Hey! Merry Christmas to everyone on my side of the planet and Christmas Eve to those on the other side...I originally planned to have this all wrapped up by Christmas but real life hapoened, and I ...couldn't.
Anyway, thanks for reading and reviewing so far!
He's unused to the silence that fills the car, nithing but snow crunching, the sound of air rushing past. He's driving too fast and he knows it but he has to do something.
She talks a lot. The mask she wears at work, cool and professional, her few words tactful and well-thought-out, is not the real Addison. The real Addison...rambles. She plays songs on long drives and sings. She argues with the newscaster and the weather reporters, she calls annoying drivers very choice names, she reels off trivia about the places that they pass.
Except that now, she's stiff and silent beside him in the rental that reeks faintly of cigarettes, hands white-knuckled in her lap.
"It's already freezing." he says finally. "If you're going to cold-shoulder me..."
"Derek." she says urgently. As if she's wanted to say it for a long time and has been restraining herself. "Does anyone actually know we're...here?"
If by here, she means pulling into his mother's driveway, then...no.
Not unless Nancy counts. Well, actually, knowing Nancy she'll have spread the news already.
"Nance." he says grudgingly. "Maybe Lizzie."
"Which means your dead dog probably knows." she moans, burying her face in her hands. "Derek...you should have let me get that blanket."
"It's not that cold." he says, confused. Addison's born and raised in Connecticut, in that estate that is cold in more ways than one. The cold doesn't really bother her. She's even been known to underdress in the name of fashion...not that he used to mind.
"The blanket, Derek." she says, irritated. "The sorry for hurting your son except in wool blanket. My making-things-up blanket."
Oh. The blanket. He vaguely remembers being spoken to about it on the plane. Maybe before that.
"It's .. all right." he says slowly. Judging by the way Nancy greeted her in Seattle, the hug, the closeness, the sisterly shorthand - they've forgiven her. Maybe he has, too.
"Nancy and the girls are all right." she moans. "Your mother hates me."
"No she doesn't." he says, his tongue moving reflexively.
"I almost killed Nancy with salmonella," she laughs, her voice choked. "And I ruined your life. And the thing with Amy-"
"Was not your fault." he says firmly, leaning across her to open her door. "And Nancy probably had salmonella from the hospital food, because none of the rest of us had it. And you didn't ruin my life, you just.. "
"Messed it up a bit?" she hiccups.
"When you put it like that.. " he smiles. "Come on, Addie. Chin up."
..
It's a winter wonderland. As in, it's frozen solid.
Or at least, his mother is.
The girls greet them effusively - Lizzie's nearly forty-nine, and still they're the girls- with squeals and hugs and cheek kisses and you look amazing to Addie and you look old to him.
The nieces and the nephews swarm around their legs, the bigger ones hanging back a little - no doubt they've eavesdropped on enough of their mothers conversations to have some gist, at least, of why their favourite aunt and uncle suddenly left, but the littlest ones - god, they're so big - are wildly excited.
"Aunt Addie!" Hannah, Nancy's youngest, delivered by Addison at four am in the kitchen after Nancy decided she'd round off her brood of four with a home birth, slams into her knees, arms wrapped tight. "Uncle Derek, hi! Did you bring me presents?"
"Han," Nancy chokes back a laugh. "Honey, let them take their coats off."
"Of course we did," Addison says brightly, kneeling to hug the child, planting a kiss on her flyaway hair. "I need a kiss before I can find them, though."
Hannah kisses her on both cheeks, snuggling close when Addison picks her up. Her brothers, emboldened, come up for hugs and even a shy we missed you, and then they're all there, even Lizzie's Christopher, twenty-one already, in his first year at med school and tall enough to look down at both of them.
And then there's his mother, her dark eyes surveying them, making him feel immediately guilty. Like he's just stayed out too late, forgotten to take out the trash, left the fridge open. He could be sixty and he'd still feel the same way.
"Derek, hello." she says finally. "What a surprise."
..
"She hates me." Addison whispers decisively, sinking into his childhood bed. "It's final now."
"Addie-"
"Derek, she asked me to leave the kitchen because she wanted everyone to be alive on Christmas." she hisses furiously. "She's ignoring me until she comes up with something to say to me. She told Hannah to go make a snowman because children shouldn't be around bad influences. She-"
"Addison," he says, less sympathetically. "You know what she's like. Give her a while to get over it."
"I...I should just go." she says softly, toeing at her unopened luggage in a very uncharacteristically Addison way. "It's like you said, Derek... Christmas makes you want to be with people you love, and I don't want to spoil it for your whole family-"
"Our family." he says firmly. "I asked you to come, Addie, I want to spend the holidays with you. Like we always do. The girls have missed you, the kids can't get enough of you - Mom will come around."
"I'm sorry," she says, leaning briefly into him. She smells of peppermint, and he inhales, red strands tickling his nose.
"Get a room." Nancy groans, barging in.
"You're in it." Addison points out, blinking.
If Nancy notices her red-rimmed eyes, she doesn't mention it, just swoops around the room, collecting stray items of children's clothing and toys. "Josh was a little pissed because he has to share with the little ones, but then he realised Uncle Derek and Aunt Addie means-"
"Ice skating." Addison murmurs.
"Yup." Nancy says cheerily. "The gang is all dressed up and ready to go, and I found your skates in the closet, so you might want to get moving."
"I haven't skated in years," he says thoughtfully.
"Because you havent shown up to Christmas in years." Nancy says bluntly. "Hey, by the way, Amy just called. She says since her favorite brother and sister-in-law are here, she might just show her face."
"On the fourth day of Christmas," he sings, moatly to humor Addison. "My true love gave to me four noisy sisters-in-law, three tired children on a plane, two nosy septuagenarians, and one delayed flight."
"Oh, so you're the love of my life now?" she teases. "Come on, let's go see if you remember how to skate."
..
"All right," Addison pants, straightening up after she's done fastening Hannah's boots for the third time because they 'made her toes feel funny'. "Everyone ready?"
"I have to pee." Hannah says urgently. He looks at her puffy pink snowsuit, undeniably adorable. And firmly fastened with more zips and tabs than a hazmat suit. Really, Nancy and Todd needs to stop spoiling the kid. Not that he's one to talk...a lot of packages in their suitcases upstairs have little Hannah's name on them.
"All right." Addison says. "Let me just-"
"Can we go already?" Josh asks, wide-eyed. "Uncle Derek, we're dying to skate. Dad won't take us and Mom sucks on the ice."
Todd, he recalls, is a find from Nancy's post-med-school graduation trip to Florida and about as adept on the ice as Bambi. And Nancy has a hard time keeping herself upright, let alone a flailing four year old and several rebellious preteens.
And Lizzie and Kath are on kitchen duty, leaving their respective husbands, who are currently hiding in the attic attempting to finish wrapping a slew of presents for the ones still little enough to be expecting Santa tomorrow night.
Addison disappears into the bathroom, Hannah propped on her hip, to a chorus of groans from the assorted cousins.
"Could you get that, Chris?" he asks when the doorbell rings, too busy trying to unknot the laces of the skates Nancy unearthed for him and Addison; they're snarled together, all four skates in a knot.
"Uncle Mark?"
Heh heh.Merry Christmas!
Hope I'll be able to update soon...even if Christmas is almost over this story is still fun to write.
Please leave me plenty of reviews...they're as good as presents!