grey's anatomy fanfiction, mark - skin against skin; move it front to back and start it again [8/12]
Flaws In Science
Author's Notes: I'm not sure this achieved what I wanted it to achieve and before you all say it's horribly, horribly Maddison (which it is... more so than I intended) remember second person POV could mean my narrator is slightly biased. (Code for: drama to ensue.) Some Addison development here and the meaningless sex Mark and Ad are famous for. NC-17.
You can’t decide if it’s the fever or the more vivid points in your memory, but you wake up shivering from the sweat drying on your skin. The room is dark but you still think the corners might not be fixed and you blink a few times, trying to orientate yourself. The headache is back and your throat aches so you sit up, grope around for the painkillers that have somehow ended up on the carpet and take an extra half-dose two hours after your last. It won’t kill you, but the headache feels like it might at this point. You’re lying there, waiting for the drugs to start working, when the door opens. Closing your eyes to the light, it registers somewhere in your mind that it must be Derek and that gives you grounds to pretend you’re still asleep for a while, because he’ll never be able to tell the difference.
You’re surprised then, when the door shuts on the sliver of light from the hall so you open your eyes again, and the silhouette before you is distinctly feminine, losing an inch in height as she kicks off the ridiculous heels. You’re trying to figure out what Addison is doing here in the middle of the night or at least, the late evening when you remember that Derek’s on call. Still, you can’t imagine your best friend having the foresight to ask his ex-wife to keep you company, especially after this afternoon’s conversation.
So you watch her surreptitiously and she obviously does think you’re asleep because she sighs to herself and sinks down onto the bed beside you, letting her palm skim across the pillow. Her other arm is wrapped around her body, squeezing tightly and she listens to your breathing for a few seconds before shuffling around again, pulling her legs from the floor and lying beside you.
“You listen to me mister,” she mutters sleepily, burrowing down into the covers beside you, “You’d better get better or I’m going to be forced to kill you myself.”
You chuckle at her, and she looks up, startled, “I didn’t know you were awake.”
“Am I?” you ask, still half-asleep, “I’m not dreaming this?”
She giggles and clutches at the covers, twisting them between her fingers, “You were dreaming about me?”
You smirk at her, “Maybe.”
She narrows her eyes at you, “Only you Mark, only you would be thinking about sex while otherwise incapacitated.”
“Hey,” you touch her face, “I was dreaming about you.”
She shuffles closer and rests her head against your hand, “How’re you feeling?”
“Crap,” you shrug, moving your fingers against her skin; she smells good and you hate yourself for noticing, “But better now.”
She shakes her head against the pillow, sighing in a rush of air that makes your face prickle, “Because I’m here?”
You grin, “That or the painkillers have finally kicked in, take your pick.”
“I got a spare key from reception,” she murmurs, “It’s alarming how easy it was.”
“I was wondering how you got in,” you say, sliding your hand down along her neck and across her collarbone absently, “I thought you were Derek.”
“He’s at the hospital,” she whispers and you can feel a sharp pull of breath in the rise of her chest, her skin responding to your touch.
“I know,” you respond, fingers curling around the back of her neck to pull her face closer, “You’ve been worried about me.”
It’s a statement, not a question and she wets her lips. Whether that’s because she doesn’t know how to respond or because you’re breathing over them is anyone’s guess.
“A little,” she shrugs, leaning in closer until her nose brushes against yours just slightly.
The small talk has been an excuse not to be kissing since she deposited herself on your bed and both of you know it so when you feel the shiver of anticipation through your hand, her body trembling slightly, you shift slightly to press your mouth against hers.
She groans quietly and presses her palms against the side of your face, twisting her body until she’s leaning over you, one knee slung over your legs and tongue pressing against yours insistently. You’re startled by her reaction; yesterday you would have said she would slap you if you tried to kiss her but you let your hands wander, slipping beneath the neckline of her sweater.
“We shouldn’t,” you kiss her distractedly, the tangle of tongues interrupted each time you pull away to mumble a little more of your sentence, “You’ll get sick.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbles, pressing her body against your hands.
The fabric stretches and makes a noise of protest so you tug at it insistently, pulling it over her head. You’re trailing kisses along her jaw and fingering the satin seam of her bra, listening to her heavy breathing when she pulls backwards. You look up at her and meet her eyes, moving to brush your lips against hers but she turns before you can, so you miss her mouth but kiss her chin lightly.
“We should stop,” she murmurs softly but firmly, her sweater falling onto the ground beyond her reach as she does. You press your palms against the warmth of her stomach as she says it and nod a little, because some part of you knows this will only complicate things; you were making progress and this would be a backwards step. Whether backwards is the right direction is something your head and your body currently disagree about.
She moves sideways until there are cubic inches of air between you, which doesn’t make it any easier because you can still feel her beside you, but you try to ignore the fact that she tastes like coffee and smells like she always does, fruity shampoo and some designer perfume which you can’t remember the name of.
“Sorry,” she offers lamely, reaching out to run a hand along your arm.
You circle her wrist and play with her fingers absently, resting them against your chest, “It’s ok. You’re right. We shouldn’t.”
“Mark?” she asks timidly, twisting around to face you.
You smile at her, because you don’t really mind and you can tell she thinks you do, “It’s ok Ad.”
“No I,” she looks embarrassed, “Can we just talk for a while? I mean, not about anything serious,” she adds quickly, and you curse your instinctive reaction to recoil at those words, “Just, please?”
You sigh, “Yeah of course.”
“If you want me to go I will,” she begins hurriedly, clearly taking your reaction as a sign of reluctance.
“No it’s ok,” you assure her, running your hand over your face thoughtfully, “Stay Ad, please.”
“I don’t know why I’m here,” she confesses quietly, gripping your hand a little more tightly, “Today was just such an exhausting day and I,” she hesitates until you trace her pinkie in encouragement, “I just needed to be close to someone and you,” she sighs and shuffles sideways until her side is pressed against yours, “You’re always my someone.”
Whatever uncertainty you may have felt, you can’t argue with that so you pull your arm out from between you to make room for her and wrap it around her shoulder, fingers brushing her skin lightly. She lets her eyes slip closed and rests her head against your shoulder, sighing happily, “Thank you.”
“What happened?” you ask her quietly, “Did something go wrong at the hospital or with Derek?”
“No,” she shakes her head, “I haven’t seen him since I left here. And I didn’t have anything out of the ordinary. One of my patients at eight weeks miscarried,” she shrugs, “But it happens.”
You twist her hair between your fingers, “Yeah.”
“It just reminds me sometimes,” she admits quietly, “But I said we didn’t have to talk about anything serious so…”
“We can talk about it Ad,” you rest your head against hers and even though you have no desire to talk about it, you would, if it’s what she needs, “If you want.”
“No,” she shakes her head just barely but you’re so close that you can detect the movement, “We’re talking about different things.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was pregnant,” she says.
“I know,” you respond, tensing a little and trying to avoid the instinctive reaction to shuffle sideways because being so close to her and talking about this is hard.
“No,” she corrects you softly; “It must be two years ago now. We’d been trying for so long and I was twice before I think, but I never told him. I wasn’t sure; it happened before ... it wouldn’t have been four weeks so,” she exhales with resolution, swallowing nervously, “So a positive test was a big deal you know? And he was working all the time then, so I thought that,” she nestles closer but turns her back to you, reaching behind her to drag your arm across her body. Your first instinct is to bury your face in her shoulder because she’s soft and warm and you miss the days when if it was late and she was sleeping, you could allow yourself to do that. Instead you shift a little uncomfortably; it’s not that you don’t like physical contact with other people: you just struggle with the overlap of emotional and physical intimacy. If she wanted to sleep you wouldn’t mind. If she wants to talk − especially about this − then you want to be on the other side of the bed.
“It’s stupid,” she continues finally, lacing her fingers through yours, seemingly unaware of how fucking stupid you feel because there’s no way you’re going to know what to say to her and this already feels awkward, “I thought that if we had a baby then… he’d be home more or we’d be able to face up to the problems because he’d feel more obliged to make it work.”
And this is obviously your cue to say something, anything, so you squeeze at her hand a little and mumble something to let her know that you’re listening, “What happened?”
“I was about six weeks along when we,” she pauses to clarify, “Myself and Doctor Fairstein, who was my OB, decided to monitor the pregnancy closely, because I told him I suspected I had previously miscarried more than once without interrupting my cycle, and that would indicate some underlying problem so we were doing weekly tests, just to make sure everything was ok. At six weeks we noticed slightly low levels of progesterone, which is sometimes a preventable cause of early miscarriage.”
Her voice is shaking a little at this point; she sounds like she might cry.
“And you can treat it, orally, if it’s a genuine deficiency but it’s rare and in a lot of cases it’s merely an indication that spontaneous abortion is going to occur because the foetus is … no longer developing so progesterone levels drop as a natural response. Oral progesterone treatments just prolong the inevitable. I, we told Derek that it was unlikely to make any difference because I had no problems until then, everything was normal and I’ve never had any history of abnormal progesterone levels or any symptoms up to that point. But he wanted to try it for a few weeks, since it doesn’t have any adverse effects if … well, if you’re going to miscarry anyway, it doesn’t matter does it? But I just couldn’t Mark; I just couldn’t pretend that it was going to be ok when I knew, as a doctor I just knew how it was going to end and I didn’t want to put myself through that. It was hard enough without spending six weeks waiting for it to happen.”
She hides her face in the pillow and you suspect it’s to conceal her tears but the most you can manage at this point is to hug her closer and move your thumb against her wrist in light circles, “Addison?”
“I’m ok,” she trembles a little as she sucks in a breath and turns in your arms, pressing her face into your shoulder and despite her words, you can feel the warm wetness of her tears, “Really,” she insists, when you tighten your hold on her and brush your fingers through her hair, “I’m fine. It’s just,” she swallows and falls against you, unable to meet your eyes, “He blamed me.”
“It wasn’t your fault Ad,” you murmur, because you hate it when she cries.
“I know,” she counters forcefully, “I’ve spent years telling patients that there’s nothing they could have done, that no one knows why it happens but he just… he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t, why I couldn’t have taken the progesterone for a few weeks just in case it helped.”
“Would it have helped?” you ask because you’re slightly curious, but you stroke her hair in case she thinks you’re prying or if it strikes a chord.
“My cortisol levels were slightly elevated, within normal levels but still, elevated and he thought I was stressed,” she sighs, “That I was working too much. There’s usually no correlation between stress and miscarriage except in daytime soaps but since cortisol and progesterone compete for common receptors in cells... progesterone activity can be impaired by abnormally high cortisol levels leading to oestrogen dominance. And that would have impaired the effectiveness of any progesterone replacement therapy anyway. He said there was a chance it might have worked though and there was, but the probability of it happening…”
She trails off and you nod in response, “There’s a non-zero probability of anything but sometimes, despite all the hope in the world, there’s nothing you can do.”
She nods, “You think he would have learned that by now.”
“He never trusted the science Addison,” you remind her, “You honestly think it wouldn’t have been worth it?”
She pulls backwards to stare at you, “Why?”
“Just,” you nudge her side gently, “You don’t feel guilty because of a what if do you?”
“No,” she declares resolutely, “No, medically I was right. All my experience told me there was nothing we could have done differently and he had all his hopes pinned on the slightest chance… he was only ever going to be disappointed,” she blinks back another wave of tears, “I just wish he hadn’t been disappointed with me.”
“He had no right to be,” you tell her softly, “And you know that.”
“After that everything was different,” she smiles at you sadly, and even though you hate being the guy that tells her all men are bastards while she’s laying between your sheets so obviously you’re a bastard too, those grateful looks almost make it worth it; “Because he was so busy and he just got busier. At first he wanted to try again but then I explained that you have to wait, for at least 12 weeks and even though that’s sound medical advice he said that I’d changed, that he didn’t know me anymore,” she chews at her lip, “It was one stupid argument, but in retrospect,” she shrugs, “When he said it, I thought he was just angry and that his anger was misdirected grief but maybe he meant it because everything got so much worse after that.”
“That’s why,” she finishes quietly, “That’s why I was so apprehensive in the first place, that’s why I didn’t want to talk about it, that’s why I didn’t want to tell any one, that’s why I didn’t want a baby with you because I,” she sniffs, her elbow pressing against your ribs as she raises a palm in between you to wipe at her eyes furiously, “I didn’t want you to blame me. And we weren’t ready for that. We just… we barely talked. I didn’t think… I mean, you’re an all right guy underneath all that crap Mark, I know you would have stuck around but things were already so out of control, I didn’t want you to stay with me just because of it. And you, you said you wouldn’t,” she pulls backwards and twists the sheets between her fingers, “You said it would just be me. And then you… then it wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” you offer uselessly, “I’m an idiot Ad. You know that.”
“Yeah,” she nods; her hair rustles against the sheets, “I’ve known that for years and for some reason, I keep reminding myself the hard way.”
You resist the urge to tell her she’s wrong; that you mean different things and that all these things happen to you by accident, that you never meant not to call her and that you never meant to sleep with her and that you certainly never meant to sleep with the nurse from peds. It sounds like an excuse but you’ve spent hours of reflection trying to explain your own actions and it’s the best you can come up with. You never meant to hurt anyone; somehow it just seems to be yet another thing you’re effortlessly good at.
“You should have told me,” you tell her, changing the subject, “If you were worried about it, or if you didn’t want to go through with it you should have told me and we could’ve … talked about it.”
“Oh Mark,” she laughs to herself mirthlessly, “We didn’t talk about anything. And I couldn’t tell you I didn’t want it, not after you… you were so enthusiastic about it at first,” she grins at you, runs her fingers along your jaw for a minute before searching your eyes seriously looking for some kind of answer, “I never knew why because we weren’t even together and it obviously wasn’t planned. I thought you’d be angry or at least, afraid and that would manifest itself as frustration,” she pauses, looking at you in wonderment, “But then again, you always surprised me.”
“That’s because you always expect to be disappointed,” you counter incredulously because it’s true, “No matter what I did or what I do, you always act as though I can’t possibly be sincere because there’s no way I could possibly do or feel anything genuinely heartfelt which just,” you sigh, “Isn’t true. It never has been.”
“You may be right,” she concedes, “But I expect you to let me down for good reason,” she reminds you, alluding to that time before she was your best friend’s girlfriend, when you think she might have liked you more than you were willing to admit at the risk of being disappointed yourself.
“We were twenty-one years old,” you say, “When are you going to move past that?”
“I don’t think I should have to,” she counters, raising her voice slightly and you detect a hint of pent up anger in her eyes, “Because you were… you… I…”
And she’s fumbling for her words again, like she did at twenty-one and you’re still finding it both endearing and terrifying because you want to hold her against you, kiss her until that self-doubt is replaced by confidence but somewhere inside you’re insecure and afraid in exactly the same way yourself so you don’t know how to fix her. Some part of you that you were never willing to acknowledge at the time always thought you weren’t good enough for her; that she needed someone who could appreciate all parts of the breathtaking whole and someone who could express that in ways she would understand. If there’s one thing that has never come easily to you, it’s expressing how you feel and what you think without your words being misinterpreted. And she was amazing; smart and funny and undeniably hot but it’s as though she had never noticed the same things about herself. She needed someone to make her understand herself and you couldn’t even understand your own myriad of issues. In some way, you always thought Derek was good for her. Derek was the kind of guy who would know what to say, you thought; Derek was the kind of guy who would be able to appreciate her for more than her body and be able to express that. At twenty-one, you never thought he would be the kind of guy to forget about her; to treat her like you did because you’d rather make nothing out of something than be caught out trying to make something from nothing.
“You were the first,” she whispers finally, after moments of silence.
“You didn’t say it was the first time,” you look at her, “And you can’t possibly think you loved me.”
“No,” she looks at you in fond perplexity and you realise you must have jumped to conclusions so far from the truth that she finds them amusing rather than offensive; “It wasn’t the first time,” she blushes a little, “I mean, I … I told you I hadn’t done it much but… well I wasn’t that much of a loser you know.”
“I didn’t mean it like…” you begin but she cuts you off, sitting up against the headboard and clasping her hands behind her knees.
“I know,” she smiles shyly, tucking the curtain of hair that spills over her shoulders behind her ears, “But that’s not what I meant either. And I never thought I loved you. I did like you though,” she grins at you, “More than I liked Derek for a while, though you never believed me.”
“Still don’t,” you sniff, for the sake of an old argument.
She smirks, “Derek had a girlfriend and I always used to pride myself in being strong enough to put aside any feelings I might have felt for attached men because I’m not the kind of woman who sits around waiting for someone to realise they want me.”
“He always wanted you,” you inform her, “He was just too nice for his own good sometimes and it took him months to work up the nerve to tell Amy it was over.”
“I’ll bet you never had that problem,” she teases.
“No,” you smirk, “Because I was never stupid enough to go out with Amy. But you liked him; admit it.”
“I never said I didn’t like him,” she pokes your shoulder, “I just said that I liked you more for a while, in spite of the fact that you weren’t the kind of guy the old Addison would have been interested in but I was… someone else with you. And I liked that. Before that night,” she refuses to meet your eyes, “I never would have thought we had a chance but you were… so different to how I first expected you to be. You ruined it though,” she sighs, “I guess I was right and wrong about you at the same time.”
“He did see you first you know,” you say quietly, “It wasn’t just an excuse. He was my best friend and I wasn’t going to let something as trivial as sex get in the way of that but you were right,” it’s complicated to explain, “It was easier. If I told myself I couldn’t because Derek liked you then I never had to and some part of me was… scared I guess. I’m cynical Ad; it never would have worked.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispers quietly, admonishing but gentle, reaching for your hand where it is resting beside her body and squeezing at your fingers.
“Yeah I do,” you sigh, “Whenever I have anything worth having I always feel the need to fuck it up.”
“I know,” she murmurs, “But I wouldn’t have let you.”
“Yes you would have,” you counter, “You did.”
“It hurt,” she hugs herself tightly, drawing your hand with hers until it is pressed against the side of her knee, “I didn’t realise how much it would until it did.”
Moments of silence ensue; she sits with her body curled up against the end of the bed and you lay there, fingers tangled in hers, unsure of how to respond.
Finally you have to say something, so you raise your voice barely above a whisper, “What did you mean?”
“What did I mean when I said you were the first?” she says.
“Yeah,” you respond, “What did you mean?”
“You were the first time I,” she looks embarrassed, “Enjoyed sex.”
“Really?” you can’t decide whether to smirk because obviously, that admission earns you bragging rights, or whether to sound as surprised as you feel.
She nods wordlessly and stares at her knees, “I mean, I’d done it before but… the first time I didn’t want to again so he broke up with me. And after that, I went out with Harrison Smethsons, you know, the orthopaedic surgeon at Bellevue?”
“And you call me an ass,” you mutter.
Her laugh is understated, “We were at college together and he was a lot less cocky in his youth, unlike someone I know.”
You pretend to look wounded but then smile smugly, “I changed your mind about sex. Obviously I thought highly of myself with good reason.”
She shakes her head at you, “I knew I shouldn’t have told you that. Ever. Your ego does well enough all on its own.”
“So Smethsons is crap in bed?” you raise an eyebrow at her; “That would explain why both his ex-wives were more than willing to sleep with me.”
She narrows her eyes at you, “Is that why he hates you?”
“Hell, he doesn’t know,” you tell her, “And for the record, both of them were ex-wives.”
“That wouldn’t have stopped you,” she accuses.
“Maybe not,” you shrug, “You never answered the question though.”
“It was twenty years ago Mark,” she shakes her head at you, “But if you must know, he was… selfish. And it was always painful but thankfully, quick. And for the record, that doesn’t mean you’re a better person, surgeon or doctor than he is.”
“But I am,” you shrug.
“Just because he beat you on one final in second-year med school,” she smirks.
“And because he treated you like crap,” you let the back of your hand brush against her thigh, “Instinctively I must have known because I always thought he was an ass. I bet he never bothered to make you come.”
“Mark,” she warns, sounding mortified.
You sigh and rest your head against the side of her body where it makes contact with the mattress, “Seriously Addison, did he?”
She shuffles from side to side and looks uncomfortable, “Not really. Never during actual sex. You were the first guy who ever cared about that and the first that ever made me think men should care,” she looks embarrassed, “It’s not that I didn’t expect to be respected or anything; I just… thought it was me.”
You grin at her, “Certainly wasn’t you.”
She shakes her head at you in exasperation, “You don’t get to take all the credit for it either.”
You roll onto your stomach and reach out to brush the hair from her eyes, “Hey, I’ve got one of your firsts. You can’t have that ever again so I guess it sort of belongs to me, in a way. And I reserve the right to...”
“Sing your own praises?” she mutters wryly, “So I noticed.”
“That’s significant though,” you muse philosophically, “You can never do something for the first time twice and it’s something we have that no one else can share.”
“What about me?” she looks up coyly, pressing her hand against yours, trapping your fingers against her face, “Was I a first for you?”
“Yeah,” you answer, but you’re silent for a moment afterwards. She was the first, but what exactly is unclear, hard to verbalise. You don’t know how to tell her because you don’t know what she is to you; she’s not everything but close to it, she’s like air but you’re not melodramatic enough to think that you couldn’t live without her and she’s a constant, always there in some way or another. She is overwhelming and terrifying and you can never quite have enough of her skin against yours. There’s an anxiety about it that confuses you and yet you’ve never really felt comfortable with anyone else.
She smiles, “What?”
“Yours was the first heart I listened to,” you tell her, “Other than my own.”
Laughing quietly she shakes her head at you, “That’s a line from some saccharine romantic comedy.”
“When we were nine-years-old we went to the hospital after Derek’s dad died,” you continue by way of explanation since it is particularly significant to you, “And one of the doctors, he must have been an intern, told us what happened and let me play with his stethoscope. It was why I wanted to be a doctor for a long time and … that was the second time I’d heard a human heartbeat, the first person’s other than my own and I,” you pause, considering your words, “Still found it somewhat inexplicable at twenty-one, even knowing how it worked and understanding the mechanism, that we’re here and breathing at all.”
She looks surprised at the honesty of this admission, “Did I make you want to be a doctor?”
“Yeah,” you bury your face in the pillow a little and she rests a palm against your cheek, “Or at least, you reminded me why I wanted to do it in the beginning.”
“You were the first person I ever used that on you know,” she smiles fondly, “The stethoscope I mean. Actually, you were the only person I ever used it on. It was purely a good luck charm after that.”
“You were the first person who ever challenged me,” you tell her, “The first person who I ever thought might actually be smarter than me.”
She laughs, “You would say that.”
“It’s true,” you defend yourself.
“You were the first time I ever cheated,” she confesses, “I never even flirted with anyone else. Derek did,” she smiles a little at the memory and you look a little shocked.
“Oh we were still in school,” she laughs at your reaction, “He kissed Elise Spencer at her twenty-second birthday party. You knew about it and promised not to tell me, but he felt so bad about it that he came right out with it and spent at least five minutes begging for forgiveness.”
“I never knew he told you about that,” you grin at her, “He made me swear not to tell you…”
“And you never would have,” she finishes the sentence slightly differently to how you would have but the overall idea is the same, “You used to be best friends,” she leans against your hand, “I never thought anything would change that.”
“You’re the first woman who ever came between us,” you tell her, cupping the side of her face and brushing your thumb against her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“Don’t be,” you tell her, pulling her closer and running your fingers along her jaw, angling her face towards yours, “You were the first woman who mattered enough.”
She kisses you, not desperately but with intent and you let a hand slip beneath her skirt, brushing the inside of her thighs as she lets her eyes slip closed and her lips linger over yours.
She breathes against your mouth, “Do I still matter enough?”
You brush your fingers against her underwear and watch her instinctive reaction as she rocks forward against your hand.
“You said yourself that nothing really matters,” you murmur, repositioning yourself so you’re lying between her ankles, “But if anything did, it would be you.”
She makes a small noise in the back of her throat and for a moment, you’re unsure whether it’s encouragement or protest so you pause, both hands firmly embedded under her skirt, one tracing patterns against the satin fabric and the other curled around the elastic at the top, tugging downwards insistently. For a moment you stare at her and she stares back, neither of you moving. Then she laughs quietly, “We always do this.”
There is a moment of shuffling and readjusting; she lifts her hips and you drag the panties down her legs slowly, noticing the contrast between silk and skin. She sinks down on the mattress and watches you; you brush your fingers along a faint scar on the inside of her ankle knowing that the wound only left a mark because the skin covers a joint and the ability to heal was comprised by natural stretching.
You don’t speak because words always seem to screw this kind of thing up for you, so you sit up beside her and nudge her shoulder cautiously, waiting for her to respond. She nudges you back, smiling as you move your fingers in slow circles along the back of her thigh. It should be enough confirmation but it’s not; you press your nose against your cheek and mumble in her ear, “We don’t have to.”
She turns her face towards yours; your foreheads brush.
“But we will,” she states simply, pressing her mouth to yours gently. The kiss is slow and lazy, filled with mutual expectation and familiarity because you’ve done this so many times that you both know how it works. When you work your hand up between her legs, your fingers slide a little against the unexpected wetness and she moans a little into your mouth at the contact. You trace circles more pointedly as she opens her eyes and meets yours, smiling against your mouth, embarrassed by her reaction.
“It’s ok,” you tell her, whispering in a warm rush of air against her neck, “Relax.”
Her eyes slip closed and she rests her back against the wall in response, her neck arched gracefully and her hair spilling out behind her. Her teeth pull her bottom lip into her mouth to stifle another of those noises and you’re surprised at how quickly her body responds to your touch because she’s rocking slightly against your hand now. You brush your lips against the exposed skin of her neck, your chin scratching against her shoulder. She reaches up and curls a hand behind your neck, fingers stroking your hair appreciatively and that’s definitely a sign you’re doing something right. She’d never actually tell you if you weren’t because most times, she’s uncharacteristically undemanding in bed but you’ve learnt to read her non-verbal answers to your non-verbal questions.
“God,” she murmurs as you kiss behind her ear, chin resting on her shoulder, “Are you going to join me anytime soon?”
You know she’d come faster and harder probably if you slipped your fingers inside her instead of just momentarily sliding them against the wetness at her entrance and smearing it against her clit but there’s plenty of time for that; this is just build up. You smirk at her and shake your head, pressing one fingertip against that spot a little harder, “This is just you.”
She groans but it jumps in pitch as you make a slow circular motion with your index finger. You’ve learnt, from years of experience, that less is sometimes more and that you really can get a girl off with your non-dominant pinkie if you concentrate on precision rather than being everywhere at once. It’s something you boast about, but really it’s the product of years of surgical training, an unhealthy curiosity with experimentation and too much sex with women you didn’t care about. Still, it has its upside; you watch the skin between her breasts turn pink in the shadowy light and she turns her face towards yours, her breathing almost feathering your skin. You love seeing her like this, five seconds from orgasm with pupils dilated by desire and physical sensation, breathing over your lips and desperately trying to tell you she wants it harder, faster but unable to say the words.
She trembles a little and whimpers, covering your hand in moisture and tensing slightly so you know she’s trying to hold out. She’s so wet and you want to taste her but you know interrupting your rhythm now will be horribly anticlimactic. So you murmur in her ear and increase the speed on your ministrations, “Come for me Ad.”
You know that if her chest wasn’t so tight from trying to breathe she’d tease you about that, make you say please, but she’s shuddering around your hand before she has a chance to regain enough equilibrium to respond. The noises are muted, because she always tries to be quiet but she cries out in a series of ‘ohs’ as you gradually slow the motion of your fingers until she collapses against your side, smiling fondly.
She giggles throatily and looks up at you, “I shouldn’t let you do that.”
“Why?” you return earnestly.
“Because,” she says with a pout in her voice, pushing her palms flat against your knees, “There’s nothing in it for you.”
You lean forward to whisper it in her ear and she shivers at the edge in your tone; “There’s plenty in it for me.”
“Mmm,” she turns her head and kisses you hard, her teeth sinking over you lip as you try to pull away and her hands insistently pressing at your legs until you let them rest against the covers, “There could be more in it for you.”
“Whatever do you mean?” you manage to retort for the sake of banter as she clambers into your lap, rocking her hips against yours with a flirtatiously raised eyebrow.
She reaches for the hand that was previously between her legs and slides her fingers through yours, leaning her head against yours and pulling your entwined hands up between your faces. Smirking, she runs her tongue along the tip of your index finger and sucks it clean pointedly. And if your body wasn’t already responding appropriately, the smell of her on your hands and her tongue on your skin is certainly making you hard. You shift a little beneath her when you notice, but apparently she already has, because she smirks even more and speaks so close to your mouth you can feel her lips brush against yours every so often, “See? It could be a lot better for you.”
You still don’t understand how she can be ready to go again seconds after the first time but you’re hardly going to complain when her wrists disappear beneath your shirt, palms pressed against your stomach and fingers tracing patterns against your skin which are similar to those her tongue is making in your mouth.
You take the opportunity to unclasp her bra, pulling it down her arms until she’s forced to remove her hands from your shirt momentarily in order to throw it aside. Your attempts to take advantage of her freed breasts are met with a stern look and a brush of her hands, which are curling around the hem of your shirt, tugging upwards. Because there are far too many clothes involved at this point, you accommodate her attempts to pull it over your head and immediately set to work unzipping her skirt and sharing her disappointed sentiments when she is forced to lift her body from yours so she can slide it down her legs and tug down on your boxers. The result is a completely naked Addison crouched above your legs and crawling up your body, so you can hardly complain about the visual.
You massage her nipples to hard peaks while she settles herself in your lap once more. You both groan as she grinds against you and her breasts bounce a little beneath your hands; she snickers at your wide-eyed reaction but groans when you press your palms flat against her chest, rubbing them against her nipples in circles similar to those you made against her clit. You smirk a little, because her body recognises the similarities and she braces her weight on her hands in order to rock against you with a greater sense of urgency. You lean back against the wall and roll one nipple between your thumb and first two fingers, intent on teasing her for a while but your hands automatically abandon this pursuit in order to brace her hips when she sinks herself onto you; you both gasp a little at the contact.
She tosses her hair a little and moves backwards and forwards experimentally, “Sorry, I couldn’t wait.”
And you don’t mind at all, so you press against her hips with your hands; hers are clasped behind your neck and she’s resting all her weight against you so the kisses are somewhat more heated than usual; her tongue presses against yours with more force, assisted by gravity. Each time she moves forward, her hard nipples brush against your chest and she’s so wet from the first time that it’s slippery, the soft noise of your bodies sliding together punctuating the silence.
You move your hands to her lower back, pulling her closer and she groans, hands pressing against your face as she meets your eyes, rocking more insistently as she does. You couldn’t say how much time passes because it all seems to happen so quickly but her skin is slick from the exertion now so maybe it’s been longer than you think. Breathing heavily, she presses her lips to yours and she tastes salty, you run your tongue along the edge of her upper lip and she laughs briefly, the trembling of her chest echoed between her legs seconds later. You’re close and there’s a sort of lusty haze between reality and your perception, so maybe you’re imagining it when she mutters a string of curses under her breath and leans forward slightly, altering the angle at which her body is pressed against yours and forcing her clit against your erection with each thrust.
She moans, digging her fingernails into your shoulders and then she’s definitely mumbling a series of dirty requests against your mouth, followed by some repetition of your name and she’s clenching herself around you, face pressed up against your shoulder to silence the shrieks. You push her backwards a little by the stomach so the noises travel across the room and they get louder still when you feel yourself stiffen inside her, gruffly muttering, “God Addison.”
She slumps against you, breathing heavily, her hair damp with sweat and you hug her against you, the lazy contraction of her muscles around you sending a hum of satisfaction through your body.
You stroke her hair affectionately, “Still enjoy sex?”
“Yeah,” she mumbles, “I slept with a lot of guys after you, just to prove that it wasn’t you and that I could. Stupid really,” she readjusts your hips against yours, presumably because it’s uncomfortable for her and you trace her thighs absently as she sinks down again, “But I figured you probably did the same thing.”
You sigh, “I’m sorry Ad. I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” she writhes around above you, “Men never do.”
Privately you think women can be unfair like that, blaming your flaws on your Y-chromosome and not just on you. Still, you don’t say that since she’s shuffling sideways and drawing the sheets around her shoulders. You push her hair from her eyes, curling the damp strands behind her ears and wait for her to speak. She lies next to you and stretches out, her toes sliding against your shins.
“I should go,” she whispers quietly.
“Addison,” you argue, a hand tangled in her hair. You open your mouth to continue but realise that’s the best you’ve got.
“No really,” she kisses you hurriedly, just a soft, chaste meeting of lips, “I have to be in early tomorrow morning.”
“Stay,” you plead quietly, hating that note in your voice that makes it sound like a desperate appeal rather than an earnest request.
She swallows and curls her body around your side but doesn’t give you an answer. One of your silences ensures, and it’s like holding your breath even though both of you are breathing, in and out, because that’s the only sound that disturbs the silence.
“I miss you,” she admits quietly, “It was never easy; we hurt each other and it exhausted me but at the end of the day,” she sighs, “You were there. I miss that. I miss having someone to come home to who smells familiar and,” she burrows further into your side, “And who’s actually there.”
You sigh, “I miss you too.”
“Goodnight,” she whispers in response, fingers tracing your skin and finally curling into a fist against your chest.
“Yeah,” you respond, pressing your lips against the side of her head, “Sweet dreams Addison.”
As a surgeon you appreciate skin in a unique way; its texture, depth and fat consistency, the patterns of muscles and nerves and how they cause wrinkles perpendicular to the contracting muscles. Incisions along these wrinkles heal well. You know that surgical incisions made along Langer’s lines of cleavage force parallel collagen fibres apart without rupturing them; these wounds heal with a minimum of scar tissue. These lines are not so well marked in the face because there is more in interchange of collage fibres in the dermis. Some things you couldn’t explain, some things you couldn’t teach an intern to save your life; the response of skin beneath a scalpel, how much pressure Others are easy: it’s best to dissect around tiny arteries leading of major blood vessels, called perforators, because the increased blood flow helps a wound to heal.
You let your fingers brush against her shoulder and pull her closer; her skin is warm where it presses against yours. Somehow you appreciate that in a way that is strictly non-surgical.
Chapter Nine: Just Remember, This Is Us
Author's Notes: I'm not sure this achieved what I wanted it to achieve and before you all say it's horribly, horribly Maddison (which it is... more so than I intended) remember second person POV could mean my narrator is slightly biased. (Code for: drama to ensue.) Some Addison development here and the meaningless sex Mark and Ad are famous for. NC-17.
You can’t decide if it’s the fever or the more vivid points in your memory, but you wake up shivering from the sweat drying on your skin. The room is dark but you still think the corners might not be fixed and you blink a few times, trying to orientate yourself. The headache is back and your throat aches so you sit up, grope around for the painkillers that have somehow ended up on the carpet and take an extra half-dose two hours after your last. It won’t kill you, but the headache feels like it might at this point. You’re lying there, waiting for the drugs to start working, when the door opens. Closing your eyes to the light, it registers somewhere in your mind that it must be Derek and that gives you grounds to pretend you’re still asleep for a while, because he’ll never be able to tell the difference.
You’re surprised then, when the door shuts on the sliver of light from the hall so you open your eyes again, and the silhouette before you is distinctly feminine, losing an inch in height as she kicks off the ridiculous heels. You’re trying to figure out what Addison is doing here in the middle of the night or at least, the late evening when you remember that Derek’s on call. Still, you can’t imagine your best friend having the foresight to ask his ex-wife to keep you company, especially after this afternoon’s conversation.
So you watch her surreptitiously and she obviously does think you’re asleep because she sighs to herself and sinks down onto the bed beside you, letting her palm skim across the pillow. Her other arm is wrapped around her body, squeezing tightly and she listens to your breathing for a few seconds before shuffling around again, pulling her legs from the floor and lying beside you.
“You listen to me mister,” she mutters sleepily, burrowing down into the covers beside you, “You’d better get better or I’m going to be forced to kill you myself.”
You chuckle at her, and she looks up, startled, “I didn’t know you were awake.”
“Am I?” you ask, still half-asleep, “I’m not dreaming this?”
She giggles and clutches at the covers, twisting them between her fingers, “You were dreaming about me?”
You smirk at her, “Maybe.”
She narrows her eyes at you, “Only you Mark, only you would be thinking about sex while otherwise incapacitated.”
“Hey,” you touch her face, “I was dreaming about you.”
She shuffles closer and rests her head against your hand, “How’re you feeling?”
“Crap,” you shrug, moving your fingers against her skin; she smells good and you hate yourself for noticing, “But better now.”
She shakes her head against the pillow, sighing in a rush of air that makes your face prickle, “Because I’m here?”
You grin, “That or the painkillers have finally kicked in, take your pick.”
“I got a spare key from reception,” she murmurs, “It’s alarming how easy it was.”
“I was wondering how you got in,” you say, sliding your hand down along her neck and across her collarbone absently, “I thought you were Derek.”
“He’s at the hospital,” she whispers and you can feel a sharp pull of breath in the rise of her chest, her skin responding to your touch.
“I know,” you respond, fingers curling around the back of her neck to pull her face closer, “You’ve been worried about me.”
It’s a statement, not a question and she wets her lips. Whether that’s because she doesn’t know how to respond or because you’re breathing over them is anyone’s guess.
“A little,” she shrugs, leaning in closer until her nose brushes against yours just slightly.
The small talk has been an excuse not to be kissing since she deposited herself on your bed and both of you know it so when you feel the shiver of anticipation through your hand, her body trembling slightly, you shift slightly to press your mouth against hers.
She groans quietly and presses her palms against the side of your face, twisting her body until she’s leaning over you, one knee slung over your legs and tongue pressing against yours insistently. You’re startled by her reaction; yesterday you would have said she would slap you if you tried to kiss her but you let your hands wander, slipping beneath the neckline of her sweater.
“We shouldn’t,” you kiss her distractedly, the tangle of tongues interrupted each time you pull away to mumble a little more of your sentence, “You’ll get sick.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbles, pressing her body against your hands.
The fabric stretches and makes a noise of protest so you tug at it insistently, pulling it over her head. You’re trailing kisses along her jaw and fingering the satin seam of her bra, listening to her heavy breathing when she pulls backwards. You look up at her and meet her eyes, moving to brush your lips against hers but she turns before you can, so you miss her mouth but kiss her chin lightly.
“We should stop,” she murmurs softly but firmly, her sweater falling onto the ground beyond her reach as she does. You press your palms against the warmth of her stomach as she says it and nod a little, because some part of you knows this will only complicate things; you were making progress and this would be a backwards step. Whether backwards is the right direction is something your head and your body currently disagree about.
She moves sideways until there are cubic inches of air between you, which doesn’t make it any easier because you can still feel her beside you, but you try to ignore the fact that she tastes like coffee and smells like she always does, fruity shampoo and some designer perfume which you can’t remember the name of.
“Sorry,” she offers lamely, reaching out to run a hand along your arm.
You circle her wrist and play with her fingers absently, resting them against your chest, “It’s ok. You’re right. We shouldn’t.”
“Mark?” she asks timidly, twisting around to face you.
You smile at her, because you don’t really mind and you can tell she thinks you do, “It’s ok Ad.”
“No I,” she looks embarrassed, “Can we just talk for a while? I mean, not about anything serious,” she adds quickly, and you curse your instinctive reaction to recoil at those words, “Just, please?”
You sigh, “Yeah of course.”
“If you want me to go I will,” she begins hurriedly, clearly taking your reaction as a sign of reluctance.
“No it’s ok,” you assure her, running your hand over your face thoughtfully, “Stay Ad, please.”
“I don’t know why I’m here,” she confesses quietly, gripping your hand a little more tightly, “Today was just such an exhausting day and I,” she hesitates until you trace her pinkie in encouragement, “I just needed to be close to someone and you,” she sighs and shuffles sideways until her side is pressed against yours, “You’re always my someone.”
Whatever uncertainty you may have felt, you can’t argue with that so you pull your arm out from between you to make room for her and wrap it around her shoulder, fingers brushing her skin lightly. She lets her eyes slip closed and rests her head against your shoulder, sighing happily, “Thank you.”
“What happened?” you ask her quietly, “Did something go wrong at the hospital or with Derek?”
“No,” she shakes her head, “I haven’t seen him since I left here. And I didn’t have anything out of the ordinary. One of my patients at eight weeks miscarried,” she shrugs, “But it happens.”
You twist her hair between your fingers, “Yeah.”
“It just reminds me sometimes,” she admits quietly, “But I said we didn’t have to talk about anything serious so…”
“We can talk about it Ad,” you rest your head against hers and even though you have no desire to talk about it, you would, if it’s what she needs, “If you want.”
“No,” she shakes her head just barely but you’re so close that you can detect the movement, “We’re talking about different things.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was pregnant,” she says.
“I know,” you respond, tensing a little and trying to avoid the instinctive reaction to shuffle sideways because being so close to her and talking about this is hard.
“No,” she corrects you softly; “It must be two years ago now. We’d been trying for so long and I was twice before I think, but I never told him. I wasn’t sure; it happened before ... it wouldn’t have been four weeks so,” she exhales with resolution, swallowing nervously, “So a positive test was a big deal you know? And he was working all the time then, so I thought that,” she nestles closer but turns her back to you, reaching behind her to drag your arm across her body. Your first instinct is to bury your face in her shoulder because she’s soft and warm and you miss the days when if it was late and she was sleeping, you could allow yourself to do that. Instead you shift a little uncomfortably; it’s not that you don’t like physical contact with other people: you just struggle with the overlap of emotional and physical intimacy. If she wanted to sleep you wouldn’t mind. If she wants to talk − especially about this − then you want to be on the other side of the bed.
“It’s stupid,” she continues finally, lacing her fingers through yours, seemingly unaware of how fucking stupid you feel because there’s no way you’re going to know what to say to her and this already feels awkward, “I thought that if we had a baby then… he’d be home more or we’d be able to face up to the problems because he’d feel more obliged to make it work.”
And this is obviously your cue to say something, anything, so you squeeze at her hand a little and mumble something to let her know that you’re listening, “What happened?”
“I was about six weeks along when we,” she pauses to clarify, “Myself and Doctor Fairstein, who was my OB, decided to monitor the pregnancy closely, because I told him I suspected I had previously miscarried more than once without interrupting my cycle, and that would indicate some underlying problem so we were doing weekly tests, just to make sure everything was ok. At six weeks we noticed slightly low levels of progesterone, which is sometimes a preventable cause of early miscarriage.”
Her voice is shaking a little at this point; she sounds like she might cry.
“And you can treat it, orally, if it’s a genuine deficiency but it’s rare and in a lot of cases it’s merely an indication that spontaneous abortion is going to occur because the foetus is … no longer developing so progesterone levels drop as a natural response. Oral progesterone treatments just prolong the inevitable. I, we told Derek that it was unlikely to make any difference because I had no problems until then, everything was normal and I’ve never had any history of abnormal progesterone levels or any symptoms up to that point. But he wanted to try it for a few weeks, since it doesn’t have any adverse effects if … well, if you’re going to miscarry anyway, it doesn’t matter does it? But I just couldn’t Mark; I just couldn’t pretend that it was going to be ok when I knew, as a doctor I just knew how it was going to end and I didn’t want to put myself through that. It was hard enough without spending six weeks waiting for it to happen.”
She hides her face in the pillow and you suspect it’s to conceal her tears but the most you can manage at this point is to hug her closer and move your thumb against her wrist in light circles, “Addison?”
“I’m ok,” she trembles a little as she sucks in a breath and turns in your arms, pressing her face into your shoulder and despite her words, you can feel the warm wetness of her tears, “Really,” she insists, when you tighten your hold on her and brush your fingers through her hair, “I’m fine. It’s just,” she swallows and falls against you, unable to meet your eyes, “He blamed me.”
“It wasn’t your fault Ad,” you murmur, because you hate it when she cries.
“I know,” she counters forcefully, “I’ve spent years telling patients that there’s nothing they could have done, that no one knows why it happens but he just… he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t, why I couldn’t have taken the progesterone for a few weeks just in case it helped.”
“Would it have helped?” you ask because you’re slightly curious, but you stroke her hair in case she thinks you’re prying or if it strikes a chord.
“My cortisol levels were slightly elevated, within normal levels but still, elevated and he thought I was stressed,” she sighs, “That I was working too much. There’s usually no correlation between stress and miscarriage except in daytime soaps but since cortisol and progesterone compete for common receptors in cells... progesterone activity can be impaired by abnormally high cortisol levels leading to oestrogen dominance. And that would have impaired the effectiveness of any progesterone replacement therapy anyway. He said there was a chance it might have worked though and there was, but the probability of it happening…”
She trails off and you nod in response, “There’s a non-zero probability of anything but sometimes, despite all the hope in the world, there’s nothing you can do.”
She nods, “You think he would have learned that by now.”
“He never trusted the science Addison,” you remind her, “You honestly think it wouldn’t have been worth it?”
She pulls backwards to stare at you, “Why?”
“Just,” you nudge her side gently, “You don’t feel guilty because of a what if do you?”
“No,” she declares resolutely, “No, medically I was right. All my experience told me there was nothing we could have done differently and he had all his hopes pinned on the slightest chance… he was only ever going to be disappointed,” she blinks back another wave of tears, “I just wish he hadn’t been disappointed with me.”
“He had no right to be,” you tell her softly, “And you know that.”
“After that everything was different,” she smiles at you sadly, and even though you hate being the guy that tells her all men are bastards while she’s laying between your sheets so obviously you’re a bastard too, those grateful looks almost make it worth it; “Because he was so busy and he just got busier. At first he wanted to try again but then I explained that you have to wait, for at least 12 weeks and even though that’s sound medical advice he said that I’d changed, that he didn’t know me anymore,” she chews at her lip, “It was one stupid argument, but in retrospect,” she shrugs, “When he said it, I thought he was just angry and that his anger was misdirected grief but maybe he meant it because everything got so much worse after that.”
“That’s why,” she finishes quietly, “That’s why I was so apprehensive in the first place, that’s why I didn’t want to talk about it, that’s why I didn’t want to tell any one, that’s why I didn’t want a baby with you because I,” she sniffs, her elbow pressing against your ribs as she raises a palm in between you to wipe at her eyes furiously, “I didn’t want you to blame me. And we weren’t ready for that. We just… we barely talked. I didn’t think… I mean, you’re an all right guy underneath all that crap Mark, I know you would have stuck around but things were already so out of control, I didn’t want you to stay with me just because of it. And you, you said you wouldn’t,” she pulls backwards and twists the sheets between her fingers, “You said it would just be me. And then you… then it wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” you offer uselessly, “I’m an idiot Ad. You know that.”
“Yeah,” she nods; her hair rustles against the sheets, “I’ve known that for years and for some reason, I keep reminding myself the hard way.”
You resist the urge to tell her she’s wrong; that you mean different things and that all these things happen to you by accident, that you never meant not to call her and that you never meant to sleep with her and that you certainly never meant to sleep with the nurse from peds. It sounds like an excuse but you’ve spent hours of reflection trying to explain your own actions and it’s the best you can come up with. You never meant to hurt anyone; somehow it just seems to be yet another thing you’re effortlessly good at.
“You should have told me,” you tell her, changing the subject, “If you were worried about it, or if you didn’t want to go through with it you should have told me and we could’ve … talked about it.”
“Oh Mark,” she laughs to herself mirthlessly, “We didn’t talk about anything. And I couldn’t tell you I didn’t want it, not after you… you were so enthusiastic about it at first,” she grins at you, runs her fingers along your jaw for a minute before searching your eyes seriously looking for some kind of answer, “I never knew why because we weren’t even together and it obviously wasn’t planned. I thought you’d be angry or at least, afraid and that would manifest itself as frustration,” she pauses, looking at you in wonderment, “But then again, you always surprised me.”
“That’s because you always expect to be disappointed,” you counter incredulously because it’s true, “No matter what I did or what I do, you always act as though I can’t possibly be sincere because there’s no way I could possibly do or feel anything genuinely heartfelt which just,” you sigh, “Isn’t true. It never has been.”
“You may be right,” she concedes, “But I expect you to let me down for good reason,” she reminds you, alluding to that time before she was your best friend’s girlfriend, when you think she might have liked you more than you were willing to admit at the risk of being disappointed yourself.
“We were twenty-one years old,” you say, “When are you going to move past that?”
“I don’t think I should have to,” she counters, raising her voice slightly and you detect a hint of pent up anger in her eyes, “Because you were… you… I…”
And she’s fumbling for her words again, like she did at twenty-one and you’re still finding it both endearing and terrifying because you want to hold her against you, kiss her until that self-doubt is replaced by confidence but somewhere inside you’re insecure and afraid in exactly the same way yourself so you don’t know how to fix her. Some part of you that you were never willing to acknowledge at the time always thought you weren’t good enough for her; that she needed someone who could appreciate all parts of the breathtaking whole and someone who could express that in ways she would understand. If there’s one thing that has never come easily to you, it’s expressing how you feel and what you think without your words being misinterpreted. And she was amazing; smart and funny and undeniably hot but it’s as though she had never noticed the same things about herself. She needed someone to make her understand herself and you couldn’t even understand your own myriad of issues. In some way, you always thought Derek was good for her. Derek was the kind of guy who would know what to say, you thought; Derek was the kind of guy who would be able to appreciate her for more than her body and be able to express that. At twenty-one, you never thought he would be the kind of guy to forget about her; to treat her like you did because you’d rather make nothing out of something than be caught out trying to make something from nothing.
“You were the first,” she whispers finally, after moments of silence.
“You didn’t say it was the first time,” you look at her, “And you can’t possibly think you loved me.”
“No,” she looks at you in fond perplexity and you realise you must have jumped to conclusions so far from the truth that she finds them amusing rather than offensive; “It wasn’t the first time,” she blushes a little, “I mean, I … I told you I hadn’t done it much but… well I wasn’t that much of a loser you know.”
“I didn’t mean it like…” you begin but she cuts you off, sitting up against the headboard and clasping her hands behind her knees.
“I know,” she smiles shyly, tucking the curtain of hair that spills over her shoulders behind her ears, “But that’s not what I meant either. And I never thought I loved you. I did like you though,” she grins at you, “More than I liked Derek for a while, though you never believed me.”
“Still don’t,” you sniff, for the sake of an old argument.
She smirks, “Derek had a girlfriend and I always used to pride myself in being strong enough to put aside any feelings I might have felt for attached men because I’m not the kind of woman who sits around waiting for someone to realise they want me.”
“He always wanted you,” you inform her, “He was just too nice for his own good sometimes and it took him months to work up the nerve to tell Amy it was over.”
“I’ll bet you never had that problem,” she teases.
“No,” you smirk, “Because I was never stupid enough to go out with Amy. But you liked him; admit it.”
“I never said I didn’t like him,” she pokes your shoulder, “I just said that I liked you more for a while, in spite of the fact that you weren’t the kind of guy the old Addison would have been interested in but I was… someone else with you. And I liked that. Before that night,” she refuses to meet your eyes, “I never would have thought we had a chance but you were… so different to how I first expected you to be. You ruined it though,” she sighs, “I guess I was right and wrong about you at the same time.”
“He did see you first you know,” you say quietly, “It wasn’t just an excuse. He was my best friend and I wasn’t going to let something as trivial as sex get in the way of that but you were right,” it’s complicated to explain, “It was easier. If I told myself I couldn’t because Derek liked you then I never had to and some part of me was… scared I guess. I’m cynical Ad; it never would have worked.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispers quietly, admonishing but gentle, reaching for your hand where it is resting beside her body and squeezing at your fingers.
“Yeah I do,” you sigh, “Whenever I have anything worth having I always feel the need to fuck it up.”
“I know,” she murmurs, “But I wouldn’t have let you.”
“Yes you would have,” you counter, “You did.”
“It hurt,” she hugs herself tightly, drawing your hand with hers until it is pressed against the side of her knee, “I didn’t realise how much it would until it did.”
Moments of silence ensue; she sits with her body curled up against the end of the bed and you lay there, fingers tangled in hers, unsure of how to respond.
Finally you have to say something, so you raise your voice barely above a whisper, “What did you mean?”
“What did I mean when I said you were the first?” she says.
“Yeah,” you respond, “What did you mean?”
“You were the first time I,” she looks embarrassed, “Enjoyed sex.”
“Really?” you can’t decide whether to smirk because obviously, that admission earns you bragging rights, or whether to sound as surprised as you feel.
She nods wordlessly and stares at her knees, “I mean, I’d done it before but… the first time I didn’t want to again so he broke up with me. And after that, I went out with Harrison Smethsons, you know, the orthopaedic surgeon at Bellevue?”
“And you call me an ass,” you mutter.
Her laugh is understated, “We were at college together and he was a lot less cocky in his youth, unlike someone I know.”
You pretend to look wounded but then smile smugly, “I changed your mind about sex. Obviously I thought highly of myself with good reason.”
She shakes her head at you, “I knew I shouldn’t have told you that. Ever. Your ego does well enough all on its own.”
“So Smethsons is crap in bed?” you raise an eyebrow at her; “That would explain why both his ex-wives were more than willing to sleep with me.”
She narrows her eyes at you, “Is that why he hates you?”
“Hell, he doesn’t know,” you tell her, “And for the record, both of them were ex-wives.”
“That wouldn’t have stopped you,” she accuses.
“Maybe not,” you shrug, “You never answered the question though.”
“It was twenty years ago Mark,” she shakes her head at you, “But if you must know, he was… selfish. And it was always painful but thankfully, quick. And for the record, that doesn’t mean you’re a better person, surgeon or doctor than he is.”
“But I am,” you shrug.
“Just because he beat you on one final in second-year med school,” she smirks.
“And because he treated you like crap,” you let the back of your hand brush against her thigh, “Instinctively I must have known because I always thought he was an ass. I bet he never bothered to make you come.”
“Mark,” she warns, sounding mortified.
You sigh and rest your head against the side of her body where it makes contact with the mattress, “Seriously Addison, did he?”
She shuffles from side to side and looks uncomfortable, “Not really. Never during actual sex. You were the first guy who ever cared about that and the first that ever made me think men should care,” she looks embarrassed, “It’s not that I didn’t expect to be respected or anything; I just… thought it was me.”
You grin at her, “Certainly wasn’t you.”
She shakes her head at you in exasperation, “You don’t get to take all the credit for it either.”
You roll onto your stomach and reach out to brush the hair from her eyes, “Hey, I’ve got one of your firsts. You can’t have that ever again so I guess it sort of belongs to me, in a way. And I reserve the right to...”
“Sing your own praises?” she mutters wryly, “So I noticed.”
“That’s significant though,” you muse philosophically, “You can never do something for the first time twice and it’s something we have that no one else can share.”
“What about me?” she looks up coyly, pressing her hand against yours, trapping your fingers against her face, “Was I a first for you?”
“Yeah,” you answer, but you’re silent for a moment afterwards. She was the first, but what exactly is unclear, hard to verbalise. You don’t know how to tell her because you don’t know what she is to you; she’s not everything but close to it, she’s like air but you’re not melodramatic enough to think that you couldn’t live without her and she’s a constant, always there in some way or another. She is overwhelming and terrifying and you can never quite have enough of her skin against yours. There’s an anxiety about it that confuses you and yet you’ve never really felt comfortable with anyone else.
She smiles, “What?”
“Yours was the first heart I listened to,” you tell her, “Other than my own.”
Laughing quietly she shakes her head at you, “That’s a line from some saccharine romantic comedy.”
“When we were nine-years-old we went to the hospital after Derek’s dad died,” you continue by way of explanation since it is particularly significant to you, “And one of the doctors, he must have been an intern, told us what happened and let me play with his stethoscope. It was why I wanted to be a doctor for a long time and … that was the second time I’d heard a human heartbeat, the first person’s other than my own and I,” you pause, considering your words, “Still found it somewhat inexplicable at twenty-one, even knowing how it worked and understanding the mechanism, that we’re here and breathing at all.”
She looks surprised at the honesty of this admission, “Did I make you want to be a doctor?”
“Yeah,” you bury your face in the pillow a little and she rests a palm against your cheek, “Or at least, you reminded me why I wanted to do it in the beginning.”
“You were the first person I ever used that on you know,” she smiles fondly, “The stethoscope I mean. Actually, you were the only person I ever used it on. It was purely a good luck charm after that.”
“You were the first person who ever challenged me,” you tell her, “The first person who I ever thought might actually be smarter than me.”
She laughs, “You would say that.”
“It’s true,” you defend yourself.
“You were the first time I ever cheated,” she confesses, “I never even flirted with anyone else. Derek did,” she smiles a little at the memory and you look a little shocked.
“Oh we were still in school,” she laughs at your reaction, “He kissed Elise Spencer at her twenty-second birthday party. You knew about it and promised not to tell me, but he felt so bad about it that he came right out with it and spent at least five minutes begging for forgiveness.”
“I never knew he told you about that,” you grin at her, “He made me swear not to tell you…”
“And you never would have,” she finishes the sentence slightly differently to how you would have but the overall idea is the same, “You used to be best friends,” she leans against your hand, “I never thought anything would change that.”
“You’re the first woman who ever came between us,” you tell her, cupping the side of her face and brushing your thumb against her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“Don’t be,” you tell her, pulling her closer and running your fingers along her jaw, angling her face towards yours, “You were the first woman who mattered enough.”
She kisses you, not desperately but with intent and you let a hand slip beneath her skirt, brushing the inside of her thighs as she lets her eyes slip closed and her lips linger over yours.
She breathes against your mouth, “Do I still matter enough?”
You brush your fingers against her underwear and watch her instinctive reaction as she rocks forward against your hand.
“You said yourself that nothing really matters,” you murmur, repositioning yourself so you’re lying between her ankles, “But if anything did, it would be you.”
She makes a small noise in the back of her throat and for a moment, you’re unsure whether it’s encouragement or protest so you pause, both hands firmly embedded under her skirt, one tracing patterns against the satin fabric and the other curled around the elastic at the top, tugging downwards insistently. For a moment you stare at her and she stares back, neither of you moving. Then she laughs quietly, “We always do this.”
There is a moment of shuffling and readjusting; she lifts her hips and you drag the panties down her legs slowly, noticing the contrast between silk and skin. She sinks down on the mattress and watches you; you brush your fingers along a faint scar on the inside of her ankle knowing that the wound only left a mark because the skin covers a joint and the ability to heal was comprised by natural stretching.
You don’t speak because words always seem to screw this kind of thing up for you, so you sit up beside her and nudge her shoulder cautiously, waiting for her to respond. She nudges you back, smiling as you move your fingers in slow circles along the back of her thigh. It should be enough confirmation but it’s not; you press your nose against your cheek and mumble in her ear, “We don’t have to.”
She turns her face towards yours; your foreheads brush.
“But we will,” she states simply, pressing her mouth to yours gently. The kiss is slow and lazy, filled with mutual expectation and familiarity because you’ve done this so many times that you both know how it works. When you work your hand up between her legs, your fingers slide a little against the unexpected wetness and she moans a little into your mouth at the contact. You trace circles more pointedly as she opens her eyes and meets yours, smiling against your mouth, embarrassed by her reaction.
“It’s ok,” you tell her, whispering in a warm rush of air against her neck, “Relax.”
Her eyes slip closed and she rests her back against the wall in response, her neck arched gracefully and her hair spilling out behind her. Her teeth pull her bottom lip into her mouth to stifle another of those noises and you’re surprised at how quickly her body responds to your touch because she’s rocking slightly against your hand now. You brush your lips against the exposed skin of her neck, your chin scratching against her shoulder. She reaches up and curls a hand behind your neck, fingers stroking your hair appreciatively and that’s definitely a sign you’re doing something right. She’d never actually tell you if you weren’t because most times, she’s uncharacteristically undemanding in bed but you’ve learnt to read her non-verbal answers to your non-verbal questions.
“God,” she murmurs as you kiss behind her ear, chin resting on her shoulder, “Are you going to join me anytime soon?”
You know she’d come faster and harder probably if you slipped your fingers inside her instead of just momentarily sliding them against the wetness at her entrance and smearing it against her clit but there’s plenty of time for that; this is just build up. You smirk at her and shake your head, pressing one fingertip against that spot a little harder, “This is just you.”
She groans but it jumps in pitch as you make a slow circular motion with your index finger. You’ve learnt, from years of experience, that less is sometimes more and that you really can get a girl off with your non-dominant pinkie if you concentrate on precision rather than being everywhere at once. It’s something you boast about, but really it’s the product of years of surgical training, an unhealthy curiosity with experimentation and too much sex with women you didn’t care about. Still, it has its upside; you watch the skin between her breasts turn pink in the shadowy light and she turns her face towards yours, her breathing almost feathering your skin. You love seeing her like this, five seconds from orgasm with pupils dilated by desire and physical sensation, breathing over your lips and desperately trying to tell you she wants it harder, faster but unable to say the words.
She trembles a little and whimpers, covering your hand in moisture and tensing slightly so you know she’s trying to hold out. She’s so wet and you want to taste her but you know interrupting your rhythm now will be horribly anticlimactic. So you murmur in her ear and increase the speed on your ministrations, “Come for me Ad.”
You know that if her chest wasn’t so tight from trying to breathe she’d tease you about that, make you say please, but she’s shuddering around your hand before she has a chance to regain enough equilibrium to respond. The noises are muted, because she always tries to be quiet but she cries out in a series of ‘ohs’ as you gradually slow the motion of your fingers until she collapses against your side, smiling fondly.
She giggles throatily and looks up at you, “I shouldn’t let you do that.”
“Why?” you return earnestly.
“Because,” she says with a pout in her voice, pushing her palms flat against your knees, “There’s nothing in it for you.”
You lean forward to whisper it in her ear and she shivers at the edge in your tone; “There’s plenty in it for me.”
“Mmm,” she turns her head and kisses you hard, her teeth sinking over you lip as you try to pull away and her hands insistently pressing at your legs until you let them rest against the covers, “There could be more in it for you.”
“Whatever do you mean?” you manage to retort for the sake of banter as she clambers into your lap, rocking her hips against yours with a flirtatiously raised eyebrow.
She reaches for the hand that was previously between her legs and slides her fingers through yours, leaning her head against yours and pulling your entwined hands up between your faces. Smirking, she runs her tongue along the tip of your index finger and sucks it clean pointedly. And if your body wasn’t already responding appropriately, the smell of her on your hands and her tongue on your skin is certainly making you hard. You shift a little beneath her when you notice, but apparently she already has, because she smirks even more and speaks so close to your mouth you can feel her lips brush against yours every so often, “See? It could be a lot better for you.”
You still don’t understand how she can be ready to go again seconds after the first time but you’re hardly going to complain when her wrists disappear beneath your shirt, palms pressed against your stomach and fingers tracing patterns against your skin which are similar to those her tongue is making in your mouth.
You take the opportunity to unclasp her bra, pulling it down her arms until she’s forced to remove her hands from your shirt momentarily in order to throw it aside. Your attempts to take advantage of her freed breasts are met with a stern look and a brush of her hands, which are curling around the hem of your shirt, tugging upwards. Because there are far too many clothes involved at this point, you accommodate her attempts to pull it over your head and immediately set to work unzipping her skirt and sharing her disappointed sentiments when she is forced to lift her body from yours so she can slide it down her legs and tug down on your boxers. The result is a completely naked Addison crouched above your legs and crawling up your body, so you can hardly complain about the visual.
You massage her nipples to hard peaks while she settles herself in your lap once more. You both groan as she grinds against you and her breasts bounce a little beneath your hands; she snickers at your wide-eyed reaction but groans when you press your palms flat against her chest, rubbing them against her nipples in circles similar to those you made against her clit. You smirk a little, because her body recognises the similarities and she braces her weight on her hands in order to rock against you with a greater sense of urgency. You lean back against the wall and roll one nipple between your thumb and first two fingers, intent on teasing her for a while but your hands automatically abandon this pursuit in order to brace her hips when she sinks herself onto you; you both gasp a little at the contact.
She tosses her hair a little and moves backwards and forwards experimentally, “Sorry, I couldn’t wait.”
And you don’t mind at all, so you press against her hips with your hands; hers are clasped behind your neck and she’s resting all her weight against you so the kisses are somewhat more heated than usual; her tongue presses against yours with more force, assisted by gravity. Each time she moves forward, her hard nipples brush against your chest and she’s so wet from the first time that it’s slippery, the soft noise of your bodies sliding together punctuating the silence.
You move your hands to her lower back, pulling her closer and she groans, hands pressing against your face as she meets your eyes, rocking more insistently as she does. You couldn’t say how much time passes because it all seems to happen so quickly but her skin is slick from the exertion now so maybe it’s been longer than you think. Breathing heavily, she presses her lips to yours and she tastes salty, you run your tongue along the edge of her upper lip and she laughs briefly, the trembling of her chest echoed between her legs seconds later. You’re close and there’s a sort of lusty haze between reality and your perception, so maybe you’re imagining it when she mutters a string of curses under her breath and leans forward slightly, altering the angle at which her body is pressed against yours and forcing her clit against your erection with each thrust.
She moans, digging her fingernails into your shoulders and then she’s definitely mumbling a series of dirty requests against your mouth, followed by some repetition of your name and she’s clenching herself around you, face pressed up against your shoulder to silence the shrieks. You push her backwards a little by the stomach so the noises travel across the room and they get louder still when you feel yourself stiffen inside her, gruffly muttering, “God Addison.”
She slumps against you, breathing heavily, her hair damp with sweat and you hug her against you, the lazy contraction of her muscles around you sending a hum of satisfaction through your body.
You stroke her hair affectionately, “Still enjoy sex?”
“Yeah,” she mumbles, “I slept with a lot of guys after you, just to prove that it wasn’t you and that I could. Stupid really,” she readjusts your hips against yours, presumably because it’s uncomfortable for her and you trace her thighs absently as she sinks down again, “But I figured you probably did the same thing.”
You sigh, “I’m sorry Ad. I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” she writhes around above you, “Men never do.”
Privately you think women can be unfair like that, blaming your flaws on your Y-chromosome and not just on you. Still, you don’t say that since she’s shuffling sideways and drawing the sheets around her shoulders. You push her hair from her eyes, curling the damp strands behind her ears and wait for her to speak. She lies next to you and stretches out, her toes sliding against your shins.
“I should go,” she whispers quietly.
“Addison,” you argue, a hand tangled in her hair. You open your mouth to continue but realise that’s the best you’ve got.
“No really,” she kisses you hurriedly, just a soft, chaste meeting of lips, “I have to be in early tomorrow morning.”
“Stay,” you plead quietly, hating that note in your voice that makes it sound like a desperate appeal rather than an earnest request.
She swallows and curls her body around your side but doesn’t give you an answer. One of your silences ensures, and it’s like holding your breath even though both of you are breathing, in and out, because that’s the only sound that disturbs the silence.
“I miss you,” she admits quietly, “It was never easy; we hurt each other and it exhausted me but at the end of the day,” she sighs, “You were there. I miss that. I miss having someone to come home to who smells familiar and,” she burrows further into your side, “And who’s actually there.”
You sigh, “I miss you too.”
“Goodnight,” she whispers in response, fingers tracing your skin and finally curling into a fist against your chest.
“Yeah,” you respond, pressing your lips against the side of her head, “Sweet dreams Addison.”
As a surgeon you appreciate skin in a unique way; its texture, depth and fat consistency, the patterns of muscles and nerves and how they cause wrinkles perpendicular to the contracting muscles. Incisions along these wrinkles heal well. You know that surgical incisions made along Langer’s lines of cleavage force parallel collagen fibres apart without rupturing them; these wounds heal with a minimum of scar tissue. These lines are not so well marked in the face because there is more in interchange of collage fibres in the dermis. Some things you couldn’t explain, some things you couldn’t teach an intern to save your life; the response of skin beneath a scalpel, how much pressure Others are easy: it’s best to dissect around tiny arteries leading of major blood vessels, called perforators, because the increased blood flow helps a wound to heal.
You let your fingers brush against her shoulder and pull her closer; her skin is warm where it presses against yours. Somehow you appreciate that in a way that is strictly non-surgical.
Chapter Nine: Just Remember, This Is Us