(no subject)
Title: A Three-Legged Workhorse
Part: 1/?
Pairing: Derek/Addison
Rating: PG
Summary: Set in late Season 2, various points in time wherein Derek and Addison think that their marriage may just be on the road to reconciliation.
A/N: So this small series of one shots is really just an attempt to start writing more frequently. I'm challenging myself to one per day, probably five over all, and we'll see how I do. Also, sometimes I think I need to purge a little Derek/Addison out of my system so I can go back to everything else I'm working on. All cut text and title belong to This Will Destroy You. Thanks for reading, enduring my writer's blockage, and enjoy-
~-~-~-~-~-~
A Three-Legged Workhorse
- This Will Destroy You
~-~-~-~-~-~
Addison can't help but smile about the two word text that just popped up on her phone. To someone else “need groceries” could mean a variety of things, but in her world it means only one- that she and Derek are going to attempt to put food in the trailer other than trout. Her jovial mood will not be ruined with details, with questioning if this will be exactly like New York, or some second version since they are married but currently (secretly) hating each other in Seattle.
She decides to do something new, take it at face value. The rest will follow.
“Someone's happy,” Miranda Bailey remarks, pressing hard on her pen, the papers in the chart imprinted more than stained by the time she finishes.
“I am,” Addison replies, instead of some variation of 'I'm always happy', which they both know is a lie.
“Well, it looks good on you,” Miranda smiles, turning her in head in approval. “Tell Shepherd to keep it up.”
Addison feels her cheeks run hot, embarrassed that this is about a man, but it is and she nods as the younger woman strides off to go maim another intern. This is possibly the best she's felt since arriving, her marriage slowly starting to slide back into its normal routines.
Three days of bouncing, pen chewing, and pacing have her on the brink of insanity. As calmly as she can manage she negotiates her car into the chosen stall, searching for her husband's vehicle in a sea of unrelenting rain and deep puddles.
The back of her head is telling her not to get her hopes up, not to let herself soar so high. That way the fall won't be quite as devastating, but she can't help it. They're going to walk down each and every aisle, pile the cart high, and then in three weeks she'll end up throwing most of it out. It's wasteful, but their attempts still count for far too much to stop. Plus, sometimes she comes home to the most wonderful smells filling the adorned walls.
Nothing amazing has been cooked in the trailer, except fish from a river, gutted on the porch, ten feet from where she sleeps and she doesn't think that counts. She wants a meal, something substantial with him, some time to simply sit together and breathe the same air. And this is the first step. That is, if he can get here within the next ten minutes (forty really, because even though she says she won't sit here and wait, she will).
At minute twelve, still wrestling with her own indecision, a sharp knock on her droplet laden window startles her into choking on her cinnamon gum. Unfortunately, he's always kind of had this effect on her.
“Addie,” Derek says loudly, grinning at her as she reaches for her throat in exaggerated reaction. “It's a little wet out here.”
On her way out the door she grabs the still damp umbrella from the passenger seat. Despite the odd looks, glares she thinks for being inferior to the constant downpour, she finds her husband with his head of sopping waves safely huddled with her. It feels nice, to have him within inches, to know she could reach up and brush his hair back, if she wanted.
But she doesn't want to waste a perfectly good moment on something like that. Instead she shakes out the contraption and then throws it in the end of cart with a squeaky wheel. Always picking the bum shopping cart no matter where she is, she pretends to pout when Derek feels the need to point it out, his coat coming to a rest in front her her, his sleeves rolled up.
There's a tiny portion of her heart exploding over the fact that he showed up, another larger chunk fizzling with the reminder that the likelihood of this being what it was before to them is a chance so slim she shouldn't wager any emotion. Daringly, she swerves toward the bread aisle, only to have the cart jerked back around suddenly.
“What are you doing?” Derek asks, surveying row number ten.
“I was-...I don't know,” Addison shrugs.
“We have a system,” Derek points out, knowing that bread comes almost last, so it doesn't get squished by anything heavier like vegetables and frozen pizza.
“We do,” Addison stammers unconvincingly, the jeans from her day off of reading and channel flipping starting to feel just a touch too tight. Then she remembers to exhale completely.
When they rush by the canned soup section, Derek refusing to even look because his mother has thoroughly spoiled him, Addison gets a wound up in what is happening. Derek picked out the apples while she mulled over the lettuce selection, and they mutually decided that oranges were out of the question this week. He loaded up the cart with his horribly bland cereal before throwing in a box of Fruit Loops just for good measure, earning himself a subtle smile. Then she caved in and allowed more frozen boxes of crap into the cart than have ever been in there before.
Because there's penance to be done everywhere, she supposes, even a forlorn, deserted grocery store.
She sneaks a kiss in by the bags of sugar that will never be useful in their home, and she notes that he captures her lips just a touch longer than usual, even nipping at the bottom one when she pulls away first. Ten minutes later she looks down, and has to remark, out loud, over how small the trailer refrigerator is in comparison to what they are used to. But Derek assures her that he has space for everything, so she blindly puts her faith in him, and saunters off to retrieve the ice cream they forgot.
“Plain chocolate?” Derek asks, eying the carton as it finds its new home nestled amongst the oatmeal and bottled water.
“Sounded good,” Addison replies wistfully, and pushes the cart forward, purposefully running into his hip. When he tells her that she's going to pay, she doesn't doubt him, but, for the first time in a long time, she doesn't mind something other than an idle threat. She can take the tickling, being pinned to the mattress, she's spent her nights worse ways. She doesn't expect, however, to be ambushed by a handful of crackers after she turns the corner to catch up with him.
Her mouth purses together, in faux anger, her fingers working the crumbs out. She'd admonish him for being such a child, for potentially getting them yelled at by the teenager who is mopping floors, but it's better to see him like this. He's away from the hospital and not locked into the trailer staring at the ceiling or avoiding her by dashing into creeks, waders drenched in mud and slime. No, instead, she embraces the war and plucks a green grape from it's cluster and takes aim at his head.
They call a truce when an employee sneers at them, and finish up their shopping in an silent but agreed upon hurry, to avoid any further unwanted scathing. She helps him load up the back of his car, and he journeys across the lot to hers, in a very charming way that reminds her of when they first started dating.
Perhaps they're overcompensating here, trying too hard, but it's still infinitely better than spending her night off alone daydreaming of these very times.
He kisses her cheek gently, choosing not to pursue anything in the rain that hasn't let up but brags that he will beat her home, offering up grocery duty as the punishment for the loser. Yes, she recognizes now, it's too much, but it's effort and if he's more willing to go this route then she'll play along for a while (until the game is worse than ignorance, weeks at least, she'd say).
Thirty-five minutes later, the trailer's light cascading into the darkness of the forest, Addison arrives in second place. She has a protest ready and waiting, road construction, but her face falls when she enters the trailer and he's retying his shoes. “I'm sorry Addie,” she hears and closes her eyes tight, hoping that she won't hear the next bit of his sentence, “Huge accident on the freeway, Richard needs-”
“It's okay,” Addison interjects, she doesn't need the full edition, she's heard it too many times to count. She turns back around to get the rest of the bags out of his car before he takes off, and is caught by the arm, and spun around. “What Derek?” and she can't help the edge of annoyance that comes seeping through.
“I...had fun,” Derek swallows, finally taking a good look at her. Hair down and rumpled, probably because it went from up to down to up all day while she fidgeted with her free time. Face remarkably clear and free of anything but mascara. Clothes, plain but still somehow in good taste. Patches of water have soaked through her sweater, leaving blotches on her thin white t-shirt. He thinks it's the most relaxed looking she's been since moving to Seattle, she may have even spent the earlier part of the day wandering around in his confiscated sweats.
“Me too,” she admits, attempting a smile and coming out somewhere between a frown and a grimace. 'I'm...I'll,” she pauses, tugging her sweater tighter, “go get the rest of the stuff and you can go.”
“Addison-”
“No, it's fine. I'm fine. It's good...I'll...catch up on reading...something.”
“Richard said he needs both of us,” Derek explains to her.
“No one paged me,” she argues, checking her purse once more.
“I told him I'd tell you, he apologized for ruining your day off, but we need to leave quickly.”
“Derek, I-”
“Addison, you look fine. You're just going to stick your hair under a scrub cap anyway,” Derek groans, leaning back against the counter, preparing for battle.
“I was going to say,” she speaks over him just a touch, “that I still need to grab the groceries.”
“Leave them, we'll take your car,” he suggests.
Never mind that they've rarely ridden together, for one reason or another (needing the space to breathe for once probably the biggest winner on the list). Addison feels floored for a second. “The frozen-”
“I guess we'll just have to go again,” Derek grins, grabbing his briefcase, and her purse from the “dining” room table. “Maybe tomorrow.”
She leaves out the fact that this is completely asinine, and that there are starving people all over the world that would gladly take the food they just purchased, and marches along behind him, crickets sawing their song into the night, stars attempting to burn through the clouds.
“Tomorrow would be nice,” Addison murmurs, surrendering the keys, and sliding against the cold leather of the seat that will soon be heated under her skin. She leans her head back sleepily, allowing herself to jostle along with the twists and dives of the dirt path, Derek humming next to her. The road spins along side of them, a blur of yellow, white, the headlights catching the oddest of shadows cast off into the trees.
Tomorrow may hold an insurmountable measure of pain, regret, and loneliness, as so many of their days together do, but for now she is content to think of the spoiling food back at home and the promise of just one more trip for groceries in their future.
~-~-~-~-~-~
Part: 1/?
Pairing: Derek/Addison
Rating: PG
Summary: Set in late Season 2, various points in time wherein Derek and Addison think that their marriage may just be on the road to reconciliation.
A/N: So this small series of one shots is really just an attempt to start writing more frequently. I'm challenging myself to one per day, probably five over all, and we'll see how I do. Also, sometimes I think I need to purge a little Derek/Addison out of my system so I can go back to everything else I'm working on. All cut text and title belong to This Will Destroy You. Thanks for reading, enduring my writer's blockage, and enjoy-
~-~-~-~-~-~
A Three-Legged Workhorse
- This Will Destroy You
~-~-~-~-~-~
Addison can't help but smile about the two word text that just popped up on her phone. To someone else “need groceries” could mean a variety of things, but in her world it means only one- that she and Derek are going to attempt to put food in the trailer other than trout. Her jovial mood will not be ruined with details, with questioning if this will be exactly like New York, or some second version since they are married but currently (secretly) hating each other in Seattle.
She decides to do something new, take it at face value. The rest will follow.
“Someone's happy,” Miranda Bailey remarks, pressing hard on her pen, the papers in the chart imprinted more than stained by the time she finishes.
“I am,” Addison replies, instead of some variation of 'I'm always happy', which they both know is a lie.
“Well, it looks good on you,” Miranda smiles, turning her in head in approval. “Tell Shepherd to keep it up.”
Addison feels her cheeks run hot, embarrassed that this is about a man, but it is and she nods as the younger woman strides off to go maim another intern. This is possibly the best she's felt since arriving, her marriage slowly starting to slide back into its normal routines.
Three days of bouncing, pen chewing, and pacing have her on the brink of insanity. As calmly as she can manage she negotiates her car into the chosen stall, searching for her husband's vehicle in a sea of unrelenting rain and deep puddles.
The back of her head is telling her not to get her hopes up, not to let herself soar so high. That way the fall won't be quite as devastating, but she can't help it. They're going to walk down each and every aisle, pile the cart high, and then in three weeks she'll end up throwing most of it out. It's wasteful, but their attempts still count for far too much to stop. Plus, sometimes she comes home to the most wonderful smells filling the adorned walls.
Nothing amazing has been cooked in the trailer, except fish from a river, gutted on the porch, ten feet from where she sleeps and she doesn't think that counts. She wants a meal, something substantial with him, some time to simply sit together and breathe the same air. And this is the first step. That is, if he can get here within the next ten minutes (forty really, because even though she says she won't sit here and wait, she will).
At minute twelve, still wrestling with her own indecision, a sharp knock on her droplet laden window startles her into choking on her cinnamon gum. Unfortunately, he's always kind of had this effect on her.
“Addie,” Derek says loudly, grinning at her as she reaches for her throat in exaggerated reaction. “It's a little wet out here.”
On her way out the door she grabs the still damp umbrella from the passenger seat. Despite the odd looks, glares she thinks for being inferior to the constant downpour, she finds her husband with his head of sopping waves safely huddled with her. It feels nice, to have him within inches, to know she could reach up and brush his hair back, if she wanted.
But she doesn't want to waste a perfectly good moment on something like that. Instead she shakes out the contraption and then throws it in the end of cart with a squeaky wheel. Always picking the bum shopping cart no matter where she is, she pretends to pout when Derek feels the need to point it out, his coat coming to a rest in front her her, his sleeves rolled up.
There's a tiny portion of her heart exploding over the fact that he showed up, another larger chunk fizzling with the reminder that the likelihood of this being what it was before to them is a chance so slim she shouldn't wager any emotion. Daringly, she swerves toward the bread aisle, only to have the cart jerked back around suddenly.
“What are you doing?” Derek asks, surveying row number ten.
“I was-...I don't know,” Addison shrugs.
“We have a system,” Derek points out, knowing that bread comes almost last, so it doesn't get squished by anything heavier like vegetables and frozen pizza.
“We do,” Addison stammers unconvincingly, the jeans from her day off of reading and channel flipping starting to feel just a touch too tight. Then she remembers to exhale completely.
When they rush by the canned soup section, Derek refusing to even look because his mother has thoroughly spoiled him, Addison gets a wound up in what is happening. Derek picked out the apples while she mulled over the lettuce selection, and they mutually decided that oranges were out of the question this week. He loaded up the cart with his horribly bland cereal before throwing in a box of Fruit Loops just for good measure, earning himself a subtle smile. Then she caved in and allowed more frozen boxes of crap into the cart than have ever been in there before.
Because there's penance to be done everywhere, she supposes, even a forlorn, deserted grocery store.
She sneaks a kiss in by the bags of sugar that will never be useful in their home, and she notes that he captures her lips just a touch longer than usual, even nipping at the bottom one when she pulls away first. Ten minutes later she looks down, and has to remark, out loud, over how small the trailer refrigerator is in comparison to what they are used to. But Derek assures her that he has space for everything, so she blindly puts her faith in him, and saunters off to retrieve the ice cream they forgot.
“Plain chocolate?” Derek asks, eying the carton as it finds its new home nestled amongst the oatmeal and bottled water.
“Sounded good,” Addison replies wistfully, and pushes the cart forward, purposefully running into his hip. When he tells her that she's going to pay, she doesn't doubt him, but, for the first time in a long time, she doesn't mind something other than an idle threat. She can take the tickling, being pinned to the mattress, she's spent her nights worse ways. She doesn't expect, however, to be ambushed by a handful of crackers after she turns the corner to catch up with him.
Her mouth purses together, in faux anger, her fingers working the crumbs out. She'd admonish him for being such a child, for potentially getting them yelled at by the teenager who is mopping floors, but it's better to see him like this. He's away from the hospital and not locked into the trailer staring at the ceiling or avoiding her by dashing into creeks, waders drenched in mud and slime. No, instead, she embraces the war and plucks a green grape from it's cluster and takes aim at his head.
They call a truce when an employee sneers at them, and finish up their shopping in an silent but agreed upon hurry, to avoid any further unwanted scathing. She helps him load up the back of his car, and he journeys across the lot to hers, in a very charming way that reminds her of when they first started dating.
Perhaps they're overcompensating here, trying too hard, but it's still infinitely better than spending her night off alone daydreaming of these very times.
He kisses her cheek gently, choosing not to pursue anything in the rain that hasn't let up but brags that he will beat her home, offering up grocery duty as the punishment for the loser. Yes, she recognizes now, it's too much, but it's effort and if he's more willing to go this route then she'll play along for a while (until the game is worse than ignorance, weeks at least, she'd say).
Thirty-five minutes later, the trailer's light cascading into the darkness of the forest, Addison arrives in second place. She has a protest ready and waiting, road construction, but her face falls when she enters the trailer and he's retying his shoes. “I'm sorry Addie,” she hears and closes her eyes tight, hoping that she won't hear the next bit of his sentence, “Huge accident on the freeway, Richard needs-”
“It's okay,” Addison interjects, she doesn't need the full edition, she's heard it too many times to count. She turns back around to get the rest of the bags out of his car before he takes off, and is caught by the arm, and spun around. “What Derek?” and she can't help the edge of annoyance that comes seeping through.
“I...had fun,” Derek swallows, finally taking a good look at her. Hair down and rumpled, probably because it went from up to down to up all day while she fidgeted with her free time. Face remarkably clear and free of anything but mascara. Clothes, plain but still somehow in good taste. Patches of water have soaked through her sweater, leaving blotches on her thin white t-shirt. He thinks it's the most relaxed looking she's been since moving to Seattle, she may have even spent the earlier part of the day wandering around in his confiscated sweats.
“Me too,” she admits, attempting a smile and coming out somewhere between a frown and a grimace. 'I'm...I'll,” she pauses, tugging her sweater tighter, “go get the rest of the stuff and you can go.”
“Addison-”
“No, it's fine. I'm fine. It's good...I'll...catch up on reading...something.”
“Richard said he needs both of us,” Derek explains to her.
“No one paged me,” she argues, checking her purse once more.
“I told him I'd tell you, he apologized for ruining your day off, but we need to leave quickly.”
“Derek, I-”
“Addison, you look fine. You're just going to stick your hair under a scrub cap anyway,” Derek groans, leaning back against the counter, preparing for battle.
“I was going to say,” she speaks over him just a touch, “that I still need to grab the groceries.”
“Leave them, we'll take your car,” he suggests.
Never mind that they've rarely ridden together, for one reason or another (needing the space to breathe for once probably the biggest winner on the list). Addison feels floored for a second. “The frozen-”
“I guess we'll just have to go again,” Derek grins, grabbing his briefcase, and her purse from the “dining” room table. “Maybe tomorrow.”
She leaves out the fact that this is completely asinine, and that there are starving people all over the world that would gladly take the food they just purchased, and marches along behind him, crickets sawing their song into the night, stars attempting to burn through the clouds.
“Tomorrow would be nice,” Addison murmurs, surrendering the keys, and sliding against the cold leather of the seat that will soon be heated under her skin. She leans her head back sleepily, allowing herself to jostle along with the twists and dives of the dirt path, Derek humming next to her. The road spins along side of them, a blur of yellow, white, the headlights catching the oddest of shadows cast off into the trees.
Tomorrow may hold an insurmountable measure of pain, regret, and loneliness, as so many of their days together do, but for now she is content to think of the spoiling food back at home and the promise of just one more trip for groceries in their future.
~-~-~-~-~-~