(no subject)
Title: Gravity of Love: Pentacles
Pairing: Mark/Addison
Authors: Sara (sweetnarcosis; eight through king) and Calla (callalily_love; ace through seven)
Rating: NC-17 [though, somehow, there are only two porny ones in here - what's gotten into us?]
Summary: Stability, intellect. Work, passion.
♠ swords
♥ cups
♣ rods
ace
Addison is three weeks into her internship and though she knows she’s done everything right, she can’t help but question all of it. She should be appreciative; her life is good, she’s healthy, she recognizes her potential to be a great doctor, and she has a decent boyfriend who will inevitably end up being a decent husband.
“I did everything I was supposed to.” She admits quietly to Derek’s best friend as they sit together on a Central Park bench taking in the afternoon together with ice cream. “I’m in a great program and I have the guy. So why am I not happy?”
“Hell if I know.” He murmurs. Upon seeing her pout and her hand clench tighter around her sugar cone, fingers dripping with melted strawberry, he reluctantly morphs into a better support system. “Want to, um, talk about it?”
“I thought I had it all, you know?” Addison sighs and takes another lick. “Or I thought I was going to because I’ll marry Derek and complete my residency and have kids with him. It’s this dream that never goes away, but imagining it seems to be better than the reality.”
The corners of his mouth twitch. “And the reality is...?”
“I’m freaked out about being this adult with a tough job and too high of expectations for myself. Then there’s Derek.” She glances over at Mark and grows frustrated with her inability to explain how she feels. “I’m not sure he loves me that way. He should be here, but instead he’s taken on an extra shift which means I’m once again resorting to his best friend. I could probably be happy with him. I could settle for infrequent phone calls, sex that is getting boring, and his lack of presence. I could just stop and accept the reality.”
“You shouldn’t settle for anything less than your dreams.” Mark shakes his head softly. “You have this whole life ahead of you, and you don’t have to live it a specific way just because you think you should. You should expect someone who loves you to make you happy all the time and to not just live with the off chance that you occasionally might be.”
She exhales slowly and considers the honesty and benevolence of his words. “What would you do if you were me?”
“I’d start by getting that ice cream off your face.” He says with a wide smirk.
Her cheeks grow warmer and she wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand, grinning sheepishly when he shakes his head.
“You missed,” he murmurs, leaning towards her and spontaneously pressing his lips against the corner of her mouth.
It’s a warm and soft sensation that is over all too quick, and she smiles in surprised contentment when he pulls back. Neither questions what the potential happiness means.
“I don’t think you got it all.” She tells him, trailing her thumb over parted lips until his find hers again.
two
She’s not always perfect, but for the most part, whether it be from a personal or professional standpoint, she doesn’t make too many mistakes. So she’s a little surprised that she’s purposely screwing up her marriage by screwing a man she shouldn’t be screwing, but it’s really hard to form coherent thoughts at the moment while fingers are twisting inside her and her nipples are being sucked to hard points.
“God, Mark.” She groans as his stubble scratches over chest. He slides another finger into her and she moans again. “Mmm, please don’t stop.”
She drove up to the Hamptons with her husband’s best friend with plans for Derek to join them later, but a massive brain hemorrhage has delayed him and he won't be arriving until tomorrow morning. She knows for certain another neurosurgeon was on duty for the night shift and her husband was supposed to get off in the early evening, but she’s having a hard time being angry with him when her skin is completely flushed and Mark is kissing a teasing path down her stomach.
It feels new and amazing and the first time his tongue circles her clit she arches her shoulders and screams, knowing she’s never had an orgasm like this despite years of dating and a marriage that has lasted nearly eight years. Mark continues curling his fingers and flicking his tongue, not stopping until she’s reached a second orgasm.
“Thank you.” She murmurs when he lets her down slowly and kisses his way back up to her. “Jesus, I haven’t had an orgasm like that ever and...oh.” She gasps when he pushes into her and her muscles twitch around him.
“Okay?” He asks, and she almost laughs, considering the magnitude of what they’re doing and knowing afterwards, when he’s done thoroughly pleasuring her and she’ll no longer be able to walk straight, that he’ll go back to the guestroom across the hall and they’ll both pretend it never happened when her inattentive husband finally makes an appearance.
“Perfect.” She says throatily, rocking her hips beneath him until he starts to thrust. She knows this will probably be the last time for the rest of the weekend that she has sex with Mark (or sex at all, honestly, because she's pretty sure Derek's tongue and fingers are no longer remotely interesting), but there is a pretty good chance her husband will be busy at the hospital next week.
three
They stroll together through Bethesda Terrace, knowing that the real celebration of completing their residency and obtaining medical licenses will take place later when the other member of the trio finishes his shift and joins them as they undergo the process of drinking themselves into an alcoholic oblivion of unnecessary phone calls, jokes that really wouldn’t be funny if they were sober, and Addison getting people’s names wrong.
“I can’t believe we did it.” She grins as they make their way towards the fountain, already crowded with people milling around the structure and peering out at the lake.
“After years of exams, attendings with overinflated egos, and having to suffer through trips to the OB/GYN floor.” He glances sideways with a smirk.
She rolls her eyes, but doesn’t bother to yell at him for it. Mark wouldn’t being Mark if he didn’t take a dig at her specialty every once in awhile. And as it is, he’s become an incredibly good friend, often her support system when her husband of three years spends more time than is needed at the hospital and she needs someone to bitch about it to. “You just had to add that last one, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” He grins confidently, and she returns the smile when they reach the fountain.
“Do you have a penny?”
“You’re going to make more money now.” He rolls his eyes, but digs around in his pocket for spare change. “No more lukewarm Chinese food or anything like that.”
“True.” She cocks her head to the side when he presses the coin into her waiting palm. “You throw one in too and we’ll both make wishes.”
“Because we’re five?” He musters all the sarcasm into it that he can, but he retrieves a penny for himself and watches as she tosses hers into the water with a hopeful smile.
“What did you wish for?” She asks after his penny joins hers in the fountain.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to tell.” He shrugs lightly.
She wrinkles her nose and they start to make their way to the Ramble Arch. “Well, I wished that you, Derek, and I would continue to be successful because of our hard work, become the best in our fields, and always, always be friends.”
“Isn’t it just one wish per penny?” He smirks as she tucks her hair behind her ears. “Anyway, I just wished for one thing, but I don’t expect it to come true.”
“Tell me.” She demands immediately, and his heart beats a little faster when her lips tease up into a warm smile.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’ll just live in the hope that someday it comes true.”
four
A quiet gasp echoes from inside the on-call room when Mark steps in, and he’s about to apologize for intruding and quickly make his way out to continue with the hellish scut work that his status as an intern has plagued him with, but the woman sitting down on the edge of the bed is one of his best friends and she has quiet tears spilling onto her knees as she hugs her legs to her chest.
“Hey.” He murmurs. “This would have been so much more embarrassing if your fiancé was in here with you.”
“Yeah.” Addison laughs a little, voice thick as she chokes out the giggle.
“What’s wrong?” He takes a seat beside her and loops an arm over her shoulders as though he’s been doing it for years.
“Doctor Webber.” She wipes angrily at her eyes with her knuckles. “He just...he...” she shakes her head when tears start to fall faster down her cheeks.
“Should I beat him up for you?” He tugs her closer until she drops her head onto his shoulder. “Or kill him?”
“No.” She offers a watery smile and closes her eyes to prevent more tears from slipping out. “I had a patient up in NICU and he had me pump Jennifer - I mean, the patient - full of medication all night even though he knew she wasn’t going to make it until morning.” She sniffles and glances up at him. “He tricked me, Mark. He knew that helpless, perfect little being wasn’t going to live and he made me stay by her incubator all night doing everything I could and the whole time I was thinking she was hanging in there. He said he was teaching me a lesson. I just...I don’t mean to get attached and really like my patients. I try so hard not to.”
“It’s hard not to sometimes.” He admits, even though a patient has never grown on him as much as the saddened woman in front of him has.
“And now I’m just this pathetic excuse of a doctor who cries every time she loses a patient or a patient’s mother.”
“No, you aren’t.” He tips her chin up with his thumb. “Addison, you’re an amazing doctor, and one day you’re going to be the best in your field. I’m serious.” He hugs her a little tighter when she pouts in disagreement.
She shakes her head. “I’m never going to recover from this.”
“You will.” He counters. “His lesson wasn’t meant to completely change the way you interact with your patients. I’m sure he just wanted to show you that getting attached to something you can’t have - well, help - isn’t worth the pain or false fulfillment.”
“I guess.” She mumbles dismally. “Derek’s scrubbing in for a surgery right now. Can you just stay with me for a little while?”
“Of course.” He kisses the top of her head and doesn’t complain when she cuddles closer to him.
five
He knocks on the brownstone door, hard enough and long enough that the woman inside finally grumbles that she’s coming. He sees her silhouette, fragile and slumped over even through the sidelites, and he inhales deeply when the handle twists and she pulls the door open.
“Hey.” Mark says softly, eyes widening when they hone in on her hair. “Addison, what did...? Your hair.”
“I dyed it.” Her voice lacks any sense of emotion as she leans against the doorframe in need of support for the fragile body snuggled in old sweats of Derek’s and a CBGB shirt.
“I can see that.” He nearly raises a hand to touch one of the golden ends, but presses his wrist into his side when Addison flinches at the movement. “Why?”
“He left.” She whispers. “And I didn’t know what else to do.”
“So you grabbed a bottle and went platinum blonde?” He fails to keep the smirk off his face, and immediately regrets it when her eyes cast down, slowly brimming with tears.
“Honey blonde.” She corrects, crossing her arms tighter around herself. “And I already know it looks bad, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t laugh.”
“I wouldn’t.” He assures. He considers for a moment, and takes a step closer. “It looks really great.”
She shakes her head and shifts back against the door. “Don’t lie. I’m humiliated enough right now. I just lost my husband of eleven years and destroyed everything good in my life. The fact that this color doesn’t go with my skin tone and there’s still some red in the back just adds to the shame.”
“You could...un-dye it.” Mark shrugs lightly and she peers up with tear-filled eyes.
“I should have tried something like this instead of sleeping with his best friend.” She laughs, but it comes out somewhere between a hiccup and sob. “Maybe he would have wanted me if I was blonde and wore dirty clothes all the time. I’m sorry I dragged you into this too.” She swallows thickly. “It just...it was just nice to be wanted for a night.”
“I want you, Addison.” He steps inside, toeing across the tiles as she instinctively steps backwards. “Every night. Not just because on a particular night you had too many glasses of wine, you were lonely, and desperately wanted to scratch an itch and I was there.”
“I don’t know what I want.” She admits quietly when a few tears trickle down her cheeks. She reaches a hand out and pushes the door shut, eyeing him both warily and uncertainly. “I just don’t know and I don’t know how to heal or figure it out.”
“Would you settle for a hug and worry about figuring it out later?” He holds out his arms, and her face crumples as she steps forward and accepts the tender embrace. He cradles the ends of her golden curls and whispers that he’ll never leave her.
six
She marvels at his generosity and how he willingly lets her move all her belongings into his apartment, slowly but surely taking over his life. She appreciates the kindheartedness she never expected from him, and faxes her divorce papers and takes calls with her lawyer nearly two months later. He recognizes the devotion of something she’s been planning to do for weeks, and as a result has never strayed or allowed his eyes to wander when other woman walk by.
“The divorce is finalized.” She tells him over dinner one night. “As of this afternoon.”
He considers. “Should I say congratulations?”
“No.” She wrinkles her nose. “You can congratulate yourself though if you like, for managing to woo me away from my husband - ex-husband - and knock me up in the process.”
“I’ll pat myself on the back later.” He smiles at her cheeks, glowing from a combination of embarrassment and the pregnancy and what he thinks is happiness. “It went okay though? I mean, you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” Her hands unconsciously brush over her stomach. “Hey, you know the futon couch we gave you that’s in your guestroom? He wanted it.”
“Seriously?”
“Apparently while he and his lusty intern were in the trailer a raccoon got in there and managed to destroy the couch they have.” She grins a little, because though the divorce was the oddest combination of amicable and embittered, she laughs a little harder each time she thinks about a raccoon biting at her whiny, indifferent ex-husband’s ankles.
He joins in on her laughter. “And what did you tell him?”
“To fuck off.” She beams proudly.
“You did not.”
“Yeah, I’m not that coldhearted.” She smirks at him. “But I politely told him he could not, though I may have thrown in that I’ve had multiple orgasms on that couch, none of which were from him.”
“And those may have resulted in that.” He points to her stomach, and though she sometimes rolls her eyes at the roughness of his words, she knows he means well in the forms on onesies, calendars, rescheduling surgeries to make her appointments, and placing his hand on her stomach every night as they fall asleep together.
“Yeah.” She leans forward to press her lips against his. “That.”
seven
She evaluates and reevaluates, growing frustrated with the array of options spinning through her head as she stares at the wedding gown in front of her.
Addison has fourteen hours until she’s supposed to march down the aisle and join her groom at the altar. It’s something promising that she thinks will end in failing. It’s not that her cold feet are entirely the result of worries and doubts; she’s simply convinced that she is capable of attaining something more, or maybe someone more.
She loves her fiancé, but there’s another man she can’t stop thinking about. Derek is the obvious and right choice no matter how she assesses it, but Mark Sloan has repeatedly entered her mind for the past few months. He’s intoxicating, and she feels she’s connected with him in way she hasn’t and probably never will with Derek.
He won’t let anyone else see his softer side, but it’s there and she’s seen it a handful of times before. He calls her on it when she’s being petty or superficial, and he’ll willingly take it when she informs him that he’s acting self-centered or offensive. They come from similar families, had similar upbringings, and though she’ll never admit it, they have similar personalities in some senses. It’s that and so much more that draws her to him, and when she should be thinking about the man she’s going to marry she keeps thinking about the one she truly wants to marry.
“Hey.” Mark pushes her door open slightly. “Naomi let me in. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
She sighs and moves away from the bedroom window and fancy gown. “I can’t get married.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Are you scared?”
“There’s someone else.” She bites her bottom lip as hope glimmers in her eyes. “I haven’t cheated and I don’t want to hurt Derek, but there’s someone else. It would be so much easier if I wasn’t because this guy isn’t really the decent guy nor the perfect one, but I can’t stop thinking about him or imagining what it would be like to be more than his friend for the rest of my life. He drives me insane and I can’t think properly when I’m around him, but I’m impossibly in love with him and it physically hurts when I imagine other women with their hands on him. I could marry Derek and probably be happy for a little while, but I know if the other guy feels the way I do, we could be happy for a lifetime.”
“Who’s the guy?” He asks quietly, because though there’s a chance, he refuses to get his hopes up after years of secretly pining after her.
“His best friend.” She answers, deciding this gives him a little more time to process what she just said than a simple you.
“His best friend feels the same way about you.” He answers, striding across the room and closing the distance between them.
eight
“Our, oh God, exam is in three hours.” She pants and closes her eyes and buries her head in his shoulder, clutching at the firm muscles of his back. She pushes her hips up to meet his and bites down on his collarbone to suppress a moan as his thumb smoothes some of her wetness up and around her clit and rubs slow, teasing circles around it.
“Were you really planning on studying more?” Mark whispers deep and low into her ear before brushing his lips across her neck, the hot air and soft movement making her squirm under him.
Addison lets out another gasp when his lips come in contact with her nipple. “Maybe.” She finds herself out of breath when he hooks her legs around his shoulders and pushes into her deeper, letting go of her nipple but not of her clit. All thoughts of the imminent intern exam and the future that hangs completely on her success on it disappear and it’s all simply Mark. “Oh...harder,” she breathily requests. She never does this. Never has inspired spontaneous sex and if she did she certainly wouldn’t do it in the middle of the day at work and she never does anything to distract her the day of a test. Whether it was spelling bees in fifth grade or the MCAT. But she’s on an uncomfortable on-call room bed, naked, her legs spread wide and telling her equally-naked partner to fuck her harder.
Mark tests the waters to see how much harder she wants him to go and then doesn’t stop.
They picked a room in an unused hallway for a reason but Addison still bites her lip as she comes because while no one in a nearby corridor would hear a moan, they’d certainly hear her scream. Mark senses this and leans down and whispers for her to let go as he covers her lips with his and as he groans his own orgasm and spills inside of her, he swallows her screams. And when she bats his hand away because it’s gotten to be too much and he rolls off of her, he thinks that he wouldn’t mind actually hearing those screams.
“You okay?” He asks after he holds her in silence for a few minutes.
She smiles and blinks slowly and gradually starts laughing quietly. “Amazing.”
“Stressed out?”
Addison thinks about that and has a moment when she can’t even remember what she’s supposed to be stressed about. The moment leaves quickly. “Nope.”
“Good.” Mark kisses her temple before deciding that they should probably make themselves presentable and then actually be present somewhere sometime very soon. He hands her her bra and makes to jokingly take her panties but she holds out a hand for them and shakes her head at him for it. “Any time you feel like your head’s gonna blow up like that again, find me."
nine
Somehow, the click of the door doesn’t interrupt them. Addison leans against the wall outside the NICU and exhales deeply and quietly. He had her pinned against the wall, they were close to - maybe completely touching - each other, his shirt was off and his hands were holding hers to the wall. She didn’t open the door any further or stay any longer to find out what was going to happen next.
She spends the rest of the day thinking about Mark and Charlene and what she saw. She spent the beginning of the day thinking about the pregnancy test in her bag that she’s too scared to take. Somewhere around lunch, she really has to pee and figures that she might as well find out now while she can schedule something in the relative privacy of her office, hopefully with one of her trusted colleagues. Another deep breath and she swears loudly and resolutely and doesn’t care if anyone else is around to hear.
“Hey, Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd,” Charlene catches Addison before she leaves at the end of the day. “Look, what you saw...it was my fault. I didn’t know you and Dr. Sloan were together. I’m sorry. Nothing happened. He pushed me away.” Under serious threat of a sexual harassment complaint, Mark forced her to tell Addison exactly what happened.
Addison searches the nurse’s face for signs of lying and actually finds signs of genuine remorse. “Thank you,” she says with a small relieved smile. “Have a good night.”
“Can I believe that the others were the same thing?” She speaks the moment she shuts his apartment door behind her, silencing him from any frantic apology. “That the rumors of you and half of the nursing staff are of them trying to jump you and failing?” Addison slumps against the door and closes her eyes. “Because I’m pregnant, Mark. And the more I think about it, the more I want this baby with you.” She opens her eyes and looks right into his. “But if I can’t believe that you told every single one of them ‘no,’ then I’m running. Tell me I can believe that.”
His heart wants to burst with happiness that she’s pregnant and wants to be with him, but it also wants to break at the desperation in her eyes. “You can believe it,” he whispers and takes a few steps toward her. “And you should.” Another few steps and he’s standing right in front of her. “Because you should believe things that are true.”
ten
Addison stops, the remnants of an exploding snowball creeping down the back of her jacket. She sets her jaw and turns around and gives Mark a look that triple dog dares him to try that again to her face.
He runs.
“Get him, Mommy!” A two year-old girlish voice pipes up from atop a tall snow bank on the side of their driveway.
Addison smiles and follows her daughter’s instructions and picks up a handful of snow and forms it into a ball as she runs after her fiancée. Breathing on it to pack it in completely, she throws it and hits him right where his jacket is a bit too short to cover the edge of his pants completely. Laughing at his face as snow goes down his pants and as he tries very hard not to swear and jokingly call her anything unrespectable, Addison simply shakes her head.
Both of them turn at a high-pitched giggle and watch their daughter put her hands in the air and slide down the mound of snow to land in a soft pile of untouched white snow. “Can I have hot chocolate?” She looks expectantly up at Addison with the eyes of her father, eyes Addison’s never been able to resist.
“Of course,” Mark says, agreeing with Addison’s smile, and walks over to them, still brushing snow off his back. He shoots a look at Addison when she bites her lip against a giggle at how funny he’s walking and it only makes her lose control. As they walk inside, he grabs a small handful of snow and shoves it down the back of her jacket, making sure to get it under her shirt as well.
“We need to do that more often,” Addison smiles and traces a pattern on his bare chest, cuddling into him that night way after their daughter is safely asleep.
He kisses her hair and tugs the blankets up around them. “Once or twice a day isn’t enough?”
“Oh, shut up. I wasn’t talking about sex.”
“I know.” He kisses her softly and loosens his arms so she can dig under the covers and snuggle as closely as possible. “I’m totally teaching her how to make and throw a snowball tomorrow.”
“No you’re not. She’s on my team.”
“Why?” He fakes indignant.
Addison laughs into his chest. “Girl power.”
“In that case,” his hand drifts between them and he brushes his lips against her neck, “I’ll have to knock you up again so it’ll be even.”
page
Mark Sloan never imagined himself having kids. He never imagined himself having a wife or living in that house down the street a bit or finding a life outside of work and bars. He never saw himself having any of that and the lack of vision eventually resulted in a decision that it was something he didn’t want. So he definitely never imagined himself drinking a cup of caffeinated coffee at midnight and staying downstairs to wait for his daughter to come home from a night out with her friends.
He trusts her to make curfew, but he likes to think that she finds it nice to have someone awake when she comes home, let her know that they care and everything. But it’s really to make sure that she’s okay and that nothing bad or stupid happened and so she can get a hug if she wants it before bed.
“I wondered where you were.” Addison blinks sleepily and shrinks into the sweatshirt she hastily pulled on when she realized just how warm and cozy it isn’t outside of bed. She sneaks a look at the clock. “She’ll be home. Come to bed.” She offers him her hand.
“It’s half an hour and I’m awake.”
Seeing that she isn’t going to win, Addison pushes away a few blankets and sits next to him on the couch, immediately pulling them up around her once she’s settled. “You don’t have to stay up, you know.” She pries his hand away from his coffee mug and gently loops his arm around her shoulder and cuddles into his side.
“Yeah, I do.”
Addison recognizes the protective tone in his voice and smiles and rests her head on his chest. “And you were so worried about being a good father.”
knight
“No, it’s okay.” Addison rests her elbows on her knees and closes her eyes, her tailbone beginning to feel the strain of sitting on the cold tile floor of the hospital for too long, waiting. “Derek, I understand. Stop apologizing. Just...go.” She flips her phone shut and sets it next to her and blinks back tears.
“You shouldn’t have said yes,” a soft masculine voice interrupts her thoughts. Mark pauses for a moment and then walks closer and sits next to her.
“You’re his best friend, Mark. You aren’t supposed to be telling me to take back vows I made to him years ago.”
He takes her hand and pulls it away from her face. “It’s not okay, Addie. And Derek does this, he always has, to every girlfriend he’s ever had. You just kept him interested longer than the others and he thought that meant that things would be solid no matter what.”
She sniffles. “He told you that?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “But when you’ve known a guy for over thirty years.”
“Yeah.” She stares at a spot over his shoulder for a moment, fully aware that his hand is still holding hers. “I just don’t get it, Mark. What happened? We were so happy and then it’s like one day I woke up and he wasn’t there.” The floodgates open, both for her words and her tears. “I don’t remember the last time he held me or told me he loved me and really meant it. The sex is infrequent and boring and he’s never home and he used to be so attentive and so caring and now it’s like he doesn’t even notice me.”
Addison isn’t sure whether she crawled into Mark’s arms or he pulled her there, but she curls up in his lap and just cries. His warm hands rub circles into her back and he soothingly whispers that it will be okay in the end and he brushes a few kisses against her temple. She sits there long after she’s calmed, comforted by his arms and how he holds her just right.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What?”
“You were at the wedding, you had the opportunity to speak now, but you forever held your peace instead. Why didn’t you say anything?” She untucks her head from under his chin and looks at him, finding a tissue in the pocket of her lap coat and wiping her nose with it.
“Because I thought that you two were going to make it. That you had broken him of that habit.”
Her face falls and she’s about to write herself up another failure when he continues.
“Nothing is ever good enough for him, Addison. He’s willing to ruin his own life to save those of others. He’s a good guy for that dedication, but he’s not the kind of guy who really wants to get married.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not really either.”
He tips her head up. “I’m just not ready for it.”
queen
The door to the NICU has never been particularly loud. It was designed that way so the babies would have as few interruptions as possible. The room itself is in a darker section of the hallway to prevent the harsh fluorescent light from the chaotic world outside flooding in when the door opens.
She doesn’t notice him come in: her stethoscope is firmly in her ears and she’s calmly listening to an infant heartbeat with her eyes closed. The strong heartbeat that was weak and uneven only hours before gives her hope in her life, boosts her confidence that her strength to keep fighting her own fight won’t fail.
He waits until she’s moved away from the newborn to let her know he’s there. He gently scuffs his shoe on the floor and smiles at her when she turns around, her red hair falling and curling around her face. This room is now the first place he looks for her at the end of the day. She owns it, it’s her territory and she runs it beautifully and confidently, demanding only when a child’s life is in danger.
He’s intimidated by her when she’s in her element and no matter how much he teases her for the pink and for the squishy, he respects her specialty far more than he does his own. Sometimes he gets his chance to truly help someone, someone who is badly scarred or disfigured by a genetic defect, but he finds his days filled with implants, ass lifts and nose jobs. When she comes home and talks about her day, he wishes he’d had the strength to choose something less glamorous and more daring. He wishes that he could go to work every day and do something that might have a chance to fall in line with the sheer beauty of giving a child born thirteen weeks premature a chance to live. But he accepts his loss in his choice of specialty and hopes that simply living with someone that amazing can negate the variety of breast implant possibilities that plagues his day.
king
“What’s wrong?” Mark notices that something’s extremely off the moment she walks in the door. He turns off the stove, feeling that dinner will be put on hold for a while, and goes to give her a hug.
She puts up her hands to stop him, not really wanting to be touched right now. “Can you be Mark my best friend for a moment, not Mark the guy I’m sleeping with?”
“Sure.” He sits on the couch and motions that she should sit next to him, but she doesn’t. She stays standing.
“Okay. I cheated on my husband with his best friend, my husband left me to go to Seattle and some slutty intern, I’m still sleeping with his best friend, and now I’m pregnant. What the hell do I do?” Addison’s on the verge of tears and she wrings her hands frantically as she paces up and down the length of his living room.
“Addison,” Mark stands up, shocked at the news.
“No, Mark. You’re my best friend. We’re not together right now. Remember that. Sit down, tell me what to do.” She already tried Savvy, Weiss, Naomi and Sam and received a get an abortion, don’t tell him, an ask him what he wants, a have the baby in secret, sell it on the black market and a don’t ask me, I’m male. So she figures she needs some more help. “Please.”
He places his hands on her shoulders and gets her to stop pacing. “Addison. What do you want?”
“A hug,” she says meekly, her eyes finding the floor. In the midst of crying and enjoying a phenomenal hug, she sniffles and pulls herself together for a moment of lucidity. “You cannot hurt me, Mark. You can’t.”
“I won’t,” he assures her.
“No.” Addison pulls back and steps away. “You really can’t hurt me. Derek tore me apart and I can’t let anything else happen to me. I want that fucking Cinderella fairy tale and I’ve wanted it since I was five and if you do anything to completely destroy that...” she trails off for a moment, her voice thick with tears and her face flushed. “I...I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She quiets her voice and takes a few deep breaths and then looks at him again. “So tell me what to do, Mark. You’re the best friend I have right now. Can I trust the other guy to put me back together and keep me that way?”
Seeing the woman he loves fall apart in front of him lost and confused and begging him to tell her where she should go from here, Mark wonders how the hell he could have been so stupid. Addison is a strong woman, she doesn’t need him to be okay, she doesn’t need him to survive, she’s completely capable of going out and fixing her own life. Yet she shares his bed every night and comes home with him.
“You can trust him for more than that.”
In the eye of the storm you will see a lonely dove...
Pairing: Mark/Addison
Authors: Sara (sweetnarcosis; eight through king) and Calla (callalily_love; ace through seven)
Rating: NC-17 [though, somehow, there are only two porny ones in here - what's gotten into us?]
Summary: Stability, intellect. Work, passion.
♠ swords
♥ cups
♣ rods
ace
Addison is three weeks into her internship and though she knows she’s done everything right, she can’t help but question all of it. She should be appreciative; her life is good, she’s healthy, she recognizes her potential to be a great doctor, and she has a decent boyfriend who will inevitably end up being a decent husband.
“I did everything I was supposed to.” She admits quietly to Derek’s best friend as they sit together on a Central Park bench taking in the afternoon together with ice cream. “I’m in a great program and I have the guy. So why am I not happy?”
“Hell if I know.” He murmurs. Upon seeing her pout and her hand clench tighter around her sugar cone, fingers dripping with melted strawberry, he reluctantly morphs into a better support system. “Want to, um, talk about it?”
“I thought I had it all, you know?” Addison sighs and takes another lick. “Or I thought I was going to because I’ll marry Derek and complete my residency and have kids with him. It’s this dream that never goes away, but imagining it seems to be better than the reality.”
The corners of his mouth twitch. “And the reality is...?”
“I’m freaked out about being this adult with a tough job and too high of expectations for myself. Then there’s Derek.” She glances over at Mark and grows frustrated with her inability to explain how she feels. “I’m not sure he loves me that way. He should be here, but instead he’s taken on an extra shift which means I’m once again resorting to his best friend. I could probably be happy with him. I could settle for infrequent phone calls, sex that is getting boring, and his lack of presence. I could just stop and accept the reality.”
“You shouldn’t settle for anything less than your dreams.” Mark shakes his head softly. “You have this whole life ahead of you, and you don’t have to live it a specific way just because you think you should. You should expect someone who loves you to make you happy all the time and to not just live with the off chance that you occasionally might be.”
She exhales slowly and considers the honesty and benevolence of his words. “What would you do if you were me?”
“I’d start by getting that ice cream off your face.” He says with a wide smirk.
Her cheeks grow warmer and she wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand, grinning sheepishly when he shakes his head.
“You missed,” he murmurs, leaning towards her and spontaneously pressing his lips against the corner of her mouth.
It’s a warm and soft sensation that is over all too quick, and she smiles in surprised contentment when he pulls back. Neither questions what the potential happiness means.
“I don’t think you got it all.” She tells him, trailing her thumb over parted lips until his find hers again.
two
She’s not always perfect, but for the most part, whether it be from a personal or professional standpoint, she doesn’t make too many mistakes. So she’s a little surprised that she’s purposely screwing up her marriage by screwing a man she shouldn’t be screwing, but it’s really hard to form coherent thoughts at the moment while fingers are twisting inside her and her nipples are being sucked to hard points.
“God, Mark.” She groans as his stubble scratches over chest. He slides another finger into her and she moans again. “Mmm, please don’t stop.”
She drove up to the Hamptons with her husband’s best friend with plans for Derek to join them later, but a massive brain hemorrhage has delayed him and he won't be arriving until tomorrow morning. She knows for certain another neurosurgeon was on duty for the night shift and her husband was supposed to get off in the early evening, but she’s having a hard time being angry with him when her skin is completely flushed and Mark is kissing a teasing path down her stomach.
It feels new and amazing and the first time his tongue circles her clit she arches her shoulders and screams, knowing she’s never had an orgasm like this despite years of dating and a marriage that has lasted nearly eight years. Mark continues curling his fingers and flicking his tongue, not stopping until she’s reached a second orgasm.
“Thank you.” She murmurs when he lets her down slowly and kisses his way back up to her. “Jesus, I haven’t had an orgasm like that ever and...oh.” She gasps when he pushes into her and her muscles twitch around him.
“Okay?” He asks, and she almost laughs, considering the magnitude of what they’re doing and knowing afterwards, when he’s done thoroughly pleasuring her and she’ll no longer be able to walk straight, that he’ll go back to the guestroom across the hall and they’ll both pretend it never happened when her inattentive husband finally makes an appearance.
“Perfect.” She says throatily, rocking her hips beneath him until he starts to thrust. She knows this will probably be the last time for the rest of the weekend that she has sex with Mark (or sex at all, honestly, because she's pretty sure Derek's tongue and fingers are no longer remotely interesting), but there is a pretty good chance her husband will be busy at the hospital next week.
three
They stroll together through Bethesda Terrace, knowing that the real celebration of completing their residency and obtaining medical licenses will take place later when the other member of the trio finishes his shift and joins them as they undergo the process of drinking themselves into an alcoholic oblivion of unnecessary phone calls, jokes that really wouldn’t be funny if they were sober, and Addison getting people’s names wrong.
“I can’t believe we did it.” She grins as they make their way towards the fountain, already crowded with people milling around the structure and peering out at the lake.
“After years of exams, attendings with overinflated egos, and having to suffer through trips to the OB/GYN floor.” He glances sideways with a smirk.
She rolls her eyes, but doesn’t bother to yell at him for it. Mark wouldn’t being Mark if he didn’t take a dig at her specialty every once in awhile. And as it is, he’s become an incredibly good friend, often her support system when her husband of three years spends more time than is needed at the hospital and she needs someone to bitch about it to. “You just had to add that last one, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” He grins confidently, and she returns the smile when they reach the fountain.
“Do you have a penny?”
“You’re going to make more money now.” He rolls his eyes, but digs around in his pocket for spare change. “No more lukewarm Chinese food or anything like that.”
“True.” She cocks her head to the side when he presses the coin into her waiting palm. “You throw one in too and we’ll both make wishes.”
“Because we’re five?” He musters all the sarcasm into it that he can, but he retrieves a penny for himself and watches as she tosses hers into the water with a hopeful smile.
“What did you wish for?” She asks after his penny joins hers in the fountain.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to tell.” He shrugs lightly.
She wrinkles her nose and they start to make their way to the Ramble Arch. “Well, I wished that you, Derek, and I would continue to be successful because of our hard work, become the best in our fields, and always, always be friends.”
“Isn’t it just one wish per penny?” He smirks as she tucks her hair behind her ears. “Anyway, I just wished for one thing, but I don’t expect it to come true.”
“Tell me.” She demands immediately, and his heart beats a little faster when her lips tease up into a warm smile.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’ll just live in the hope that someday it comes true.”
four
A quiet gasp echoes from inside the on-call room when Mark steps in, and he’s about to apologize for intruding and quickly make his way out to continue with the hellish scut work that his status as an intern has plagued him with, but the woman sitting down on the edge of the bed is one of his best friends and she has quiet tears spilling onto her knees as she hugs her legs to her chest.
“Hey.” He murmurs. “This would have been so much more embarrassing if your fiancé was in here with you.”
“Yeah.” Addison laughs a little, voice thick as she chokes out the giggle.
“What’s wrong?” He takes a seat beside her and loops an arm over her shoulders as though he’s been doing it for years.
“Doctor Webber.” She wipes angrily at her eyes with her knuckles. “He just...he...” she shakes her head when tears start to fall faster down her cheeks.
“Should I beat him up for you?” He tugs her closer until she drops her head onto his shoulder. “Or kill him?”
“No.” She offers a watery smile and closes her eyes to prevent more tears from slipping out. “I had a patient up in NICU and he had me pump Jennifer - I mean, the patient - full of medication all night even though he knew she wasn’t going to make it until morning.” She sniffles and glances up at him. “He tricked me, Mark. He knew that helpless, perfect little being wasn’t going to live and he made me stay by her incubator all night doing everything I could and the whole time I was thinking she was hanging in there. He said he was teaching me a lesson. I just...I don’t mean to get attached and really like my patients. I try so hard not to.”
“It’s hard not to sometimes.” He admits, even though a patient has never grown on him as much as the saddened woman in front of him has.
“And now I’m just this pathetic excuse of a doctor who cries every time she loses a patient or a patient’s mother.”
“No, you aren’t.” He tips her chin up with his thumb. “Addison, you’re an amazing doctor, and one day you’re going to be the best in your field. I’m serious.” He hugs her a little tighter when she pouts in disagreement.
She shakes her head. “I’m never going to recover from this.”
“You will.” He counters. “His lesson wasn’t meant to completely change the way you interact with your patients. I’m sure he just wanted to show you that getting attached to something you can’t have - well, help - isn’t worth the pain or false fulfillment.”
“I guess.” She mumbles dismally. “Derek’s scrubbing in for a surgery right now. Can you just stay with me for a little while?”
“Of course.” He kisses the top of her head and doesn’t complain when she cuddles closer to him.
five
He knocks on the brownstone door, hard enough and long enough that the woman inside finally grumbles that she’s coming. He sees her silhouette, fragile and slumped over even through the sidelites, and he inhales deeply when the handle twists and she pulls the door open.
“Hey.” Mark says softly, eyes widening when they hone in on her hair. “Addison, what did...? Your hair.”
“I dyed it.” Her voice lacks any sense of emotion as she leans against the doorframe in need of support for the fragile body snuggled in old sweats of Derek’s and a CBGB shirt.
“I can see that.” He nearly raises a hand to touch one of the golden ends, but presses his wrist into his side when Addison flinches at the movement. “Why?”
“He left.” She whispers. “And I didn’t know what else to do.”
“So you grabbed a bottle and went platinum blonde?” He fails to keep the smirk off his face, and immediately regrets it when her eyes cast down, slowly brimming with tears.
“Honey blonde.” She corrects, crossing her arms tighter around herself. “And I already know it looks bad, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t laugh.”
“I wouldn’t.” He assures. He considers for a moment, and takes a step closer. “It looks really great.”
She shakes her head and shifts back against the door. “Don’t lie. I’m humiliated enough right now. I just lost my husband of eleven years and destroyed everything good in my life. The fact that this color doesn’t go with my skin tone and there’s still some red in the back just adds to the shame.”
“You could...un-dye it.” Mark shrugs lightly and she peers up with tear-filled eyes.
“I should have tried something like this instead of sleeping with his best friend.” She laughs, but it comes out somewhere between a hiccup and sob. “Maybe he would have wanted me if I was blonde and wore dirty clothes all the time. I’m sorry I dragged you into this too.” She swallows thickly. “It just...it was just nice to be wanted for a night.”
“I want you, Addison.” He steps inside, toeing across the tiles as she instinctively steps backwards. “Every night. Not just because on a particular night you had too many glasses of wine, you were lonely, and desperately wanted to scratch an itch and I was there.”
“I don’t know what I want.” She admits quietly when a few tears trickle down her cheeks. She reaches a hand out and pushes the door shut, eyeing him both warily and uncertainly. “I just don’t know and I don’t know how to heal or figure it out.”
“Would you settle for a hug and worry about figuring it out later?” He holds out his arms, and her face crumples as she steps forward and accepts the tender embrace. He cradles the ends of her golden curls and whispers that he’ll never leave her.
six
She marvels at his generosity and how he willingly lets her move all her belongings into his apartment, slowly but surely taking over his life. She appreciates the kindheartedness she never expected from him, and faxes her divorce papers and takes calls with her lawyer nearly two months later. He recognizes the devotion of something she’s been planning to do for weeks, and as a result has never strayed or allowed his eyes to wander when other woman walk by.
“The divorce is finalized.” She tells him over dinner one night. “As of this afternoon.”
He considers. “Should I say congratulations?”
“No.” She wrinkles her nose. “You can congratulate yourself though if you like, for managing to woo me away from my husband - ex-husband - and knock me up in the process.”
“I’ll pat myself on the back later.” He smiles at her cheeks, glowing from a combination of embarrassment and the pregnancy and what he thinks is happiness. “It went okay though? I mean, you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” Her hands unconsciously brush over her stomach. “Hey, you know the futon couch we gave you that’s in your guestroom? He wanted it.”
“Seriously?”
“Apparently while he and his lusty intern were in the trailer a raccoon got in there and managed to destroy the couch they have.” She grins a little, because though the divorce was the oddest combination of amicable and embittered, she laughs a little harder each time she thinks about a raccoon biting at her whiny, indifferent ex-husband’s ankles.
He joins in on her laughter. “And what did you tell him?”
“To fuck off.” She beams proudly.
“You did not.”
“Yeah, I’m not that coldhearted.” She smirks at him. “But I politely told him he could not, though I may have thrown in that I’ve had multiple orgasms on that couch, none of which were from him.”
“And those may have resulted in that.” He points to her stomach, and though she sometimes rolls her eyes at the roughness of his words, she knows he means well in the forms on onesies, calendars, rescheduling surgeries to make her appointments, and placing his hand on her stomach every night as they fall asleep together.
“Yeah.” She leans forward to press her lips against his. “That.”
seven
She evaluates and reevaluates, growing frustrated with the array of options spinning through her head as she stares at the wedding gown in front of her.
Addison has fourteen hours until she’s supposed to march down the aisle and join her groom at the altar. It’s something promising that she thinks will end in failing. It’s not that her cold feet are entirely the result of worries and doubts; she’s simply convinced that she is capable of attaining something more, or maybe someone more.
She loves her fiancé, but there’s another man she can’t stop thinking about. Derek is the obvious and right choice no matter how she assesses it, but Mark Sloan has repeatedly entered her mind for the past few months. He’s intoxicating, and she feels she’s connected with him in way she hasn’t and probably never will with Derek.
He won’t let anyone else see his softer side, but it’s there and she’s seen it a handful of times before. He calls her on it when she’s being petty or superficial, and he’ll willingly take it when she informs him that he’s acting self-centered or offensive. They come from similar families, had similar upbringings, and though she’ll never admit it, they have similar personalities in some senses. It’s that and so much more that draws her to him, and when she should be thinking about the man she’s going to marry she keeps thinking about the one she truly wants to marry.
“Hey.” Mark pushes her door open slightly. “Naomi let me in. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
She sighs and moves away from the bedroom window and fancy gown. “I can’t get married.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Are you scared?”
“There’s someone else.” She bites her bottom lip as hope glimmers in her eyes. “I haven’t cheated and I don’t want to hurt Derek, but there’s someone else. It would be so much easier if I wasn’t because this guy isn’t really the decent guy nor the perfect one, but I can’t stop thinking about him or imagining what it would be like to be more than his friend for the rest of my life. He drives me insane and I can’t think properly when I’m around him, but I’m impossibly in love with him and it physically hurts when I imagine other women with their hands on him. I could marry Derek and probably be happy for a little while, but I know if the other guy feels the way I do, we could be happy for a lifetime.”
“Who’s the guy?” He asks quietly, because though there’s a chance, he refuses to get his hopes up after years of secretly pining after her.
“His best friend.” She answers, deciding this gives him a little more time to process what she just said than a simple you.
“His best friend feels the same way about you.” He answers, striding across the room and closing the distance between them.
eight
“Our, oh God, exam is in three hours.” She pants and closes her eyes and buries her head in his shoulder, clutching at the firm muscles of his back. She pushes her hips up to meet his and bites down on his collarbone to suppress a moan as his thumb smoothes some of her wetness up and around her clit and rubs slow, teasing circles around it.
“Were you really planning on studying more?” Mark whispers deep and low into her ear before brushing his lips across her neck, the hot air and soft movement making her squirm under him.
Addison lets out another gasp when his lips come in contact with her nipple. “Maybe.” She finds herself out of breath when he hooks her legs around his shoulders and pushes into her deeper, letting go of her nipple but not of her clit. All thoughts of the imminent intern exam and the future that hangs completely on her success on it disappear and it’s all simply Mark. “Oh...harder,” she breathily requests. She never does this. Never has inspired spontaneous sex and if she did she certainly wouldn’t do it in the middle of the day at work and she never does anything to distract her the day of a test. Whether it was spelling bees in fifth grade or the MCAT. But she’s on an uncomfortable on-call room bed, naked, her legs spread wide and telling her equally-naked partner to fuck her harder.
Mark tests the waters to see how much harder she wants him to go and then doesn’t stop.
They picked a room in an unused hallway for a reason but Addison still bites her lip as she comes because while no one in a nearby corridor would hear a moan, they’d certainly hear her scream. Mark senses this and leans down and whispers for her to let go as he covers her lips with his and as he groans his own orgasm and spills inside of her, he swallows her screams. And when she bats his hand away because it’s gotten to be too much and he rolls off of her, he thinks that he wouldn’t mind actually hearing those screams.
“You okay?” He asks after he holds her in silence for a few minutes.
She smiles and blinks slowly and gradually starts laughing quietly. “Amazing.”
“Stressed out?”
Addison thinks about that and has a moment when she can’t even remember what she’s supposed to be stressed about. The moment leaves quickly. “Nope.”
“Good.” Mark kisses her temple before deciding that they should probably make themselves presentable and then actually be present somewhere sometime very soon. He hands her her bra and makes to jokingly take her panties but she holds out a hand for them and shakes her head at him for it. “Any time you feel like your head’s gonna blow up like that again, find me."
nine
Somehow, the click of the door doesn’t interrupt them. Addison leans against the wall outside the NICU and exhales deeply and quietly. He had her pinned against the wall, they were close to - maybe completely touching - each other, his shirt was off and his hands were holding hers to the wall. She didn’t open the door any further or stay any longer to find out what was going to happen next.
She spends the rest of the day thinking about Mark and Charlene and what she saw. She spent the beginning of the day thinking about the pregnancy test in her bag that she’s too scared to take. Somewhere around lunch, she really has to pee and figures that she might as well find out now while she can schedule something in the relative privacy of her office, hopefully with one of her trusted colleagues. Another deep breath and she swears loudly and resolutely and doesn’t care if anyone else is around to hear.
“Hey, Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd,” Charlene catches Addison before she leaves at the end of the day. “Look, what you saw...it was my fault. I didn’t know you and Dr. Sloan were together. I’m sorry. Nothing happened. He pushed me away.” Under serious threat of a sexual harassment complaint, Mark forced her to tell Addison exactly what happened.
Addison searches the nurse’s face for signs of lying and actually finds signs of genuine remorse. “Thank you,” she says with a small relieved smile. “Have a good night.”
“Can I believe that the others were the same thing?” She speaks the moment she shuts his apartment door behind her, silencing him from any frantic apology. “That the rumors of you and half of the nursing staff are of them trying to jump you and failing?” Addison slumps against the door and closes her eyes. “Because I’m pregnant, Mark. And the more I think about it, the more I want this baby with you.” She opens her eyes and looks right into his. “But if I can’t believe that you told every single one of them ‘no,’ then I’m running. Tell me I can believe that.”
His heart wants to burst with happiness that she’s pregnant and wants to be with him, but it also wants to break at the desperation in her eyes. “You can believe it,” he whispers and takes a few steps toward her. “And you should.” Another few steps and he’s standing right in front of her. “Because you should believe things that are true.”
ten
Addison stops, the remnants of an exploding snowball creeping down the back of her jacket. She sets her jaw and turns around and gives Mark a look that triple dog dares him to try that again to her face.
He runs.
“Get him, Mommy!” A two year-old girlish voice pipes up from atop a tall snow bank on the side of their driveway.
Addison smiles and follows her daughter’s instructions and picks up a handful of snow and forms it into a ball as she runs after her fiancée. Breathing on it to pack it in completely, she throws it and hits him right where his jacket is a bit too short to cover the edge of his pants completely. Laughing at his face as snow goes down his pants and as he tries very hard not to swear and jokingly call her anything unrespectable, Addison simply shakes her head.
Both of them turn at a high-pitched giggle and watch their daughter put her hands in the air and slide down the mound of snow to land in a soft pile of untouched white snow. “Can I have hot chocolate?” She looks expectantly up at Addison with the eyes of her father, eyes Addison’s never been able to resist.
“Of course,” Mark says, agreeing with Addison’s smile, and walks over to them, still brushing snow off his back. He shoots a look at Addison when she bites her lip against a giggle at how funny he’s walking and it only makes her lose control. As they walk inside, he grabs a small handful of snow and shoves it down the back of her jacket, making sure to get it under her shirt as well.
“We need to do that more often,” Addison smiles and traces a pattern on his bare chest, cuddling into him that night way after their daughter is safely asleep.
He kisses her hair and tugs the blankets up around them. “Once or twice a day isn’t enough?”
“Oh, shut up. I wasn’t talking about sex.”
“I know.” He kisses her softly and loosens his arms so she can dig under the covers and snuggle as closely as possible. “I’m totally teaching her how to make and throw a snowball tomorrow.”
“No you’re not. She’s on my team.”
“Why?” He fakes indignant.
Addison laughs into his chest. “Girl power.”
“In that case,” his hand drifts between them and he brushes his lips against her neck, “I’ll have to knock you up again so it’ll be even.”
page
Mark Sloan never imagined himself having kids. He never imagined himself having a wife or living in that house down the street a bit or finding a life outside of work and bars. He never saw himself having any of that and the lack of vision eventually resulted in a decision that it was something he didn’t want. So he definitely never imagined himself drinking a cup of caffeinated coffee at midnight and staying downstairs to wait for his daughter to come home from a night out with her friends.
He trusts her to make curfew, but he likes to think that she finds it nice to have someone awake when she comes home, let her know that they care and everything. But it’s really to make sure that she’s okay and that nothing bad or stupid happened and so she can get a hug if she wants it before bed.
“I wondered where you were.” Addison blinks sleepily and shrinks into the sweatshirt she hastily pulled on when she realized just how warm and cozy it isn’t outside of bed. She sneaks a look at the clock. “She’ll be home. Come to bed.” She offers him her hand.
“It’s half an hour and I’m awake.”
Seeing that she isn’t going to win, Addison pushes away a few blankets and sits next to him on the couch, immediately pulling them up around her once she’s settled. “You don’t have to stay up, you know.” She pries his hand away from his coffee mug and gently loops his arm around her shoulder and cuddles into his side.
“Yeah, I do.”
Addison recognizes the protective tone in his voice and smiles and rests her head on his chest. “And you were so worried about being a good father.”
knight
“No, it’s okay.” Addison rests her elbows on her knees and closes her eyes, her tailbone beginning to feel the strain of sitting on the cold tile floor of the hospital for too long, waiting. “Derek, I understand. Stop apologizing. Just...go.” She flips her phone shut and sets it next to her and blinks back tears.
“You shouldn’t have said yes,” a soft masculine voice interrupts her thoughts. Mark pauses for a moment and then walks closer and sits next to her.
“You’re his best friend, Mark. You aren’t supposed to be telling me to take back vows I made to him years ago.”
He takes her hand and pulls it away from her face. “It’s not okay, Addie. And Derek does this, he always has, to every girlfriend he’s ever had. You just kept him interested longer than the others and he thought that meant that things would be solid no matter what.”
She sniffles. “He told you that?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “But when you’ve known a guy for over thirty years.”
“Yeah.” She stares at a spot over his shoulder for a moment, fully aware that his hand is still holding hers. “I just don’t get it, Mark. What happened? We were so happy and then it’s like one day I woke up and he wasn’t there.” The floodgates open, both for her words and her tears. “I don’t remember the last time he held me or told me he loved me and really meant it. The sex is infrequent and boring and he’s never home and he used to be so attentive and so caring and now it’s like he doesn’t even notice me.”
Addison isn’t sure whether she crawled into Mark’s arms or he pulled her there, but she curls up in his lap and just cries. His warm hands rub circles into her back and he soothingly whispers that it will be okay in the end and he brushes a few kisses against her temple. She sits there long after she’s calmed, comforted by his arms and how he holds her just right.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What?”
“You were at the wedding, you had the opportunity to speak now, but you forever held your peace instead. Why didn’t you say anything?” She untucks her head from under his chin and looks at him, finding a tissue in the pocket of her lap coat and wiping her nose with it.
“Because I thought that you two were going to make it. That you had broken him of that habit.”
Her face falls and she’s about to write herself up another failure when he continues.
“Nothing is ever good enough for him, Addison. He’s willing to ruin his own life to save those of others. He’s a good guy for that dedication, but he’s not the kind of guy who really wants to get married.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not really either.”
He tips her head up. “I’m just not ready for it.”
queen
The door to the NICU has never been particularly loud. It was designed that way so the babies would have as few interruptions as possible. The room itself is in a darker section of the hallway to prevent the harsh fluorescent light from the chaotic world outside flooding in when the door opens.
She doesn’t notice him come in: her stethoscope is firmly in her ears and she’s calmly listening to an infant heartbeat with her eyes closed. The strong heartbeat that was weak and uneven only hours before gives her hope in her life, boosts her confidence that her strength to keep fighting her own fight won’t fail.
He waits until she’s moved away from the newborn to let her know he’s there. He gently scuffs his shoe on the floor and smiles at her when she turns around, her red hair falling and curling around her face. This room is now the first place he looks for her at the end of the day. She owns it, it’s her territory and she runs it beautifully and confidently, demanding only when a child’s life is in danger.
He’s intimidated by her when she’s in her element and no matter how much he teases her for the pink and for the squishy, he respects her specialty far more than he does his own. Sometimes he gets his chance to truly help someone, someone who is badly scarred or disfigured by a genetic defect, but he finds his days filled with implants, ass lifts and nose jobs. When she comes home and talks about her day, he wishes he’d had the strength to choose something less glamorous and more daring. He wishes that he could go to work every day and do something that might have a chance to fall in line with the sheer beauty of giving a child born thirteen weeks premature a chance to live. But he accepts his loss in his choice of specialty and hopes that simply living with someone that amazing can negate the variety of breast implant possibilities that plagues his day.
king
“What’s wrong?” Mark notices that something’s extremely off the moment she walks in the door. He turns off the stove, feeling that dinner will be put on hold for a while, and goes to give her a hug.
She puts up her hands to stop him, not really wanting to be touched right now. “Can you be Mark my best friend for a moment, not Mark the guy I’m sleeping with?”
“Sure.” He sits on the couch and motions that she should sit next to him, but she doesn’t. She stays standing.
“Okay. I cheated on my husband with his best friend, my husband left me to go to Seattle and some slutty intern, I’m still sleeping with his best friend, and now I’m pregnant. What the hell do I do?” Addison’s on the verge of tears and she wrings her hands frantically as she paces up and down the length of his living room.
“Addison,” Mark stands up, shocked at the news.
“No, Mark. You’re my best friend. We’re not together right now. Remember that. Sit down, tell me what to do.” She already tried Savvy, Weiss, Naomi and Sam and received a get an abortion, don’t tell him, an ask him what he wants, a have the baby in secret, sell it on the black market and a don’t ask me, I’m male. So she figures she needs some more help. “Please.”
He places his hands on her shoulders and gets her to stop pacing. “Addison. What do you want?”
“A hug,” she says meekly, her eyes finding the floor. In the midst of crying and enjoying a phenomenal hug, she sniffles and pulls herself together for a moment of lucidity. “You cannot hurt me, Mark. You can’t.”
“I won’t,” he assures her.
“No.” Addison pulls back and steps away. “You really can’t hurt me. Derek tore me apart and I can’t let anything else happen to me. I want that fucking Cinderella fairy tale and I’ve wanted it since I was five and if you do anything to completely destroy that...” she trails off for a moment, her voice thick with tears and her face flushed. “I...I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She quiets her voice and takes a few deep breaths and then looks at him again. “So tell me what to do, Mark. You’re the best friend I have right now. Can I trust the other guy to put me back together and keep me that way?”
Seeing the woman he loves fall apart in front of him lost and confused and begging him to tell her where she should go from here, Mark wonders how the hell he could have been so stupid. Addison is a strong woman, she doesn’t need him to be okay, she doesn’t need him to survive, she’s completely capable of going out and fixing her own life. Yet she shares his bed every night and comes home with him.
“You can trust him for more than that.”
In the eye of the storm you will see a lonely dove...