pop culture clichés catch up with you sooner or later
Title: pop culture clichés catch up with you sooner or later: side a: track five: misery is a butterfly
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Five months after this whole thing started, encouragement and reassurance are given, redheads appear for a welcome reprieve of sensibility, advice is smacked into heads by people who have no business giving it and sex is had by nobody important.
track one: teardrop
track two: once upon a time
track three: 99% of us is failure
track four: there is a number of small things
“Because he’s my friend, Pete. And I miss a few people. That’s why I’m going.”
Pete takes a swig of his beer and leans against the counter with a slight smile on his face, amused at how flustered she gets when he asks her something simple. “From what I heard, he’s a friend who screwed with your head.”
Addison sets her jaw and braces her arms behind her on the counter on the other side of her kitchen from him. “Yes, he did. But he’s always been there for me and…”
“Hey,” he sets the beer bottle down and holds up his hands. “I’m not arguing, Addison.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Reminding my fun what she’s getting into up there.” He says it with a smile but the way she turns and storms out the front door makes him think that there were better ways to have phrased his concern.
Not a minute later, Addison sheepishly returns inside. “This is my house.”
“Yes.”
“I live here.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t make a point by leaving.”
“No.”
Addison sighs heavily and stares at the floor and her toenail polish. “Am I just fun to you?” She asks quietly and uncertainly before looking up again. “Because it’s been five months and we said we’d see how it goes, and not that I’m not happy with this because I am. Happy. Very happy. The sex is phenomenal, so I have absolutely no complaints about fun. But I…is this still just fun?”
Though the nice guy in him wants to save her from herself and do something to get her to stop talking like she’s fifteen, he thinks she looks cute when she’s rambling awkwardly and wringing her hands and avoiding eye contact so he waits until she’s done and then steps toward her so their toes are almost touching and gently tips up her chin. “You’re more than fun, Addison.” Anticipating her next question, he smiles at her. “Means I’ll be pretty pissed if you sleep with him.”
--
Caught up in listening to the crashing waves of high tide and watching the surf roll over the beach in the moonlight through the floor-to-ceiling windows in her bedroom, Addison doesn’t notice Pete sliding his arm over her waist and pulling himself toward her. She blinks in surprise as his bare chest comes into contact with her back and his fingers gently graze the skin of her stomach.
“Stop thinking,” he mumbles into her shoulder. “Go to sleep.”
“I’m not tired,” she answers automatically even though her body is screaming for her to be unconscious.
At that, Pete rolls his eyes because he knows full well that what they did earlier should have the same effect as a double dose of the sleeping medication she keeps in her bedside drawer, just leaving her with some happy tingling between her thighs instead of a slightly-fuzzy mind. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“No,” he scolds softly. “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering, because the words and thoughts are so jammed up in her head that it would turn into a crazy crying girl flip out that has almost everything to do with her ovaries and nothing to do with Mark even though it would come out the other way around and she really isn’t in the mood for that, she turns over and kisses him lightly, gradually pushing him onto his back as she slides on top of him to deepen the kiss and slip her tongue between his lips. He quickly gets that she doesn’t want to talk about it and this is her way of not talking about it and gently eases her camisole over her head.
--
Addison opens the door as quietly as she can and slips inside Mark’s apartment, trying her best not to jangle her car keys or make too much noise. When she stopped by the hospital to talk to Derek and Miranda (and say I told you so to Richard), she learned that Caroline (and, incidentally, Mark some days) has a pretty consistent naptime in the middle of the afternoon and Derek had handed her his set of keys as long as she promised to return them before she went home. She toes off her shoes and sets her purse and keys down on the floor next to them before silently making her way through his apartment to see if he’s awake.
She stops as she turns around the corner of the couch in the living room and she smiles widely at the sight of Mark soundly asleep on the couch, the sports section of the newspaper folded on his chest. She laughs softly as he wakes with a start when she places a hand on his arm. “I stole Derek’s keys,” she explains and waits until he’s standing to give him a hug. “How are you?”
“Overwhelmed,” he admits honestly. “This is insane.”
She nods and smiles. “It’s supposed to be.” She takes a moment to study him and isn’t sure why she’s surprised at how, even though he’s physically just as she left him, he looks so much different; so much happier. “You’re in one piece, though.”
He laughs and shakes his head, as amazed at that as everyone else is. “I am. How’re you? How’s LA?”
Addison smiles widely. “I’m really good. I have, like, one patient of my own a day but, you know, we all work together so.” She stops herself before she can mention any names (especially Pete), feeling that it isn’t the right time or place to start gushing about everyone she left Seattle for. She accepts Mark’s offered glass of water and sits down with him on the couch, catching up about the newest Seattle Grace gossip (even though she’s heard most of it, she indulges him a little) and how Charlotte King could give Erica Hahn a run for her money in the category of being a hardass.
“I’m gonna go wake her up,” Mark says after a while. “Otherwise she’ll never fall asleep tonight.”
Addison nods, her emotions rising when she hears him giving soft encouragement to wake up and she halfway regrets what she once said to him. Though she was sure of it at the time, he wouldn’t have been a terrible father to their child. He wouldn’t have been great, but he wouldn’t have been terrible. But mostly, she didn’t want him to play Daddy to her Mommy and didn’t know any other way to tell him; she either wanted Derek or nobody at all. Her introspective retrospect disappears when he comes back out to the living room with a small child in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder.
Mark’s now recognized Caroline’s hiding behavior as typical but it still makes him laugh when he sets her down and she immediately runs behind him and grabs onto his leg and occasionally peeks out just to see if the new person is still there. He shrugs at Addison, knowing that forcing Caroline to come out of hiding will end very badly.
Instead of crouching down and encouraging the girl to step in front of her father, Addison sits down on the floor with her legs crossed and tucked under her and waits for Caroline to stick her head out. Addison smiles widely when she finally does and Caroline blinks at the unexpected appearance of a happy face at her level instead of just a pair of legs. “Hi,” Addison says when Caroline doesn’t immediately duck back behind Mark. “I’m Addie.” She’s long learned that little kids have trouble with her full name.
Sensing a comfort and ease within Addison, Caroline takes a few hesitant steps toward her. “Caroline!” She announces proudly, sending both Addison and Mark into laughter.
--
Knowing that Addison’s only up for the weekend and isn’t in Seattle solely for him, Mark correctly assumes that he might have another passing five minutes with her if he runs into her at the hospital so he fully intends to test something that he instinctively knows will fail but, like any other doomed heart, has to try anyway. He waits until Caroline is safely in bed before he brushes a gentle kiss against Addison’s lips.
Addison breaks away from Mark’s lips almost immediately and puts her hands flat against his chest. “Mark, I…”
Mark nods and even though she won’t tell her friends how serious it is, it only took a brief second of not being kissed in return to tell him everything she won’t tell them. “There’s a guy.”
She nods slowly and lightly grasps the fabric of his shirt in her fingertips before dropping her hands away - a recognition of what they once had but that she’s moved on from. “There’s a guy.”
“You like him?” He doesn’t make any effort to put space between them.
“Yeah,” Addison smiles softly to herself. “I really do.”
Though she’s said four-word versions of “we’re done” countless times to him for years, those four words and the tone admitting nothing but genuine care for someone else are the final shove the door to the part of his life she inhabited for so long needs to close and lock. “Okay.” It takes him a moment to temporarily recover from the sudden loss of something he was always sure would always be there, but he does and smirks at her. “Is he better than me?”
She sees that he’s hurting behind the smirk so she decides to ignore the question, not having an answer - joking or serious - that would soothe the hurt. “You’ll find someone.” At his dejected sigh, she shakes her head and speaks softly. “You’re a really good guy, Mark. Don’t think that you’re going to be alone because I’m unavailable or you think that the kid thing is going to turn people away.”
“I want you,” he mumbles.
Addison shakes her head softly. “You need to let me go. Let me go and it’ll all fall into place.”
“How do you know?”
His insecure side has always unsettled her and she never knew how to handle it properly while they were close friends or together. She smiles to herself, recognizing that it’s easier to reassure him when she isn’t terrified of losing him. “Because after I let you and Derek go, Pete was there.” He stands silently in front of her and she reaches up, her fingertips lightly grazing his cheek. “I know you love me and that’s why it hurts so much, but I’m not your only shot at this and I think you know that.”
Mark looks at the woman he has self-destructively loved for fifteen years, her sun-lightened red hair softly framing her face and her teeth gently biting into her lower lip like they always do when she’s being honest and caring and her eyes holding genuine concern that only slightly masks the true happiness glittering in the blue that made him fall in love with her, and finds himself believing her even though he’s terrified to let her go, terrified to let go of something he was so certain was right, and nods. “You really think there’s someone out there?”
“Yeah. Great guys are hard to come by lately. You’ll be snatched up in an instant.”
“I’m not a great guy, Addison.”
“Yes, you are. You’re kind of a jerk sometimes and used to sleep with anything that had a willing vagina and you had a tendency to scream at the television watching championship poker, but that’s okay. Bad guys would’ve tried to seduce me away from my husband the moment we started dating, bad guys would be playing championship poker. Bad guys either wouldn’t have taken Caroline at all or not put so much effort into taking care of her. You took two months off just to be with her, you learned how to cook, you don’t go out and sleep with random women anymore, you’ve been a wonderful friend to Callie without once trying to get in her pants and you are an amazing father to Caroline.”
His eyes light up at her unexpected praise; though he’s had other people tell him otherwise, her accusation that he would be a terrible father always echoes in the back of his mind even when he’s done something that makes his daughter giggle and smile. “I am?”
Smiling, Addison nods. “Yeah. You are.”
“Thank you.”
--
“I’m insane, right? I mean, I got divorced. I’m supposed to have a mourning period. Even though George didn’t, he didn’t even bother to wait until we were divorced. He had a negative mourning period.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Addison watches in amazement as Callie gestures wildly with her hands and paces back and forth on the plush carpet of Addison’s hotel room.
Not hearing her friend, Callie turns around and walks back the other way. “And I’m supposed to still be hung up on him. I got left. The ones who get left are supposed to hang on longer and be hurt. I know it’s like five months so I’m technically within my right to move on but it’s been like this for four months. I didn’t mourn long enough but I didn’t do anything about it so it’s not like I can get called out for not caring about it. Right?” She stops in front of the bed and looks at Addison sitting cross-legged in the middle. “I’m insane, aren’t I?”
“Callie. What are we talking about?”
“Mark!” Callie exclaims as if it should have been obvious and then flops ungracefully onto the bed next to Addison. She groans and looks upside down at her. “Am I crazy? I mean, he isn’t really the kinda guy you like. He’s a fling guy.”
It takes a second for the pieces to click together for her, but Addison nods once it all makes sense. “He was a fling guy.” She falls backwards so she’s lying next to Callie and stares up at the ceiling. “But he’s grown up a lot.” She turns her head and looks at Callie. “And he’s all yours, however you want him.”
“He’s the one friend I have who isn’t out of their mind. Besides Miranda, but she won’t put up with my crap. I don’t want to mess that up.”
Internally laughing at the sudden reminder of the majestic failure and proceeding awkwardness that was the attempted sex between Cooper and Violet, Addison simply nods. “This is going to sound all about Addison, but give him some time to get over me.”
Callie groans in desperation. “That’ll never happen. You damaged him too much.”
“I did not! Okay, I did. But he knows that there is no way I’m ever going to get back with him. Ever. So, he’ll get over me.”
Callie rolls onto her side and props her head up. “You fell for this Pete guy, didn’t you?”
“This? This is Callie Time.” Addison dodges the question, unwilling to commit to an answer until she knows exactly what more than fun really means. “Plus, you’ve already slept with him. So it’s not like there’d be any first time awkwardness.”
“That was dirty my-boyfriend-is-a-jackass sex. Not happy I-really-like-you-in-that-way sex. I mean, no offense, but I don’t want to be another best friend he sleeps with because she’s lonely and he’s lonely. I’d want it to be, you know, real.”
Ignoring the resurfacing dull ache of her broken marriage and the debacle between her and Mark that she hasn’t been able to fully dissolve, Addison shrugs as best she can while lying down. “That? That was really screwed up. People were hurting, people were leaving, people were drunk and horny, it was a mess. This? This is not screwed up. You guys are happy and yeah it’s a little complicated but it’s not messy complicated. It’s clean and neat and organized complicated.”
“Complicated can be organized?”
“Human bone structure.”
“That’s simple.”
“Not to me.”
“Is this supposed to be an analogy for something? Because somehow we went from me sleeping with Mark to your opinions on the skeleton.”
Addison sits up suddenly and blinks away the vertigo and turns around to face Callie, tucking her legs under her. “Just kiss him. If there’s nothing, say you just wondered if there was any chemistry to support the rumors that are going around. If there’s something, then you know.”
“You are not qualified to give relationship advice. You are in an ambiguously serious relationship with some voodoo guy.”
“And yet you’re listening to me.”
--
“It is one o’clock in the morning.” Derek rubs his eyes and lets Mark pass him and head into the trailer, Caroline soundly asleep on his shoulder. He gestures at his recently-vacated bed, offering it to Caroline since he’s pretty sure he’s not going back into it anytime soon. He pushes back a wave of jealousy as he watches Mark tenderly tuck her in. The way his friend has changed and stayed the same makes Derek’s head spin: Mark’s still a cocky bastard and an egotistical jerk at the hospital but the moment he sets eyes on his daughter, his smile becomes less arrogant and he softens into a person who cares and loves and who Derek hasn’t seen since they were kids themselves. He could ponder the duality for years and never understand it.
“How do I ask Callie on a date?”
“This couldn’t be a phone call or wait until it’s light outside?”
“I haven’t asked a girl out since high school. I need some help.”
Derek tugs a sweatshirt over his head and quietly sifts through a drawer to find some socks. “Addison’s been off your market for two seconds and you’re trying to get in bed with her best friend?” He knows it’s wrong, but knowing that his ex-wife has moved on not only from him but also from Mark makes him feel a little better about it all.
Mark crosses his arms, his leather jacket crinkling in the cold that the metal box of the trailer does little to keep at bay. “You want to drop the sarcasm for eight seconds and help me out? I listened to you whine and complain about Addison for years and I listen to you whine and complain about Meredith every damn day. You owe ten minutes of helping your manwhore best friend figure out how to make something actually work.”
“The first real relationship I had ended in divorce and I’m now having regular sex with a dark and twisty woman I want to marry and have kids with even though she says she doesn’t want marriage or kids. Am I really the best person to ask?”
Mark sighs and falls into the seat at the table across Derek. “No, but you’re the only person I have to ask.”
side a: track six: rescued
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Five months after this whole thing started, encouragement and reassurance are given, redheads appear for a welcome reprieve of sensibility, advice is smacked into heads by people who have no business giving it and sex is had by nobody important.
track one: teardrop
track two: once upon a time
track three: 99% of us is failure
track four: there is a number of small things
“Because he’s my friend, Pete. And I miss a few people. That’s why I’m going.”
Pete takes a swig of his beer and leans against the counter with a slight smile on his face, amused at how flustered she gets when he asks her something simple. “From what I heard, he’s a friend who screwed with your head.”
Addison sets her jaw and braces her arms behind her on the counter on the other side of her kitchen from him. “Yes, he did. But he’s always been there for me and…”
“Hey,” he sets the beer bottle down and holds up his hands. “I’m not arguing, Addison.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Reminding my fun what she’s getting into up there.” He says it with a smile but the way she turns and storms out the front door makes him think that there were better ways to have phrased his concern.
Not a minute later, Addison sheepishly returns inside. “This is my house.”
“Yes.”
“I live here.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t make a point by leaving.”
“No.”
Addison sighs heavily and stares at the floor and her toenail polish. “Am I just fun to you?” She asks quietly and uncertainly before looking up again. “Because it’s been five months and we said we’d see how it goes, and not that I’m not happy with this because I am. Happy. Very happy. The sex is phenomenal, so I have absolutely no complaints about fun. But I…is this still just fun?”
Though the nice guy in him wants to save her from herself and do something to get her to stop talking like she’s fifteen, he thinks she looks cute when she’s rambling awkwardly and wringing her hands and avoiding eye contact so he waits until she’s done and then steps toward her so their toes are almost touching and gently tips up her chin. “You’re more than fun, Addison.” Anticipating her next question, he smiles at her. “Means I’ll be pretty pissed if you sleep with him.”
--
Caught up in listening to the crashing waves of high tide and watching the surf roll over the beach in the moonlight through the floor-to-ceiling windows in her bedroom, Addison doesn’t notice Pete sliding his arm over her waist and pulling himself toward her. She blinks in surprise as his bare chest comes into contact with her back and his fingers gently graze the skin of her stomach.
“Stop thinking,” he mumbles into her shoulder. “Go to sleep.”
“I’m not tired,” she answers automatically even though her body is screaming for her to be unconscious.
At that, Pete rolls his eyes because he knows full well that what they did earlier should have the same effect as a double dose of the sleeping medication she keeps in her bedside drawer, just leaving her with some happy tingling between her thighs instead of a slightly-fuzzy mind. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“No,” he scolds softly. “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering, because the words and thoughts are so jammed up in her head that it would turn into a crazy crying girl flip out that has almost everything to do with her ovaries and nothing to do with Mark even though it would come out the other way around and she really isn’t in the mood for that, she turns over and kisses him lightly, gradually pushing him onto his back as she slides on top of him to deepen the kiss and slip her tongue between his lips. He quickly gets that she doesn’t want to talk about it and this is her way of not talking about it and gently eases her camisole over her head.
--
Addison opens the door as quietly as she can and slips inside Mark’s apartment, trying her best not to jangle her car keys or make too much noise. When she stopped by the hospital to talk to Derek and Miranda (and say I told you so to Richard), she learned that Caroline (and, incidentally, Mark some days) has a pretty consistent naptime in the middle of the afternoon and Derek had handed her his set of keys as long as she promised to return them before she went home. She toes off her shoes and sets her purse and keys down on the floor next to them before silently making her way through his apartment to see if he’s awake.
She stops as she turns around the corner of the couch in the living room and she smiles widely at the sight of Mark soundly asleep on the couch, the sports section of the newspaper folded on his chest. She laughs softly as he wakes with a start when she places a hand on his arm. “I stole Derek’s keys,” she explains and waits until he’s standing to give him a hug. “How are you?”
“Overwhelmed,” he admits honestly. “This is insane.”
She nods and smiles. “It’s supposed to be.” She takes a moment to study him and isn’t sure why she’s surprised at how, even though he’s physically just as she left him, he looks so much different; so much happier. “You’re in one piece, though.”
He laughs and shakes his head, as amazed at that as everyone else is. “I am. How’re you? How’s LA?”
Addison smiles widely. “I’m really good. I have, like, one patient of my own a day but, you know, we all work together so.” She stops herself before she can mention any names (especially Pete), feeling that it isn’t the right time or place to start gushing about everyone she left Seattle for. She accepts Mark’s offered glass of water and sits down with him on the couch, catching up about the newest Seattle Grace gossip (even though she’s heard most of it, she indulges him a little) and how Charlotte King could give Erica Hahn a run for her money in the category of being a hardass.
“I’m gonna go wake her up,” Mark says after a while. “Otherwise she’ll never fall asleep tonight.”
Addison nods, her emotions rising when she hears him giving soft encouragement to wake up and she halfway regrets what she once said to him. Though she was sure of it at the time, he wouldn’t have been a terrible father to their child. He wouldn’t have been great, but he wouldn’t have been terrible. But mostly, she didn’t want him to play Daddy to her Mommy and didn’t know any other way to tell him; she either wanted Derek or nobody at all. Her introspective retrospect disappears when he comes back out to the living room with a small child in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder.
Mark’s now recognized Caroline’s hiding behavior as typical but it still makes him laugh when he sets her down and she immediately runs behind him and grabs onto his leg and occasionally peeks out just to see if the new person is still there. He shrugs at Addison, knowing that forcing Caroline to come out of hiding will end very badly.
Instead of crouching down and encouraging the girl to step in front of her father, Addison sits down on the floor with her legs crossed and tucked under her and waits for Caroline to stick her head out. Addison smiles widely when she finally does and Caroline blinks at the unexpected appearance of a happy face at her level instead of just a pair of legs. “Hi,” Addison says when Caroline doesn’t immediately duck back behind Mark. “I’m Addie.” She’s long learned that little kids have trouble with her full name.
Sensing a comfort and ease within Addison, Caroline takes a few hesitant steps toward her. “Caroline!” She announces proudly, sending both Addison and Mark into laughter.
--
Knowing that Addison’s only up for the weekend and isn’t in Seattle solely for him, Mark correctly assumes that he might have another passing five minutes with her if he runs into her at the hospital so he fully intends to test something that he instinctively knows will fail but, like any other doomed heart, has to try anyway. He waits until Caroline is safely in bed before he brushes a gentle kiss against Addison’s lips.
Addison breaks away from Mark’s lips almost immediately and puts her hands flat against his chest. “Mark, I…”
Mark nods and even though she won’t tell her friends how serious it is, it only took a brief second of not being kissed in return to tell him everything she won’t tell them. “There’s a guy.”
She nods slowly and lightly grasps the fabric of his shirt in her fingertips before dropping her hands away - a recognition of what they once had but that she’s moved on from. “There’s a guy.”
“You like him?” He doesn’t make any effort to put space between them.
“Yeah,” Addison smiles softly to herself. “I really do.”
Though she’s said four-word versions of “we’re done” countless times to him for years, those four words and the tone admitting nothing but genuine care for someone else are the final shove the door to the part of his life she inhabited for so long needs to close and lock. “Okay.” It takes him a moment to temporarily recover from the sudden loss of something he was always sure would always be there, but he does and smirks at her. “Is he better than me?”
She sees that he’s hurting behind the smirk so she decides to ignore the question, not having an answer - joking or serious - that would soothe the hurt. “You’ll find someone.” At his dejected sigh, she shakes her head and speaks softly. “You’re a really good guy, Mark. Don’t think that you’re going to be alone because I’m unavailable or you think that the kid thing is going to turn people away.”
“I want you,” he mumbles.
Addison shakes her head softly. “You need to let me go. Let me go and it’ll all fall into place.”
“How do you know?”
His insecure side has always unsettled her and she never knew how to handle it properly while they were close friends or together. She smiles to herself, recognizing that it’s easier to reassure him when she isn’t terrified of losing him. “Because after I let you and Derek go, Pete was there.” He stands silently in front of her and she reaches up, her fingertips lightly grazing his cheek. “I know you love me and that’s why it hurts so much, but I’m not your only shot at this and I think you know that.”
Mark looks at the woman he has self-destructively loved for fifteen years, her sun-lightened red hair softly framing her face and her teeth gently biting into her lower lip like they always do when she’s being honest and caring and her eyes holding genuine concern that only slightly masks the true happiness glittering in the blue that made him fall in love with her, and finds himself believing her even though he’s terrified to let her go, terrified to let go of something he was so certain was right, and nods. “You really think there’s someone out there?”
“Yeah. Great guys are hard to come by lately. You’ll be snatched up in an instant.”
“I’m not a great guy, Addison.”
“Yes, you are. You’re kind of a jerk sometimes and used to sleep with anything that had a willing vagina and you had a tendency to scream at the television watching championship poker, but that’s okay. Bad guys would’ve tried to seduce me away from my husband the moment we started dating, bad guys would be playing championship poker. Bad guys either wouldn’t have taken Caroline at all or not put so much effort into taking care of her. You took two months off just to be with her, you learned how to cook, you don’t go out and sleep with random women anymore, you’ve been a wonderful friend to Callie without once trying to get in her pants and you are an amazing father to Caroline.”
His eyes light up at her unexpected praise; though he’s had other people tell him otherwise, her accusation that he would be a terrible father always echoes in the back of his mind even when he’s done something that makes his daughter giggle and smile. “I am?”
Smiling, Addison nods. “Yeah. You are.”
“Thank you.”
--
“I’m insane, right? I mean, I got divorced. I’m supposed to have a mourning period. Even though George didn’t, he didn’t even bother to wait until we were divorced. He had a negative mourning period.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Addison watches in amazement as Callie gestures wildly with her hands and paces back and forth on the plush carpet of Addison’s hotel room.
Not hearing her friend, Callie turns around and walks back the other way. “And I’m supposed to still be hung up on him. I got left. The ones who get left are supposed to hang on longer and be hurt. I know it’s like five months so I’m technically within my right to move on but it’s been like this for four months. I didn’t mourn long enough but I didn’t do anything about it so it’s not like I can get called out for not caring about it. Right?” She stops in front of the bed and looks at Addison sitting cross-legged in the middle. “I’m insane, aren’t I?”
“Callie. What are we talking about?”
“Mark!” Callie exclaims as if it should have been obvious and then flops ungracefully onto the bed next to Addison. She groans and looks upside down at her. “Am I crazy? I mean, he isn’t really the kinda guy you like. He’s a fling guy.”
It takes a second for the pieces to click together for her, but Addison nods once it all makes sense. “He was a fling guy.” She falls backwards so she’s lying next to Callie and stares up at the ceiling. “But he’s grown up a lot.” She turns her head and looks at Callie. “And he’s all yours, however you want him.”
“He’s the one friend I have who isn’t out of their mind. Besides Miranda, but she won’t put up with my crap. I don’t want to mess that up.”
Internally laughing at the sudden reminder of the majestic failure and proceeding awkwardness that was the attempted sex between Cooper and Violet, Addison simply nods. “This is going to sound all about Addison, but give him some time to get over me.”
Callie groans in desperation. “That’ll never happen. You damaged him too much.”
“I did not! Okay, I did. But he knows that there is no way I’m ever going to get back with him. Ever. So, he’ll get over me.”
Callie rolls onto her side and props her head up. “You fell for this Pete guy, didn’t you?”
“This? This is Callie Time.” Addison dodges the question, unwilling to commit to an answer until she knows exactly what more than fun really means. “Plus, you’ve already slept with him. So it’s not like there’d be any first time awkwardness.”
“That was dirty my-boyfriend-is-a-jackass sex. Not happy I-really-like-you-in-that-way sex. I mean, no offense, but I don’t want to be another best friend he sleeps with because she’s lonely and he’s lonely. I’d want it to be, you know, real.”
Ignoring the resurfacing dull ache of her broken marriage and the debacle between her and Mark that she hasn’t been able to fully dissolve, Addison shrugs as best she can while lying down. “That? That was really screwed up. People were hurting, people were leaving, people were drunk and horny, it was a mess. This? This is not screwed up. You guys are happy and yeah it’s a little complicated but it’s not messy complicated. It’s clean and neat and organized complicated.”
“Complicated can be organized?”
“Human bone structure.”
“That’s simple.”
“Not to me.”
“Is this supposed to be an analogy for something? Because somehow we went from me sleeping with Mark to your opinions on the skeleton.”
Addison sits up suddenly and blinks away the vertigo and turns around to face Callie, tucking her legs under her. “Just kiss him. If there’s nothing, say you just wondered if there was any chemistry to support the rumors that are going around. If there’s something, then you know.”
“You are not qualified to give relationship advice. You are in an ambiguously serious relationship with some voodoo guy.”
“And yet you’re listening to me.”
--
“It is one o’clock in the morning.” Derek rubs his eyes and lets Mark pass him and head into the trailer, Caroline soundly asleep on his shoulder. He gestures at his recently-vacated bed, offering it to Caroline since he’s pretty sure he’s not going back into it anytime soon. He pushes back a wave of jealousy as he watches Mark tenderly tuck her in. The way his friend has changed and stayed the same makes Derek’s head spin: Mark’s still a cocky bastard and an egotistical jerk at the hospital but the moment he sets eyes on his daughter, his smile becomes less arrogant and he softens into a person who cares and loves and who Derek hasn’t seen since they were kids themselves. He could ponder the duality for years and never understand it.
“How do I ask Callie on a date?”
“This couldn’t be a phone call or wait until it’s light outside?”
“I haven’t asked a girl out since high school. I need some help.”
Derek tugs a sweatshirt over his head and quietly sifts through a drawer to find some socks. “Addison’s been off your market for two seconds and you’re trying to get in bed with her best friend?” He knows it’s wrong, but knowing that his ex-wife has moved on not only from him but also from Mark makes him feel a little better about it all.
Mark crosses his arms, his leather jacket crinkling in the cold that the metal box of the trailer does little to keep at bay. “You want to drop the sarcasm for eight seconds and help me out? I listened to you whine and complain about Addison for years and I listen to you whine and complain about Meredith every damn day. You owe ten minutes of helping your manwhore best friend figure out how to make something actually work.”
“The first real relationship I had ended in divorce and I’m now having regular sex with a dark and twisty woman I want to marry and have kids with even though she says she doesn’t want marriage or kids. Am I really the best person to ask?”
Mark sighs and falls into the seat at the table across Derek. “No, but you’re the only person I have to ask.”
side a: track six: rescued