(no subject)
01 - No Obstacles, Only Challenges
02 - Girls Like Us
Title: Groove ♠ Champagne Beat Boogie [3/14]
Pairing: Addison, moments of Mark/Addison
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Get the hell out of Dodge.
Arbitrary Note: I am so not kidding about the title. So maybe sometimes I shouldn't go the album-as-fic-title-and-tracks-as-chapters format route.
Mark caught Addison as she was moving the last box of her stuff into her car outside his apartment building. She had hoped to move out completely before he got home, but a shoe problem had gotten in the way of her plan. Addison set the box in her trunk and slammed it shut. Ellie had helped her with most of it but had decided to make a quick exit before Mark could get back, the two sisters deciding that it was probably not the best idea to have Mark and Ellie in the same place at the same time. Not after Addison told her everything. Ellie had a reputation for not only for verbally smacking sense into people but also physically smacking sense into people when they needed it and, though Mark certainly deserved it, she didn’t want to provoke him. She knew he would not be happy once he heard what Addison had to say and she was pretty sure she would hit him and equally pretty sure that he wouldn’t hold true to the Don’t Hit Girls rule since he would probably assume it was all Ellie’s fault. Though the theory was all based in hypotheticals, Ellie and Addison decided it was better to just avoid the situation and have Ellie leave before Mark came home.
“You’re leaving,” he said quietly.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Chief said you were taking time off. Something about space, time to heal on your own, clear your head.” When he realized that he hadn’t seen her in over a week and a half, Mark had urgently asked around to find if anyone knew anything about where she was. He couldn’t figure out why, if everything she said to him the night she caught him in bed with her sister was true, he cared so much.
She nodded again. “Yeah.”
“Where are you going?” He knew it wasn’t any of his business, but he still wanted to know. The Chief had steadfastly refused to tell him and instead told him to grow some balls and ask her himself.
“Boston. I’m staying with Ellie for a while.” Addison saw a look pass over his face before he could mask it and clenched her teeth. “Mark, she is my sister and one of my closest friends. That she ended up in bed with you while you and I were supposed to be together is not her fault. That I’m leaving you isn’t her fault either.”
“You know you could’ve told her we were together just as much as I could have.”
“I know,” she admitted. “And I take some responsibility for that. But Mark, you were the one who should have said no.” Addison took a deep breath. Ellie had calmed her down about talking to Mark and helped her figure out how to say what she wanted to say (and, in the process, Addison discovered a huge advantage to having a lawyer as a sister) but had backed out the moment Addison asked whether she should tell Mark she was pregnant. Ellie had told her that she was on her own there and wasn’t going to get involved.
In a split second, Addison chose to keep her mouth shut.
She decided she would deal with any consequences later but at that moment just needed to get out of town and to her sister’s house in the suburbs of Boston and breathe different air.
“How long are you going to be gone?”
“I don’t know,” she answered moderately truthfully. She had told everyone she would be back and everyone had believed her except the Chief. Addison had caved and told him everything and he said that he understood if she wanted to stay in Boston and would give her nothing less than a phenomenal recommendation if she needed, but that there was always a job in Mt. Sinai for her if she wanted. After she left his office, she knew that it was unlikely she’d ever be permanently in New York again. “But it shouldn’t matter, Mark. We’re done.”
Mark grabbed her arm as she headed around her car to get in and leave. “Addison, so you catch me with one person. Look, I’m trying. I haven’t had sex with anyone in eight days.”
“Wow, eight days,” she deadpanned, mocking him. She had walked out two weeks ago.
He swallowed a nasty retort. “Just give me another chance.”
Addison slid her arm out of his grasp. “She’s not the only one I caught you with. I just kept my mouth shut about the others. No more chances, Mark.” She opened her door and looked straight at him over the roof of the car. “I’m sorry,” she said simply and didn’t offer any insight into her apology before she hopped in and drove off, leaving Mark to wonder whether he had enough beer to make drinking himself out of it worth it or if he should just stick to scotch.
--
“I’m going to kill you.”
“How much can I pay you not to?”
“What the hell did you say to her?”
“Does it matter?”
“Ellie...”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I swear to God, if this thing between me and Addison ends...”
“It has ended, Mark. It’s over between the two of you. And unless you somehow didn’t notice that all of her stuff is out of your apartment and didn’t hear her say that it was over, you don’t need me to tell you that it’s over.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I didn’t say anything, you jackass. Let me off the hook. You could’ve avoided a hell of a lot of hurt to Addison and yourself had you simply answered ‘How’s Addison?’ with ‘I know this is too much information, but naked in my bed every night.’”
“Ellie...”
“You are in no position to bitch about anyone but yourself, Mark Alan Sloan. She’s hurting, she’s always been hurting. Her husband didn’t care enough about her to remember anniversaries or even come home every night, so she turns to you hoping that you’ll give her things that he never did. And now you don’t care enough about her to see that she finally did something you’d been asking her to do for two months, you’re not even faithful to her. To Addison, you and Derek are exactly the same. Both of you claim to love her, both of you ignore her. You do not get to bitch about her, you do not get to bitch about me, you do not get to bitch about anybody but you for ending whatever the hell you had together. She’s running now so she can save herself before she shatters. Do not follow her.”
“Why not?”
“She’s untouchable now, Mark. And so am I.”
Mark stared at the phone in his hands after Ellie hung up on him.
--
Addison swiftly discovered that she was utterly incapable of doing nothing for any extended period of time. Extended period of time translated into four weeks.
She averaged five books every seven days, determined that approximately twenty percent of everything she read wasn’t worth keeping but put it on her sister’s bookshelf anyway, considered starting a scrapbook once she collected her ultrasound prints together but decided that glue might not be her strong suit, decided to clean out Ellie’s refrigerator only to discover that she wasn’t one of those people who left broccoli in the vegetable drawer for three months, became addicted to General Hospital because the frequency with which people awoke from comas perfectly coherent was wrong yet oddly optimistic and, at the start of her second month in Boston picked up the phone and called the Chief of Surgery at Massachusetts General and asked if there was a space for her in his hospital.
She then called Derek and predictably got his voicemail and left a message saying that they probably should talk and did so with the tone of voice that gave away exactly what she wanted to talk about so he wouldn’t return her call with hesitance thinking that she would want to make things work between the two of them. It wasn’t that she didn’t want things to work, because she genuinely thought that (if they tried) they could work out again, but it was that she knew he didn’t want to put the effort forth and given how much her life had changed in four months she wasn’t sure she could put forth the right effort and it would all end in a complete mess. It surprised her how much the decision to get a divorce didn’t faze her. She sighed when she hung up the phone and figured that it was probably something her subconscious had been tossing around for months, maybe years, anyway and that’s why it was so easy.
After that, she called their real estate agent and said that the brownstone would likely be put up for sale soon and that something should be done about that. But before she continued calling and found a number for a moving company, she regained her sensibilities and decided it was probably best to have a place to live before all of her stuff showed up. So she put the phone down and started looking.
“And how was your day?” Ellie asked with a grin after she had given Addison a long-winded answer to the same question that boiled down to “hectic.” She pushed some pasta around her plate and decided that it had probably cooled down too much to enjoy the last bit so she set her fork down and finished her glass of wine instead.
Addison smiled. “I’m starting work at Mass General in two weeks, called Derek - who hasn’t called me back yet - to get the divorce process going and started the ever-annoying search for a place to live that isn’t my sister’s guest room. Not that I don’t love you, but.”
“You can admit it,” Ellie joked, “you’re moving out because you hate my dogs. I know it.”
Schrödinger and Einstein had been a slight point of contention until the two Alaskan Huskies had gotten used to Addison being in the house. Ellie liked to claim it was because Addison made fun of their names - Ellie had chosen them because they sounded cool and physics was the one science she could stand and, she added in lament, no lawyers have good dog names - but Addison claimed it was because they were crazy.
They cleaned up dinner in silence and as Addison finished washing out the saucepot, Ellie hopped up on the counter. “So you’re moving up here.”
“Yeah.” She hung up the towel and leaned on the refrigerator. “I thought about going back to New York, but I don’t think I can. Mark’s going to find out,” she placed her hand on her stomach, just now slightly showing, and she blinked as a thought rushed through her head but she pushed it away, “and going to demand to be in my baby’s life and I don’t want that. Plus, it’s all kind of painful.”
“Addie, Mark’s going to find out anyway. Not that I don’t want you here or that I think you’re making the wrong choice because I do like you and agree that New York isn’t good for you. But Mark’s like the Mafia, he sees and hears everything and if he doesn’t like it, he gets angry.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s going to shoot me.”
“Addison.” Ellie raised her voice in accusation and swiftly shut up her sister. “I don’t like Mark any more than you do right now and I really wish you didn’t have to deal with this. But it’s going to be a lot uglier if you wait or if he hears it through the grapevine. I’ll defend you like crazy, I’ll beat the hell out of him, you know that. But I really don’t want to have to.”
Scrunching up her nose and pouting, Addison knew Ellie was right. She couldn’t find it in herself to be pissed off that her sister was right, even tangentially. In all the years she had been going to Ellie for advice, Addison had never been led astray. Over a bottle of gin one night when Derek first started being nonexistent, they decided that, despite their respective ages, Ellie really was the older sister of the two.
“You’re right,” Addison mumbled. “I’ll do it this week.” She looked up at Ellie giving her a disapproving stare. “Do not give me that look, El. I’ll do it.” Her hand traveled over her stomach again and the same thought fluttered back into her mind.
--
“I have a small problem.”
Ellie looked up from the Sunday comics and spared a quick glance to the toaster in hopes that glaring would make it go faster. “Addie, no problem with you is ever...what is this and why is it in front of me?” She suddenly found the spot where her coffee mug used to sit covered by something Addison handed her and looked at the rest of the table awkwardly in attempt to find an open space to put it.
“A calendar.” Addison pushed it toward her sister. The stray thought had finally gotten to be too much. The calendar was open to four months earlier.
“Well, I know that.” Ellie blinked and studied the neat handwriting in purple pen near the end of the month and then grinned and looked back at Addison. Her toast popped up. “You don’t know who the father is.”
Addison nodded. “I don’t know who the father is.”
♠ Champagne Beat Boogie
02 - Girls Like Us
Title: Groove ♠ Champagne Beat Boogie [3/14]
Pairing: Addison, moments of Mark/Addison
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Get the hell out of Dodge.
Arbitrary Note: I am so not kidding about the title. So maybe sometimes I shouldn't go the album-as-fic-title-and-tracks-as-chapters format route.
Mark caught Addison as she was moving the last box of her stuff into her car outside his apartment building. She had hoped to move out completely before he got home, but a shoe problem had gotten in the way of her plan. Addison set the box in her trunk and slammed it shut. Ellie had helped her with most of it but had decided to make a quick exit before Mark could get back, the two sisters deciding that it was probably not the best idea to have Mark and Ellie in the same place at the same time. Not after Addison told her everything. Ellie had a reputation for not only for verbally smacking sense into people but also physically smacking sense into people when they needed it and, though Mark certainly deserved it, she didn’t want to provoke him. She knew he would not be happy once he heard what Addison had to say and she was pretty sure she would hit him and equally pretty sure that he wouldn’t hold true to the Don’t Hit Girls rule since he would probably assume it was all Ellie’s fault. Though the theory was all based in hypotheticals, Ellie and Addison decided it was better to just avoid the situation and have Ellie leave before Mark came home.
“You’re leaving,” he said quietly.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Chief said you were taking time off. Something about space, time to heal on your own, clear your head.” When he realized that he hadn’t seen her in over a week and a half, Mark had urgently asked around to find if anyone knew anything about where she was. He couldn’t figure out why, if everything she said to him the night she caught him in bed with her sister was true, he cared so much.
She nodded again. “Yeah.”
“Where are you going?” He knew it wasn’t any of his business, but he still wanted to know. The Chief had steadfastly refused to tell him and instead told him to grow some balls and ask her himself.
“Boston. I’m staying with Ellie for a while.” Addison saw a look pass over his face before he could mask it and clenched her teeth. “Mark, she is my sister and one of my closest friends. That she ended up in bed with you while you and I were supposed to be together is not her fault. That I’m leaving you isn’t her fault either.”
“You know you could’ve told her we were together just as much as I could have.”
“I know,” she admitted. “And I take some responsibility for that. But Mark, you were the one who should have said no.” Addison took a deep breath. Ellie had calmed her down about talking to Mark and helped her figure out how to say what she wanted to say (and, in the process, Addison discovered a huge advantage to having a lawyer as a sister) but had backed out the moment Addison asked whether she should tell Mark she was pregnant. Ellie had told her that she was on her own there and wasn’t going to get involved.
In a split second, Addison chose to keep her mouth shut.
She decided she would deal with any consequences later but at that moment just needed to get out of town and to her sister’s house in the suburbs of Boston and breathe different air.
“How long are you going to be gone?”
“I don’t know,” she answered moderately truthfully. She had told everyone she would be back and everyone had believed her except the Chief. Addison had caved and told him everything and he said that he understood if she wanted to stay in Boston and would give her nothing less than a phenomenal recommendation if she needed, but that there was always a job in Mt. Sinai for her if she wanted. After she left his office, she knew that it was unlikely she’d ever be permanently in New York again. “But it shouldn’t matter, Mark. We’re done.”
Mark grabbed her arm as she headed around her car to get in and leave. “Addison, so you catch me with one person. Look, I’m trying. I haven’t had sex with anyone in eight days.”
“Wow, eight days,” she deadpanned, mocking him. She had walked out two weeks ago.
He swallowed a nasty retort. “Just give me another chance.”
Addison slid her arm out of his grasp. “She’s not the only one I caught you with. I just kept my mouth shut about the others. No more chances, Mark.” She opened her door and looked straight at him over the roof of the car. “I’m sorry,” she said simply and didn’t offer any insight into her apology before she hopped in and drove off, leaving Mark to wonder whether he had enough beer to make drinking himself out of it worth it or if he should just stick to scotch.
--
“I’m going to kill you.”
“How much can I pay you not to?”
“What the hell did you say to her?”
“Does it matter?”
“Ellie...”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I swear to God, if this thing between me and Addison ends...”
“It has ended, Mark. It’s over between the two of you. And unless you somehow didn’t notice that all of her stuff is out of your apartment and didn’t hear her say that it was over, you don’t need me to tell you that it’s over.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I didn’t say anything, you jackass. Let me off the hook. You could’ve avoided a hell of a lot of hurt to Addison and yourself had you simply answered ‘How’s Addison?’ with ‘I know this is too much information, but naked in my bed every night.’”
“Ellie...”
“You are in no position to bitch about anyone but yourself, Mark Alan Sloan. She’s hurting, she’s always been hurting. Her husband didn’t care enough about her to remember anniversaries or even come home every night, so she turns to you hoping that you’ll give her things that he never did. And now you don’t care enough about her to see that she finally did something you’d been asking her to do for two months, you’re not even faithful to her. To Addison, you and Derek are exactly the same. Both of you claim to love her, both of you ignore her. You do not get to bitch about her, you do not get to bitch about me, you do not get to bitch about anybody but you for ending whatever the hell you had together. She’s running now so she can save herself before she shatters. Do not follow her.”
“Why not?”
“She’s untouchable now, Mark. And so am I.”
Mark stared at the phone in his hands after Ellie hung up on him.
--
Addison swiftly discovered that she was utterly incapable of doing nothing for any extended period of time. Extended period of time translated into four weeks.
She averaged five books every seven days, determined that approximately twenty percent of everything she read wasn’t worth keeping but put it on her sister’s bookshelf anyway, considered starting a scrapbook once she collected her ultrasound prints together but decided that glue might not be her strong suit, decided to clean out Ellie’s refrigerator only to discover that she wasn’t one of those people who left broccoli in the vegetable drawer for three months, became addicted to General Hospital because the frequency with which people awoke from comas perfectly coherent was wrong yet oddly optimistic and, at the start of her second month in Boston picked up the phone and called the Chief of Surgery at Massachusetts General and asked if there was a space for her in his hospital.
She then called Derek and predictably got his voicemail and left a message saying that they probably should talk and did so with the tone of voice that gave away exactly what she wanted to talk about so he wouldn’t return her call with hesitance thinking that she would want to make things work between the two of them. It wasn’t that she didn’t want things to work, because she genuinely thought that (if they tried) they could work out again, but it was that she knew he didn’t want to put the effort forth and given how much her life had changed in four months she wasn’t sure she could put forth the right effort and it would all end in a complete mess. It surprised her how much the decision to get a divorce didn’t faze her. She sighed when she hung up the phone and figured that it was probably something her subconscious had been tossing around for months, maybe years, anyway and that’s why it was so easy.
After that, she called their real estate agent and said that the brownstone would likely be put up for sale soon and that something should be done about that. But before she continued calling and found a number for a moving company, she regained her sensibilities and decided it was probably best to have a place to live before all of her stuff showed up. So she put the phone down and started looking.
“And how was your day?” Ellie asked with a grin after she had given Addison a long-winded answer to the same question that boiled down to “hectic.” She pushed some pasta around her plate and decided that it had probably cooled down too much to enjoy the last bit so she set her fork down and finished her glass of wine instead.
Addison smiled. “I’m starting work at Mass General in two weeks, called Derek - who hasn’t called me back yet - to get the divorce process going and started the ever-annoying search for a place to live that isn’t my sister’s guest room. Not that I don’t love you, but.”
“You can admit it,” Ellie joked, “you’re moving out because you hate my dogs. I know it.”
Schrödinger and Einstein had been a slight point of contention until the two Alaskan Huskies had gotten used to Addison being in the house. Ellie liked to claim it was because Addison made fun of their names - Ellie had chosen them because they sounded cool and physics was the one science she could stand and, she added in lament, no lawyers have good dog names - but Addison claimed it was because they were crazy.
They cleaned up dinner in silence and as Addison finished washing out the saucepot, Ellie hopped up on the counter. “So you’re moving up here.”
“Yeah.” She hung up the towel and leaned on the refrigerator. “I thought about going back to New York, but I don’t think I can. Mark’s going to find out,” she placed her hand on her stomach, just now slightly showing, and she blinked as a thought rushed through her head but she pushed it away, “and going to demand to be in my baby’s life and I don’t want that. Plus, it’s all kind of painful.”
“Addie, Mark’s going to find out anyway. Not that I don’t want you here or that I think you’re making the wrong choice because I do like you and agree that New York isn’t good for you. But Mark’s like the Mafia, he sees and hears everything and if he doesn’t like it, he gets angry.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s going to shoot me.”
“Addison.” Ellie raised her voice in accusation and swiftly shut up her sister. “I don’t like Mark any more than you do right now and I really wish you didn’t have to deal with this. But it’s going to be a lot uglier if you wait or if he hears it through the grapevine. I’ll defend you like crazy, I’ll beat the hell out of him, you know that. But I really don’t want to have to.”
Scrunching up her nose and pouting, Addison knew Ellie was right. She couldn’t find it in herself to be pissed off that her sister was right, even tangentially. In all the years she had been going to Ellie for advice, Addison had never been led astray. Over a bottle of gin one night when Derek first started being nonexistent, they decided that, despite their respective ages, Ellie really was the older sister of the two.
“You’re right,” Addison mumbled. “I’ll do it this week.” She looked up at Ellie giving her a disapproving stare. “Do not give me that look, El. I’ll do it.” Her hand traveled over her stomach again and the same thought fluttered back into her mind.
--
“I have a small problem.”
Ellie looked up from the Sunday comics and spared a quick glance to the toaster in hopes that glaring would make it go faster. “Addie, no problem with you is ever...what is this and why is it in front of me?” She suddenly found the spot where her coffee mug used to sit covered by something Addison handed her and looked at the rest of the table awkwardly in attempt to find an open space to put it.
“A calendar.” Addison pushed it toward her sister. The stray thought had finally gotten to be too much. The calendar was open to four months earlier.
“Well, I know that.” Ellie blinked and studied the neat handwriting in purple pen near the end of the month and then grinned and looked back at Addison. Her toast popped up. “You don’t know who the father is.”
Addison nodded. “I don’t know who the father is.”
♠ Champagne Beat Boogie