(no subject)
Please note that this was mostly prompted out of a lack of Mark/Addison fic at the moment, Gabbi feeding me ideas (again), and me waking up two days ago to a Post-It on our fridge reading TAMPONS! Underlined. Twice. In Sharpie.
Title: Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love...
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mark with a hint of Mark/Addison
Summary: Awkwardness ensues when you have a twelve year-old daughter and your wife is out of town.
Music: A Chorus Line - Hello Twelve...
Mark held up his hand and waved at his daughter, acknowledging that she was standing at the door to the kitchen but telling her that he’d be with her in a second. He flipped open his date book to the next month and penned in a date.
“What can I do for you, Scout?” He motioned her in when he hung up the phone. They read To Kill a Mockingbird together when she was six and he stuck the nickname on her. She tried calling him Atticus for a while, just for the sake of returns, but it turned out to be too much so, on the eve of her seventh birthday, she sighed and resigned herself to calling him Dad.
“I started my period.” Becky rolled her eyes and knew it was inevitable. She was, after all, Addison’s daughter and understood these things but that didn’t make it any less annoying. And her mother was out of town. Which made it worse.
Mark blinked and then dropped his pen and, in the process of trying to stop his stool mid-swivel, smacked his knee into the side of the bar-like counter. He swore. And then had a brief moment of considering the merits of killing Addison for not being there that weekend but shortly realized that, if his wife weren’t there, he would also be stuck with the boys and sex conversation and immediately silently apologized and wished her very good health.
Becky somehow kept herself from laughing and held back a snarky “Well done, Dad.” As the daughter of two doctors, she had learned at an early age not to be squeamish about the human body. When she was nine, her mother had detailed an entire complicated surgery (Becky couldn’t remember what exactly it was, just that Addison thought it was Really Cool!) over dinner without losing her train of thought when she asked for the salt and when she was ten Mark used her as a practice audience for a presentation about a new innovation of skin grafts for burn victims. So, really, all she wanted was for her father to tell her where her mother hid the tampons and leave her alone (because, after all, she could read a diagram and instructions and they had taken all the seventh grade girls out of health class one day and explained these things in terms Addison had laughed at when Becky told her what happened that day at school).
Mark didn’t do Girl Stuff. He grew up with Derek and, by extension, Derek’s sisters but all of that was kept away from him and he was quite happy with that arrangement. Biologically and physiologically he knew what happened and knew that it was best to steer clear of Addison on the first Thursday of every month and that two days later it was necessary to present her with chocolate and a massage after work. But he didn’t much care how it was that his wife managed to walk around in skirts all the time without blood running down her leg. It wasn’t something he thought about and really wasn’t anything he wanted to think about. His daughter stared at him with the oh, God, you’re so embarrassing look that curses all girls in the almost-thirteen set when confronted with their fathers and something girly.
Later on in life, around nineteen, Becky would wish that she had given her father a harder time about it and made him squirm a little more just for kicks and because it was quite funny when he was awkward and at a loss for words. But, at almost thirteen, the last thing she wanted to do (besides figure out what x equaled) was extend the moment. So she simply thought you’re kind of useless at him and opened her mouth to ask where Addison hid the tampons because clearly he wasn’t going to tell her on his own.
“Under the sink in our bathroom,” he answered before she said anything. Her look had changed from oh, God, you’re so embarrassing to you’re really kind of lame and, as much as he loved her, he wasn’t interested in what the next expression was.
“Thank you.” She turned with a relieved nervous smile.
“Do you need any -” He felt somewhat obligated to ask because it seemed like the thing he should do as a responsible parent.
“I can read,” Becky was quick to answer to the obvious relief of her father and disappeared upstairs.
Dinner was slightly awkward with both parties thankful that Addison was coming home the next day.
Mark tried several times to initiate a discussion about the biology of it and, physiologically, what was going on but was always cut off by an “I know” or a roll of her eyes or a clatter of a spoon against a bowl signaling that he really could shut up now. So he resorted to baseball and pitching stats and batting averages and eventually things loosened up so the rest of the grilled cheese and tomato soup dinner (because it was kind of cold and rainy) was eaten in a mutual eager excitement about the upcoming season.
But then dinner ended and dinner was cleaned up and then Becky had to go to the bathroom (for no motive other than having to pee because she was really thirsty during dinner) and, when she came out, the awkwardness was back. She curled up in a chair and read (Catcher in the Rye, which Addison found an odd choice for a girl her age and, when she said so, was promptly reminded that she read Wuthering Heights when she was eleven and told to be quiet about it) and tuned out Mark’s obsession with the World Poker Tour. She considered going upstairs to her room to read but, because she was smarter than most girls her age, she knew that it might prompt a Discussion right before she actually went to bed. So she suffered the bad lighting and chair that was less comfy than her bed and her father’s inexplicable excitement about betting.
Mark, for his part, put the TV on only because it was noise and something to focus on other than his daughter obviously avoiding eye contact. Later, when she would be around nineteen, they would laugh about it and tease each other about it but right then, when she was almost thirteen, he kind of wanted his wife home a little more desperately than normal. To his credit, he did try to start a few conversations with Becky about anything but what was going on with her reproductive organs but because all possible sports channels were taken up by hockey (which he hated, but only because Johnny Armstrong from Fairfield South intentionally tripped him with a hockey stick when they were thirteen and on junior high hockey teams and Mark fell on the ice and no one ever let him forget it because no one but Mark saw the hockey stick in front of his knees) and the only things he read besides the newspaper were medical journals; Addison had the book thing pretty well covered.
He found it ironic, actually, that a man as successful as himself and who was quite good at speaking to people - strangers, even - and in front of crowds couldn’t hold a conversation with his own daughter. Meanly ironic, but ironic still. He felt slightly bad for being a bit thankful when Becky said she was going to bed but then he saw that she was relieved to go and felt better for it. Mark gave her a hug and kissed her forehead and wished her sweet dreams and could almost see the aura of THANK GOD running behind her.
Addison raised her eyebrows at her husband and daughter when she got home the next afternoon. Something was off but, because she was a mother and a mother who dealt with that general anatomical area for a living, she quickly figured it out and tried her best not to laugh until she was in the shower and washing away the fact that she had been on a plane for six hours. She came down for dinner and noticed that Mark and Becky were both pretty damn thrilled to have something to talk about and made a conscious effort to keep them entertained. She gave Becky some of the free schwag she got at the conference as well as the requisite bag of airplane peanuts for her lunch the next day and did the maternal thing while Mark was washing up dinner and out of earshot.
Exhausted, Addison headed upstairs to bed shortly after Becky did. Mark followed, having nothing to do. He started to say something, but Addison cut him off with a you are so male smile before he could get any more embarrassed and awkward. She squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush and turned around to face him as she brushed out leftover garlic from dinner.
“I don’t do girl stuff,” he explained anyway.
She nodded and tried her best not to laugh. “No kidding,” she smiled and hugged him once she rinsed her mouth.
“You get to do the sex conversation,” he muttered into her hair.
Title: Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love...
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mark with a hint of Mark/Addison
Summary: Awkwardness ensues when you have a twelve year-old daughter and your wife is out of town.
Music: A Chorus Line - Hello Twelve...
Mark held up his hand and waved at his daughter, acknowledging that she was standing at the door to the kitchen but telling her that he’d be with her in a second. He flipped open his date book to the next month and penned in a date.
“What can I do for you, Scout?” He motioned her in when he hung up the phone. They read To Kill a Mockingbird together when she was six and he stuck the nickname on her. She tried calling him Atticus for a while, just for the sake of returns, but it turned out to be too much so, on the eve of her seventh birthday, she sighed and resigned herself to calling him Dad.
“I started my period.” Becky rolled her eyes and knew it was inevitable. She was, after all, Addison’s daughter and understood these things but that didn’t make it any less annoying. And her mother was out of town. Which made it worse.
Mark blinked and then dropped his pen and, in the process of trying to stop his stool mid-swivel, smacked his knee into the side of the bar-like counter. He swore. And then had a brief moment of considering the merits of killing Addison for not being there that weekend but shortly realized that, if his wife weren’t there, he would also be stuck with the boys and sex conversation and immediately silently apologized and wished her very good health.
Becky somehow kept herself from laughing and held back a snarky “Well done, Dad.” As the daughter of two doctors, she had learned at an early age not to be squeamish about the human body. When she was nine, her mother had detailed an entire complicated surgery (Becky couldn’t remember what exactly it was, just that Addison thought it was Really Cool!) over dinner without losing her train of thought when she asked for the salt and when she was ten Mark used her as a practice audience for a presentation about a new innovation of skin grafts for burn victims. So, really, all she wanted was for her father to tell her where her mother hid the tampons and leave her alone (because, after all, she could read a diagram and instructions and they had taken all the seventh grade girls out of health class one day and explained these things in terms Addison had laughed at when Becky told her what happened that day at school).
Mark didn’t do Girl Stuff. He grew up with Derek and, by extension, Derek’s sisters but all of that was kept away from him and he was quite happy with that arrangement. Biologically and physiologically he knew what happened and knew that it was best to steer clear of Addison on the first Thursday of every month and that two days later it was necessary to present her with chocolate and a massage after work. But he didn’t much care how it was that his wife managed to walk around in skirts all the time without blood running down her leg. It wasn’t something he thought about and really wasn’t anything he wanted to think about. His daughter stared at him with the oh, God, you’re so embarrassing look that curses all girls in the almost-thirteen set when confronted with their fathers and something girly.
Later on in life, around nineteen, Becky would wish that she had given her father a harder time about it and made him squirm a little more just for kicks and because it was quite funny when he was awkward and at a loss for words. But, at almost thirteen, the last thing she wanted to do (besides figure out what x equaled) was extend the moment. So she simply thought you’re kind of useless at him and opened her mouth to ask where Addison hid the tampons because clearly he wasn’t going to tell her on his own.
“Under the sink in our bathroom,” he answered before she said anything. Her look had changed from oh, God, you’re so embarrassing to you’re really kind of lame and, as much as he loved her, he wasn’t interested in what the next expression was.
“Thank you.” She turned with a relieved nervous smile.
“Do you need any -” He felt somewhat obligated to ask because it seemed like the thing he should do as a responsible parent.
“I can read,” Becky was quick to answer to the obvious relief of her father and disappeared upstairs.
Dinner was slightly awkward with both parties thankful that Addison was coming home the next day.
Mark tried several times to initiate a discussion about the biology of it and, physiologically, what was going on but was always cut off by an “I know” or a roll of her eyes or a clatter of a spoon against a bowl signaling that he really could shut up now. So he resorted to baseball and pitching stats and batting averages and eventually things loosened up so the rest of the grilled cheese and tomato soup dinner (because it was kind of cold and rainy) was eaten in a mutual eager excitement about the upcoming season.
But then dinner ended and dinner was cleaned up and then Becky had to go to the bathroom (for no motive other than having to pee because she was really thirsty during dinner) and, when she came out, the awkwardness was back. She curled up in a chair and read (Catcher in the Rye, which Addison found an odd choice for a girl her age and, when she said so, was promptly reminded that she read Wuthering Heights when she was eleven and told to be quiet about it) and tuned out Mark’s obsession with the World Poker Tour. She considered going upstairs to her room to read but, because she was smarter than most girls her age, she knew that it might prompt a Discussion right before she actually went to bed. So she suffered the bad lighting and chair that was less comfy than her bed and her father’s inexplicable excitement about betting.
Mark, for his part, put the TV on only because it was noise and something to focus on other than his daughter obviously avoiding eye contact. Later, when she would be around nineteen, they would laugh about it and tease each other about it but right then, when she was almost thirteen, he kind of wanted his wife home a little more desperately than normal. To his credit, he did try to start a few conversations with Becky about anything but what was going on with her reproductive organs but because all possible sports channels were taken up by hockey (which he hated, but only because Johnny Armstrong from Fairfield South intentionally tripped him with a hockey stick when they were thirteen and on junior high hockey teams and Mark fell on the ice and no one ever let him forget it because no one but Mark saw the hockey stick in front of his knees) and the only things he read besides the newspaper were medical journals; Addison had the book thing pretty well covered.
He found it ironic, actually, that a man as successful as himself and who was quite good at speaking to people - strangers, even - and in front of crowds couldn’t hold a conversation with his own daughter. Meanly ironic, but ironic still. He felt slightly bad for being a bit thankful when Becky said she was going to bed but then he saw that she was relieved to go and felt better for it. Mark gave her a hug and kissed her forehead and wished her sweet dreams and could almost see the aura of THANK GOD running behind her.
Addison raised her eyebrows at her husband and daughter when she got home the next afternoon. Something was off but, because she was a mother and a mother who dealt with that general anatomical area for a living, she quickly figured it out and tried her best not to laugh until she was in the shower and washing away the fact that she had been on a plane for six hours. She came down for dinner and noticed that Mark and Becky were both pretty damn thrilled to have something to talk about and made a conscious effort to keep them entertained. She gave Becky some of the free schwag she got at the conference as well as the requisite bag of airplane peanuts for her lunch the next day and did the maternal thing while Mark was washing up dinner and out of earshot.
Exhausted, Addison headed upstairs to bed shortly after Becky did. Mark followed, having nothing to do. He started to say something, but Addison cut him off with a you are so male smile before he could get any more embarrassed and awkward. She squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush and turned around to face him as she brushed out leftover garlic from dinner.
“I don’t do girl stuff,” he explained anyway.
She nodded and tried her best not to laugh. “No kidding,” she smiled and hugged him once she rinsed her mouth.
“You get to do the sex conversation,” he muttered into her hair.