promises himself — for the dozenth time since he originally made his "pit stop" here — that if she doesn't come in tonight, then that's a sign and he'll pack up and head out tomorrow. The rest is up to fate. Or Lucy. ...or both.
Lucy
She's everything he's afraid of getting attached to: a white woman who appears to be human; they've only ever hurt him and the people he cares about in the past. She's everything Derek's never wanted, in some ways very much a polar opposite of him while, in other ways, a little too much like him. She somehow manages to bring out both the best and the worst of Derek and he hates her for it. ...but he likes her a lot for it, too, and maybe that's why, even though he keeps telling himself that they're two ships passing in the night, he still hasn't left Alabama. There's nothing keeping him here, except that he keeps running into her and call it kismet or call it a disaster waiting to happen, but Derek can't make himself leave, because then he'll be leaving behind the one person who's managed to make him smile in the past several years without also surreptitiously stabbing him in the back. Yet.
The hotel he's been holing himself up in is nothing special, but it doesn't need to be. He grew up wealthy and pampered and while he's still wealthy, God knows he's lived in worse places. The burned out shell of his family home after Kate Argent trapped damn near everyone who ever mattered to him all inside and lit it on fire, killing them all, comes to mind. The train depot, too, springs to the forefront. Even his loft in the warehouse district — the first thing he ever actually owned on his own that hadn't been handed down to him or inherited — was dingy and unloved, empty for lack of effort to make it look like a home. So he doesn't mind staying in a hotel. It's not the hotel that's the problem. It's his apparent inability or unwillingness to leave it in his wake and move on that bothers him.
And whether she realizes it or not, that's Lucy's fault entirely.
He doesn't like sports — except basketball — but he finds himself frequenting the local sports bar because he's run into her a few times there. Tonight, he's hoping for another run in and that both exhilarates and infuriates him because he should know better by now. Women are powerful. Women are leaders. Women are deadly because he's been cursed with terrible character judgement abilities and he's too easily won by a pretty face with a nice smile.
Derek settles on a stool, ordering a beer he doesn't really want and that he won't really feel, and a side of cheese fries. Why he's here is still largely a mystery to him, because it's stupid to think that she'll be any different from anyone else and, quite frankly, he doesn't know her that well. For all he knows, she's just a social butterfly who'll chat up whoever feels so inclined to look in her general direction when she's in a good mood and that's all this has been; that the spark he thinks might be there between them is all in his head.
So now he's just going to wait and see if she shows up and he promises himself — for the dozenth time since he originally made his "pit stop" here — that if she doesn't come in tonight, then that's a sign and he'll pack up and head out tomorrow. The rest is up to fate. Or Lucy. ...or both.