grey's anatomy fanfiction, mark/addison - maybe this christmas
Maybe This Christmas
Author’s Notes: Pointless and slightly introspective holiday fic, because I'm jumping on the bandwagon. This is a small offering from the non-cooperative muse.
You are not really the festive type. For as long as you can remember, the benefits of Christmas (like getting presents and parties with free alcohol) have been made negligible by the costs (like buying presents and waking up hungover).
As a child, Christmas was the only day of the year your biological parents would be caught dead in the same suburb. This was usually only for the brief amount of time it took your father to collect you from your mother’s house after Christmas lunch. Then it was off to your father’s to open a second set of presents and endure your stepmother for several long hours. To add injury to insult, you were always expected to ‘play’ with your stepbrother, who was six months older than you and always wanted to hit you over the head with toys rather than use them as they were intended. You never consciously tried to become bitter about the holiday season, but those are your most prominent childhood memories and you can’t honestly say the holidays have improved since you were five-years-old.
The one Christmas you spent with Derek’s family when you were both fourteen let you see what all the fuss was about: it surprised you that his family was actually functional in some way, and that his parents could sit in the same room without screaming at each other. The house was decorated to a ridiculous extent and the tree didn’t have that clinical department store look about it. Nancy told you it was a family tradition for the women in the family to decorate the tree on December first before she cornered you under the mistletoe. (To this day, you have never, ever told Derek about that.) His mother actually cooked Christmas dinner. At five o’clock sharp the cousins arrived and presents were exchanged until the living room carpet was covered in gift-wrap. As you both lay under the tree and looked up at the lights on a bed of tape, bows and discarded paper you commented on how lucky he was to have a family that didn’t use the good china as projectiles when gathered in the same house. A year later his father was dead. You always found it horribly unfair: Derek loved his father and you hated yours; yet his was the one who died. You never told him that was the reason you couldn’t bring yourself to accept the invitation again, despite Nancy’s powers of persuasion.
When you were twenty-one you spent your last Christmas with your evil stepmother and the father you loathe. You don’t like to admit it, but the reason you hate him is that he reminds you of yourself. You visited your mother the next year, but your stepfather was as insufferable as ever and you quickly tired of your mother’s concerns that you had no intention of settling down. In the end she told you that you were just like your father. Despite the fact that she was (and is) right, you never spent the holidays at home again. Under no circumstances will you agree to make the trip despite the protests of both parents. Every year, you privately hope your father will have a cardiac arrest or your mother will forget to take her insulin in early December so you will be able to spend the holidays alone, in the spirit of ‘peace on earth’. Every year you endure the obligatory phone call emotionlessly. It scares you that you no longer care that they don’t love you. You are the child of a bitter divorce and the only time your parents spared you a second of thought was when they were fighting over custody. You are glad. If they cared they might actually pressure you to join them for Christmas instead of accepting your refusal without argument.
The second year they were married, you agreed to join Addison and Derek for the day which only served to remind you what you were missing out on. Since then, you’ve mostly spent the holidays alone or with girlfriends you didn’t really care about. Since then, you have tried to keep your status as a regular Scrooge a secret to prevent visits from the ghost of Christmas past but you have never been a festive person.
Addison knows that.
She doesn’t understand it but she has grudgingly learnt to accept it.
So you are surprised when this year, come the first of December, she isn’t insisting on drinking Starbucks (God forbid) simply for the gingerbread lattes or trying to drag you into any of her other ridiculous holiday traditions. Well, that in itself does not surprise you since she is still tentative around you despite her best efforts to hide it. The biggest surprise is that she shows no signs of Christmas cheer herself, which is so uncharacteristic you are beginning to feel a little worried. When you catch her sitting in the staff lounge absently fingering the branches of a small plastic tree placed on the middle of the table, you decide to mentally cross out the ‘a little’.
Some misguided soul has haphazardly attempted to decorate. There is tinsel hanging from all four corners of the room and Christmas lights hanging from above the blinds making them impossible to close properly.
She sits in the middle of this and pokes at a tiny bauble dejectedly, unaware of your presence in the doorway.
“Hey,” you offer by way of greeting, pouring yourself a cup of crappy hospital coffee and sitting beside her, “That looks thrilling, may I join you?”
She looks up at you over the branch of the tree between your faces and raises an eyebrow, “Very cute.”
“Come on Addison,” you smirk, “I really love playing with Christmas decorations and looking miserable. It’s my favourite holiday tradition.”
“What would you know about holiday traditions?” she sulks, clearly feeling sorry for herself.
“The ones that celebrate that festive feeling of drowning in your own misery?” you shrug, “A lot more than any one person should.”
“Aw,” she rolls her eyes at you, “Poor you.”
“When did you become the grinch?” you inquire with a pleased smile, “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good dose of holiday hostility.”
“I’m sorry,” she mutters quietly, “I guess I’m just not in a festive mood this year.”
“Hey,” you shrug, “I’m not in a festive mood any year. It would be hypocritical of me to hold that against you.”
“Tell that to Isobel Stevens,” she pouts, “If I have to eat another Christmas cookie I might scream. I mean, they’re fabulous. They taste,” she sighs and closes her eyes at the memory, “So good and they are perfectly decorated. It’s amazing, she must have hand-crafted the marzipan or something and then spent hours painting them. They are fabulous and I hate them,” she folds her arms in frustration, “Dumb cookies. It just serves to remind me of all my traditions that I won’t be upholding this year.”
“You’re not making cookies?” you are a little disappointed by this. Addison’s Christmas cookies are probably the only thing you don’t hate about the holiday season.
“In my hotel room?” she raises an eyebrow at you, “And I feel ridiculous decorating, just like last year. I mean, the trailer was too small for a tree and I don’t even know what happened to all my decorations post-divorce. Derek probably threw them out.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” you point out, “Since the Addison I know would have him dumped in,” you catch yourself before you complete the sentence traditionally: ‘in the Hudson’. Instead you continue, “Puget Sound at the very thought.”
She smiles a little at this, but whether it is your unconscious slip or the thought of dumping Derek’s body in a large expanse of water you don’t know.
“You have always hated Christmas,” she responds with a sigh, “I guess I know why now. It sucks, being alone at this time of year.”
You reach out and squeeze her shoulder, “If we both sit here feeling alone together, I guess the irony of it is you’re not alone.”
She smiles and raises her hand to meet your own as you push her hair out of her face. She slides her fingers through yours and you brush the side of her face with the back of your palm.
“Thanks,” she whispers.
“Did you think I’d let you have your own private pity party?” you ask, “Misery loves company, especially at Christmas.”
“Did you always hate the holidays so much?” she responds wryly, but squeezes at your hand even as she stands to answer a page.
You follow her to the doorway before shrugging, “Yeah, pretty much. But I’d say this year, things are looking up.”
The upward path of your eyes causes her to automatically mirror your gesture.
She rolls hers something grand at the tacky plastic mistletoe Santa’s Little Helper has hung in the doorway.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she mumbles.
“There are some things about Christmas,” you tell her, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her to you, “That I don’t hate.”
She doesn’t know whether to hit you or laugh, that much is obvious from her tentative expression. Finally she relaxes and smacks your arm, “You’re incorrigible. Let me go, I’ve got a patient.”
“It’s tradition,” you point out.
She answers this with an exasperated sigh before squirming out of your grasp and putting her hands on her hips, “Is this how you pick up your regular holiday fling?”
“I thought you had a patient,” you smirk.
“I do,” she whispers, stepping closer and catching your eye.
You both lean forward.
She stands on tip-toe on her heels and closes her eyes. You are about to kiss her when your own eyes slide shut. She turns her face and presses her lips to the side of your face before you know what is happening.
“Merry Christmas,” she murmurs against your face before spinning on her heel and disappearing around the corner.
“I’m Jewish,” you mumble to yourself, even though it’s not true and mostly because you’re sulking. You are thrown right back into the true spirit of loathing Christmas for several hours but when you reach the locker room, she is sitting there, wrapped in an expensive coat and smiling shyly.
“About that alone thing,” she greets you; “I’ve heard misery loves company and drinks.”
“Reliable source,” you shrug, grabbing your bag and folding your coat over your arm.
“Does this mean you’re coming to Joe’s?” she presses her hands together nervously.
“Only if you are,” you wink at her.
She smiles and reaches for your hand, “Good.”
When you step through the glass doors and into the parking lot your breath rises in clouds of steam. You pull her against you and whisper in her ear, “Merry Christmas Addie.”
The thing you loved most about Christmas presents as a kid was never the gifts themselves, it wasn’t even the suspense. It was the promise of the gift itself, that idea that beneath the carefully tied ribbons and layers of tape there was something you had dreamed of for weeks before.
She turns to look at you like a five-year-old looks at a present, with eyes full of hope and promise.
You tap her nose.
“You appear to have caught the festive fever,” you tell her.
“Someone told me things were looking up,” she tugs at your hand and together you trudge across the snow-covered street.
Author’s Notes: Pointless and slightly introspective holiday fic, because I'm jumping on the bandwagon. This is a small offering from the non-cooperative muse.
You are not really the festive type. For as long as you can remember, the benefits of Christmas (like getting presents and parties with free alcohol) have been made negligible by the costs (like buying presents and waking up hungover).
As a child, Christmas was the only day of the year your biological parents would be caught dead in the same suburb. This was usually only for the brief amount of time it took your father to collect you from your mother’s house after Christmas lunch. Then it was off to your father’s to open a second set of presents and endure your stepmother for several long hours. To add injury to insult, you were always expected to ‘play’ with your stepbrother, who was six months older than you and always wanted to hit you over the head with toys rather than use them as they were intended. You never consciously tried to become bitter about the holiday season, but those are your most prominent childhood memories and you can’t honestly say the holidays have improved since you were five-years-old.
The one Christmas you spent with Derek’s family when you were both fourteen let you see what all the fuss was about: it surprised you that his family was actually functional in some way, and that his parents could sit in the same room without screaming at each other. The house was decorated to a ridiculous extent and the tree didn’t have that clinical department store look about it. Nancy told you it was a family tradition for the women in the family to decorate the tree on December first before she cornered you under the mistletoe. (To this day, you have never, ever told Derek about that.) His mother actually cooked Christmas dinner. At five o’clock sharp the cousins arrived and presents were exchanged until the living room carpet was covered in gift-wrap. As you both lay under the tree and looked up at the lights on a bed of tape, bows and discarded paper you commented on how lucky he was to have a family that didn’t use the good china as projectiles when gathered in the same house. A year later his father was dead. You always found it horribly unfair: Derek loved his father and you hated yours; yet his was the one who died. You never told him that was the reason you couldn’t bring yourself to accept the invitation again, despite Nancy’s powers of persuasion.
When you were twenty-one you spent your last Christmas with your evil stepmother and the father you loathe. You don’t like to admit it, but the reason you hate him is that he reminds you of yourself. You visited your mother the next year, but your stepfather was as insufferable as ever and you quickly tired of your mother’s concerns that you had no intention of settling down. In the end she told you that you were just like your father. Despite the fact that she was (and is) right, you never spent the holidays at home again. Under no circumstances will you agree to make the trip despite the protests of both parents. Every year, you privately hope your father will have a cardiac arrest or your mother will forget to take her insulin in early December so you will be able to spend the holidays alone, in the spirit of ‘peace on earth’. Every year you endure the obligatory phone call emotionlessly. It scares you that you no longer care that they don’t love you. You are the child of a bitter divorce and the only time your parents spared you a second of thought was when they were fighting over custody. You are glad. If they cared they might actually pressure you to join them for Christmas instead of accepting your refusal without argument.
The second year they were married, you agreed to join Addison and Derek for the day which only served to remind you what you were missing out on. Since then, you’ve mostly spent the holidays alone or with girlfriends you didn’t really care about. Since then, you have tried to keep your status as a regular Scrooge a secret to prevent visits from the ghost of Christmas past but you have never been a festive person.
Addison knows that.
She doesn’t understand it but she has grudgingly learnt to accept it.
So you are surprised when this year, come the first of December, she isn’t insisting on drinking Starbucks (God forbid) simply for the gingerbread lattes or trying to drag you into any of her other ridiculous holiday traditions. Well, that in itself does not surprise you since she is still tentative around you despite her best efforts to hide it. The biggest surprise is that she shows no signs of Christmas cheer herself, which is so uncharacteristic you are beginning to feel a little worried. When you catch her sitting in the staff lounge absently fingering the branches of a small plastic tree placed on the middle of the table, you decide to mentally cross out the ‘a little’.
Some misguided soul has haphazardly attempted to decorate. There is tinsel hanging from all four corners of the room and Christmas lights hanging from above the blinds making them impossible to close properly.
She sits in the middle of this and pokes at a tiny bauble dejectedly, unaware of your presence in the doorway.
“Hey,” you offer by way of greeting, pouring yourself a cup of crappy hospital coffee and sitting beside her, “That looks thrilling, may I join you?”
She looks up at you over the branch of the tree between your faces and raises an eyebrow, “Very cute.”
“Come on Addison,” you smirk, “I really love playing with Christmas decorations and looking miserable. It’s my favourite holiday tradition.”
“What would you know about holiday traditions?” she sulks, clearly feeling sorry for herself.
“The ones that celebrate that festive feeling of drowning in your own misery?” you shrug, “A lot more than any one person should.”
“Aw,” she rolls her eyes at you, “Poor you.”
“When did you become the grinch?” you inquire with a pleased smile, “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good dose of holiday hostility.”
“I’m sorry,” she mutters quietly, “I guess I’m just not in a festive mood this year.”
“Hey,” you shrug, “I’m not in a festive mood any year. It would be hypocritical of me to hold that against you.”
“Tell that to Isobel Stevens,” she pouts, “If I have to eat another Christmas cookie I might scream. I mean, they’re fabulous. They taste,” she sighs and closes her eyes at the memory, “So good and they are perfectly decorated. It’s amazing, she must have hand-crafted the marzipan or something and then spent hours painting them. They are fabulous and I hate them,” she folds her arms in frustration, “Dumb cookies. It just serves to remind me of all my traditions that I won’t be upholding this year.”
“You’re not making cookies?” you are a little disappointed by this. Addison’s Christmas cookies are probably the only thing you don’t hate about the holiday season.
“In my hotel room?” she raises an eyebrow at you, “And I feel ridiculous decorating, just like last year. I mean, the trailer was too small for a tree and I don’t even know what happened to all my decorations post-divorce. Derek probably threw them out.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” you point out, “Since the Addison I know would have him dumped in,” you catch yourself before you complete the sentence traditionally: ‘in the Hudson’. Instead you continue, “Puget Sound at the very thought.”
She smiles a little at this, but whether it is your unconscious slip or the thought of dumping Derek’s body in a large expanse of water you don’t know.
“You have always hated Christmas,” she responds with a sigh, “I guess I know why now. It sucks, being alone at this time of year.”
You reach out and squeeze her shoulder, “If we both sit here feeling alone together, I guess the irony of it is you’re not alone.”
She smiles and raises her hand to meet your own as you push her hair out of her face. She slides her fingers through yours and you brush the side of her face with the back of your palm.
“Thanks,” she whispers.
“Did you think I’d let you have your own private pity party?” you ask, “Misery loves company, especially at Christmas.”
“Did you always hate the holidays so much?” she responds wryly, but squeezes at your hand even as she stands to answer a page.
You follow her to the doorway before shrugging, “Yeah, pretty much. But I’d say this year, things are looking up.”
The upward path of your eyes causes her to automatically mirror your gesture.
She rolls hers something grand at the tacky plastic mistletoe Santa’s Little Helper has hung in the doorway.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she mumbles.
“There are some things about Christmas,” you tell her, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her to you, “That I don’t hate.”
She doesn’t know whether to hit you or laugh, that much is obvious from her tentative expression. Finally she relaxes and smacks your arm, “You’re incorrigible. Let me go, I’ve got a patient.”
“It’s tradition,” you point out.
She answers this with an exasperated sigh before squirming out of your grasp and putting her hands on her hips, “Is this how you pick up your regular holiday fling?”
“I thought you had a patient,” you smirk.
“I do,” she whispers, stepping closer and catching your eye.
You both lean forward.
She stands on tip-toe on her heels and closes her eyes. You are about to kiss her when your own eyes slide shut. She turns her face and presses her lips to the side of your face before you know what is happening.
“Merry Christmas,” she murmurs against your face before spinning on her heel and disappearing around the corner.
“I’m Jewish,” you mumble to yourself, even though it’s not true and mostly because you’re sulking. You are thrown right back into the true spirit of loathing Christmas for several hours but when you reach the locker room, she is sitting there, wrapped in an expensive coat and smiling shyly.
“About that alone thing,” she greets you; “I’ve heard misery loves company and drinks.”
“Reliable source,” you shrug, grabbing your bag and folding your coat over your arm.
“Does this mean you’re coming to Joe’s?” she presses her hands together nervously.
“Only if you are,” you wink at her.
She smiles and reaches for your hand, “Good.”
When you step through the glass doors and into the parking lot your breath rises in clouds of steam. You pull her against you and whisper in her ear, “Merry Christmas Addie.”
The thing you loved most about Christmas presents as a kid was never the gifts themselves, it wasn’t even the suspense. It was the promise of the gift itself, that idea that beneath the carefully tied ribbons and layers of tape there was something you had dreamed of for weeks before.
She turns to look at you like a five-year-old looks at a present, with eyes full of hope and promise.
You tap her nose.
“You appear to have caught the festive fever,” you tell her.
“Someone told me things were looking up,” she tugs at your hand and together you trudge across the snow-covered street.