There Are Places I Remember 6/?
Author: JeriBearRN
Title: There Are Places I Remember 6/?
Rating: PG for the time being
Summary: There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed; some forever, not for better. Preston Burke and Addison Montgomery left their lives in Seattle for different reasons but never lost touch with each other. Now after two years away from the place they once called home, they find themselves wondering why they ever left.
Disclaimer: These characters are property of Shonda Rhimes/ABC and Grey's Anatomy. They do not belong to me. Reimbursement is not received for fictitious works. The borrowed lyrics are from the song In My Life (There Are Places I Remember) by the Beatles.
AN: For Niceole.
|one| |two| |three| |four| |five|
Addison dragged her feet against the cold hardwood floors of her apartment to the smell of fresh coffee being brewed. She wasn’t used to such a ruckus in the morning coming from her own dwellings. While it may have been a rude awakening five minutes ago, now that Preston was handing her a large mug filled with steaming hot coffee, it was the best wakeup call ever.
“I think you need to sleep on my couch all the time,” Addison commented before taking a sip of the soothing brown liquid and the setting the mug down on the counter. She brought her hand to her temples and massaged gently.
“Headache?” Burke asked with a smug grin as he raised his own coffee cup to his lips.
“Something like that,” She answered with a look of disdain. “You’re making breakfast too? If Cristina doesn’t take you back, I want you.”
With a small chuckle, Burke checked the omelet near completion in the pan, “I didn’t think that you’d mind me foraging through your kitchen for breakfast so long as there was some for you as well.”
“No. Forage away. As a matter of fact, you can forage all the time that way I don’t have to cook. I hate cooking,” She grumbled sitting on the countertop.
Burke smiled as he slid the omelet onto a plate, perfectly timed with a slice of toast popping out of the toaster. He handed the filled plate to her, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Addison shook her head slightly in disbelief at him, “You really are perfect aren’t you? I mean, is there one messed up thing about you at all? It’s disgusting, Preston. You’re disgusting.”
“There’s at least one messed up thing about me,” He assured her, “If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here making you breakfast, would I?”
“I suppose not,” She answered before taking a bite of her toast, “So…what’s the plan for today? Are we going to call it quits for Cristina’s benefit? I can do the angry and jaded ex thing. I’ve got lots of experience in that role.”
“No,” Burke answered with an apologetic smile, “Not yet. The plan for today is working. I have a busy schedule and a lot of patients that need my attention. So today, I’m working.”
“But what about-“ Addison started to protest. She needed to work on his plans so that she didn’t have to think about her own.
“Working,” Burke repeated, putting away the last of his mess. “I need to run home before I head in. I’ll see you at the hospital?”
“Of course,” Addison answered idly, not happy with the decision of today being just a regular day. She stabbed at her breakfast with her fork, waiting until the door was closed and her apartment was empty before muttering a dammit under her breath and heading towards her bathroom to shower.
x-x-x-x-x
Tattered pieces of coffee cup fell to the floor, bit by bit, each little piece another piece of the puzzle, every tiny shred another piece of Cristina’s resolve, gathered into a pile at her feet. Her eyes remained fixed to the cup but she wasn’t looking at it, she wasn’t really looking at anything; she was only thinking.
Thinking was always dangerous activity for her; doubts and thoughts had cost her so much in the past and now was no exception. There was so much she’d hidden from Owen, so much that he didn’t know about her yet.
Cristina didn’t think that he’d be upset with her at first for not mentioning it; it’s not like it was something pressing or important. It was a piece of the past and it didn’t affect the present so much- maybe only a little bit. Now though?
Now he was going to be upset.
She had no intention of telling him anytime soon. Cristina wished that somebody else would mention it, that somebody else could ‘accidentally’ bring up their past so that Owen would know and she wouldn’t feel as guilty. Honestly she didn’t care what he felt about it because he didn’t deal with it and it wasn’t his business, she was too busy wrapped up in how she felt about it to nurse his feelings right now.
The door opened behind her and Cristina heard somebody stumble but she didn’t turn to see who the intruder was. Whoever it was, clearly their bones weren’t broken and therefore not a surgical emergency and completely undeserving of her attention right now.
A couple more curse words coming from a sweet voice however finally caused curiosity to pull her from drowning in her own thoughts and she turned around to see what the disruption was.
Lexie stood there shuffling more than walking in a pair of ridiculously high stiletto heels. Instead of her normal jeans and sweater, she was wearing a black pencil skirt that had to make it pretty close to impossible for her to walk and a button down blouse that was left incredibly low. Her brown hair was twisted up into a bun with a few tendrils hanging down and she looked like anything except Lexie.
Cristina couldn’t help but laugh, “What the hell happened to you?”
“Nothing happened to me,” Lexie stammered, “I’m fine. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” Cristina retorted.
With a very slow and careful gait, Lexie walked towards the bench. It was only a few more feet and she knew she could make it. The skirt was too tight and her feet were aching and if she could only make it a few more feet then she could pull on her scrubs and her comfortable tennis shoes and she wouldn’t have to look at the damn heels for at least another ten hours. She could make a few feet.
“Did you just learn how to walk yesterday?” Cristina quipped, watching her carefully. “Maybe you should try wearing something besides stripper heels.”
“Maybe you should try minding your own business,” Lexie snapped back at her and then felt her face turn red with embarrassment. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. This is entertaining,” The other woman smirked. She needed distraction and Lexie trying to be Addison was certainly enough entertainment for her. It took her mind off of everything else if at least for a few minutes.
Lexie carefully sat down next to her, reaching back to make sure that she would hit her target and not rip her skirt at the same time, “I just don’t get it,” Lexie finally sighed, pulling the chocolate colored Stuart Weitzman heel from her foot . The damn thing was going to take up her lunch money for the next month at least. “How can she be so perfect? How can she walk in these heels and sit in these skirts without splitting a seam? How? Nobody is that perfect. I need her to have one flaw. Like a giant ass or a oozing and festering sore in the middle of her ridiculously perfect face.”
Cristina looked at the young woman next to her, pulling off her heels and rubbing her feet as she tried so hard to compete with a woman that Meredith herself had once been competing with. She couldn’t help but find the irony in all of it and glanced back down to the tattered pieces of paper on the ground.
“Honestly,” Lexie continued, “I don’t even know why I’m worried about it. It’s not like I should even care because Addison doesn’t want to date Mark at all. She’s dating your ex-fiancé. And they’re happy and stuff, right? They look like happy people.”
If Cristina had been a good friend or colleague or whatever twisted relationship it was that she shared with Lexie, she would have given her the reassurance that she was asking for. She would have told her to stop dressing like something that she wasn’t and be secure in who she was but it was almost too entertaining for her not to share the secret she’d known since Burke and Addison said they were dating, “They’re not together,” Cristina answered in a quiet voice, glancing around. “He’s not dating her. It’s not real.”
“They are too. You’ve seen them at Joe’s,” Lexie answered in a sympathetic tone, “It’s really bothering-“
“No,” Cristina sighed, standing up and sending little pieces of coffee cup all over the place, “It’s totally transparent.”
“It doesn’t look transparent to me,” Lexie fought back weakly.
“He-“ Cristina started and then fell quiet. How could she put it into words that Burke doesn’t look at Addison the same way that he looked at her? The same way that he was looking at her last night? She shook her head and bent over to pick up the scraps of Styrofoam. “They’re not together, okay. I just know.”
“Do you miss him?” Lexie asked quietly, watching Cristina. “I mean, because you sound a-almost relieved. When you said they weren’t together. And you obviously care that they’re not together otherwise you w-wouldn’t correct me whenever I say that they’re together. You’d just let me believe that they’re together.”
Cristina looked up at Lexie, her eyes cold. It was definitely something that was off topic with her if Owen didn’t even know about it. She lowered her voice, forced a cold and twisted smirk onto her face, “The only reason I told you is because I enjoy watching you try to walk in those heels and be something that you’ll never be. Addison is impossibly perfect. Ask Meredith. She’d know.”
Lexie watched as Cristina dropped her coffee cup into the trashcan and then followed her across the room with her eyes as she left the locker room. She turned back to the shoe in her hand and sighed heavily. “It’s going to take me a long time to get used to you,” She mumbled to the shoe before carefully laying it in the bottom of her locker.
x-x-x-x-x
Mark sat quietly in his office, trying to focus on the patients he needed to see. For the entirety of his morning his mind had been everywhere that it wasn’t supposed to be. Things had been different for him since Addison had come back to Seattle. Not different like he’d been doing something that he wasn’t supposed to be or different he wanted to, just different.
Lexie was acting different, doing things differently. She was saying things and doing things and trying her best to be everything except for what she was and now she’d taken it to extremes. He half expected her to come home with red hair one day, blue contacts- anything else that would make her not herself.
If she tried any harder, she was going to cease being Lexie altogether.
The sound of heels echoing down the hallway drew his attention up to the door and he paused for a moment. They sounded far too steady to be Lexie and he smiled to himself proudly when Addison appeared in his doorway.
He still knew what she sounded like coming down the hallway.
“Addison, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” He asked with a cocky grin, taking a moment to glance down at her legs and then mentally smacking himself for doing so.
“I have a patient,” Addison answered, glancing up from her file. She pulled it out from the stack in her arms and placed in front of him on the desk. “She’s a twenty-four weeker born last night. Severe cleft lift and palate. I know it’s not emergent but if we fix it now, she’ll grow faster, the family can get her home more quickly- less time with a feeding tube.”
“Is she strong enough?” Mark asked, rubbing the back of his head as he glanced over the notes. Working on extremely low birth weight babies wasn’t necessarily his favorite thing to do.
Addison was really the only person who had the capability of talking him into it.
“Surprisingly, yes. Obviously ventilated with the underdeveloped lungs, but her vital signs have all been within normal limits. I think the sooner we get her into surgery the better. The less trauma that she has to undergo overall- Mark, I know that you don’t like taking on these cases but-“
“I’ll do it,” He answered, picking up the file and handing it to her, “Next week. Let her get some time out of the womb and get adjusted. I’ll take her to surgery on Monday.”
Addison smiled taking the file from him, “The parents will be thrilled. Their son suffered similar circumstances and they’ve had lifelong problems because of late intervention,” She rambled and then stopped, “Really. Thank you, Mark.”
Mark looked up at her, his gaze burning into hers, “You’re welcome Addie,” He said in that rumble of a voice that always turned her stomach in knots and reminded her why she threw away eleven years of a dull marriage for one night with him.
She just wished she could figure out why she threw away 60 days of trying in earnest to prove that he loved her on Alex Karev. That thought still resurfaced feelings of self-loathing, though it didn’t usually take much.
“Well, I-uh…I should go,” Addison stammered a little, walking backwards, her back bumping into the wall. She felt her cheeks redden slightly when he laughed at her and she scowled before turning around to walk out the door.
Casually, she glanced over her shoulder to see Mark’s eyes tracing up her legs and she smiled to herself before continuing down the hallway.
“I’ve still got it,” She mumbled to herself.
Today wasn’t such a bad day after all.
x-x-x-x-x
“More wine?” Addison offered, holding out the bottle after pouring herself another generous glass. Between Mark checking out her legs, getting her preemie into surgery next week and a couple of successful surgeries, Addison had cause to celebrate.
Burke raised his hand, “No thank you. I think I’ve had my fill. You’re going to regret that tomorrow morning. Like you did this morning.”
“You’re no fun, Preston. You should live a little,” Addison smirked, setting the bottle down and raising her glass. “We had good days.”
“You had a good day. I had a busy day,” He corrected her. “I only came over fearing that you may have starved if I didn’t.”
“I’m more than capable of cooking for myself. I only said that you should come over more often so that I didn’t have to cook.”
He smiled but said nothing. It would pain him to admit that he was tired of living in an empty apartment aloud, that he was tired of being so incredibly close to what he wanted yet so impossibly far away at the same time.
“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Addison asked after a swallow of her wine, “More of the same?”
“More of the same,” He echoed, standing to clean up their dishes.
“When are you going to talk to her again?” She asked, helping him clean up. “You can’t just leave it like that. It sounds to me like you were going to get somewhere.”
“Cristina will let me know when it’s time to talk again,” Burke answered confidently, putting the plates away. “I pushed her. Before, I went at my own pace and I never waited for Cristina to do what Cristina wanted. I won’t make the same mistakes again. So tomorrow is more of the same and the day after that. It will be more of the same until Cristina tells me that it’s different.”
Addison smiled warmly at her friend, put her hand on his shoulder. “And when Cristina decides that it’s different, she’ll be very lucky to have you.”
Burke offered a small smile with his disagreement, “I’ll be the lucky one.”
His friend had no reply to that and they continued to clean up from their meal in silence. They parted ways with a hug and a quiet goodbye and Burke left her apartment to head to his own. Slowly he walked down the stairs with the faintest hope of at least catching a glimpse of Cristina.
He’d said that he was letting her take her time, letting her have her space; it was all up to her. It didn’t mean that it wasn’t murder to be apart from her, that it wasn’t painful to wait for more. While Burke was sure that he deserved much more than the pain of waiting for her to come around, it didn’t mean that he enjoyed it.
When he saw Cristina sitting on the edge of his car with her arms crossed, eyes focused on the ground his step faltered and he froze for a moment. He wasn’t really expecting to see or hear from her anytime soon, especially not outside of work. He spoke her name softly, eyes lingering on her form, her sagging shoulders.
She seemed upset.
Cristina cleared her throat, but didn’t raise her gaze to his. “I thought- No, I knew. I knew that you weren’t really with Addison, that you two weren’t together. I’ve never seen your car here, never seen you guys together except at Joe’s or in obvious places. It’s so incredibly transparent. Or it was. And then I was coming home after rounding on my last patient and your car was here. And I don’t care that you’re with her, I don’t. Except I knew that you weren’t but your car is here and you’re never here-“
Burke approached her slowly, stood only a couple of inches in front of her. He spoke her name again, this time more firmly, interrupting her angry rambling. Despite his better judgment he reached out to tip her chin upwards and turn her gaze towards his. “I’m not with her, Cristina. You knew that. You know that,” He spoke softly. “It was just dinner. She’s just a friend.”
“I don’t care,” Cristina answered weakly, pushing his hand away.
“Of course you don’t,” He murmured.
She stood up straighter, her body unbearably close to his and she stayed there, his breath tickling her nose and her eyes fixed on the buttons of his red button-up shirt. She could smell his cologne and almost feel his heart beating as hard as hers. Her eyes traced upwards slowly over his neck to the strong line of his jaw, the dimple in his chin, his lips. Cristina parted her own lips and a shaky breath escaped when she felt his hand move softly to rest on her hip.
Her eyes met his and they glimmered with all of the things she was fighting back. She looked at him through half lidded eyes, her lips close and inviting and her hand clutching the arm of his jacket of its own volition as if she were bracing herself.
“Cristina?” The sound of her own name shouldn’t have made her blood run like ice through her veins, but in that instance, exceptions were to be made.
Though her eyes were closed now in anticipation of what was to come, she could already see the confused and angry glare in Owen’s eyes. She didn’t push Burke away quickly, aware that it would only make her appear guiltier than what she already was. Instead she straightened herself out and cleared her throat slightly.
Owen looked between the two of them incredulously and rather than turning to walk away from them, he walked towards the door of her apartment complex. He obviously expected an explanation.
Cristina only wished that she had one. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing. It was just happening and she’d never be able to explain how she was drawn to Burke in a way that she shouldn’t be.
“Are you okay?” Burke asked, very aware of Owen’s history to physical outbursts, unintentional or not.
She shook her head, “You should go. I’m fine. Nothing happened.”
Reluctantly, he walked around his side of the car watching as Cristina walked towards Hunt. He was afraid to leave her, unsure of whether or not she was really safe. Burke didn’t know the man well enough to really understand what had happened prior to his arrival and while he didn’t want to jump to conclusions, he wasn’t really willing to take chances when it came to Cristina either.
Cristina turned for a moment, looked at Burke with a pained expression and then turned back to Owen. Her head hung as she heard his car pull away and she swallowed hard, hoping to find some sort of words to explain all of this away.
She just wasn’t sure which part she wanted to explain away.
Title: There Are Places I Remember 6/?
Rating: PG for the time being
Summary: There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed; some forever, not for better. Preston Burke and Addison Montgomery left their lives in Seattle for different reasons but never lost touch with each other. Now after two years away from the place they once called home, they find themselves wondering why they ever left.
Disclaimer: These characters are property of Shonda Rhimes/ABC and Grey's Anatomy. They do not belong to me. Reimbursement is not received for fictitious works. The borrowed lyrics are from the song In My Life (There Are Places I Remember) by the Beatles.
AN: For Niceole.
|one| |two| |three| |four| |five|
Addison dragged her feet against the cold hardwood floors of her apartment to the smell of fresh coffee being brewed. She wasn’t used to such a ruckus in the morning coming from her own dwellings. While it may have been a rude awakening five minutes ago, now that Preston was handing her a large mug filled with steaming hot coffee, it was the best wakeup call ever.
“I think you need to sleep on my couch all the time,” Addison commented before taking a sip of the soothing brown liquid and the setting the mug down on the counter. She brought her hand to her temples and massaged gently.
“Headache?” Burke asked with a smug grin as he raised his own coffee cup to his lips.
“Something like that,” She answered with a look of disdain. “You’re making breakfast too? If Cristina doesn’t take you back, I want you.”
With a small chuckle, Burke checked the omelet near completion in the pan, “I didn’t think that you’d mind me foraging through your kitchen for breakfast so long as there was some for you as well.”
“No. Forage away. As a matter of fact, you can forage all the time that way I don’t have to cook. I hate cooking,” She grumbled sitting on the countertop.
Burke smiled as he slid the omelet onto a plate, perfectly timed with a slice of toast popping out of the toaster. He handed the filled plate to her, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Addison shook her head slightly in disbelief at him, “You really are perfect aren’t you? I mean, is there one messed up thing about you at all? It’s disgusting, Preston. You’re disgusting.”
“There’s at least one messed up thing about me,” He assured her, “If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here making you breakfast, would I?”
“I suppose not,” She answered before taking a bite of her toast, “So…what’s the plan for today? Are we going to call it quits for Cristina’s benefit? I can do the angry and jaded ex thing. I’ve got lots of experience in that role.”
“No,” Burke answered with an apologetic smile, “Not yet. The plan for today is working. I have a busy schedule and a lot of patients that need my attention. So today, I’m working.”
“But what about-“ Addison started to protest. She needed to work on his plans so that she didn’t have to think about her own.
“Working,” Burke repeated, putting away the last of his mess. “I need to run home before I head in. I’ll see you at the hospital?”
“Of course,” Addison answered idly, not happy with the decision of today being just a regular day. She stabbed at her breakfast with her fork, waiting until the door was closed and her apartment was empty before muttering a dammit under her breath and heading towards her bathroom to shower.
x-x-x-x-x
Tattered pieces of coffee cup fell to the floor, bit by bit, each little piece another piece of the puzzle, every tiny shred another piece of Cristina’s resolve, gathered into a pile at her feet. Her eyes remained fixed to the cup but she wasn’t looking at it, she wasn’t really looking at anything; she was only thinking.
Thinking was always dangerous activity for her; doubts and thoughts had cost her so much in the past and now was no exception. There was so much she’d hidden from Owen, so much that he didn’t know about her yet.
Cristina didn’t think that he’d be upset with her at first for not mentioning it; it’s not like it was something pressing or important. It was a piece of the past and it didn’t affect the present so much- maybe only a little bit. Now though?
Now he was going to be upset.
She had no intention of telling him anytime soon. Cristina wished that somebody else would mention it, that somebody else could ‘accidentally’ bring up their past so that Owen would know and she wouldn’t feel as guilty. Honestly she didn’t care what he felt about it because he didn’t deal with it and it wasn’t his business, she was too busy wrapped up in how she felt about it to nurse his feelings right now.
The door opened behind her and Cristina heard somebody stumble but she didn’t turn to see who the intruder was. Whoever it was, clearly their bones weren’t broken and therefore not a surgical emergency and completely undeserving of her attention right now.
A couple more curse words coming from a sweet voice however finally caused curiosity to pull her from drowning in her own thoughts and she turned around to see what the disruption was.
Lexie stood there shuffling more than walking in a pair of ridiculously high stiletto heels. Instead of her normal jeans and sweater, she was wearing a black pencil skirt that had to make it pretty close to impossible for her to walk and a button down blouse that was left incredibly low. Her brown hair was twisted up into a bun with a few tendrils hanging down and she looked like anything except Lexie.
Cristina couldn’t help but laugh, “What the hell happened to you?”
“Nothing happened to me,” Lexie stammered, “I’m fine. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” Cristina retorted.
With a very slow and careful gait, Lexie walked towards the bench. It was only a few more feet and she knew she could make it. The skirt was too tight and her feet were aching and if she could only make it a few more feet then she could pull on her scrubs and her comfortable tennis shoes and she wouldn’t have to look at the damn heels for at least another ten hours. She could make a few feet.
“Did you just learn how to walk yesterday?” Cristina quipped, watching her carefully. “Maybe you should try wearing something besides stripper heels.”
“Maybe you should try minding your own business,” Lexie snapped back at her and then felt her face turn red with embarrassment. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. This is entertaining,” The other woman smirked. She needed distraction and Lexie trying to be Addison was certainly enough entertainment for her. It took her mind off of everything else if at least for a few minutes.
Lexie carefully sat down next to her, reaching back to make sure that she would hit her target and not rip her skirt at the same time, “I just don’t get it,” Lexie finally sighed, pulling the chocolate colored Stuart Weitzman heel from her foot . The damn thing was going to take up her lunch money for the next month at least. “How can she be so perfect? How can she walk in these heels and sit in these skirts without splitting a seam? How? Nobody is that perfect. I need her to have one flaw. Like a giant ass or a oozing and festering sore in the middle of her ridiculously perfect face.”
Cristina looked at the young woman next to her, pulling off her heels and rubbing her feet as she tried so hard to compete with a woman that Meredith herself had once been competing with. She couldn’t help but find the irony in all of it and glanced back down to the tattered pieces of paper on the ground.
“Honestly,” Lexie continued, “I don’t even know why I’m worried about it. It’s not like I should even care because Addison doesn’t want to date Mark at all. She’s dating your ex-fiancé. And they’re happy and stuff, right? They look like happy people.”
If Cristina had been a good friend or colleague or whatever twisted relationship it was that she shared with Lexie, she would have given her the reassurance that she was asking for. She would have told her to stop dressing like something that she wasn’t and be secure in who she was but it was almost too entertaining for her not to share the secret she’d known since Burke and Addison said they were dating, “They’re not together,” Cristina answered in a quiet voice, glancing around. “He’s not dating her. It’s not real.”
“They are too. You’ve seen them at Joe’s,” Lexie answered in a sympathetic tone, “It’s really bothering-“
“No,” Cristina sighed, standing up and sending little pieces of coffee cup all over the place, “It’s totally transparent.”
“It doesn’t look transparent to me,” Lexie fought back weakly.
“He-“ Cristina started and then fell quiet. How could she put it into words that Burke doesn’t look at Addison the same way that he looked at her? The same way that he was looking at her last night? She shook her head and bent over to pick up the scraps of Styrofoam. “They’re not together, okay. I just know.”
“Do you miss him?” Lexie asked quietly, watching Cristina. “I mean, because you sound a-almost relieved. When you said they weren’t together. And you obviously care that they’re not together otherwise you w-wouldn’t correct me whenever I say that they’re together. You’d just let me believe that they’re together.”
Cristina looked up at Lexie, her eyes cold. It was definitely something that was off topic with her if Owen didn’t even know about it. She lowered her voice, forced a cold and twisted smirk onto her face, “The only reason I told you is because I enjoy watching you try to walk in those heels and be something that you’ll never be. Addison is impossibly perfect. Ask Meredith. She’d know.”
Lexie watched as Cristina dropped her coffee cup into the trashcan and then followed her across the room with her eyes as she left the locker room. She turned back to the shoe in her hand and sighed heavily. “It’s going to take me a long time to get used to you,” She mumbled to the shoe before carefully laying it in the bottom of her locker.
x-x-x-x-x
Mark sat quietly in his office, trying to focus on the patients he needed to see. For the entirety of his morning his mind had been everywhere that it wasn’t supposed to be. Things had been different for him since Addison had come back to Seattle. Not different like he’d been doing something that he wasn’t supposed to be or different he wanted to, just different.
Lexie was acting different, doing things differently. She was saying things and doing things and trying her best to be everything except for what she was and now she’d taken it to extremes. He half expected her to come home with red hair one day, blue contacts- anything else that would make her not herself.
If she tried any harder, she was going to cease being Lexie altogether.
The sound of heels echoing down the hallway drew his attention up to the door and he paused for a moment. They sounded far too steady to be Lexie and he smiled to himself proudly when Addison appeared in his doorway.
He still knew what she sounded like coming down the hallway.
“Addison, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” He asked with a cocky grin, taking a moment to glance down at her legs and then mentally smacking himself for doing so.
“I have a patient,” Addison answered, glancing up from her file. She pulled it out from the stack in her arms and placed in front of him on the desk. “She’s a twenty-four weeker born last night. Severe cleft lift and palate. I know it’s not emergent but if we fix it now, she’ll grow faster, the family can get her home more quickly- less time with a feeding tube.”
“Is she strong enough?” Mark asked, rubbing the back of his head as he glanced over the notes. Working on extremely low birth weight babies wasn’t necessarily his favorite thing to do.
Addison was really the only person who had the capability of talking him into it.
“Surprisingly, yes. Obviously ventilated with the underdeveloped lungs, but her vital signs have all been within normal limits. I think the sooner we get her into surgery the better. The less trauma that she has to undergo overall- Mark, I know that you don’t like taking on these cases but-“
“I’ll do it,” He answered, picking up the file and handing it to her, “Next week. Let her get some time out of the womb and get adjusted. I’ll take her to surgery on Monday.”
Addison smiled taking the file from him, “The parents will be thrilled. Their son suffered similar circumstances and they’ve had lifelong problems because of late intervention,” She rambled and then stopped, “Really. Thank you, Mark.”
Mark looked up at her, his gaze burning into hers, “You’re welcome Addie,” He said in that rumble of a voice that always turned her stomach in knots and reminded her why she threw away eleven years of a dull marriage for one night with him.
She just wished she could figure out why she threw away 60 days of trying in earnest to prove that he loved her on Alex Karev. That thought still resurfaced feelings of self-loathing, though it didn’t usually take much.
“Well, I-uh…I should go,” Addison stammered a little, walking backwards, her back bumping into the wall. She felt her cheeks redden slightly when he laughed at her and she scowled before turning around to walk out the door.
Casually, she glanced over her shoulder to see Mark’s eyes tracing up her legs and she smiled to herself before continuing down the hallway.
“I’ve still got it,” She mumbled to herself.
Today wasn’t such a bad day after all.
x-x-x-x-x
“More wine?” Addison offered, holding out the bottle after pouring herself another generous glass. Between Mark checking out her legs, getting her preemie into surgery next week and a couple of successful surgeries, Addison had cause to celebrate.
Burke raised his hand, “No thank you. I think I’ve had my fill. You’re going to regret that tomorrow morning. Like you did this morning.”
“You’re no fun, Preston. You should live a little,” Addison smirked, setting the bottle down and raising her glass. “We had good days.”
“You had a good day. I had a busy day,” He corrected her. “I only came over fearing that you may have starved if I didn’t.”
“I’m more than capable of cooking for myself. I only said that you should come over more often so that I didn’t have to cook.”
He smiled but said nothing. It would pain him to admit that he was tired of living in an empty apartment aloud, that he was tired of being so incredibly close to what he wanted yet so impossibly far away at the same time.
“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Addison asked after a swallow of her wine, “More of the same?”
“More of the same,” He echoed, standing to clean up their dishes.
“When are you going to talk to her again?” She asked, helping him clean up. “You can’t just leave it like that. It sounds to me like you were going to get somewhere.”
“Cristina will let me know when it’s time to talk again,” Burke answered confidently, putting the plates away. “I pushed her. Before, I went at my own pace and I never waited for Cristina to do what Cristina wanted. I won’t make the same mistakes again. So tomorrow is more of the same and the day after that. It will be more of the same until Cristina tells me that it’s different.”
Addison smiled warmly at her friend, put her hand on his shoulder. “And when Cristina decides that it’s different, she’ll be very lucky to have you.”
Burke offered a small smile with his disagreement, “I’ll be the lucky one.”
His friend had no reply to that and they continued to clean up from their meal in silence. They parted ways with a hug and a quiet goodbye and Burke left her apartment to head to his own. Slowly he walked down the stairs with the faintest hope of at least catching a glimpse of Cristina.
He’d said that he was letting her take her time, letting her have her space; it was all up to her. It didn’t mean that it wasn’t murder to be apart from her, that it wasn’t painful to wait for more. While Burke was sure that he deserved much more than the pain of waiting for her to come around, it didn’t mean that he enjoyed it.
When he saw Cristina sitting on the edge of his car with her arms crossed, eyes focused on the ground his step faltered and he froze for a moment. He wasn’t really expecting to see or hear from her anytime soon, especially not outside of work. He spoke her name softly, eyes lingering on her form, her sagging shoulders.
She seemed upset.
Cristina cleared her throat, but didn’t raise her gaze to his. “I thought- No, I knew. I knew that you weren’t really with Addison, that you two weren’t together. I’ve never seen your car here, never seen you guys together except at Joe’s or in obvious places. It’s so incredibly transparent. Or it was. And then I was coming home after rounding on my last patient and your car was here. And I don’t care that you’re with her, I don’t. Except I knew that you weren’t but your car is here and you’re never here-“
Burke approached her slowly, stood only a couple of inches in front of her. He spoke her name again, this time more firmly, interrupting her angry rambling. Despite his better judgment he reached out to tip her chin upwards and turn her gaze towards his. “I’m not with her, Cristina. You knew that. You know that,” He spoke softly. “It was just dinner. She’s just a friend.”
“I don’t care,” Cristina answered weakly, pushing his hand away.
“Of course you don’t,” He murmured.
She stood up straighter, her body unbearably close to his and she stayed there, his breath tickling her nose and her eyes fixed on the buttons of his red button-up shirt. She could smell his cologne and almost feel his heart beating as hard as hers. Her eyes traced upwards slowly over his neck to the strong line of his jaw, the dimple in his chin, his lips. Cristina parted her own lips and a shaky breath escaped when she felt his hand move softly to rest on her hip.
Her eyes met his and they glimmered with all of the things she was fighting back. She looked at him through half lidded eyes, her lips close and inviting and her hand clutching the arm of his jacket of its own volition as if she were bracing herself.
“Cristina?” The sound of her own name shouldn’t have made her blood run like ice through her veins, but in that instance, exceptions were to be made.
Though her eyes were closed now in anticipation of what was to come, she could already see the confused and angry glare in Owen’s eyes. She didn’t push Burke away quickly, aware that it would only make her appear guiltier than what she already was. Instead she straightened herself out and cleared her throat slightly.
Owen looked between the two of them incredulously and rather than turning to walk away from them, he walked towards the door of her apartment complex. He obviously expected an explanation.
Cristina only wished that she had one. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing. It was just happening and she’d never be able to explain how she was drawn to Burke in a way that she shouldn’t be.
“Are you okay?” Burke asked, very aware of Owen’s history to physical outbursts, unintentional or not.
She shook her head, “You should go. I’m fine. Nothing happened.”
Reluctantly, he walked around his side of the car watching as Cristina walked towards Hunt. He was afraid to leave her, unsure of whether or not she was really safe. Burke didn’t know the man well enough to really understand what had happened prior to his arrival and while he didn’t want to jump to conclusions, he wasn’t really willing to take chances when it came to Cristina either.
Cristina turned for a moment, looked at Burke with a pained expression and then turned back to Owen. Her head hung as she heard his car pull away and she swallowed hard, hoping to find some sort of words to explain all of this away.
She just wasn’t sure which part she wanted to explain away.