(no subject)
Title: Passenger's Log, The Unity Fractions
Pairing: Mark/Addison, Derek/Addison, Addison, Mark.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2469.
Summary: Secret Santa 2011 for flipflop_diva who wanted no fluff. Derek's always home on Christmas.
A/N: LJ now spaces things however they would like, I'm pretending not to care. Hope you like it, Happy Holidays!
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Passenger's Log, The Unity Fractions
- Seven Mile Journey
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
It's four days before Christmas.
It's been two weeks since the wedding and eight days since the all too short honeymoon. Mark's drunk, banging on the door downstairs. She doesn't have to look to know its him. He's been some form of intoxicated every night she has seen him in the last six. He hasn't had to beg to get in the door before though, so that's new, she recognizes. Taking a deep breath, carefully cradling her hair against the storm blowing through outside, she swings the solid wood wide open with a demanding scowl.
“What?” Addison urges.
“Can I come in? Or have your hosting skills gone out the window with your sanity?” Mark manages, leaning against the frame, one foot already dangerously close to being in.
Then, that's how he likes things, he thought. Until now. Until her.
“I don't have time for this Mark, and frankly, you won't remember it in the morning so there's really no point.”
“Addison-”
“Don't bother,” she says firmly and then slams the door shut, listening for the pleasurable profanities that come screeching from his mouth as his toes get smashed in the process.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Three years. Three annoying Christmas proclamations that she never fully hears out from Mark.
There's something about him that's unnerving tonight though, he's itchy in his skin as she ushers him in. “Hurry up,” she coaxes, tapping her heels for effect. Derek's running a little late this evening, which isn't necessarily a horrible all things considered. It's just Bizzy's big Christmas party wherein she has to play the part of the perfect daughter, take flak for choosing to work, suffer through the probable questions of when grandchildren are coming, and ignore all of the embarrassing stories of her own adolescence that people choose to replay as though they may somehow be enjoyable now.
They're not.
Not even when Archer interjects with his own flavor of whatever tale. Though he does tend to grip her shoulder tightly, telling her that they'll live through this, and he always refills her drink for her.
She's waiting this year, staring back at him. He hasn't shaved in a week, grew out his disgusting beard all November, to annoy her she is certain. He claims he got more than ever, “Women love facial hair Addison.”
“I...” Mark begins, but doesn't finish. It's the first time she hasn't pushed him out of the entryway and onto the frozen steps with her dead plants. He's not really sure what he wants to say, given the opportunity.
This is his only tradition. She's ruined it with patience.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
It's been four years since he last dared grace this particular house on the particular evening. Their, he cringes, multicolored lights are burning bright in the window. He knows she is home. Mostly because he just left the hospital and she wasn't there, he searched, but also because Derek just sent him here, and he trusts his friend to know where his wife may be.
It's never been important before. Just missed coffee dates he would stand in for, buy her the wrong drink, feign ignorance, and pretend to be bothered by her.
Pretending, at some point in their blurry past, became so much easier.
But this, tonight, feels lower than all the easy jabs he takes at her in elevators when people are paying attention. Addison slowly opens the door, now creaking. Her face says she knows, but he says it anyway. “Derek has to fill in for Jenkins.”
“He's not coming,” Addison clarifies, clearly annoyed.
There's a twinge of satisfaction that creeps into his chest when he sees how hurt she is.
Dinner last month didn't make her this upset, neither did the ballet in October. She's flush across her neck, chest, mouth tightened in the corners, eyes show just a hint of dashed hope.
“Drink?” she manages to get out, turning away, ivory colored dress following her as she moves.
“I have plans,” Mark replies and leaves, the door clicking closed with a resolve he didn't know he was searching for.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Two days later he finds her in an on call room, a ball of a person on the top bunk.
“Don't bother,” Addison tells him before he can get anything other than her name out. It's stifled, he thinks because she buried deep in the sleeve of her blue undershirt, scrubs rising just enough for him to get a peek of her impossibly pale back.
He holds his hand in the air, testing himself.
“I broke up with Isabelle,” Mark complies, sitting below her, kicking out his legs, slowly falling onto the mattress.
“Shocking,” Addison replies halfheartedly.
“He's only going to be an hour late,” Mark says back to her, lying. He didn't listen to what Derek said, he's stopped doing that.
It doesn't matter. That's not what's wrong. She'd prefer that Derek not show up at all tonight, or the prior two that she spent trying to get as far away as possible from him on their insanely small mattress.
“Sure.”
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
It gets easier. By the next year he doesn't even really have to say anything, her expectations are low.
One day after Christmas and Derek is already back studying charts and looking at scans. Addison, on the other hand, is clinging to the side of the couch opposite him as they scour his now monstrous DVD collection of scary movies. To be fair, she asked what he wanted to do.
She was supposed to be skiing. With Derek. In fresh powder and huddling by the crackling of a roasting fire inside what looked to be a very inviting cabin. She figured they deserved it after all the trips to the Hamptons they had skipped this summer in the name of finishing whatever fellowship. A whole week without patients, without worry and care that Derek may prefer to be somewhere else with someone else (she's convinced, Mark says she's insane), and he waits until the last minute to tell her that he won't be going.
Mark's off by luck. Good or bad luck is where he is undecided. Sure, when she's not a neurotic mess she's kind of fun to hang out with, and look at, but it's all getting kind of old. Or that's what he tells himself when he leaves to make some of the popcorn she bought and instead returns with a bottle of wine that was given to him by his ex-golf instructor and his wife, who Mark slept with twice.
They don't bother with the pretense of glasses, passing the bottle between shaking hands.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“Just say it,” Addison huffs, sweats looped over her heels, a ratty shirt of Derek's covering her shoulders. She's sick this year, intolerant, and mostly just exhausted. Trying to keep up with Derek at work certainly hasn't helped, she doesn't really know what he finds so damn appealing about sleeping in on call rooms instead of their fabulous bed upstairs where she's been wallowing for the better part of three hours.
“I brought soup,” Mark shrugs, letting himself in, kicking his shoes off consciously before she can bicker with him. Derek remarked in September how nice it is that they don't argue as often, he has no idea.
“Chicken noodle?” Addison asks, automatically rushed with warmth at the thought of someone caring.
Half of the time she can't find Derek, the other half he's pecking her check and bringing her juju, walking down the hall with her. It's all very confusing, and she feels absolutely crazy. He's the same. To everyone else- Mark, his mother, the nurses, their friends.
“Of course,” Mark smiles, helping himself to her bowls and spoons. He hasn't felt great himself the last two days.
In the silence, clattering silverware marks the seconds, eyes never meet, and Addison's fingers are near her eyes far too often for Mark to be comfortable.
“We would've been happier,” he says softly, sighing when Addison pretends not to hear him.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“Look at me! Can't you look at me while you're ruining our season?” Addison yells toward their closet where her husband is again undressing, shedding his tux, and finding a fresh tie for work. Mark's already on his way, a willing stand-in, as long as there are women wherever it is he has to drag Addison tonight.
“It's just Bizzy's ridiculous party,” Derek remarks. They haven't seen her family all year, including Archer, and it's not exactly a missed endeavor.
“It's important,” Addison fights, makeup finished, heels waiting in the closet. She's as tall as Derek but she wishes she was wearing shoes at the moment.
“So's Mr. Stein's frontal lobe,” Derek counters angrily.
“Don't do that Derek, don't treat me like I'm not a doctor, don't try and make me feel bad-”
Do this. Don't do that. Go here. Come home. Derek's at the end of his rope.
“I'm going,” he tells her, liking the way her face falls even further as he returns to their room. “Don't wait up.” He pauses, taking her in, and since it's their season decides to add, “We'll have coffee in the morning at that cafe around the corner and you can tell all about Archer's inappropriate toasts.”
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“No one fit the bill tonight?” Addison questions as Mark helps her back into her car. The estate is glorious with its lights and wreaths but the whole thing feels fake. She wishes someone would just shake the snow globe and be done with it. Whatever the disaster be.
Mark smiles but simply closes the door and goes around the hood of the car to the driver's seat. Sure, there were plenty of women tonight, some a little old compared to what he normally selects, but taking them home or to whatever closet they could find seemed relatively unimportant as he watched his friend suffer amongst the hordes of people, trying to drown herself in cocktails.
“I wish Derek was here,” Addison mumbles to herself as the ignition begins to roar.
“I'm a better fill in,” Mark tells her confidently.
“Why does he hate me, Mark, just tell me, I can handle it,” she begs as they head out the long driveway back home.
“He doesn't hate you,” he grumbles back, unimpressed with the turn the night seems to have taken.
Mark is learning how to hate Derek. For all of this.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
She used to remember how she'd rejoice to Mark every year when Derek told her he had Christmas morning off. He always had Christmas morning. In the early years they would take days off, then just Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, trekking to his mother's house and back. The Christmas, and finally she was afraid nothing, but he was always there, at least, in the morning.
They would exchange thoughtful and then convenient gifts with one another, Derek often becoming more lavish as the time elapsed. Mark would always come by for lunch, bringing a bag of alcohol and once a girlfriend that lasted longer than a week.
For one day it was alright. Alright that her husband chose to lecture her on the merits of his own abilities over spending time together. She didn't have an aneurism, or a hemorrhage, she wasn't in a car accident, she had no memory loss unaccounted for.
Unfortunately.
One day a year was what she received and she greedily lapped it up.
Mark asked her last year why she bothered. He was agitated. He always seemed angry when he was around her, put out.
She responded the only way she knew how to, “He's my husband, Mark.”
Now as she sits in the dark dampness of the trailer in the middle of the woods she questions it all. The gluttonous drinks of the night before left a bitter taste in her mouth, head trying to spiral away, a balloon on a loose thread. Derek's here. It's Christmas.
He just loves someone else. Or both of them. Or only Meredith. It's all redundant.
As she sips black coffee quietly she savors the early morning blackness beginning to break apart outside the window. It's beautiful out here, logically she knows that, occasionally enjoys the fresh trees on her way to the car, but it's mostly torture.
For both of them.
And she's deserving of it, so she bends a little more. Cold showers, numb shoulders, trout, raccoons. But she's not sure what's left to give. The prior evening seems as though it should have been a catalyst of sorts. What human sticks around clearly unwanted. Only her, evidently.
She hears him come to life in a series of linear movements. Teeth brushing, yawning, groaning, she assumes when he realizes there's no work to run off to today. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Addison replies, burying her face in her bottomless cup once more. He chooses to take his to the porch, crumpling into a chair and stretching.
She finds herself thankful. She doesn't know how to be around him anymore. What to say, what not to say, how to react to things. She's not sure what it is that he wants here, what he's trying to prove.
She wishes for a lot of things. Today, snow. Lights, a tree to decorate. The trailer looks the same as any other day. If there had been a holiday, you couldn't discern that here. She wishes for hot chocolate and ice skating, for bad movies and her horrible attempts at cooking.
She wishes Derek would just away. Wherever he'd rather be. She wishes she made him happy still, if she ever did at all.
And not for the first time she wishes Mark was here, in Seattle, with his brown paper bag of liquid dreams and mouth spewing the hopeful nonsense she wanted to buy into.
“Where are you going?” Derek asks, tone far too accusatory for the early morning hour.
She wants to say who cares, but saves the fight for another time. “Work. Babies don't understand time.” He looks as though he wants to remind her haughtily that it's their season as she's done so many times in the past, but doesn't. “Don't wait up,” Addison tacks on as she jingles her car keys down the slippery slope of weeds and mud.
“Addison, it's Christmas.”
Christmas, indeed.
Her present to herself comes at seventy miles an hour, all of the windows down, chunks of ice flying in and the spray of rain impeding her poor vision.
Freedom is glorious, she decides impulsively, if only fleetingly.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Pairing: Mark/Addison, Derek/Addison, Addison, Mark.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2469.
Summary: Secret Santa 2011 for flipflop_diva who wanted no fluff. Derek's always home on Christmas.
A/N: LJ now spaces things however they would like, I'm pretending not to care. Hope you like it, Happy Holidays!
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Passenger's Log, The Unity Fractions
- Seven Mile Journey
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
It's four days before Christmas.
It's been two weeks since the wedding and eight days since the all too short honeymoon. Mark's drunk, banging on the door downstairs. She doesn't have to look to know its him. He's been some form of intoxicated every night she has seen him in the last six. He hasn't had to beg to get in the door before though, so that's new, she recognizes. Taking a deep breath, carefully cradling her hair against the storm blowing through outside, she swings the solid wood wide open with a demanding scowl.
“What?” Addison urges.
“Can I come in? Or have your hosting skills gone out the window with your sanity?” Mark manages, leaning against the frame, one foot already dangerously close to being in.
Then, that's how he likes things, he thought. Until now. Until her.
“I don't have time for this Mark, and frankly, you won't remember it in the morning so there's really no point.”
“Addison-”
“Don't bother,” she says firmly and then slams the door shut, listening for the pleasurable profanities that come screeching from his mouth as his toes get smashed in the process.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Three years. Three annoying Christmas proclamations that she never fully hears out from Mark.
There's something about him that's unnerving tonight though, he's itchy in his skin as she ushers him in. “Hurry up,” she coaxes, tapping her heels for effect. Derek's running a little late this evening, which isn't necessarily a horrible all things considered. It's just Bizzy's big Christmas party wherein she has to play the part of the perfect daughter, take flak for choosing to work, suffer through the probable questions of when grandchildren are coming, and ignore all of the embarrassing stories of her own adolescence that people choose to replay as though they may somehow be enjoyable now.
They're not.
Not even when Archer interjects with his own flavor of whatever tale. Though he does tend to grip her shoulder tightly, telling her that they'll live through this, and he always refills her drink for her.
She's waiting this year, staring back at him. He hasn't shaved in a week, grew out his disgusting beard all November, to annoy her she is certain. He claims he got more than ever, “Women love facial hair Addison.”
“I...” Mark begins, but doesn't finish. It's the first time she hasn't pushed him out of the entryway and onto the frozen steps with her dead plants. He's not really sure what he wants to say, given the opportunity.
This is his only tradition. She's ruined it with patience.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
It's been four years since he last dared grace this particular house on the particular evening. Their, he cringes, multicolored lights are burning bright in the window. He knows she is home. Mostly because he just left the hospital and she wasn't there, he searched, but also because Derek just sent him here, and he trusts his friend to know where his wife may be.
It's never been important before. Just missed coffee dates he would stand in for, buy her the wrong drink, feign ignorance, and pretend to be bothered by her.
Pretending, at some point in their blurry past, became so much easier.
But this, tonight, feels lower than all the easy jabs he takes at her in elevators when people are paying attention. Addison slowly opens the door, now creaking. Her face says she knows, but he says it anyway. “Derek has to fill in for Jenkins.”
“He's not coming,” Addison clarifies, clearly annoyed.
There's a twinge of satisfaction that creeps into his chest when he sees how hurt she is.
Dinner last month didn't make her this upset, neither did the ballet in October. She's flush across her neck, chest, mouth tightened in the corners, eyes show just a hint of dashed hope.
“Drink?” she manages to get out, turning away, ivory colored dress following her as she moves.
“I have plans,” Mark replies and leaves, the door clicking closed with a resolve he didn't know he was searching for.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Two days later he finds her in an on call room, a ball of a person on the top bunk.
“Don't bother,” Addison tells him before he can get anything other than her name out. It's stifled, he thinks because she buried deep in the sleeve of her blue undershirt, scrubs rising just enough for him to get a peek of her impossibly pale back.
He holds his hand in the air, testing himself.
“I broke up with Isabelle,” Mark complies, sitting below her, kicking out his legs, slowly falling onto the mattress.
“Shocking,” Addison replies halfheartedly.
“He's only going to be an hour late,” Mark says back to her, lying. He didn't listen to what Derek said, he's stopped doing that.
It doesn't matter. That's not what's wrong. She'd prefer that Derek not show up at all tonight, or the prior two that she spent trying to get as far away as possible from him on their insanely small mattress.
“Sure.”
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
It gets easier. By the next year he doesn't even really have to say anything, her expectations are low.
One day after Christmas and Derek is already back studying charts and looking at scans. Addison, on the other hand, is clinging to the side of the couch opposite him as they scour his now monstrous DVD collection of scary movies. To be fair, she asked what he wanted to do.
She was supposed to be skiing. With Derek. In fresh powder and huddling by the crackling of a roasting fire inside what looked to be a very inviting cabin. She figured they deserved it after all the trips to the Hamptons they had skipped this summer in the name of finishing whatever fellowship. A whole week without patients, without worry and care that Derek may prefer to be somewhere else with someone else (she's convinced, Mark says she's insane), and he waits until the last minute to tell her that he won't be going.
Mark's off by luck. Good or bad luck is where he is undecided. Sure, when she's not a neurotic mess she's kind of fun to hang out with, and look at, but it's all getting kind of old. Or that's what he tells himself when he leaves to make some of the popcorn she bought and instead returns with a bottle of wine that was given to him by his ex-golf instructor and his wife, who Mark slept with twice.
They don't bother with the pretense of glasses, passing the bottle between shaking hands.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“Just say it,” Addison huffs, sweats looped over her heels, a ratty shirt of Derek's covering her shoulders. She's sick this year, intolerant, and mostly just exhausted. Trying to keep up with Derek at work certainly hasn't helped, she doesn't really know what he finds so damn appealing about sleeping in on call rooms instead of their fabulous bed upstairs where she's been wallowing for the better part of three hours.
“I brought soup,” Mark shrugs, letting himself in, kicking his shoes off consciously before she can bicker with him. Derek remarked in September how nice it is that they don't argue as often, he has no idea.
“Chicken noodle?” Addison asks, automatically rushed with warmth at the thought of someone caring.
Half of the time she can't find Derek, the other half he's pecking her check and bringing her juju, walking down the hall with her. It's all very confusing, and she feels absolutely crazy. He's the same. To everyone else- Mark, his mother, the nurses, their friends.
“Of course,” Mark smiles, helping himself to her bowls and spoons. He hasn't felt great himself the last two days.
In the silence, clattering silverware marks the seconds, eyes never meet, and Addison's fingers are near her eyes far too often for Mark to be comfortable.
“We would've been happier,” he says softly, sighing when Addison pretends not to hear him.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“Look at me! Can't you look at me while you're ruining our season?” Addison yells toward their closet where her husband is again undressing, shedding his tux, and finding a fresh tie for work. Mark's already on his way, a willing stand-in, as long as there are women wherever it is he has to drag Addison tonight.
“It's just Bizzy's ridiculous party,” Derek remarks. They haven't seen her family all year, including Archer, and it's not exactly a missed endeavor.
“It's important,” Addison fights, makeup finished, heels waiting in the closet. She's as tall as Derek but she wishes she was wearing shoes at the moment.
“So's Mr. Stein's frontal lobe,” Derek counters angrily.
“Don't do that Derek, don't treat me like I'm not a doctor, don't try and make me feel bad-”
Do this. Don't do that. Go here. Come home. Derek's at the end of his rope.
“I'm going,” he tells her, liking the way her face falls even further as he returns to their room. “Don't wait up.” He pauses, taking her in, and since it's their season decides to add, “We'll have coffee in the morning at that cafe around the corner and you can tell all about Archer's inappropriate toasts.”
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“No one fit the bill tonight?” Addison questions as Mark helps her back into her car. The estate is glorious with its lights and wreaths but the whole thing feels fake. She wishes someone would just shake the snow globe and be done with it. Whatever the disaster be.
Mark smiles but simply closes the door and goes around the hood of the car to the driver's seat. Sure, there were plenty of women tonight, some a little old compared to what he normally selects, but taking them home or to whatever closet they could find seemed relatively unimportant as he watched his friend suffer amongst the hordes of people, trying to drown herself in cocktails.
“I wish Derek was here,” Addison mumbles to herself as the ignition begins to roar.
“I'm a better fill in,” Mark tells her confidently.
“Why does he hate me, Mark, just tell me, I can handle it,” she begs as they head out the long driveway back home.
“He doesn't hate you,” he grumbles back, unimpressed with the turn the night seems to have taken.
Mark is learning how to hate Derek. For all of this.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
She used to remember how she'd rejoice to Mark every year when Derek told her he had Christmas morning off. He always had Christmas morning. In the early years they would take days off, then just Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, trekking to his mother's house and back. The Christmas, and finally she was afraid nothing, but he was always there, at least, in the morning.
They would exchange thoughtful and then convenient gifts with one another, Derek often becoming more lavish as the time elapsed. Mark would always come by for lunch, bringing a bag of alcohol and once a girlfriend that lasted longer than a week.
For one day it was alright. Alright that her husband chose to lecture her on the merits of his own abilities over spending time together. She didn't have an aneurism, or a hemorrhage, she wasn't in a car accident, she had no memory loss unaccounted for.
Unfortunately.
One day a year was what she received and she greedily lapped it up.
Mark asked her last year why she bothered. He was agitated. He always seemed angry when he was around her, put out.
She responded the only way she knew how to, “He's my husband, Mark.”
Now as she sits in the dark dampness of the trailer in the middle of the woods she questions it all. The gluttonous drinks of the night before left a bitter taste in her mouth, head trying to spiral away, a balloon on a loose thread. Derek's here. It's Christmas.
He just loves someone else. Or both of them. Or only Meredith. It's all redundant.
As she sips black coffee quietly she savors the early morning blackness beginning to break apart outside the window. It's beautiful out here, logically she knows that, occasionally enjoys the fresh trees on her way to the car, but it's mostly torture.
For both of them.
And she's deserving of it, so she bends a little more. Cold showers, numb shoulders, trout, raccoons. But she's not sure what's left to give. The prior evening seems as though it should have been a catalyst of sorts. What human sticks around clearly unwanted. Only her, evidently.
She hears him come to life in a series of linear movements. Teeth brushing, yawning, groaning, she assumes when he realizes there's no work to run off to today. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Addison replies, burying her face in her bottomless cup once more. He chooses to take his to the porch, crumpling into a chair and stretching.
She finds herself thankful. She doesn't know how to be around him anymore. What to say, what not to say, how to react to things. She's not sure what it is that he wants here, what he's trying to prove.
She wishes for a lot of things. Today, snow. Lights, a tree to decorate. The trailer looks the same as any other day. If there had been a holiday, you couldn't discern that here. She wishes for hot chocolate and ice skating, for bad movies and her horrible attempts at cooking.
She wishes Derek would just away. Wherever he'd rather be. She wishes she made him happy still, if she ever did at all.
And not for the first time she wishes Mark was here, in Seattle, with his brown paper bag of liquid dreams and mouth spewing the hopeful nonsense she wanted to buy into.
“Where are you going?” Derek asks, tone far too accusatory for the early morning hour.
She wants to say who cares, but saves the fight for another time. “Work. Babies don't understand time.” He looks as though he wants to remind her haughtily that it's their season as she's done so many times in the past, but doesn't. “Don't wait up,” Addison tacks on as she jingles her car keys down the slippery slope of weeds and mud.
“Addison, it's Christmas.”
Christmas, indeed.
Her present to herself comes at seventy miles an hour, all of the windows down, chunks of ice flying in and the spray of rain impeding her poor vision.
Freedom is glorious, she decides impulsively, if only fleetingly.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~