Addison and Derek's first meeting. Addek Angst (-ish). Set in a very very alternate universe. . . .

Blue Eyes

(1)

It's a cold night in December when it happened. She's waiting in Damon's car, blowing into her hands to keep them warm because even though he has left the engine running, the heater is still broken.

Why isn't that a surprise?

Maybe if this goes well, they'll have enough money to buy a new car - or at least get this dump fixed.

That being said, she knows the more likely scenario - more money equals to more drugs and Damon does care and is not bothered enough about material things to worry about anything more than rent, gas, electricity and water bills and, of course, keeping the liquor cabinet stocked.

There's a blanket of snow on the ground, not enough for traffic or planes to grind to a halt, but enough to warrant the boots she's wearing and the thick winter coat just enough to keep the chill off. She huffs out a breath and it fogs up the passenger side window so much that the view of the apartment building they're parked outside becomes cloudy and tinged with grey. Or, at least more grey than it already is. Winters in New York isn't much more than a palette of whites and charcoals.

But it's nevertheless beautiful.

The snow continues to fall, light flakes turning to heavier ones and Addison jabs at the radio because she hates the silence of these nights - the ones in which he leaves her in the car to keep watch for the cops or anyone in particular from walking in on 'whatever' he's doing while he demands money from clients who haven't yet cleared their tab. Last thing they need is for someone to question whether she's alright in there.

She's tired tonight, limbs heavy from continuous interrupted sleep and the effects of a couple whiskey shots before they drove across to Washington Square Park (a little dutch courage, she knows, but won't admit.) and it's taking a monumental amount of effort to keep her eyelids from closing like they desperately want to.

More minutes pass though, and there's a growing uneasiness about the amount of time she's been waiting for her boyfriend to return. She has the apartment number memorised but she's safer out here, in the dark, she knows it, and besides, he hates it when she comes looking for him.

It had happened a good few times ago, in the beginning, where she would panic and go to check if he was alright, only to find trashed homes and a client nursing a bloody nose or some broken ribs or other things dislocated. And he would be furious, screaming at her, telling her she'd risk some overly-nosy neighbour reporting a strange car parked outside or risk creating a scene by walking in on something she didn't need to see.

What he means by that, as she had gathered over the years they've been doing this together, is of a body. A very dead one. Damon has killed before and she knows it and yet staying with him is better than any alternative she can think of. Staying on his good side, too, is safer still.

Of course.

All of a sudden, the front door of the building she has been watching bursts open to reveal a man in only a t-shirt and jeans, his cheek bloody and swollen - the recipient, she imagines, is the barrel of Damon's gun - being forced towards the car by Damon, himself, and already she knows this isn't going to end well tonight.

She hops quickly over to the driver seat because if this is the hostage situation she immediately fears and knows for a fact it is, there's no way they can put this guy in the backseat of the car without handcuffs or a rope or cable wires - none of which they have, of course - and it's not like she can hold him, now is it?

Once she's seated there and her shaky fingers are clutching the steering wheel, the back door opens and she hears Damon shoving this stranger onto the seat, watches in the rearview mirror as he falls against the other door lazily and limp like all his energy has been sucked right out of him.

He slams the door shut behind him and barks at her to drive, the harshness in his voice betraying how panicked he really is.

It wouldn't have been obvious to many and other people, she thinks, but she knows him, knows him all too well, as she has ever since she was sixteen and had fallen deeply in love for the no-good-pot-smoking-public-school-dropout, which had to result in an ultimatum by her parents - him or them (but, really, when did the Montgomeries ever prioritised family amongst other discretions?) - and it doesn't take a genius to figure out whom she had chosen over.

She'd like to think it was all the hormones coursing through her veins and naivety that made her think without her head that day. She'd really like to believe that because she wasn't all that stupid (she was suppose to be a surgeon. Not a high school dropout.), up until she met him, that is.

Stupid in love.

Love is stupid. Love is overrated. Love make you do dumb things. Like making the wrong decisions that cuts you out of lives and trust funds.

She just wanted that love and she finally found it with Damon. And Damon, he loved her.

No, he loves her.

He loves her. And she still loves him.

"Addison, go!"

And everything in his tone suggests this isn't what he had planned. His anxiousness quickly transfers to her veins and her whole body is humming in fear.

"Fucking drive!" he shouts again, and she floors the gas pedal, resulting in a high-pitched squeal from the tyres as they protested against the lack of friction on the snow until finally, they give in and let the car travel away from the curb.

"Where to?" she asks, gripping the wheel even tighter as the guy in the back groans and Damon hisses at him to shut the fuck up.

"The basement."

"Our basement?" she asks incredulously because, yeah, she doesn't expect him to have much of a plan but she would have thought there would be something better than this - their fucking basement - better than hiding a goddamn hostage under their kitchen floor.

"How many other fucking basements do you know?" he spits, any last remnants of calm evaporating.

She swallows and puts her foot down further, just making it through the next light before amber turns to red.

She wants to ask him whether he's thought about this guy remembering their route, being able to memorise the houses in their shitty shitty neighbourhood so he can lead the cops back there once he escapes, storing every detail of their faces in his mind so that he can pick them out of a line-up and put them away for decades.

Of course, she knows he hasn't, because that's the thing with Damon - he's rash and impetuous and reckless and impulsive and as much as that was once their once upon a time, a fairytale, as exciting and thrilling these enthrals once was, when they were all in for that Bonnie and Clyde verity without all the killing and thieving and robbing aspect, now it's more of a worry when she's relying on him to put food on the table and formula in Milo's bottle.

She crosses West 14th and makes the left turn a little too quickly that the car skids along the patch of ice she hadn't spied until it was too late. The roads here haven't been gritted (nobody gives much of a shit about that on this side of Manhattan.) and so she takes her foot off the gas just a little because as much as they need to get this guy inside, she needs to do it without drawing any further attention to themselves.

Without warning, she hears an audible crack and a grunt and a strangled scream escapes her mouth as she watches this guy's head slump forward.

"Wh-what did-?"

"Shut up!" he urges, pulling his gun away from the face of the guy beside him. "Last thing we need is for him to see where he's going."

Okay. But he didn't have to pistol whack him in the head like that.

She knows it should be a comfort that he's going to be out cold when they pull up at the house but she also knows he's going to be a dead weight and Damon's big, granted, but he's not going to be able to drag him up onto the porch and into the house without her help.

She makes the right onto their street and slows the car gently so it doesn't slide into the wall of the house. Last thing she needs is to wake Milo.

"Unlock the door," he instructs. "Prop the door to the basement open."

"I need to check on Milo first." she tells him, but his face sours and then, she knows that was the wrong thing to say.

"He'll be fine for another five fucking minutes, Addie."

She tries not to wince at his words, tries (and fails miserably.) not to feel her stomach drop when he talks about their child like he isn't the most precious thing in their lives, because deep down and as much as she wants him to, she knows he doesn't feel for Milo what she feels. Knows that as much as he loves his son, he isn't in love with what they've created together.

Love keeps making you do stupid things and maybe bringing a child into their kind of world is one of them.

She'd like to believe it isn't. But Archer's voice rings in her ear, telling her that this time, she've officially lost it, that he can't continue to pretend that he's okay with the decisions she keeps making when he never was okay to begin with.

You gave up everything for that piece of shit, Addie. Your life. Your education. Your family. You picked him over us. And, tell me this, what has he done for you other than knock you up?

Her brother's probably right. She brought shame to the Montgomery name.

She misses him.

"Okay. Yeah." she nods and exits the car but they both know she'll stop by his crib, smooth the dark curls of his hair to settle him down even if he doesn't stir.

And she does.

She unlocks the front door and makes her way upstairs quickly, inching the door to Milo's room open so the fraction of light from the hallway enables her to see that he's safe and still sleeping soundly like Damon said he'd be.

After propping open the basement door and then remembering to turn the lights on so they don't trip down the stairs, she heads back out to the car where Damon's standing by the back door with a fistful of the guy's t-shirt.

"Stand on the other side." he tells her, "Take his other arm once I've got him out."

By the time they've got him up the porch steps, the neat scar across the bottom of her stomach is protesting at the strain but she knows they have to get him inside before she can even consider a rest.

When they do, he looks at her, must have sense her discomfort and tells her to find something to tie the guy to the radiator with.

She's rummaging through the cupboard for some sort of wire she thinks she saw the other week, when she hears a series of almighty thuds.

Shit!

She closes her eyes as bile rises in her throat because as much as she doesn't want to acknowledge it as such, she knows the noise was the result of the guy being thrown down the stairs to the basement.

Next, she waits for Milo's cries to echo because she knows he's heard it too, tells herself she has to go to Damon with the wire before she can comfort their son, and so once she's found what she rummaging for, she all but runs down the stairs herself.

"No rope?" he asks when she hands him the wire.

"That's all I could find."

"It'll do for tonight."

"I can go to the store in the morning." she offers, then wishes she hadn't as Milo's cries grew louder.

Damon seems to acknowledge that she needs to quiet the baby and nods at her to go back upstairs, dragging the guy's body over to the radiator on the far wall.

She's shushing Milo when she hears the light to the basement click off and the door close. Her hold on him tightens, a subconscious attempt to comfort herself just as much as she's comforting him she supposes, although it doesn't work - not that she'd expected it to.

"C'mon little man," she whispers, "You're okay. You're safe."

She feels like a fraud at those words because she knows none of them are safe now - not really - because however this situation ends, it's not going to be good for either one.

Not for her. Definitely not for Damon. And their son's collateral damage because he has criminals as parents.

He's the innocent one, the purest in all this, but he'll be the one with the harshest punishment.

There's a rattle from the kitchen, the refrigerator door opening and closing again, and she breathes kisses into her son's hair, takes from it that delicious sweet scent of milk and baby powder before laying him back down in his crib. She keeps a hand on his back, rubbing gently up and down until he drifts back off again, and then stays for a few more minutes to get her breath right, prepares herself as best she can for whatever plan Damon's formulating downstairs.

He's leaning against the counter when she enters the kitchen, tipping the bottle of Busch against his lips and draining the contents. She doesn't say anything, just stands against the frame between that room and the livingroom, her hands pressed into the wood.

"They're going to notice him missing." he announces in a tone that lets her know just how fucked they are in all of this.

"Who?"

What is he talking about?

"Family. Friends. He's a student. Someone's gonna notice. He has people who's gonna miss him, Addie. "

Not like us, she adds for herself.

Sometimes she forgets not everyone is like them.

Unknown.

People like them do not even exist and if they don't exist, how can they go missing?

With them, no one is ever going to even notice or care and that scares her, because Milo would have nobody else.

Her skin flames and pricks with beads of sweat. "You sure? What makes you think that?" It seems such a stupid question to ask and yet here she is, letting the words spill from her lips regardless.

He tosses something towards her and she misses it, the thing landing at her feet and distinguishing itself as a wallet. She bends to pick it up, unfolding the leather and taking in the distinctive smell of cinnamon and mint.

The picture catches her eye first and her heart twists at the conundrum.

Happy, carefree, toothy smiles - oh, how she misses curling her lips in a grin just like that. But it's been too long since then and she thinks her facial muscles can no longer soften like that.

It's a village of smiles by a fireplace, all girls, looking almost similar, sisters she suspects, and a familiar face but not so because the guy they have downstairs is swollen and broken.

They did that to him.

She thinks of the last Christmas she had with her family before all this began. She was still miserable then, but what she can say is that she was happier.

Well, happier than she is now.

There's a student card that almost - just almost tells her to beg him to let him go (Columbia University of Physicians and Surgeons. That was her dream school.) and a driver's licence and she looks at it carefully, tracing the words with her fingertips.

"Derek Christopher Shepherd," she says softly, looking at the image beside the information. "His address doesn't match."

"That's because it was his friend's place."

What?

"So, why'd you bring him here?" her voice quivers in frustration.

How much more stupid can he be?

"Addison, use your head. See, so, I can use him as leverage to get paid. Tit for tat. Then, I'll kill him."

"But why don't you just kill him? Why bring him here?"

"Because - haven't you been listening? Killing him right now doesn't get me paid. When I get the money, then I'll do it."

She can't help but feel like this would be a small loss, this couple of hundred dollars, like it'd be a small price to pay for not keeping someone tied up in the basement while your child sleeps upstairs.

"How are you going to get the money?" she asks, needing his answers because she sure as hell can't see how this is going to work out.

What makes him think that this friend would even care?

"Demand it off his friend."

"His friend?"

Damon sighs like he's sick of having to explain things to her. "It was his friend's place. His friend owes me the money. He wasn't there but this guy was."

"Derek." she says almost defiantly.

"What?"

"His name is Derek."

He looks confused for a moment, like he's not sure why their conversation's taken a slight turn, but he chooses to ignore it and Addison decides not to bring it up again.

Damon's going to do what Damon's going to do and she's along for the ride whether she likes it or not.

"You want a beer?" he asks, crossing to the refrigerator for his second bottle but she shakes her head. She's foggy and tired enough from the whiskey earlier, and the last thing they need is to both be out cold when Derek wakes and starts making all kinds of noise to alert the neighbours.

She shakes her head and he shrugs. "Suit yourself."

Instead, she flicks on the coffee machine so she doesn't have to work quite so hard to fight sleep. Her limbs protest at the movement but eventually the water begins to drip through the filter and the smell begins to stir her senses enough that not every blink is quite so difficult.

Later, when Damon's sinking something like his sixth or seventh beer and she's on coffee mug number three, there's an almighty bang from down in the basement. She looks towards him but already knows it's going to be her that goes down there - his eyes are glazed and she knows he's going to be unsteady on his feet, and so she rises from the couch, suppressing the sigh that's threatening to escape.

She clicks the light on first, waits the seemingly endless period of time where the light jumps on and off again repeatedly until it finally stays on and she can head down the stairs.

"Hey." she hisses at him, "Shut up!"

The guy doesn't seem to get her memo though, and continues thrashing around, testing the strength of the wire which doesn't look like it'll hold too well if he keeps it up.

She repeats her words, voice a little louder and a little more aggressive, but he still doesn't stop his movements. He sounds pained: breathing ragged and laboured and it's only when Addison inches just a little closer that she realises he's not fully-present.

He looks panicked.

In body, he is of course, but his mind has to be somewhere else, she figures. That being said, he's currently being held in a basement so she supposes maybe his mind has retreated somewhere else. Somewhere else though that's not possibly worse than this.

"Shepherd!" she says, even louder still as she kicks the bottom of his left boot with her own. It appears to do the trick and his head snaps up in her direction revealing bloodshot eyes and agony etched into his forehead. She swallows, feeling her stomach lurch as she watches him take in his surroundings and realise where he is.

"Would please stop making so much noise."

He just stares at her like she's speaking a foreign language and he looks so much like a small child in that moment that she even considers untying him, telling him to run and not look back. But she can't do that of course - can't even attempt to clean up this mess that Damon has created for them because it's always going to come back and bite them.

Jail she could take, she figures.

Damon going to jail, she could cope with - it's not like it would be the first time - but leaving Milo? That would break her, and so she silently chides herself for even thinking about the man in front of her as a person.

It's not going to help anyone.

"What does he think he's going to get from keeping me down here?" Derek finally says, his voice rough and scratchy.

Addison clamps her mouth closed, refusing without words to be drawn into conversation with him.

"He's going to kill me?"

Again, she remains stoic, absently running her fingers along her arms. It's damn near freezing down in that basement and she doesn't miss the fact he's only wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He's got to be even colder than she is. Still, she figures it won't matter much anyway after a few days or whenever it is that Damon decides to end this situation.

"Stay quiet." is all she says before turning to leave. She's almost at the top of the stairs when he calls out to her.

"If he's going to kill me anyway, why does it even matter?"

She clicks off the light and shuts the door without an answer.

By the time she returns to the livingroom, Damon's near to passed out and she seriously considers running.

Packing a bag upstairs quickly, grabbing Milo and the car and driving until the gas runs out.

She wants to go home to Connecticut.

But the practicalities of it all keep her firmly in this house; there's nowhere to run to, no one to seek out to - not without money at least - and Damon's never given her any more than what she needs for diapers and formula and other essentials along those lines.

She wants to go to bed. Wants so desperately to stretch out beneath the sheets, drift off and then wake up to realise this was simply a vivid nightmare, and yet she knows it isn't possible. They can't both possibly sleep at the same time - not without a lock on that basement door at least - and it's obvious that Damon's not going to be the one on watch tonight.

Looking at the man now passed out on the couch, she makes her way to the kitchen, and more specifically, to the drawer next to the refrigerator. She takes out the 9mm Glock and turns it over in her hands, dusting her forefinger over the trigger. It's heavier than she remembers - it's not often she's had it in her hands but ever since the day she had the barrel of a gun pressed up against her own cheek, she's made target practice a priority. When Milo came along, it was the one thing she made Damon get for her.

She carries it upstairs with her towards the room where he's sleeping, puts it down on the changing table while she lifts him from the crib, careful not to jostle and wake him. He barely stirs, just nuzzles his head against her chest somewhat subconsciously, and she feels such a rush of love for him in that moment that it's almost overwhelming. Nobody had told her much about what to expect about having a kid.

Mountains of dirty diapers - sure - an endless drain on money you don't have, a constant interruption of sleep, but never this. Nobody has ever said she'd feel so incredibly protective and afraid - always afraid that someone or something might come and steal him from her. Milo came with the question of why Bizzy clearly hadn't felt the same towards her and her brother; why it had been so easy for her to walk away without a second glance, why hadn't she tried stopping the Captain from throwing her out of the house that night, why hadn't she made any effort as a mother to check up on her.

Just a visit is all she wants.

She breathes a kiss into his dark curls and grabs the blanket from his crib, draping it over him before picking the gun back up and heading back downstairs. She settles on the couch next to Damon, Milo snuggled in against her chest in his red pyjamas, his tiny eyelids flickering with the indication of a dream. She hopes it's a good one, hopes that his world - especially in sleep - will always remain safe and happy.

The gun stays by her side in case Derek manages to break free of the wire binding his wrists to the radiator. She hopes more than anything it won't come to that, but she knows if she needs to keep her son safe, she won't hesitate in cocking that gun and pulling the trigger.

Dawn breaks weakly, the sun barely stuttering out enough light for the streetlamps to turn off, and before long it's snowing again. She feeds her son, changes him and dresses him warmly enough that they can go to the store for cable wires and ropes without him catching a cold, all with the gun by her side.

He smiles when she bounces him, squeals and giggles at the raspberry she blows against his stomach while he's lying on the changing table, and protests with only minimal fuss when she tries to force his arms inside of the snowsuit.

By the time she comes downstairs, Damon's waking groggily and so she flicks on the coffee machine, Milo balanced on her hip so she can wrap the scarf around his neck to hold the hood of his snowsuit over his head.

"I'll head to the hardware store," she says flatly. "Get some rope and cable wires."

Damon runs a hand over his face and nods.

"I'm going to need some money."

"There's money in his wallet. Take it from there." he tells her, groaning as he rises from the couch. She does as Damon instructs, slipping the two twenties into her pocket and then adding a couple tens too - just in case. Maybe she should take it all but there's something stopping her; a warped sense of right and wrong, maybe, whispers of a conscience fighting its way to the surface.

She almost leaves without asking the question, but the words manage to fight their way out of her mouth.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll figure it out."

And yet, she's almost certain he won't. That blind faith she had in him back when she was a teenager and looking for any kind of guidance and love he was willing to give, have slipped away over the years, since eroded by the increasing evidence that he's calculating, yes, but not calculating enough.

Not clever enough.

Not good enough.

Not worthy enough.

He is never enough.

But there's no turning back time now.

"Okay." she tells him, because it's much easier than we're screwed.

She buys the rope and cable wires with Milo's innocent eyes watching her movements, watching as she becomes even more complicit in this kidnap-slash-hostage situation. She wonders whether this will become something that will screw him up later in life - one of those childhood experiences you don't necessarily remember but that is stored in your subconscious so you end up conditioned to act in a certain way. And if it doesn't, Addison decides, she's certain she'll screw him up eventually anyway, because who is she kidding?

Love alone will never be enough to ensure he'll have a good life.

The snow doesn't let up for the journey back, nor does it cease when she reaches the house and closes the door to the freezing air.

She hands Damon the supplies first and then proceeds to unbundle Milo from his snowsuit, setting him in the little pen in the corner of the room so she can take off her own coat.

"You'll have to buy the lock," she says. "It would've looked suspicious if I got it with all these stuff." she gestures to the bag.

"Uh, yeah." he agrees, like he hadn't even thought of it, and that's what worries her more than anything - the lack of planning. Like when they would lie on the hood of her car and talk about their future like they had a clue.

Five years later, she's here, nowhere, with a boyfriend who works for she-doesn't-ever-want-to-know-who for a living, a baby she can't support on her own and the life she always hears as story and says she'll never have.

"I'll head out later."

She nods and stifles a yawn. It's approaching thirty hours that she's been awake now and she knows there'll be at least another couple more before she can get some much needed sleep.

"I'll go re-tie him. Bring the gun."

She does as he says and they head down into the basement together. Derek's watching them as they descend, his eyes showing that he, too, has had minimal - if any - sleep in the past day. There are bruises rising on his skin - purples and greens and yellows littering his arms to display the results of being half-thrown down the stairs last night.

"Stay still," Damon instructs him. "She'll fire if you try to make a run for it."

Derek focuses his attention on her then, and she feels her skin burn under his stare. His eyes, the bluest ocean, fixes on her finger - the one that's resting on the trigger - and she wills it not to shake, not to betray the hammering of her heart.

She have never, herself, gotten into anything this illegal before. Never to this extent.

She stares at him and is almost certain she sees his lips twitch - not a smile (barely a hint of one, really.) - but it's enough of a movement to register in her sleep-deprived brain.

His eyes returns back to hers and she swears there's something in them that isn't the hate there ought to be - a plea, maybe, or hope that she'll be the one to rectify all of this. And so she takes a step closer to him, angles the gun just a tad little to the left so it's pointing right between his eyes now.

She isn't weak, and she won't allow him to think that she is.

Derek doesn't move when Damon secures the first cable wire around his wrist, nor does he when the second one is secured. And when Damon binds his feet together with a rope, she mentally notes the way his breathing increases, then grows shallower. It's a small victory, she supposes - noticing tiny details like this.

The rope and her gun are triggers of sorts for him and she can use that to her advantage if needed be, and yet for some reason she tells herself it's information for her, not Damon.

He starts to head back upstairs and she notes the fact that he hasn't removed the original wire that was binding Derek's hands to the radiator.

"Aren't you going to take the old ones off?" she asks, instantly regretting her words.

His face darkens but he seems to consider it for a moment. She's only thinking of the what-ifs, there isn't any hidden meaning behind her question.

What if he somehow breaks free of the rope and the cable wires?

What if he uses the wire as something to strangle them with?

But then she realises, too, that it's a signal to Derek that if there is a plan here, it hasn't been fully communicated.

It's her first error, she knows, one that she'll pay for on several accounts to come.

And then she hears a noise. It's only faint, but her ears are already so attuned to the sound of Milo's cries. She tries not to draw any attention to it, creates more noise than she usually would as Damon decides against untying the wire and they head back up the stairs, but this guy has got brains.

An even more complex labyrinth of tunnels and chambers just because he's a medical student.

If she's thinking it, then he's most definitely thinking it too.

She's almost certainly he's already picked up the tiny details here and there - honing in on them so that what might be considered a snippet of information to some, becomes the nail to their coffin for them.

"Get some sleep." he tells her once they're back in the livingroom and she's comforting a teary baby. "I'll watch him."

Suddenly, she's overcome with a desperate need to stay awake. To spend every last minute with her son. "It's okay."

"Addie, we can't both be asleep at the same time. If you're tired, you'll slip up."

She rages silently at that. At the suggestion that she'll be the one to bring about the inevitable awful end to all of this. And yet, she knows he's right, and she can't risk Milo being hurt, so she hands him to his dad before dropping a kiss to his crown.

Her bed, unsurprisingly, isn't the comforting haven she needs. It's cold without Damon there to warm her up, and the room's too bright, even in the pathetic excuse for daylight.

Every time her eyes closes, it's a different image, but each equally as haunting as the last; Damon whacking Derek with the barrel of his gun; him tumbling down the stairs into the basement; the bruises on his arms and face; Milo's innocent stare as she bought the supplies at the hardware store; the raw redness of Derek's blue eyes; her own shaking finger poised over the trigger.

If anything, her bed and the fitful almost-sleep it's bringing, is hell.

Hey guys! Thanks so much for reading! What do you think of this world for Addison and Derek? I'd love to know your thoughts!

REVIEW!