licenseartistic Love
Title / Prompt: Love (July #02)
Character: Dr. Derek Shepherd
Pairings: implied Derek/OC but mostly Derek/Addison and Derek/Meredith
Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy
Word count: 953
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Grey’s et al created by Shonda Rhimes. Derek's high school image, friends, love, etc. are mine.
Notes: I think I might've made this a little more Derek/Addison than it really should have been, but that's just the shipper in me talking.
Derek experienced love for the first time at the age of seventeen. The girl had been his best friend of the time, and he’d just gotten over a serious crush on the prom queen. She had been so supportive and caring when he was shot down so ungracefully by Miss Perfect that he found it hard not to love her. But then they went to colleges on separate sides of the country and after an attempt to make the long-distance relationship work, they came to the mature decision that it just wasn’t in the cards.
Over the years, he dated a few women and steadily broke away from his high school image as the awkward, brainy kid who spoke with a slight lisp. He had fun, for once being around people on the same comprehension level he was, and also out of the house where he was surrounded by girls-he had four sisters and no brothers. However, none of the girls hoping to get in good with a future brain surgeon held a candle to the woman he met his first day as an intern.
Addison was beautiful. The first time he saw her he did a double-take. He’d thought the prom queen was something, but she was nothing to this fiery red-head. She was tough and very on top of her game. He was just Derek, what shot in Hell did he have? Probably the same as with the prom queen, he wagered. He asked her out anyway, and was almost surprised she agreed with a touched smile. From then on they were inseparable.
Their romance was something the other interns-and even the residents and attendings, he suspected-envied. Everyone said they were perfect together, that it must have been fate. And Derek felt the same way. Never before had he felt so needed, loved, or respected. Addison was his equal, but she was also so much more. She loved him for who he was, not who he would or could be, or for his looks, or because they were friends and it was convenient.
The only sensible thing to do was marry her. No one was surprised, and the ceremony was beautiful-almost as beautiful as the rest of their marriage. They got along magnificently and everything was so perfect. They found work at the same hospital in New York and became the first-rate surgeons everyone knew they would be. They bought a snazzy apartment and wore expensive clothes. It was like living a dream.
Then, slowly but surely, that dream started to fade. Addison fell into the background and the hospital became priority number one. Though he didn’t realize it, he didn’t need her anymore. His love for her had been built on the need to be loved and valued above all else for who he was. When he began getting that kind of attention from everyone because of his work, he threw himself into it, subconsciously determined to heighten the level of this respect. It was never that he grew tired of Addison; it was that he grew out of her.
One not-so-special day he came home from work. And he knew. As soon as he opened the door, he just knew. He wasn’t sure what or how, but something was happening-something big. He called out for his wife, knowing she was home. There wasn’t an answer. He made a beeline for the bedroom and stepped on a familiar jacket along the way. And then he really knew. It was Mark’s-his best friend and colleague. He pushed open the bedroom door, and there they were. That’s when he split for Seattle, leaving no forwarding address or any way for anyone to know where he had gone.
It was there that he met Meredith. She was sitting at the bar across the street from Seattle Grace Hospital, several emptied drinks in front of her. He noticed her as soon as he walked in but didn’t sit with her at first. Instead he took a table in a corner of the bar, watching her and already beginning to fall. When he entered the establishment-Joe’s Emerald City Bar-he had only been expecting to find a one-night stand, someone to help him get over the hurt of being betrayed. He had never expected to find Meredith. After a few scotches of his own he asked her if the stool beside her was taken. She smiled and totally checked him out and told him no, it wasn’t.
He didn’t know after she kicked him out the next morning that he would see her very soon, because he was to be her boss. He was already hooked, and thoughts of being loved or fate or anything at all were absent from his mind. All he knew was that she was different from Addison and she didn’t need him at all. In fact, she didn’t even act like she wanted him. But he knew she did, and that drove him further. He felt no desire to make any plans with her, to consider love a possibility. He had fallen so hard he didn’t know he had hit yet.
That is, until Addison finally caught up to him. While he had been ready to leave her behind before, he realized that people made mistakes, and he had been so caught up in himself and making an incredible career that he had neglected not only his wife’s feelings, but his own. Maybe he loved her still, and there was a chance he could make it work. It was the right thing to do, love or no. His feelings were mixed and the decision was painful, but he chose Addison. He loved Meredith, but he chose Addison.