A/N: Okay, so I seem to have some trouble writing Derek in character. He's never, um . . . edgy? . . . enough for my liking, and I guess a bit too soft. I guess I just see him differently when he's older. Sorry, but like I've said before, this is fanfiction, I'm a fan, so this is how I'm writing it. I don't know where this story is going. It took me long enough to finish this ridiculously short chapter. I also don't think this will be a very long story. Maybe two chapters, maybe five, I really have no idea.
Everyone is a few years older than what they are in the show, around early college years for Derek. Also, this story is kind of inspired by a couple of songs, but I won't list them because I seem to cause people to play songs over and over until their brains explode.
Enjoy and review
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Closing the door behind him, he placed the guitar case on the floor next to the table in the hallway. Turning the lock and tossing the borrowed keys on the table, he staggered his way into the living room, dropping onto the couch to remove his shoes. He could really use a cup of coffee at the moment, but being that it was four in the morning, Derek decided against it.
Making his way into the kitchen, Derek poured himself a glass of water and stared out at the lights on the street through the huge windows. Tomorrow will be seven days. One week in this city and he still couldn't believe that it actually doesn't sleep. He was warned, told that shops wouldn't close and blazing lights would shine through the windows all the time, but he wouldn't believe it. That first night, while he stayed up contemplating his decisions, the fact that what he was told was the truth boggled his mind.
Buying the eye mask the next day to block out the light made him feel like a girl.
From a young age, noise at night never bothered him. Both his father and brother snored, and the walls in his house weren't thick enough to block out the sounds. Snoring might actually be a Venturi trait that was passed along the Y chromosome, because he had been told before that he snored, although extremely lightly and you had to be next to him to hear it. Marti, however, didn't snore at all, but she was what made him recognize his hatred of light as he slept.
Derek hadn't realized it as a child, but there was never any light in his room at night. His room was at the precise angle where the street lights didn't fall into his window and he was always too much of a 'big kid' to need a nightlight. Edwin, however, favored a nightlight growing up, but his room was down the hall from Derek's, making it impossible for him to see the faint glow coming from his younger brother's room.
Unlike Derek, Marti needed the light. And instead of the small nightlight near her bed like Edwin, she needed the hallway light on and her door cracked a bit. She told her parents that it was so that the monsters under her bed would be too afraid to come out, knowing that anyone could pass in the hallway and see them, but Derek knew the truth. He really couldn't blame her though, she was too little at the time to reach the light switch, and trying to walk down the dark hallway to his room was too scary for any four year old to endure. Besides, if he wasn't thirteen at the time, he'd probably need someone to comfort him when Abby and George were fighting, so he didn't blame Marti at all for needing the light.
It always bothered him that his parents never realized how she became so dependant on the light; or on him for that matter. He chalked it up to them being too self-absorbed in their fighting to realize that she didn't need the light until the fighting actually began.
After a couple of days of not getting sleep, tossing and turning from the small slit of light coming from under the door, Derek thought he was going to die of exhaustion. He tried everything, from moving his bed to sleeping under the covers, adding a quilt he took from the hallway closet, but the light still bothered him. The towel against the bottom of the door helped, and he got a few hours of sleep that one night, until he woke up to crying, finding Marti slumped against his door because she couldn't push it open.
Convincing his father to buy him a new door was a bit of trouble, but Derek made up some story involving the possibility of termites and wood nymphs. George finally conceded, realizing that if Derek was that adamant about something there must be a good reason. But seeing his son take out a measuring tape, checking the height of all the possible bedroom doors, was something that George never thought in a million years he would see. Then, watching Derek have the employee attach the door to the makeshift frame so he can test the ease of opening made George not even put up a fight about the fact that the door was red.
And so, years later, as he rinsed the dirty cup and put it in the draining board, he was shocked that he'd been able to sleep in the apartment that overlooked the city of bright lights with windows lacking curtains. But, he did what he had to do, even if it involved embarrassing himself with going to store to purchase the eye mask, which he was grateful they had in black.
Walking past the windows where a huge, obnoxiously bright billboard for some musical he wouldn't be able to afford at the moment lit up the whole apartment, he collapsed onto the couch and reached for the eye mask on the coffee table. And, as he dimmed the lights in his world for the time being, Derek wished that the next day would shine a little brighter for him, despite the many mistakes his heart told him he was making.
A/N2: And let's all just pretend that the scene in Lies my Brother Told Me with Derek sleeping as Edwin worked at his desk with the light on doesn't exist, or he didn't get a good night's sleep.