(no subject)
Title: A Three-Legged Workhorse
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. These are one-shots that require no previous knowledge of other chapters to peruse and hopefully enjoy. Previous.
A/N: Nostalgia is mean, especially when Brother has just decided to get into this show. It's like a magnet, if it's on, I'm in the room...and here we are. Enjoy-
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
A Three-Legged Workhorse
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
The water drops from the leaky shower head keep her company on cold, dewy mornings. Addison is stuck against the wall, head full of shampoo, exhausted and trying to work up to shaving. It probably won't happen, she reasons, as she slides carefully down the freshly washed tile, the plunking cascade now plowing into her shoulder. Sometimes the broken shower seems like her only constant, her only friend on chilly nights when Derek is missing and still can't bother to fix the heat.
She may as well be living in the harshness of the woods, she's certain he'd get a good laugh out of that.
But for now, she attempts to stretch out her aching limbs, wanting the scalding water to hit everywhere as it seems to only reach her neck and right ear. It won't fix anything. Bubble baths, nights of vodka, endless apologies, they aren't fixing what she allegedly broke.
This morning sealed it for her.
Feeling a bit daring, especially after finding herself alone again in the sheets, she drug out her running shoes and found an almost clean long sleeved blue shirt that would stand up to minimal wind and her heat. And the further she got down the trail, the better it felt. The better her lungs stretching, trying to accommodate the long lost hobby, and her feet pounding into unsteady terrain felt. She passed a patch of poison oak carefully, not wanting a repeat performance, and nearly tripped over a protruding tree root.
Her breathing was beyond labored, headed dangerously toward something else, but when she saw her husband, Doc (who she neglected to notice was missing), and Meredith Grey fifty feet ahead of her, instinct took over. She darted behind a suspicious bush, and watched as her heart wrenched in her chest from a lack of oxygen (though she would later swear it was shattering ever more).
They never touched, never shared more than simple eye contact, but it was enough to send Addison into the weird hug of trepidation, and passive aggressive trends. Because she could never say she saw him, never accuse him of something she hasn't seen.
She doesn't have that kind of leverage anymore (he made his own number three, they don't move and he still holds it against her in every conversation). So she retreats, and turns to the shower to help wash away her pain.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Three days later she's seeing it in her dreams. Meredith's gentle laugh, Doc chasing after a stick, Derek's hands stuffed into his pockets, not in tension, but a sense of ease she hasn't seen in years.
And deep down, there's a sincere happiness. Because old Derek is still under there somewhere, the one she fell in love with, and there's solace in knowing she didn't alter him that profoundly.
But old Derek isn't anywhere to be found inside the trailer where they spend time together by sitting in opposite “rooms” in silence. They “read”, and then pretend to be asleep. It's a game, seeing who gives in last, though neither knows the prize is only deprivation.
Five days out from her run and Addison prepares a dinner she knows he won't show up for, but she's always been a bit of a masochist, even though old Addison wouldn't have put up with this insanity. But old Addison didn't have something to prove to everyone, to herself. Old Addison had a seemingly stable relationship that no one questioned.
At day seven, Addison thinks she may be officially losing it. She's too tired to hold herself up and apply mascara but she doesn't realize it until ten minutes into her morning routine when the image staring back at her in the mirror doesn't match what she wants to see. New Addison has bags under her eyes that are getting harder to cover, and new Addison cries far too often for old Addison's liking. New Addison is barely recognizable.
She wonders if this is part of why Derek can't stand to be near her.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
It's steaming tea that's helping her get through it. Aiding her through Derek's cold cheek kisses and fake attempts at their life. Well tea and Miranda Bailey, who, despite her no-nonsense policy, has made a small exception at the troubling life and times of Addison Montgomery-Shepherd. She tells her how it is, not how old or new Addison want to believe it is, and it's the stark breath of fresh air that's keeping her sane.
“You look horrible,” Miranda greets, standing next to Addison, who has her nose buried in a wad of tissues.
“Spare me,” Addison begs horridly.
“You're sick,” Miranda accuses, drinking in the lanky form next to her that is using the counter as a resting spot, her nose severely congested, cough sounding like a pair of boulders being clanked together.
“Seattle hates me,” Addison declares, hands stretched upward.
“Seattle is a city,” Miranda reminds her, feeling something oddly reminiscent of sympathy. “Why are you at work trying to infect all of my interns?”
“I'm not contagious, no fever, and I feel fi-” a sneeze cuts the redhead short but Miranda gets the gist.
“You are not fine. Come with me,” Miranda demands, but stops short when there is no movement behind her. Addison scrubs at her eyes, smudging her eyeliner and Miranda decides yelling might be something she responds to better, “I said come with me!”
She watches the lifeless attending drag her silly stiletto feet behind her, and gently convinces her that maybe she'd like to lay down somewhere. Miranda suggests an exam room, but Addison refuses to play the role of a patient and instead picks her own office with an unbearably rigid beige couch suited for an unbearably beige office.
Miranda administers the medicine as she would to her own son, stopping just above making airplane noises, and she gets the distinct impression that Addison Montgomery-Shepherd doesn't “do” sick, it's undignified, and she says as much when she rises to round on her post-ops.
“Karev will handle that, it's what he's there for. Learning,” Miranda soothes her, paging the male Shepherd for the third time. Eventually, after watching Addison settle against a thin pillow and bury her feet into her wool coat, Miranda gives up and pages him from Addison's number.
Maybe it'll grab his attention.
But three hours, a cup of chicken noodle soup, and jag of crying about her pathetic life later and Addison still has no husband to drive her drugged up head home.
Miranda Bailey is running out of patience.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“You are an idiot,” Miranda notifies Derek Shepherd before slapping the back of his head as the rest of the crowded elevator watches on interested.
“Excuse me?” Derek asks, rubbing the sore spot.
“Can you read?”
“What kind of a question is that?” Derek wonders aloud, looking around at all of the people who think him to be the most competent surgeon on the floor.
“It's a- answer me!”
“Y-es,” Derek stammers, still confused as he is shoved out of the elevator and down the hall.
“Must be all the damn hair then,” Miranda decides.
“Look, Dr. Bailey, I don't know what we're talking about,” Derek confesses as they come to a rest in front of an office door.
“I've paged you, your wife has paged you, the nurses have paged you-”
“I was performing a craniotomy on Mr. Rivera-”
Miranda twists the handle, shaking her head at his ignorance and always prepared excuses, and she can't possibly fathom what it must be like being married to this egotistical jackass. But then, that's none of her concern so she instructs him much like a few weeks ago to stay quiet and be nice.
This time she doesn't leave. She doesn't trust him.
“Addison?” Derek questions, staring at the pile of wasted, crumpled tissues in the trashcan next to her. Her makeup is basically non-existent, her clothes wrinkled, shoes discarded by the desk. She hasn't looked this disheveled in his presence for years. The impenetrable has fallen, to a plain cold no less.
“Derek,” Addison breathes, forcing her lungs to wait until she's done with her mouth for their turn. Her throat is on fire, head feeling like it's floating off into space, and really she should have seen this coming, she should have felt the familiar twinge of aches and cottonmouth long before this overtook her system but she was too busy remembering the way Derek turned toward Meredith Grey on the trail, the way he smiled with her, the way he looked so relaxed.
She was busy and now she's paying for it. Like always.
“Miranda, I'm fine,” Addison insists, sitting up woozily and extending a stocking covered toe for her pointy heel that's too far out for her to notice.
“You shut up,” Miranda points at Addison, because if she has to hear about it anymore or see her for the next three days she may put her hands around her neck. “And you take her home...and do whatever it is you do when she's sick.”
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Derek wishes he couldn't remember what it was he did when she was sick. Hell, most of the time he wishes he couldn't remember most of their marriage, it would be a lot easier to hate her and a lot less painful that way.
It'd be easier to feel less like a jerk for just watching her suffer, wound up in a hundred blankets, sheen with chilly sweat, and shaking.
Old Derek would wrap her up in his arms and not care if he got sick, but this Derek has a very busy day tomorrow because half of today got pushed into it and he resents her a little for taking his time. Not that she asked him to come home, not that she's said one word to him in so many days he's lost track. But he's tired of being out of coffee in the morning, or being out of cereal, or of being late to work because she turned off his alarm when he wouldn't budge.
So he hasn't seen the trailer in the better part of a week, not since her last overnight shift, then it was safe to nest here and not have to deal with...any of it.
He can hear her mumbling something, breaking his reverie, and he used to love sick Addison because she was incredibly vulnerable, but he has no desire to be part of the pity party. He hangs back, making her lunch in the kitchen. She isn't hungry, in fact she recently threw up all of the soup Bailey fed her, but it's a good reason to not have to go see what she wants.
Offhand he can think of fifty other places he wants to be.
He leaves at seven-thirty convinced that he can catch the next rotation of nurses and see what he's missed out on. Addison is asleep anyway.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“You left me,” Addison sniffles, clutching an orange pillow and staring at the black television. The remote is too far away to reach without making her queasy and for a split second she can see concern splash over his face. It's quickly replaced by anger, however, and he shrugs out of his sweater and balks something about a work emergency which she knows to be untrue because Bailey cleared his schedule, and speaking from experience, no one messes with Bailey.
“I saw you, with Meredith, walking Doc.”
Derek blinks. She's been holding onto that, he can tell, the way it's forced out. And had she not been delusion and ill, he doesn't think she would have brought it up. New Addison is too over it to yell and scream about Meredith anymore, but sick Addison has some spunk. He blinks again, and there's nothing to say so he doesn't, just continues undressing.
He didn't do anything wrong, but he's betrayed her. He can tell, the way she rolls her eyes and sinks back into the bed. “We're friends.”
“Friends,” Addison repeats lamely. She's pretty sure a condition of her moving here was that she didn't speak about non-work related items. This is bridging into a whole other sector. She's held up her end of the bargain, stuffed away in this tin can, taking in his new life.
“She- I need a friend,” Derek tells her, down to his socks and boxers. He's actually going to get into bed with this disease but then changes his mind. He shucks off the comforters and knitted blankets, accidentally almost ripping Addison's favorite one and then proceeds to tell her to take off the ridiculous hat and mittens she's wearing and to get naked. She scowls, but knows better than to think that it's anything sexual, especially with their recent forays.
Derek turns the tap of the shower on and waits for it to warm while she stands shivering. “This- it doesn't change us, Addie. I'm still...trying.”
Even sick Addison and old Addison know that this changes things, but new Addison is kind of a take-what-you-can-get person and merely bristles by him as she climbs into the hot stream he suggested.
Standing feels futile.
And so she sinks onto her knees and settles back to her old nook, barely looking up into the steam when he joins her and reluctantly sits, forced to pull her onto his lap so they both fit. Her messy red hair tickles his ear, and her head finds that one spot against his neck, and Derek sighs.
“This is my favorite place,” Addison admits to him, then coughs, leaning forward as he digs his fingers through her drenched tangles. She can feel him smile against her cheek, and he probably thinks she's crazy.
And she may be.
But the coursing droplets that fall inelegantly from above are on her left tonight, not her trusty right, and it's just enough to keep her in the punishingly brutal game of loving her husband.
That and a strong dose of cough syrup.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
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. These are one-shots that require no previous knowledge of other chapters to peruse and hopefully enjoy. Previous.
A/N: Nostalgia is mean, especially when Brother has just decided to get into this show. It's like a magnet, if it's on, I'm in the room...and here we are. Enjoy-
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
A Three-Legged Workhorse
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
The water drops from the leaky shower head keep her company on cold, dewy mornings. Addison is stuck against the wall, head full of shampoo, exhausted and trying to work up to shaving. It probably won't happen, she reasons, as she slides carefully down the freshly washed tile, the plunking cascade now plowing into her shoulder. Sometimes the broken shower seems like her only constant, her only friend on chilly nights when Derek is missing and still can't bother to fix the heat.
She may as well be living in the harshness of the woods, she's certain he'd get a good laugh out of that.
But for now, she attempts to stretch out her aching limbs, wanting the scalding water to hit everywhere as it seems to only reach her neck and right ear. It won't fix anything. Bubble baths, nights of vodka, endless apologies, they aren't fixing what she allegedly broke.
This morning sealed it for her.
Feeling a bit daring, especially after finding herself alone again in the sheets, she drug out her running shoes and found an almost clean long sleeved blue shirt that would stand up to minimal wind and her heat. And the further she got down the trail, the better it felt. The better her lungs stretching, trying to accommodate the long lost hobby, and her feet pounding into unsteady terrain felt. She passed a patch of poison oak carefully, not wanting a repeat performance, and nearly tripped over a protruding tree root.
Her breathing was beyond labored, headed dangerously toward something else, but when she saw her husband, Doc (who she neglected to notice was missing), and Meredith Grey fifty feet ahead of her, instinct took over. She darted behind a suspicious bush, and watched as her heart wrenched in her chest from a lack of oxygen (though she would later swear it was shattering ever more).
They never touched, never shared more than simple eye contact, but it was enough to send Addison into the weird hug of trepidation, and passive aggressive trends. Because she could never say she saw him, never accuse him of something she hasn't seen.
She doesn't have that kind of leverage anymore (he made his own number three, they don't move and he still holds it against her in every conversation). So she retreats, and turns to the shower to help wash away her pain.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Three days later she's seeing it in her dreams. Meredith's gentle laugh, Doc chasing after a stick, Derek's hands stuffed into his pockets, not in tension, but a sense of ease she hasn't seen in years.
And deep down, there's a sincere happiness. Because old Derek is still under there somewhere, the one she fell in love with, and there's solace in knowing she didn't alter him that profoundly.
But old Derek isn't anywhere to be found inside the trailer where they spend time together by sitting in opposite “rooms” in silence. They “read”, and then pretend to be asleep. It's a game, seeing who gives in last, though neither knows the prize is only deprivation.
Five days out from her run and Addison prepares a dinner she knows he won't show up for, but she's always been a bit of a masochist, even though old Addison wouldn't have put up with this insanity. But old Addison didn't have something to prove to everyone, to herself. Old Addison had a seemingly stable relationship that no one questioned.
At day seven, Addison thinks she may be officially losing it. She's too tired to hold herself up and apply mascara but she doesn't realize it until ten minutes into her morning routine when the image staring back at her in the mirror doesn't match what she wants to see. New Addison has bags under her eyes that are getting harder to cover, and new Addison cries far too often for old Addison's liking. New Addison is barely recognizable.
She wonders if this is part of why Derek can't stand to be near her.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
It's steaming tea that's helping her get through it. Aiding her through Derek's cold cheek kisses and fake attempts at their life. Well tea and Miranda Bailey, who, despite her no-nonsense policy, has made a small exception at the troubling life and times of Addison Montgomery-Shepherd. She tells her how it is, not how old or new Addison want to believe it is, and it's the stark breath of fresh air that's keeping her sane.
“You look horrible,” Miranda greets, standing next to Addison, who has her nose buried in a wad of tissues.
“Spare me,” Addison begs horridly.
“You're sick,” Miranda accuses, drinking in the lanky form next to her that is using the counter as a resting spot, her nose severely congested, cough sounding like a pair of boulders being clanked together.
“Seattle hates me,” Addison declares, hands stretched upward.
“Seattle is a city,” Miranda reminds her, feeling something oddly reminiscent of sympathy. “Why are you at work trying to infect all of my interns?”
“I'm not contagious, no fever, and I feel fi-” a sneeze cuts the redhead short but Miranda gets the gist.
“You are not fine. Come with me,” Miranda demands, but stops short when there is no movement behind her. Addison scrubs at her eyes, smudging her eyeliner and Miranda decides yelling might be something she responds to better, “I said come with me!”
She watches the lifeless attending drag her silly stiletto feet behind her, and gently convinces her that maybe she'd like to lay down somewhere. Miranda suggests an exam room, but Addison refuses to play the role of a patient and instead picks her own office with an unbearably rigid beige couch suited for an unbearably beige office.
Miranda administers the medicine as she would to her own son, stopping just above making airplane noises, and she gets the distinct impression that Addison Montgomery-Shepherd doesn't “do” sick, it's undignified, and she says as much when she rises to round on her post-ops.
“Karev will handle that, it's what he's there for. Learning,” Miranda soothes her, paging the male Shepherd for the third time. Eventually, after watching Addison settle against a thin pillow and bury her feet into her wool coat, Miranda gives up and pages him from Addison's number.
Maybe it'll grab his attention.
But three hours, a cup of chicken noodle soup, and jag of crying about her pathetic life later and Addison still has no husband to drive her drugged up head home.
Miranda Bailey is running out of patience.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“You are an idiot,” Miranda notifies Derek Shepherd before slapping the back of his head as the rest of the crowded elevator watches on interested.
“Excuse me?” Derek asks, rubbing the sore spot.
“Can you read?”
“What kind of a question is that?” Derek wonders aloud, looking around at all of the people who think him to be the most competent surgeon on the floor.
“It's a- answer me!”
“Y-es,” Derek stammers, still confused as he is shoved out of the elevator and down the hall.
“Must be all the damn hair then,” Miranda decides.
“Look, Dr. Bailey, I don't know what we're talking about,” Derek confesses as they come to a rest in front of an office door.
“I've paged you, your wife has paged you, the nurses have paged you-”
“I was performing a craniotomy on Mr. Rivera-”
Miranda twists the handle, shaking her head at his ignorance and always prepared excuses, and she can't possibly fathom what it must be like being married to this egotistical jackass. But then, that's none of her concern so she instructs him much like a few weeks ago to stay quiet and be nice.
This time she doesn't leave. She doesn't trust him.
“Addison?” Derek questions, staring at the pile of wasted, crumpled tissues in the trashcan next to her. Her makeup is basically non-existent, her clothes wrinkled, shoes discarded by the desk. She hasn't looked this disheveled in his presence for years. The impenetrable has fallen, to a plain cold no less.
“Derek,” Addison breathes, forcing her lungs to wait until she's done with her mouth for their turn. Her throat is on fire, head feeling like it's floating off into space, and really she should have seen this coming, she should have felt the familiar twinge of aches and cottonmouth long before this overtook her system but she was too busy remembering the way Derek turned toward Meredith Grey on the trail, the way he smiled with her, the way he looked so relaxed.
She was busy and now she's paying for it. Like always.
“Miranda, I'm fine,” Addison insists, sitting up woozily and extending a stocking covered toe for her pointy heel that's too far out for her to notice.
“You shut up,” Miranda points at Addison, because if she has to hear about it anymore or see her for the next three days she may put her hands around her neck. “And you take her home...and do whatever it is you do when she's sick.”
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Derek wishes he couldn't remember what it was he did when she was sick. Hell, most of the time he wishes he couldn't remember most of their marriage, it would be a lot easier to hate her and a lot less painful that way.
It'd be easier to feel less like a jerk for just watching her suffer, wound up in a hundred blankets, sheen with chilly sweat, and shaking.
Old Derek would wrap her up in his arms and not care if he got sick, but this Derek has a very busy day tomorrow because half of today got pushed into it and he resents her a little for taking his time. Not that she asked him to come home, not that she's said one word to him in so many days he's lost track. But he's tired of being out of coffee in the morning, or being out of cereal, or of being late to work because she turned off his alarm when he wouldn't budge.
So he hasn't seen the trailer in the better part of a week, not since her last overnight shift, then it was safe to nest here and not have to deal with...any of it.
He can hear her mumbling something, breaking his reverie, and he used to love sick Addison because she was incredibly vulnerable, but he has no desire to be part of the pity party. He hangs back, making her lunch in the kitchen. She isn't hungry, in fact she recently threw up all of the soup Bailey fed her, but it's a good reason to not have to go see what she wants.
Offhand he can think of fifty other places he wants to be.
He leaves at seven-thirty convinced that he can catch the next rotation of nurses and see what he's missed out on. Addison is asleep anyway.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
“You left me,” Addison sniffles, clutching an orange pillow and staring at the black television. The remote is too far away to reach without making her queasy and for a split second she can see concern splash over his face. It's quickly replaced by anger, however, and he shrugs out of his sweater and balks something about a work emergency which she knows to be untrue because Bailey cleared his schedule, and speaking from experience, no one messes with Bailey.
“I saw you, with Meredith, walking Doc.”
Derek blinks. She's been holding onto that, he can tell, the way it's forced out. And had she not been delusion and ill, he doesn't think she would have brought it up. New Addison is too over it to yell and scream about Meredith anymore, but sick Addison has some spunk. He blinks again, and there's nothing to say so he doesn't, just continues undressing.
He didn't do anything wrong, but he's betrayed her. He can tell, the way she rolls her eyes and sinks back into the bed. “We're friends.”
“Friends,” Addison repeats lamely. She's pretty sure a condition of her moving here was that she didn't speak about non-work related items. This is bridging into a whole other sector. She's held up her end of the bargain, stuffed away in this tin can, taking in his new life.
“She- I need a friend,” Derek tells her, down to his socks and boxers. He's actually going to get into bed with this disease but then changes his mind. He shucks off the comforters and knitted blankets, accidentally almost ripping Addison's favorite one and then proceeds to tell her to take off the ridiculous hat and mittens she's wearing and to get naked. She scowls, but knows better than to think that it's anything sexual, especially with their recent forays.
Derek turns the tap of the shower on and waits for it to warm while she stands shivering. “This- it doesn't change us, Addie. I'm still...trying.”
Even sick Addison and old Addison know that this changes things, but new Addison is kind of a take-what-you-can-get person and merely bristles by him as she climbs into the hot stream he suggested.
Standing feels futile.
And so she sinks onto her knees and settles back to her old nook, barely looking up into the steam when he joins her and reluctantly sits, forced to pull her onto his lap so they both fit. Her messy red hair tickles his ear, and her head finds that one spot against his neck, and Derek sighs.
“This is my favorite place,” Addison admits to him, then coughs, leaning forward as he digs his fingers through her drenched tangles. She can feel him smile against her cheek, and he probably thinks she's crazy.
And she may be.
But the coursing droplets that fall inelegantly from above are on her left tonight, not her trusty right, and it's just enough to keep her in the punishingly brutal game of loving her husband.
That and a strong dose of cough syrup.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~