(no subject)
Title: Blood On The Tracks - 01 - Tangled Up in Blue
Pairing: Mark/Addison, a little Mark/Derek.
Rating: PG.
Summary: The beginning of Sara’s attempt at doing something that meshes with canon plot and canon characters even if they don’t always mesh with each other within canon. Follow? Starts the night of adultery and shall follow the show timeline (however looped and convoluted it may be) from there (to a point).
I am, apparently, incapable of one-shots now. Oh well.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” Addison quiets her inner mantra of please be home, please be home, please be home and fiddles with the edge of her shirt, shivering.
“You okay?” Mark welcomes her in out of the rain and shuts the door behind her. He quickly finds her a sweatshirt and politely closes his eyes as she peels off her wet t-shirt and tugs the warmer top over her head.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?” As he watches her kick off her shoes, he thinks that tonight could easily be dubbed Mark’s Night Of Stupid Questions.
She takes a deep breath before saying anything and spits it all out almost in one go. “I cheated on my husband with his best friend and he threw me out in the rain and said that he can’t look at me because I make him nauseous and there’s no way we can go back to being Addison and Derek again, but he said that it was Derek and Addison because it’s all about him.” She sniffles. “And it’s raining and I’m freezing and I’m not comfortable in my own goddamn house and I may have just thrown away my marriage to the love of my life on - no offense - a primal need to get laid. I’m out of wiper fluid and there’s a brake light out and I lost three patients earlier today, my mother isn’t talking to me, the Yankees lost again and my husband threw me outside in a thunderstorm along with half my clothes.”
Without saying anything more, he envelops her in a hug and she sags into him, finally giving in to the tears. He sweeps her up and carries her into his living room and sits down on the couch. He lets her wiggle her way into his lap and he lets go of her with one arm just fast enough to turn off the TV and silence a championship poker game he wasn’t interested in. This is new territory for him. For all his years and relationships (however short they may be) with women, he’s never had one crying in his lap that he can’t soothe with offers of sex. So he does everything he’s seen in movies said women have forced him to watch and quickly discovers that she likes having her back rubbed and soft kisses brushed against her temple and he slowly calms her down.
Addison leans back and awkwardly wipes at her eyes and is surprised when Mark hands her a box of tissues, not expecting him to have one handy.
“Allergies, Addison, pull your head out of the gutter,” he explains when she gives him a look.
At that, she smiles a little but the smile immediately turns to a disapproving pout when she sees just how much eyeliner has smudged off onto the tissue. She sighs and looks up at him, deciding that the tissue doesn’t need to be fiddled with that much. “I can’t go back,” she says with the tone of someone who’s on the verge of losing everything she has.
“He locked you out?” Mark shakes his head in disbelief. He understands that his best friend is angry, even furious, but Derek has some sense of decency.
She shakes her head. “No. But...” Addison trails off and plays with the tissue in her hands again.
He doesn’t really understand, but he nods and kisses her forehead. “You can stay here.” When she looks up at him, she looks a little apprehensive and he gets more worried about her by the second. “I’ll sleep on the couch, you can have the bed.”
Addison almost smiles at his misinterpretation. She’s worried at how it will look if anyone should wonder where she spent the night, not worried that he might try something because she knows he won’t, not right now and not when she’s like this. “No. I mean.” She sighs a short sigh in frustration because she can’t figure out how to say what she wants. “I know that your string of women are in the fuck-me-now-get-out-of-my-bed category so it’s really probably out of your comfort zone but...” she silences as he puts a gentle hand on her arm.
“I know how to cuddle, Addison.” Part of him blinks as he says the word cuddle; it sounds so strange coming out of his mouth, so alien. He smiles, seeing her obvious and badly-hidden relief. Mark circles his arms around her again and shifts his weight so his legs can regain feeling and holds her to him for a while; she seems perfectly content to tuck her knees under her chin and lean her head on his shoulder. When her breathing steadies and he feels that she’s fallen asleep, he slips one arm under her knees and the other around her back and awkwardly stands up to carry her to bed.
“I can walk,” she mumbles but loops her arms around his neck.
Mark smiles and doesn’t respond. He sets her down on his unmade bed and raises a concerned eyebrow when he feels that her shorts are damp from the rain. He was so occupied with making her feel better earlier that he didn’t notice. “Your clothes are wet, Addie. Here.” After rummaging through a few drawers, he comes up with clean boxers and a clean t-shirt in case she doesn’t want to sleep in the sweatshirt and both will be remarkably large on her.
“Okay,” she says meekly, reason and rationality peeking through the tears, and sits up. She looks expectantly at him and knows it’s stupid since his tongue was in questionable places on her body only hours before but it’s protocol now and with an apologetic lopsided smile she asks him to turn around. “All clear,” she announces and hands him the damp clothing when he holds out his hand for it. Her eyes follow him as he walks into his bathroom to drop the shorts and t-shirt into the laundry hamper and she begins to reassess parts of what she thinks about him.
“What?” Mark raises an eyebrow at her expression and then sees what she’s looking at. “You’ve been here before.”
“I know. Just...downstairs. I’ve never been up here before; I didn’t expect organization and cleanliness to travel through the entire place.” She lies down and rests her head on the comfy pillow, amazed at the mattress.
He tugs off his shirt - it has Addison’s tears and eyeliner on it - and drops into bed next to her, turning out the light as he digs his feet under the blankets. Mark knows that she’s avoiding discussing Derek; he may be male, and he may be densely male, but he isn’t so stupid as to believe that she really cares about how clean his bathroom is and that one set of tears will solve it all. He decides not to push her on it for now and he opens his arms to her.
Addison scoots in toward him and tucks her head under his chin and gets as close as she can and nods happily as he envelops her with his strong arms once he’s brought the covers up around them. She’s always viewed Mark as the protective older male friend, the one who she would never sleep with but would beat people up for her even if someone else already had. And as she drifts off to sleep she thinks it kind of funny that sex, something she was convinced would ruin the entire premise of their friendship (husband and best friend excluded, of course), was really an act of protection.
Mark stays up after she falls asleep. He’s awake and though it’s late and he witnessed the same events in that bedroom as she did, he simply came home and took a shower and punched a wall a few times and decided to deal with it later when they both came to him like he knew they would. He hasn’t had the emotional trauma as Addison has - though he knows that it will hurt like hell the next time he sees Derek because the sense of betrayal in the man’s eyes wasn’t entirely directed at his wife - or the physical exhaustion that goes with crying and running away but his mind is awake and won’t stop thinking.
He tries to remember who started it. He knows that she was slamming kitchen drawers and spending too much time with her back to him for everything to be okay but the next thing he remembers is the two of them kissing. If Derek asks, Mark will say that he started it even if he finds out later that he didn’t because he cares too much about Derek to let him believe that the love of his life is the one that started it all (it won’t be pretty if it’s Mark’s fault either, but it will be less ugly than if Derek thinks Addison started it) and he cares too much about Addison to let her go through that kind of fallout. He tries to plot it all out in his head, tries to remember what happened first, second, third all the way until the bedroom door opened just as she was screaming his name. Derek is the kind of guy who won’t accept “It just happened. You know, like sex does” as a response even if it’s the only correct one there is so Mark spends two hours trying to craft an answer to a question he might not even be asked.
Addison shifts in his arms and makes a soft noise as she rearranges herself and her body tenses and Mark knows she’s dreaming and, since he isn’t that densely male, has an idea of the contents of the dream. He considers waking her up but Derek once confided in him that Addison takes hours to fall back asleep if she’s woken up so he lets her sleep and rubs her back hoping it’ll calm her down.
He drifts off just before sunrise and Addison wakes up just a few minutes later. She studies him as he sleeps and wonders exactly what he sees in her that he could choose her over the man he’s known for over thirty years. Thinking about her own best friend, who she’s known for almost the same time, she smiles and softly shakes her head. Try as she might, Addison can’t think of any situation - outside of family and even then it’s questionable - that would put anyone above the woman. As much as she loves Derek and as confused as she is about Mark, she doesn’t care as much about anyone as she does the girl who shared her purple crayon with her the first day of kindergarten. She wants to ask Mark what it is, what part of his relationship with Derek wasn’t strong enough, what part of his relationship with her was so strong to make it okay enough, but she won’t.
She begins to nod off again and she decides that if Derek were to forgive either of them, it would be her. Because she and Derek had thirteen years together, Derek and Mark had a lifetime. And she wakes up out of her almost-sleep with a slight start as she realizes that she might care more about the fact that she may have broken up a thirty-five year friendship than a ten-year marriage.
--
Derek groans as he turns on his cell phone after a long flight and sees twelve missed calls, ten from the same person. The eleventh is his mother because she has eyes and ears everywhere and has somehow heard about it already (though he suspects it’s more of a “feeling” than actual knowledge) and he calls her back first without listening to her message because he can tolerate her.
He deletes all messages from Addison without listening to anything beyond the first pleading words and nearly stumbles as he reaches the top of the escalator on his way to baggage claim as he hears the voice on the other end of the twelfth message.
“I’m sorry, Derek. We’ve been friends since before kindergarten, that’s not what was supposed to happen. Give me a call so I at least know you’re alive. I won’t pick up, I know you don’t really want to talk to me, but I’d like to know that you’re okay wherever you are.”
He debates calling back now but he figures that if he doesn’t do it right now, he’ll forget about it and will have everyone that Mark knows across the United States looking for him within thirty-six hours. So he takes a deep breath and hopes his friend stays true to his word and he hits speed dial three. The hospital is two, Addison is four.
At the beep, he opens his mouth but realizes he doesn’t know what he should say. He gets his wits about him quickly, though.
“It’s me. I, uh, I’m in Seattle. Richard Webber’s been trying to get me out here for years. I think I’m staying for a while, sort stuff out.”
He pauses for a few beats.
“Uhm. Take care of her, okay?” And he hangs up and shoves the phone in his pocket and pushes people aside with insincere apologies as he sees his bag go by.
--
Mark listens to the message while Addison is in the shower and he replays it a few times. He tells himself that he’s looking for nuance in Derek’s voice but it’s really because Derek’s been in his life since he was three and Mark feels a little incomplete with Derek suddenly absent. He almost deletes the message when he’s done listening but then he saves it, knowing Addison will want to know where Derek is (and preferably from Derek’s mouth) and Mark knows that Derek deeply cares about her - even when he’s spent five nights in a row at the hospital - and hearing the tone in his voice when he requests that Mark take care of her might do her some good.
“I should go back,” she announces, checking the time as she dries her hair. “He said that he’d be back in the morning to get some of his stuff. I should be there.”
He tries to quiet her so he can tell her the news but she won’t listen. Eventually he has to grab her arm. “Addison, listen to me.” He waits until she’s silent and looking at him. “He’s not coming back. He’s in Seattle.”
“How do you know? Did you talk to him? Why didn’t you tell me?” She opens her mouth to continue the barrage of questions but his finger on her lips silences her.
“He called and left a message while you were in the shower.”
“Why didn’t you answer? Mark...”
“You really think he wanted to talk to me? He called because I called because I want to know that he’s alive somewhere. No matter how much I like you or how much of a jackass he is for ditching you for work, he’s still my best friend and I need to know that he’s okay.” If it comes down to it, Mark is taking his own side in any argument that involves the three of them. Because he doesn’t want to hurt Addison by choosing Derek over her, but he can’t choose her over Derek, not when he can’t remember not having Derek as his friend. He can’t even remember life before Derek.
“Can I listen to it?” She squeezes out the last drop of water from her hair and drapes the towel back on the bar. Nodding her thanks, she puts the phone up to her ear and listens to the short message. Like Mark, she replays it a few times. Unlike Mark, she admits that it’s because she wants to hear his voice, wants to hear his voice ringing in her head in a tone other than bitter and angry. “He does care,” she says softly, dropping her shoulders and handing the phone back to Mark. She looks up with tears in her eyes. “I didn’t think he did anymore.”
He gives her a quick hug and then asks her what she wants for breakfast, a diversion for both of them.
They end up with cereal because anything Addison suggests Mark shakes his head and says he doesn’t have or can’t make.
Blood on the Tracks - 02 - Simple Twist of Fate
Pairing: Mark/Addison, a little Mark/Derek.
Rating: PG.
Summary: The beginning of Sara’s attempt at doing something that meshes with canon plot and canon characters even if they don’t always mesh with each other within canon. Follow? Starts the night of adultery and shall follow the show timeline (however looped and convoluted it may be) from there (to a point).
I am, apparently, incapable of one-shots now. Oh well.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” Addison quiets her inner mantra of please be home, please be home, please be home and fiddles with the edge of her shirt, shivering.
“You okay?” Mark welcomes her in out of the rain and shuts the door behind her. He quickly finds her a sweatshirt and politely closes his eyes as she peels off her wet t-shirt and tugs the warmer top over her head.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?” As he watches her kick off her shoes, he thinks that tonight could easily be dubbed Mark’s Night Of Stupid Questions.
She takes a deep breath before saying anything and spits it all out almost in one go. “I cheated on my husband with his best friend and he threw me out in the rain and said that he can’t look at me because I make him nauseous and there’s no way we can go back to being Addison and Derek again, but he said that it was Derek and Addison because it’s all about him.” She sniffles. “And it’s raining and I’m freezing and I’m not comfortable in my own goddamn house and I may have just thrown away my marriage to the love of my life on - no offense - a primal need to get laid. I’m out of wiper fluid and there’s a brake light out and I lost three patients earlier today, my mother isn’t talking to me, the Yankees lost again and my husband threw me outside in a thunderstorm along with half my clothes.”
Without saying anything more, he envelops her in a hug and she sags into him, finally giving in to the tears. He sweeps her up and carries her into his living room and sits down on the couch. He lets her wiggle her way into his lap and he lets go of her with one arm just fast enough to turn off the TV and silence a championship poker game he wasn’t interested in. This is new territory for him. For all his years and relationships (however short they may be) with women, he’s never had one crying in his lap that he can’t soothe with offers of sex. So he does everything he’s seen in movies said women have forced him to watch and quickly discovers that she likes having her back rubbed and soft kisses brushed against her temple and he slowly calms her down.
Addison leans back and awkwardly wipes at her eyes and is surprised when Mark hands her a box of tissues, not expecting him to have one handy.
“Allergies, Addison, pull your head out of the gutter,” he explains when she gives him a look.
At that, she smiles a little but the smile immediately turns to a disapproving pout when she sees just how much eyeliner has smudged off onto the tissue. She sighs and looks up at him, deciding that the tissue doesn’t need to be fiddled with that much. “I can’t go back,” she says with the tone of someone who’s on the verge of losing everything she has.
“He locked you out?” Mark shakes his head in disbelief. He understands that his best friend is angry, even furious, but Derek has some sense of decency.
She shakes her head. “No. But...” Addison trails off and plays with the tissue in her hands again.
He doesn’t really understand, but he nods and kisses her forehead. “You can stay here.” When she looks up at him, she looks a little apprehensive and he gets more worried about her by the second. “I’ll sleep on the couch, you can have the bed.”
Addison almost smiles at his misinterpretation. She’s worried at how it will look if anyone should wonder where she spent the night, not worried that he might try something because she knows he won’t, not right now and not when she’s like this. “No. I mean.” She sighs a short sigh in frustration because she can’t figure out how to say what she wants. “I know that your string of women are in the fuck-me-now-get-out-of-my-bed category so it’s really probably out of your comfort zone but...” she silences as he puts a gentle hand on her arm.
“I know how to cuddle, Addison.” Part of him blinks as he says the word cuddle; it sounds so strange coming out of his mouth, so alien. He smiles, seeing her obvious and badly-hidden relief. Mark circles his arms around her again and shifts his weight so his legs can regain feeling and holds her to him for a while; she seems perfectly content to tuck her knees under her chin and lean her head on his shoulder. When her breathing steadies and he feels that she’s fallen asleep, he slips one arm under her knees and the other around her back and awkwardly stands up to carry her to bed.
“I can walk,” she mumbles but loops her arms around his neck.
Mark smiles and doesn’t respond. He sets her down on his unmade bed and raises a concerned eyebrow when he feels that her shorts are damp from the rain. He was so occupied with making her feel better earlier that he didn’t notice. “Your clothes are wet, Addie. Here.” After rummaging through a few drawers, he comes up with clean boxers and a clean t-shirt in case she doesn’t want to sleep in the sweatshirt and both will be remarkably large on her.
“Okay,” she says meekly, reason and rationality peeking through the tears, and sits up. She looks expectantly at him and knows it’s stupid since his tongue was in questionable places on her body only hours before but it’s protocol now and with an apologetic lopsided smile she asks him to turn around. “All clear,” she announces and hands him the damp clothing when he holds out his hand for it. Her eyes follow him as he walks into his bathroom to drop the shorts and t-shirt into the laundry hamper and she begins to reassess parts of what she thinks about him.
“What?” Mark raises an eyebrow at her expression and then sees what she’s looking at. “You’ve been here before.”
“I know. Just...downstairs. I’ve never been up here before; I didn’t expect organization and cleanliness to travel through the entire place.” She lies down and rests her head on the comfy pillow, amazed at the mattress.
He tugs off his shirt - it has Addison’s tears and eyeliner on it - and drops into bed next to her, turning out the light as he digs his feet under the blankets. Mark knows that she’s avoiding discussing Derek; he may be male, and he may be densely male, but he isn’t so stupid as to believe that she really cares about how clean his bathroom is and that one set of tears will solve it all. He decides not to push her on it for now and he opens his arms to her.
Addison scoots in toward him and tucks her head under his chin and gets as close as she can and nods happily as he envelops her with his strong arms once he’s brought the covers up around them. She’s always viewed Mark as the protective older male friend, the one who she would never sleep with but would beat people up for her even if someone else already had. And as she drifts off to sleep she thinks it kind of funny that sex, something she was convinced would ruin the entire premise of their friendship (husband and best friend excluded, of course), was really an act of protection.
Mark stays up after she falls asleep. He’s awake and though it’s late and he witnessed the same events in that bedroom as she did, he simply came home and took a shower and punched a wall a few times and decided to deal with it later when they both came to him like he knew they would. He hasn’t had the emotional trauma as Addison has - though he knows that it will hurt like hell the next time he sees Derek because the sense of betrayal in the man’s eyes wasn’t entirely directed at his wife - or the physical exhaustion that goes with crying and running away but his mind is awake and won’t stop thinking.
He tries to remember who started it. He knows that she was slamming kitchen drawers and spending too much time with her back to him for everything to be okay but the next thing he remembers is the two of them kissing. If Derek asks, Mark will say that he started it even if he finds out later that he didn’t because he cares too much about Derek to let him believe that the love of his life is the one that started it all (it won’t be pretty if it’s Mark’s fault either, but it will be less ugly than if Derek thinks Addison started it) and he cares too much about Addison to let her go through that kind of fallout. He tries to plot it all out in his head, tries to remember what happened first, second, third all the way until the bedroom door opened just as she was screaming his name. Derek is the kind of guy who won’t accept “It just happened. You know, like sex does” as a response even if it’s the only correct one there is so Mark spends two hours trying to craft an answer to a question he might not even be asked.
Addison shifts in his arms and makes a soft noise as she rearranges herself and her body tenses and Mark knows she’s dreaming and, since he isn’t that densely male, has an idea of the contents of the dream. He considers waking her up but Derek once confided in him that Addison takes hours to fall back asleep if she’s woken up so he lets her sleep and rubs her back hoping it’ll calm her down.
He drifts off just before sunrise and Addison wakes up just a few minutes later. She studies him as he sleeps and wonders exactly what he sees in her that he could choose her over the man he’s known for over thirty years. Thinking about her own best friend, who she’s known for almost the same time, she smiles and softly shakes her head. Try as she might, Addison can’t think of any situation - outside of family and even then it’s questionable - that would put anyone above the woman. As much as she loves Derek and as confused as she is about Mark, she doesn’t care as much about anyone as she does the girl who shared her purple crayon with her the first day of kindergarten. She wants to ask Mark what it is, what part of his relationship with Derek wasn’t strong enough, what part of his relationship with her was so strong to make it okay enough, but she won’t.
She begins to nod off again and she decides that if Derek were to forgive either of them, it would be her. Because she and Derek had thirteen years together, Derek and Mark had a lifetime. And she wakes up out of her almost-sleep with a slight start as she realizes that she might care more about the fact that she may have broken up a thirty-five year friendship than a ten-year marriage.
--
Derek groans as he turns on his cell phone after a long flight and sees twelve missed calls, ten from the same person. The eleventh is his mother because she has eyes and ears everywhere and has somehow heard about it already (though he suspects it’s more of a “feeling” than actual knowledge) and he calls her back first without listening to her message because he can tolerate her.
He deletes all messages from Addison without listening to anything beyond the first pleading words and nearly stumbles as he reaches the top of the escalator on his way to baggage claim as he hears the voice on the other end of the twelfth message.
“I’m sorry, Derek. We’ve been friends since before kindergarten, that’s not what was supposed to happen. Give me a call so I at least know you’re alive. I won’t pick up, I know you don’t really want to talk to me, but I’d like to know that you’re okay wherever you are.”
He debates calling back now but he figures that if he doesn’t do it right now, he’ll forget about it and will have everyone that Mark knows across the United States looking for him within thirty-six hours. So he takes a deep breath and hopes his friend stays true to his word and he hits speed dial three. The hospital is two, Addison is four.
At the beep, he opens his mouth but realizes he doesn’t know what he should say. He gets his wits about him quickly, though.
“It’s me. I, uh, I’m in Seattle. Richard Webber’s been trying to get me out here for years. I think I’m staying for a while, sort stuff out.”
He pauses for a few beats.
“Uhm. Take care of her, okay?” And he hangs up and shoves the phone in his pocket and pushes people aside with insincere apologies as he sees his bag go by.
--
Mark listens to the message while Addison is in the shower and he replays it a few times. He tells himself that he’s looking for nuance in Derek’s voice but it’s really because Derek’s been in his life since he was three and Mark feels a little incomplete with Derek suddenly absent. He almost deletes the message when he’s done listening but then he saves it, knowing Addison will want to know where Derek is (and preferably from Derek’s mouth) and Mark knows that Derek deeply cares about her - even when he’s spent five nights in a row at the hospital - and hearing the tone in his voice when he requests that Mark take care of her might do her some good.
“I should go back,” she announces, checking the time as she dries her hair. “He said that he’d be back in the morning to get some of his stuff. I should be there.”
He tries to quiet her so he can tell her the news but she won’t listen. Eventually he has to grab her arm. “Addison, listen to me.” He waits until she’s silent and looking at him. “He’s not coming back. He’s in Seattle.”
“How do you know? Did you talk to him? Why didn’t you tell me?” She opens her mouth to continue the barrage of questions but his finger on her lips silences her.
“He called and left a message while you were in the shower.”
“Why didn’t you answer? Mark...”
“You really think he wanted to talk to me? He called because I called because I want to know that he’s alive somewhere. No matter how much I like you or how much of a jackass he is for ditching you for work, he’s still my best friend and I need to know that he’s okay.” If it comes down to it, Mark is taking his own side in any argument that involves the three of them. Because he doesn’t want to hurt Addison by choosing Derek over her, but he can’t choose her over Derek, not when he can’t remember not having Derek as his friend. He can’t even remember life before Derek.
“Can I listen to it?” She squeezes out the last drop of water from her hair and drapes the towel back on the bar. Nodding her thanks, she puts the phone up to her ear and listens to the short message. Like Mark, she replays it a few times. Unlike Mark, she admits that it’s because she wants to hear his voice, wants to hear his voice ringing in her head in a tone other than bitter and angry. “He does care,” she says softly, dropping her shoulders and handing the phone back to Mark. She looks up with tears in her eyes. “I didn’t think he did anymore.”
He gives her a quick hug and then asks her what she wants for breakfast, a diversion for both of them.
They end up with cereal because anything Addison suggests Mark shakes his head and says he doesn’t have or can’t make.
Blood on the Tracks - 02 - Simple Twist of Fate