Here it is, the promised Christmas story. Bit short, but I promise longer chapters once I get going.

I'll continue if you guys want me to...so let me know!

It's their season. Of silvery snow and biting wind, cheery warmth and festivity.

It's the season they celebrate each year, no matter how busy they are. They always have time for Christmas. Used to have.

He still doesn't know exactly how he feels about what just happened. He keeps seeing Addison's face, her eyes sparking with hope when he sat down next to her, her hand curled around her glass, rings glinting in the light, a reminder. She looked so familiar; it could have been any year of their marriage, her hair straight and loose about her face, eyes alight.

And then he said it. Even now, he can't say exactly why he did it - some urge, perhaps, to be honest, to cone clean, to let her know they weren't living a fairytale anymore.

"Meredith - she wasn't a fling. I fell in love with her."

He did. He loved Meredith - or he thought he did - as much as anyone can love a girl they met in a bar a few weeks after their wife cheated on them. But he loved her. She was a breath of fresh air, she didn't know the baggage trailing him, she didn't judge him for the way he'd left his old life; for a moment, he was just a guy in a bar, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

"I'm not saying this to hurt you, or because I want to leave you, but-"

But...what? He did hurt her, he could see that, the way that spark in her eyes dimmed, her mouth turning down infinitesimally at the corners, her shoulders folding inward, the change so subtle only someone who knows her as well as he does would spot it.

The trailer is cold - something she has pointed out, repeatedly, and loudly - and empty. She took a call from a resident as he was opening the door to Joe's, silence hanging frostier than the winter air between them, his hand millimeters from the small of her back, said she would be home late. She told not to wait up.

That was probably habit, too. She still does, sometimes, curling on the little couch, reading journals or the newspaper, if she's remembered to pick one up. There's a stack of catalogs in her place now, shiny covers advertising cookie-cutter Christmases. Smiling families, rosy children, the future he'd imagined for himself.

He sees with a pang that she's left her glasses on top of the pile, along with a oen he recognises as the one he hasn't been able to find all week. She must have planned for an evening of choosing presents, sharing hot chocolate and bickering like they always used to. It's tradition, starting when they were first-year med students in over their heads, and she showed him the magic of catalogs.

That was the year he took her home for Christmas for the first time, he remembers. She's been there every year since.

Except this year. This year, there will be three empty places at his mother's table.

I understand she sighed, when she called last week. But, Derek...are you sure it's the right thing? Trying again?

She's never liked Addison. Not really, although she's accepting enough. He's spent nearly fifteen years maintaining Addison's innocent belief that Carolyn Shepherd likes her, while simultaneously trying to convince his mother that Addison makes him happy.

Because she did. She was the love of his life, right up until the point where she decided to implode their lives. The moment he met her, his eyes watering even behind safety goggles, clad in old clothes and a decidedly unflattering apron that she wore like a cape, he knew. She was it.

It's the right decision.

The cab driver looks at her askance the way they always do when she asks them to let her off at the trailer, shivering slightly, her coat in her hands because it was warm in the cab. Her shoes slide a little on the frosty ground, slippery, and she wishes for a little snow. Something to make it feel a little like Christmas.

Because the way her husband is looking at her lately makes her feel decidedly unfestive. She hesitates a moment before she opens the door, remembering how weary he looked under the dim lights at the bar, confessing that their relationship - what was left of it - was the manifestation of his desire to be a good person, nothing more.

When she met him, he was nothing she'd seen before. She was enchanted by his innocence, the genuine warmth of his personality, the way he cared, deeply, avout things that did not affect him in the slightest but that meant something to her. She was used to boys looking at her like a plaything, pretty and useful.

She knew that he would never hurt her. He just didn't have it in him. And she'd been hurt enough.

Even now, he can't bring himself to leave her. He's staying, miserable, in love with another woman, but he's here. That's what matters.

"Derek, I'm-"

"Hello." he says cheerfully.

What?

She stands by the open door, dumbfounded. A million possibilities race through her mind - is he leaving?

Kicking her out?

He tosses another pair of her panties into a large suitcase - resting on the bed, but she manages to refrain from pointing that out - and turns to rummage in a plastic tub.

"Do you think you'll need these?" he asks, holding up a pair of black pumps she hasn't worn in at least a year. "Or do you have any, you know, practical footwear?"

"Wh - why?" she asks faintly, plopping onto the bed.

"We're going home for Christmas." he says. "It's our season, remember?"

So! Sad struggling Addek are off to have a Shepherd family Christmas circus.This is an idea that hit me whilst on hour four in the library, so it might be...weird.

But I'd love to explore the Shepherd's reactions to their situation, maybe some Montgomeries in the mix. I swear it'll be mostly fluffy and funny. I'll suppress the angst. I SWEAR.

What do you think? Should I keep going?