I couldn't resist starting this sequel right away, so here's the first chapter!
Not much in the way of a plot in this one, just a little bit of fluff and some McShepherds.
It picks up almost three years after the end of What We Could Have Been, so you might want to read that first or you'll be a bit lost.
ADDISON'S POV
"Mommy!"
"Mama."
"Mo-om!"
"Mama."
"Shut up!" Mark bellows.
"Mark." she hisses. "Stop moving."
"Your kid is climbing my leg!"
"She's your goddaughter."
"Beth." he says firmly. "Down."
"Me too, Daddy," Sofia squeals. "Climb!"
She anchors herself to Mark's other leg, both girls giggling.
"I spent ages on their hair," she moans. "Look at them."
Their carefully arranged curls are merrily askew, flowers forgotten in a corner, a suspicious wet spot on Sofia's also look adorable, and Mark agrees, but they might be biased.
"Isn't Karev on kid duty?" Amelia asks, stabbing pins into her hair.
"Yeah," she mutters, yanking at Mark's tie. "But he got paged. Arizona too."
"Has anyone seen - oh, there they are." Derek sighs in relief, seizing both toddlers and pulling them away. "Addie, why aren't you dressed yet?"
"Ask your daughter."
"Mommy, look at my flowers!" she sings, bouncing on the sofa now. The petals are spilling from her basket; Sofia seizes a handful and tries an experimental toss. Michael hops excitedly into the cascading petals, his laughter spurring Annabeth on.
"No, sweetie, those are for after." Derek explains, scooping them back in. "You have to walk down the aisle, and-"
"Like zis-" Sofia says, chucking another fistful at Derek.
"Damn the French nanny." Mark mutters. "Kid speaks Spanish with a French accent, because toddler-speak wasn't hard enough."
"Au pair." Callie corrects. "Why does your tie look like that? Wait, lemme try."
Addison steps back with her hands held up, and Callie goes after the wayward tie with a vengeance.
"Derek, help." Mark begs.
"I can't tie a tie."
"I tie his ties." she explains.
"Tie." Michael says happily, pointing at his own little tie.
"Lexie's ready whenever you are." Meredith says from the doorway, surveying the chaos in the suite, toys and sippy cups mingling with discarded clothes and shoes on the floor, most of the elaborate flower arrangements lifted out of the children's reach, the three flushed children on the couch, Mark with his crooked tie, and she herself nowhere near ready.
MEREDITH'S POV
She's had a lot of stupid ideas, made a lot of stupid decisions, but this is probably one of the worst.
They look at her with three pairs of solemn eyes, two brilliant blue, one chocolate.
She figures she has the element of surprise for about two more seconds before they launch back into terrible-twos mode, so she unearths a pad of heavy cream paper with the hotel's logo on it, digs a couple of pens from her purse, and passes them out.
"Why'd you bring the progeny in here?" Cristina gripes, refilling her glass.
"Juice?" Sofia asks.
"Not for you," Cristina says hastily.
"Mark's ... freaking out." she says, lowering her voice on the last two words. "And Addison's a mess, so I offered to watch them for a while until Arizona gets here."
"Mark's what?" Lexie squawks.
"Getting..dressed!" she says perkily, glaring at Cristina when she snorts.
"I look like a cake." she whispers, rotating slowly in front of the mirror. "Mer, help me!"
"You look very nice." she says loyally. Just...puffy.
"I should never have listened to Mom," she whimpers, her voice rising into panic range. Annabeth looks up with interest.
"You don't look like a cake." Cristina says firmly. Lexie looks at her gratefully.
"More like a ...meringue."
"Cris- tina." she snaps. "Shut up."
"What? I'm being honest."
"What am I going to do?" Lexie howls.
"Pretty." Annabeth says, poking a finger into Lexie's sleeve.
"Great," Lexie mutters. "I'm asking a two year old for advice."
"Almost three," she corrects. "A very well dressed three, you might want to listen to her."
Annabeth flounces back over, smoothing her pink chiffon skirt. Her crimson hair is carefully pulled back with a multitude of pins, tiny white roses tucked among the curls. "Pretty." she coos, patting her knee.
"Pretty." Sofia says to Cristina.
"Do they say it to everyone?" she wonders aloud.
"Uncle Alex!" Michael cheers. "Hi! Hi hi hi-"
"Hey, kid." he smiles, coming over after the girls have enthusiastically greeted him. "Who got them hopped up on candy?"
"How could you tell?" Cristina asks, looking shifty.
"I'm a pediatric surgeon?"
"Not yet." Arizona smirks. "Come on, gang, let's go."
DEREK'S POV
It's refreshingly quiet after the kids leave, Addison following not long after to get dressed, Amy vanishing sometime in between.
So he digs out the video camera and points it at Mark. Revenge is sweet.
"Man," Mark says, looking uncomfortable.
"Men like us were meant to have -" he mocks.
"I take it back, okay." Mark says into the camera. "I have the woman I need, so that's it."
"Now is when I talk you out of it, right?" he teases.
"Nah." Mark grins. "I think we're past that now."
"You tried to talk me out of marrying Addison." he reminds him.
"I was young and stupid." he replies. "Clearly you two are perfect for each other."
"We better be," he snorts. "We've been married almost fifteen years-"
"God, we're old."
"So, when I tell you to not give up," he presses on. "Listen to me, because I know what I'm talking about- when it's hard and you can't look at her the same way and it feels like it might be over...that's when you have to really put your back into it, know what I mean?"
"Or another part of the anatomy," Mark says, eyebrows dancing.
"That's all you can say? I was giving you important life advice and that all you can say?"
"What are you talking about?" Addison asks curiously, and he's distracted for a moment.
"Nothing."
"Well, if you're done, let's go get you married." she says, her heels clicking purposefully on the floor ahead of them.
She stops before the closed double doors that lead out into the ballroom, turns to them with her eyes bright, a smile spreading across her face.
"What, Addison?" Mark says exasperatedly, tugging at his collar.
She flings her arms around Mark's neck, yanking him along with one arm.
"Who thought we'd end up here?" she laughs in his ear.
MARK'S POV
They stand there for a while, arms tangles around each other, Addison's hair in his face, Derek's foot on his, but it feels right.
They're family. They're all he needs to get through today, them and Sofia and Callie.
And Lexie.
I swear it's worth it Derek told him; now, watching her walk down that aisle on Thatcher's arm, he understands.
And then she's laughing and crying at the same time, rings sliding onto fingers, her lips soft and sweet against his, and it's dine, it's over. She his, he's hers. He has a family, people to call his own. It's a sensation so novel he finds his eyes blurring suspiciously, even when Derek takes the stage, accompanied by Addison, to deliver a toe-curlingly embarrassing speech.
"I figured I owed you that," Derek grins when he steps off the stage.
"Me too." Addison smirks. "I haven't forgotten that one lyric, you know."
"It is pretty fine-" Derek begins.
"Kids!" Addison says, cheeks pink. "Come here."
They've been hanging out with Karev and Stevens and their kid, who looks like a mini- Stevens, miraculously quiet; when Addison beckons to them, they come running in a stampede of time feet, Sofia launching herself into his arms.
He holds her against his chest, the puffy skirt making it hard to hold on. "I throwed the floflowers, Daddy!" Do you see?"
"I did," he kisses her cheek. "You were perfect. You too, Beth."
She grins sleepily at him from Derek's shoulder, a thumb straying to her mouth.
"Someone needs bed." he says succinctly. Sofia is starting to get fidgety, a sure sign of an impending meltdown.
"We should probably get home," Derek says.
"We've barely started!" Lexie objects, breathless from dancing.
"When you got married," he snickers. "I thought we'd get thrown out of the hotel for sure."
"We were young." Addison counters. "And massively stupid."
"And childless." Callie says, reaching for a floppy Sofia. "I don't think coming on your honeymoon is really in her best interest, so hand her over."
DEREK'S POV
It's a relief to be back home, although his head is still pounding from the music, probably too much champagne. Addison's standing in front of the mirror, wincing as she brushes out her hair, pins clinking onto the dressing table.
"I don't know about you," she says, gingerly rotating an ankle. "But my feet are definitely old. Their dancing in heels days are over."
"You don't look old." he assures her, trailing his fingers through her hair; she moans and tilts her head back into his hands, enjoying the feeling. She jumps a little when he presses his lips to her neck, eyes darting to the door.
"The twins-"
"Dead to the world." he assures her. They were asleep in the car, drowsy as they undressed them, and out like lights the minute they tucked them into their beds.
"Mama?" a tremulous voice calls.
"Eat your words." Addison mutters, yanking the strap of her dress back up her shoulder, which he'd been kissing.
"What is it, baby?" he hears her call as she walks down the hallway. He follows her; one waking up invariably means the other will be up in a few minutes.
It's Michael who called out, sitting up in his little bed with the dinosaur-print sheets, his hair sticking up comically. He's clutching the low rail he insists he doesn't need, reaching for his mother the moment he sees her.
Across the room, Annabeth is sleeping soundly, buried in an avalanche of stuffed animals, one hand curled firmly around her favorite, a seal named Stumpy for his amputated flipper.
"I spill." Michael says guiltily, pointing to the puddle on the floor. He retrieves the cup from under the bed, frowning at the top, which has somehow popped off.
"It's okay," Addison soothes. "Let's get you some water."
She picks up Beth's cup from the table that's within reach of her bed, handing it to Michael while he mops up the spill.
"Me too."
They look over to see Annabeth looking alert, reaching for her cup.
"When he's done." Addison says firmly.
She waits her turn, which is a pleasant surprise, setting the cup back on the table when she's done.
"Night, Mommy. Night Daddy. Night, Mikey."
"No," Michael says tearfully, clinging. He dislikes sleeping alone, most mornings they find both of them curled like puppies in Annabeth's bed even though she kicks like a demon in her sleep. More than once, they've found the imprint of her sturdy little feet on her brother's legs.
When it's raining the way it is tonight, he and Addison take it for granted that he'll be in their bed.
"You can share, Mikey." she says magnanimously, patting her dotted sheets.
"Don't touch Stumpy." they hear her whisper as they draw the door half-closed behind them.
"She's either going to be Chief of Surgery or a terrorist." he chuckles as they finally shut their own bedroom door, Addison flicking on the baby monitor that still stands beside the bed. "There's no in between."
"Michael will probably be a shrink." she muses, sliding into bed with a sigh. "He talked Sofia out of playing hide and seek under the tables at the reception today."
"You know, they might not be doctors." he says, lying down beside her. "God that feels good."
"I know." she murmurs sleepily, turning into him as he pulls up the covers; they both turn off the lights at the same time. "But they probably will be - they don't know anyone who isn't."
"Addie?"
"No."
"I, uh." he clears his throat. She lifts her arm off her eyes to glare at him. "Need to tell you something."
"At the wedding..." he starts. "He was there, but -"
"Please tell me you didn't." She groans, rolling away from him; his left side feels suddenly cold. "Mark said not to."
"Mark says a lot of things," he says, the covers slipping down as he gestures. "Doesn't mean-"
"This is something you need to let him decide, honey." she says, kissing him with an air of finality. "Good night."
Please review and let me know what you thought of it!
And feel free to leave your suggestions for anything you want to see in this sequel - I'm open to anything.
Title: All We Are, Matt Nathanson. Go listen to it. I thought it was perfect for what I have in mind next.