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Blood on the Tracks - 01 - Tangled Up in Blue
Blood on the Tracks - 02 - Simple Twist of Fate
Title: Blood on the Tracks - 03 - You’re a Big Girl Now
Pairing: Addison/Derek. Meredith thinks a lot.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: In which Derek is annoyed with Meredith and mad at Addison, Meredith has trouble hating Addison, Addison is irritated by the entire hospital and, oh, viewfinders and a ziploc baggie.
21 hour turnaround time. This is what happens when you write within canon, I guess.
“Derek...have you ever thought that even if I am Satan and an adulterous bitch that I still might be the love of your life?” Addison puts her hand on the elevator door to keep it from closing as she asks the question. Only a minute earlier she was making jokes about threesomes and now she’s quiet and openly honest. She knows that Meredith is around somewhere, Meredith is always around somewhere, and is either listening in or watching but this time she doesn’t really care. Because the younger woman should know better, should know that someone who walked her way into her life all in black and stilettos isn’t willing to give up a man like Derek quite so easily. The elevator door tries to close on her and she steps in to go back to her hotel.
Even though he said that he wouldn’t take her back and even though she said that wasn’t her intention, it comes up anyway. Eleven years of marriage does that, they think in their own separate ways. Derek doesn’t know whether it was Addison’s love of his life comment or just seeing her again and seeing how much his relationship with Meredith hurt her. Addison knows that she lied to keep the argument as small and unobtrusive as possible.
“Do you think this could work?” She asks softly when they’re in an elevator alone.
He shifts his eyes over to her and answers quickly. “No.”
“Derek...”
He hits the emergency stop button and looks at her. “You cheated on me, Addison. With my best friend.”
“You cheated on me for two months with a twig of an intern who you knew for two hours before you hopped into bed with her.” Addison decides that, for the moment, her relationship with Mark can be left out of the picture.
“Leave her out of it.”
“I really don’t think we can. And why is it worse because it’s Mark? You asked him to check on me when you were going to be late or weren’t going to be home. After a year of that, are you really surprised? You virtually sent him to bed with me. Why aren’t you angry with him, too?”
“I am. He’s not here. It could have been anyone and you chose my best friend. My best friend, Addison. We were friends since we were three. You had to choose him. You took my best friend from me and you took my wife from me. That’s unforgivable.”
“You took my husband and my best friend away from me and yet I’m trying.”
“Savvy’s your best friend, Addison, not me. I didn’t sleep with her.” He reaches to release the red button but her hand catches his and he looks at her and watches the emotions roll across her face.
“There was a day that was really shitty while you were gone. It was a Tuesday and I had already lost three patients since Monday and nurses were still talking behind my back about you and me and Mark, and nothing was going my way and I locked myself in a supply closet. You were the first person I wanted to call and I started crying when I realized I couldn’t. Yeah, Sav’s my best friend but you’re pretty fucking high on the list.” She hits the button and feels the elevator rise again. “So. Do you think it can work?”
Derek walks out as his floor without a word and Addison hates her life a lot more when she sees the look that passes between him and Meredith before Meredith steps into the elevator with her.
“Dr. Grey.”
“Dr. Shepherd.”
Meredith is finding it very hard to hate her ex-boyfriend’s wife and, really, she thinks that she shouldn’t try. It isn’t her fault that Derek didn’t mention that he was married and it isn’t her fault that a mother who needed her help happened to be in Seattle. But she can’t help it. Because Addison cheated on Derek and Derek has never seemed to be the kind of guy who’s worthy of being cheated on. She’s angry with Derek, too, mostly for not telling her about it but also because his “breath of fresh air” description wasn’t enough to justify two months of lying to her. Fresh air isn’t enough. Meredith smiles at Addison when the redhead leaves the elevator and decides to take her own side in the triangle.
--
Meredith Grey does not plead. She hates people who plead with her, she hates people who plead at all and yet here she is pleading with Derek. She hates living her life without him and hates him just a little bit for forcing her to not remember what her life was like before him. And she’s tired of Addison and she’s tired of thinking that every minute the redhead stays is another minute that Derek might think about staying with Addison.
“Okay, here it is. Your choice. It’s simple. Her or me. And I’m sure she’s really great. But, Derek, I love you in a really, really big pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you love you.” She pauses for effect. “So pick me. Choose me. Love me,” enunciating every request, she feels tears start to form at her eyes. “I’ll be at Joe’s tonight, so if you do decide to sign the papers, meet me there.”
Listening to her begging, Derek isn’t sure what he ever saw in her. Maybe he liked the clinginess, the lack of independence that Addison showed with such intense degree. With that type of need, he knew Meredith would never leave him. Addison isn’t the kind of woman who puts up with absent husbands for too long (though he admits that she went longer than he expected, though he certainly wasn’t trying for it) but Meredith? He thinks Meredith definitely would and she’d always be there to come home to at the end of the day no matter how late he was out however many nights in a row. And he likes that, he likes that guarantee. But the pathetic whining and forcing him to make a choice so quickly isn’t anything he wants. It’s been a long day and Addison is easy to hate when she’s on the opposite side of the country but not so easy when she’s on the opposite side of the hospital. Not when he can see her face and hear her voice.
Derek sighs as she walks out without another word. He has no intention of going to Joe’s unless it’s to tell her that Addison’s staying and there will be no divorce papers and she should start learning how to get out of their relationship. He isn’t giving up eleven years of his life just like that, not without knowing that it’s the only choice.
--
“Hey.” Derek catches Addison in the locker room.
She looks up from messing with her shoe, apprehensive. The neutrality in his voice scares her; it generally means that he’s chosen something she doesn’t like but doesn’t want to give it away without saying it first. “Did you sign them?”
“No.” He drops a small, clear plastic bag of shredded paper on the bench next to her. “And I don’t think you wanted me to.”
“What about Meredith?”
“Shooting tequila at Joe’s,” he says with a faked air of detachment. “What about Mark?”
“Fucking a peds nurse in on-call room A13.”
“Specifics, I like that.”
“It’s where I last saw him,” she explains and can’t keep the pain out of her voice.
Derek puts a hand on her shoulder. “What the hell happened in New York?” As much as he’s wanted to turn off the part of his brain that always watches her and always knows how she feels and what she’s thinking, he can’t. It’s been on for fifteen years.
Her other shoe successfully on, she stands up. “It...it just wasn’t quite as happy for me after you left as it seemed to be for you.”
“I thought you said you wanted to make this work.”
“This is about you and me.”
“Mark was a part of that.”
She swings her coat over her shoulders. “Mark was a part of the night you walked in, told him to get the fuck out of your house and away from your wife, yelled at me, locked me out in the rain, told me I make you sick, belittled my explanation, and then disappeared. Derek, you had happy with Meredith. I didn’t. Let’s just leave it there right now.”
He furrows his brows, worried about what Mark may have done to her, but respects her wishes and lets it go. She has a point, anyway: whatever it was happened after he was gone and involved just her and Mark. He wishes her good night and then quickly changes out of his scrubs into real clothing to go across the street to tell Meredith to stop hoping.
--
That a train wreck brings them all back to the hospital is a little bit ironic.
All Derek wants to do while he’s operating on the two people stuck on the pole together is smack Meredith and tell her to get out of his OR, especially when she starts CPR on the dead woman. Bonnie had no chance from the beginning and there isn’t any metaphor or deeper meaning to the fact that he chose someone to live. He had to make a choice because he is a doctor and he couldn’t save both and he chose the one who had the best chance at surviving. Derek’s thankful for Bailey pulling Meredith away because if she’s out of the room (he doesn’t care if she screams and whines and cries as long as she does it where he isn’t), he can focus on saving the man who needs to be saved.
There is no metaphor or deeper meaning.
She’s just hungover. And upset that he chose someone else over her. Hysterical, in the psychiatric sense of the word, and had no business being in an OR even if the only sign of a tequila romance was a headache.
And he just wants her to shut up so he can think clearly.
--
Babies are still hard and Addison suspects that they will be for a while but the hurt will deteriorate into a dull ache which will eventually turn into a fading bruise and at some point she’ll be okay. They’re hard because she gave one up but she thinks that it’s better to have lost one by her own choice and give people their own healthy babies than to have a healthy baby and be forced to tell other people that their child is not okay. Babies still make her smile and always lift her mood so she’s glad that she gives her patient her baby after her chat with Izzie.
It isn’t that she suspected the blonde to jump at the chance - Addison would’ve had the same reaction had their roles been switched - but it was the unfair distaste in the woman’s eyes. She wants to create a flyer and post around the entire hospital and ask that everyone stop hating her because it isn’t her fault that Derek didn’t tell Meredith and it isn’t her fault that Richard needed her help and it isn’t her fault that it all had to happen right now. And she really wants to remind people that she gave Derek every opportunity to leave her and stay with Meredith and Derek didn’t take it.
So, she would conclude in large font at the bottom of the bright yellow paper tacked to every bulletin board and elevator, everyone should hate Derek.
Addison picks up the infant and cuddles it on her shoulder for a moment before carrying it to its mother. It’s a self-comforting habit left over from her exhausted internship days but now that single snapshot moment gives her the smallest sense that everything in her life will be okay: if something that tiny and delicate can survive being born, she can survive through the rest of the day. She manages to sneak a look behind her and sees Izzie laughing and smiling and seeming to enjoy what’s going on and she thinks that maybe, just maybe, she’ll find a way to survive here.
--
He never likes telling family members that a loved one is dead. He’s pretty sure that if he did like it, he’d need to check himself in somewhere. But he’s never gotten used to it, not in all the years he’s been doing it. It’s sad and they sometimes cry but he’s usually immune to the emotion because it isn’t someone he knows and he knows that he tried his best. But Meredith’s outburst in the OR made him think that (though it isn’t a metaphor for anything) he could have saved both patients even though he knows there was no way. Sometime in the middle of telling Bonnie’s fiancée her final wishes, he knows he’s going to lose it soon because the last twenty-four hours have reached and exceeded his emotional quota for the month.
Part of why Derek stayed at the hospital back in New York was because it gave him something to do. Surgery required his focus and his entire mind. If one stray thought entered his head then the scalpel could slip and the patient could die or lose their memory, their speech, their control of their right side. It kept his mind off of Addison and what was happening between the two of them. Instead of trying to fix it, he ran away so he wouldn’t experience it and he wouldn’t run the risk of hurting other people. It was best for everyone, he thought.
But out of surgery, out of a stressful surgery and out of a stressful situation with a dissolving ex-girlfriend, his mind starts working again. And he sees Addison, whom he loves and misses but is really angry with. And he sees Meredith, who is everything Addison isn’t to a fault. He sees Meredith telling him to pick her, choose her, love her (and he can’t get those words out of his head even if he starts humming “It’s a Small World After All”) and he sees Meredith crying about Bonnie having to die. He sees Addison’s red hair spilled out over the Italian sheets, her mouth open in a soft gasp as his best friend moves above her in a steady rhythm, a rhythm that doesn’t exist the first time, and he sees Addison standing outside the door in the rain crying with her hands against the glass panes. He sees Addison smiling on their wedding day and sees Meredith smiling as just a girl in a bar.
Derek bites his lip as Miranda Bailey pushes the emergency button and sets off a ringing alarm that people have become deaf to over the years. He steps to the back of the elevator and braces his hands against the railing, closing his eyes as he lets a few tears fall. He can’t hold them in forever and he’s thankful that it’s Bailey in the elevator instead of Burke or any of the interns. Though he’s only known her for a few months, she seems to be the most human out of anyone in the hospital.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
--
After a shower, Derek goes out of his way to avoid any of her friends and walks out of the hospital with Addison. She links her arm through his and he looks at her, half annoyed because he’s angry with her for cheating and he feels that even though she’s staying in Seattle physical contact should be limited to accidents for a while. Addison smiles at him, parts of her hair falling down into her face, and offers to buy him lunch.
--
They aren’t even sure what they’re arguing about or even if they’re having the same argument or if they’re having two parallel arguments but not with each other. But there’s hand waving and gestures and talking over each other as if the man sitting across from them is supposed to figure it out and solve their problem for them. The bell rings like it’s a boxing tournament only no one’s won anything except a Lifesaver for Addison because the rain is getting to her and her throat hurts after all that shouting and they leave and go to work.
Derek intends his comment about the cute viewfinders to be a compliment and a true answer to her question because it will take him more than two seconds to come up with something real (and there is something real) and it should fill the space. Addison hears differently but covers her reaction and smiles and admits to her inner geekiness and announces that she does have a Best of Seattle book. She’s a little surprised when Derek doesn’t question why there’s a category about viewfinders because he’s always sharp to come back about inane things like that.
“This isn’t going to work if all we see of each other is at work and counseling.” She folds her arms across her chest and leans against a viewfinder. Crossing her ankles, Addison frowns and stares at the concrete before looking up at her husband. She pushes her hair behind her ear in a useless attempt at taming it from the wind. “Or do you not want to make it work? Derek,” she says over the noise of lunchtime traffic below, “tell me now. Tell me that you don’t want to bother and that you want me to get those divorce papers again. Tell me now before I go through the hassle of getting all my shit shipped out here.”
It’s his turn to sigh and he leans against the railing and stares out into the gray clouds. “I do. It’s just...you need to give me a little to get used to the idea of you again.”
“Fifteen years of being with me and it takes a total of two months to forget about me?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
Derek turns around and shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “I can’t possibly describe how it felt to walk in on you with Mark. A lot happened that night after he left, but what I remember is the image of you having sex with my best friend. Give me some time to be able to look at you and not have that flash in my head.”
Addison nods. “Okay.” If she can’t understand the whole feeling, she understands a little bit. Every time she thinks of Mark she sees him on top of one of her favorite nurses.
“Come out to the trailer after work.”
She shakes her head quickly to wake herself up out of her daze, confused at the juxtaposition of his two requests. “What?”
“People hate that we’re staying together enough as it is without seeing us together outside of work so we’re not going to Joe’s. Come out.” As conflicted as he is about her, Derek knows Addison has a point. They can tolerate each other during work (and he thinks that marriage counseling shouldn’t count toward anything because they’re supposed to not get along there) but they haven’t tried outside of work. And that’s a test they need to pass. If they don’t, he’ll tell her he’s not interested - it’ll take a few days to get the packing and shipping of her stuff taken care of anyway - and if it is, they’ll go from there.
“I’m not fishing.”
“Did I ask you to?”
Blood On the Tracks - 04 - Idiot Wind
Blood on the Tracks - 02 - Simple Twist of Fate
Title: Blood on the Tracks - 03 - You’re a Big Girl Now
Pairing: Addison/Derek. Meredith thinks a lot.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: In which Derek is annoyed with Meredith and mad at Addison, Meredith has trouble hating Addison, Addison is irritated by the entire hospital and, oh, viewfinders and a ziploc baggie.
21 hour turnaround time. This is what happens when you write within canon, I guess.
“Derek...have you ever thought that even if I am Satan and an adulterous bitch that I still might be the love of your life?” Addison puts her hand on the elevator door to keep it from closing as she asks the question. Only a minute earlier she was making jokes about threesomes and now she’s quiet and openly honest. She knows that Meredith is around somewhere, Meredith is always around somewhere, and is either listening in or watching but this time she doesn’t really care. Because the younger woman should know better, should know that someone who walked her way into her life all in black and stilettos isn’t willing to give up a man like Derek quite so easily. The elevator door tries to close on her and she steps in to go back to her hotel.
Even though he said that he wouldn’t take her back and even though she said that wasn’t her intention, it comes up anyway. Eleven years of marriage does that, they think in their own separate ways. Derek doesn’t know whether it was Addison’s love of his life comment or just seeing her again and seeing how much his relationship with Meredith hurt her. Addison knows that she lied to keep the argument as small and unobtrusive as possible.
“Do you think this could work?” She asks softly when they’re in an elevator alone.
He shifts his eyes over to her and answers quickly. “No.”
“Derek...”
He hits the emergency stop button and looks at her. “You cheated on me, Addison. With my best friend.”
“You cheated on me for two months with a twig of an intern who you knew for two hours before you hopped into bed with her.” Addison decides that, for the moment, her relationship with Mark can be left out of the picture.
“Leave her out of it.”
“I really don’t think we can. And why is it worse because it’s Mark? You asked him to check on me when you were going to be late or weren’t going to be home. After a year of that, are you really surprised? You virtually sent him to bed with me. Why aren’t you angry with him, too?”
“I am. He’s not here. It could have been anyone and you chose my best friend. My best friend, Addison. We were friends since we were three. You had to choose him. You took my best friend from me and you took my wife from me. That’s unforgivable.”
“You took my husband and my best friend away from me and yet I’m trying.”
“Savvy’s your best friend, Addison, not me. I didn’t sleep with her.” He reaches to release the red button but her hand catches his and he looks at her and watches the emotions roll across her face.
“There was a day that was really shitty while you were gone. It was a Tuesday and I had already lost three patients since Monday and nurses were still talking behind my back about you and me and Mark, and nothing was going my way and I locked myself in a supply closet. You were the first person I wanted to call and I started crying when I realized I couldn’t. Yeah, Sav’s my best friend but you’re pretty fucking high on the list.” She hits the button and feels the elevator rise again. “So. Do you think it can work?”
Derek walks out as his floor without a word and Addison hates her life a lot more when she sees the look that passes between him and Meredith before Meredith steps into the elevator with her.
“Dr. Grey.”
“Dr. Shepherd.”
Meredith is finding it very hard to hate her ex-boyfriend’s wife and, really, she thinks that she shouldn’t try. It isn’t her fault that Derek didn’t mention that he was married and it isn’t her fault that a mother who needed her help happened to be in Seattle. But she can’t help it. Because Addison cheated on Derek and Derek has never seemed to be the kind of guy who’s worthy of being cheated on. She’s angry with Derek, too, mostly for not telling her about it but also because his “breath of fresh air” description wasn’t enough to justify two months of lying to her. Fresh air isn’t enough. Meredith smiles at Addison when the redhead leaves the elevator and decides to take her own side in the triangle.
--
Meredith Grey does not plead. She hates people who plead with her, she hates people who plead at all and yet here she is pleading with Derek. She hates living her life without him and hates him just a little bit for forcing her to not remember what her life was like before him. And she’s tired of Addison and she’s tired of thinking that every minute the redhead stays is another minute that Derek might think about staying with Addison.
“Okay, here it is. Your choice. It’s simple. Her or me. And I’m sure she’s really great. But, Derek, I love you in a really, really big pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you love you.” She pauses for effect. “So pick me. Choose me. Love me,” enunciating every request, she feels tears start to form at her eyes. “I’ll be at Joe’s tonight, so if you do decide to sign the papers, meet me there.”
Listening to her begging, Derek isn’t sure what he ever saw in her. Maybe he liked the clinginess, the lack of independence that Addison showed with such intense degree. With that type of need, he knew Meredith would never leave him. Addison isn’t the kind of woman who puts up with absent husbands for too long (though he admits that she went longer than he expected, though he certainly wasn’t trying for it) but Meredith? He thinks Meredith definitely would and she’d always be there to come home to at the end of the day no matter how late he was out however many nights in a row. And he likes that, he likes that guarantee. But the pathetic whining and forcing him to make a choice so quickly isn’t anything he wants. It’s been a long day and Addison is easy to hate when she’s on the opposite side of the country but not so easy when she’s on the opposite side of the hospital. Not when he can see her face and hear her voice.
Derek sighs as she walks out without another word. He has no intention of going to Joe’s unless it’s to tell her that Addison’s staying and there will be no divorce papers and she should start learning how to get out of their relationship. He isn’t giving up eleven years of his life just like that, not without knowing that it’s the only choice.
--
“Hey.” Derek catches Addison in the locker room.
She looks up from messing with her shoe, apprehensive. The neutrality in his voice scares her; it generally means that he’s chosen something she doesn’t like but doesn’t want to give it away without saying it first. “Did you sign them?”
“No.” He drops a small, clear plastic bag of shredded paper on the bench next to her. “And I don’t think you wanted me to.”
“What about Meredith?”
“Shooting tequila at Joe’s,” he says with a faked air of detachment. “What about Mark?”
“Fucking a peds nurse in on-call room A13.”
“Specifics, I like that.”
“It’s where I last saw him,” she explains and can’t keep the pain out of her voice.
Derek puts a hand on her shoulder. “What the hell happened in New York?” As much as he’s wanted to turn off the part of his brain that always watches her and always knows how she feels and what she’s thinking, he can’t. It’s been on for fifteen years.
Her other shoe successfully on, she stands up. “It...it just wasn’t quite as happy for me after you left as it seemed to be for you.”
“I thought you said you wanted to make this work.”
“This is about you and me.”
“Mark was a part of that.”
She swings her coat over her shoulders. “Mark was a part of the night you walked in, told him to get the fuck out of your house and away from your wife, yelled at me, locked me out in the rain, told me I make you sick, belittled my explanation, and then disappeared. Derek, you had happy with Meredith. I didn’t. Let’s just leave it there right now.”
He furrows his brows, worried about what Mark may have done to her, but respects her wishes and lets it go. She has a point, anyway: whatever it was happened after he was gone and involved just her and Mark. He wishes her good night and then quickly changes out of his scrubs into real clothing to go across the street to tell Meredith to stop hoping.
--
That a train wreck brings them all back to the hospital is a little bit ironic.
All Derek wants to do while he’s operating on the two people stuck on the pole together is smack Meredith and tell her to get out of his OR, especially when she starts CPR on the dead woman. Bonnie had no chance from the beginning and there isn’t any metaphor or deeper meaning to the fact that he chose someone to live. He had to make a choice because he is a doctor and he couldn’t save both and he chose the one who had the best chance at surviving. Derek’s thankful for Bailey pulling Meredith away because if she’s out of the room (he doesn’t care if she screams and whines and cries as long as she does it where he isn’t), he can focus on saving the man who needs to be saved.
There is no metaphor or deeper meaning.
She’s just hungover. And upset that he chose someone else over her. Hysterical, in the psychiatric sense of the word, and had no business being in an OR even if the only sign of a tequila romance was a headache.
And he just wants her to shut up so he can think clearly.
--
Babies are still hard and Addison suspects that they will be for a while but the hurt will deteriorate into a dull ache which will eventually turn into a fading bruise and at some point she’ll be okay. They’re hard because she gave one up but she thinks that it’s better to have lost one by her own choice and give people their own healthy babies than to have a healthy baby and be forced to tell other people that their child is not okay. Babies still make her smile and always lift her mood so she’s glad that she gives her patient her baby after her chat with Izzie.
It isn’t that she suspected the blonde to jump at the chance - Addison would’ve had the same reaction had their roles been switched - but it was the unfair distaste in the woman’s eyes. She wants to create a flyer and post around the entire hospital and ask that everyone stop hating her because it isn’t her fault that Derek didn’t tell Meredith and it isn’t her fault that Richard needed her help and it isn’t her fault that it all had to happen right now. And she really wants to remind people that she gave Derek every opportunity to leave her and stay with Meredith and Derek didn’t take it.
So, she would conclude in large font at the bottom of the bright yellow paper tacked to every bulletin board and elevator, everyone should hate Derek.
Addison picks up the infant and cuddles it on her shoulder for a moment before carrying it to its mother. It’s a self-comforting habit left over from her exhausted internship days but now that single snapshot moment gives her the smallest sense that everything in her life will be okay: if something that tiny and delicate can survive being born, she can survive through the rest of the day. She manages to sneak a look behind her and sees Izzie laughing and smiling and seeming to enjoy what’s going on and she thinks that maybe, just maybe, she’ll find a way to survive here.
--
He never likes telling family members that a loved one is dead. He’s pretty sure that if he did like it, he’d need to check himself in somewhere. But he’s never gotten used to it, not in all the years he’s been doing it. It’s sad and they sometimes cry but he’s usually immune to the emotion because it isn’t someone he knows and he knows that he tried his best. But Meredith’s outburst in the OR made him think that (though it isn’t a metaphor for anything) he could have saved both patients even though he knows there was no way. Sometime in the middle of telling Bonnie’s fiancée her final wishes, he knows he’s going to lose it soon because the last twenty-four hours have reached and exceeded his emotional quota for the month.
Part of why Derek stayed at the hospital back in New York was because it gave him something to do. Surgery required his focus and his entire mind. If one stray thought entered his head then the scalpel could slip and the patient could die or lose their memory, their speech, their control of their right side. It kept his mind off of Addison and what was happening between the two of them. Instead of trying to fix it, he ran away so he wouldn’t experience it and he wouldn’t run the risk of hurting other people. It was best for everyone, he thought.
But out of surgery, out of a stressful surgery and out of a stressful situation with a dissolving ex-girlfriend, his mind starts working again. And he sees Addison, whom he loves and misses but is really angry with. And he sees Meredith, who is everything Addison isn’t to a fault. He sees Meredith telling him to pick her, choose her, love her (and he can’t get those words out of his head even if he starts humming “It’s a Small World After All”) and he sees Meredith crying about Bonnie having to die. He sees Addison’s red hair spilled out over the Italian sheets, her mouth open in a soft gasp as his best friend moves above her in a steady rhythm, a rhythm that doesn’t exist the first time, and he sees Addison standing outside the door in the rain crying with her hands against the glass panes. He sees Addison smiling on their wedding day and sees Meredith smiling as just a girl in a bar.
Derek bites his lip as Miranda Bailey pushes the emergency button and sets off a ringing alarm that people have become deaf to over the years. He steps to the back of the elevator and braces his hands against the railing, closing his eyes as he lets a few tears fall. He can’t hold them in forever and he’s thankful that it’s Bailey in the elevator instead of Burke or any of the interns. Though he’s only known her for a few months, she seems to be the most human out of anyone in the hospital.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
--
After a shower, Derek goes out of his way to avoid any of her friends and walks out of the hospital with Addison. She links her arm through his and he looks at her, half annoyed because he’s angry with her for cheating and he feels that even though she’s staying in Seattle physical contact should be limited to accidents for a while. Addison smiles at him, parts of her hair falling down into her face, and offers to buy him lunch.
--
They aren’t even sure what they’re arguing about or even if they’re having the same argument or if they’re having two parallel arguments but not with each other. But there’s hand waving and gestures and talking over each other as if the man sitting across from them is supposed to figure it out and solve their problem for them. The bell rings like it’s a boxing tournament only no one’s won anything except a Lifesaver for Addison because the rain is getting to her and her throat hurts after all that shouting and they leave and go to work.
Derek intends his comment about the cute viewfinders to be a compliment and a true answer to her question because it will take him more than two seconds to come up with something real (and there is something real) and it should fill the space. Addison hears differently but covers her reaction and smiles and admits to her inner geekiness and announces that she does have a Best of Seattle book. She’s a little surprised when Derek doesn’t question why there’s a category about viewfinders because he’s always sharp to come back about inane things like that.
“This isn’t going to work if all we see of each other is at work and counseling.” She folds her arms across her chest and leans against a viewfinder. Crossing her ankles, Addison frowns and stares at the concrete before looking up at her husband. She pushes her hair behind her ear in a useless attempt at taming it from the wind. “Or do you not want to make it work? Derek,” she says over the noise of lunchtime traffic below, “tell me now. Tell me that you don’t want to bother and that you want me to get those divorce papers again. Tell me now before I go through the hassle of getting all my shit shipped out here.”
It’s his turn to sigh and he leans against the railing and stares out into the gray clouds. “I do. It’s just...you need to give me a little to get used to the idea of you again.”
“Fifteen years of being with me and it takes a total of two months to forget about me?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
Derek turns around and shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “I can’t possibly describe how it felt to walk in on you with Mark. A lot happened that night after he left, but what I remember is the image of you having sex with my best friend. Give me some time to be able to look at you and not have that flash in my head.”
Addison nods. “Okay.” If she can’t understand the whole feeling, she understands a little bit. Every time she thinks of Mark she sees him on top of one of her favorite nurses.
“Come out to the trailer after work.”
She shakes her head quickly to wake herself up out of her daze, confused at the juxtaposition of his two requests. “What?”
“People hate that we’re staying together enough as it is without seeing us together outside of work so we’re not going to Joe’s. Come out.” As conflicted as he is about her, Derek knows Addison has a point. They can tolerate each other during work (and he thinks that marriage counseling shouldn’t count toward anything because they’re supposed to not get along there) but they haven’t tried outside of work. And that’s a test they need to pass. If they don’t, he’ll tell her he’s not interested - it’ll take a few days to get the packing and shipping of her stuff taken care of anyway - and if it is, they’ll go from there.
“I’m not fishing.”
“Did I ask you to?”
Blood On the Tracks - 04 - Idiot Wind