Title: Boundaries
Author: gabs88
Summary: Darker post season nine piece from Teddy's Point of view, Arizona makes an appearance as does Addison. Please read the note before reading.
Rating: M-swearing, drinking, sexual themes, angry people
Disclaimer: All characters belong to ABC/Shonda Rhimes. This story is not for profit and made purely for entertainment value/I needed some fluff.
Warning: this story could have some triggers for self harm and anorexia.
Note: This is one of quite a few darker one shots (that don't link to each other) that I've written among all the drama and angst of the season nine finale episodes. I'm not sure if I'll post all of them, I suppose it depends on the reception.
Imagine Private Practice has never happened, because I've never watched it and I wanted Addison in this so just made it happen. Heh. :)
Boundaries
I'm possibly the worst friend to ever be.
Which is unfair, as she was never anything but a great friend to me. When he died she picked me up, multiple times. I slept on her and Callie's couch more than I care to remember and she literally pulled me off the bathroom floor at work even more. When I had moments where I would be standing, staring at the wall and unable to snap myself out of it, she'd appear in front of me, all blonde hair and dimples and suddenly the softness of Sofia would be in my arms and there is nothing like a baby to wake you up.
And I've abandoned her.
Of course I know about the plane crash.
Owen emailed me.
They were stuck out there four days. He told me what Cristina told him, animals eating Lexie's remains, Meredith being almost catatonic, Yang being actually catatonic, Derek ruining his hand, Arizona with her femur through her thigh trying to keep a dying Mark awake and with her.
And Arizona lost her leg.
And Mark died.
And everything was so fucked up.
And still I never called.
Instead, I increased how much Xanax I took and went back to fucking Addison.
Oh, yeah. That.
I ended up in L.A. I craved sun and sand and desert and the days before Owen was drowning in PTSD and before Cristina and before Henry stole a part of me that died with him. There was no way I'd pass a psych evaluation, though, I'd lied about the job because I just needed out. So I went for somewhere else with sand and sun and completely different to Seattle and Henry.
And I met Addison.
I knew of her, vaguely, from the admiration in Callie's voice when she spoke of her. Sometimes I swore it was more than admiration, but I had kept that thought to myself.
I met a redhead in a bar and it had been almost a year since I'd had sex, yet the idea of another man made me feel nauseated, because he wouldn't be Henry. The redhead was talkative and liked her gin with soda, not tonic, like I did. She left me toying with the idea of reliving my college days. I took her in the bathroom, learning that riding a girl is like riding a bicycle: a slightly wobbly start, but in the end you're moving along with a smile on your face like you've been doing it forever.
She came on my hand and then returned the favour with her tongue.
I was still panting, skirt hitched up, when the redhead with legs that went for days fixed her shirt and kissed me, leaving the bathroom and leaving me with the taste of myself on my lips.
I returned to that bar repeatedly, as did she, and months later, here we are.
We don't talk about the men that have left us, that have destroyed us and broken us and made us and fixed us and and fucked us and gone. She never speaks of Derek, the man she felt she should have loved, and Mark the one she did love but couldn't let herself. I never speak of Henry, and what he was to me, or Owen and how he broke me, and we never speak of the link of Mark, because that's all just too fucked up, even for us.
I don't comment on the scars on her thighs, razor thin and straight. They're healed, but not old enough to make me think it was a teenage stupidity. She doesn't speak of how when she runs her hands down my sides, leaving a trail of goosebumps, she could count my ribs easily, one by one, a bony testament to what plagues my insides.
We did speak of Callie, and we did speak of Arizona.
I told her what I knew and her face had darkened-Callie, she said, would mess this up by trying to help, too good not to know when to back off.
Arizona, I said, would mess this up by trying to be who her wife wanted to be, rather than who she needed to be.
But I still didn't call her.
When I got the news, I thought she'd be dead, and I swear my heart had stopped
As a cardiothoracic surgeon, I can tell you that yes, that can actually happen. A severe emotional response sending an electro pulse through your autonomic system and bam, your heart skips a beat.
In kind, it's like it's stopped for a moment.
And mine did.
I found out she was alive and realised she probably wished she wasn't, and it had skipped again.
Arizona would be broken.
I could just see it.
That woman was full of pride and perk and ability. All that covered up a complex little personality buried under it all that a lot of people didn't see.
Losing her limb had probably broken her.
And still I didn't pick up a phone.
I didn't before the crash, because I didn't want to put my utter brokenness on her world. I didn't want to smear her and Callie's lives with the anger and the grief and sadness that coats my own.
And now I can't, because I'm beyond helping myself, let alone anyone else.
And she'll need help.
And she won't get it, either.
Like I haven't.
Like Addison hasn't.
Addison doesn't want me to fix her. We are a balm for each other, a band aid over gaping wounds that will never heal. Necrotic flesh and puss and we are never going to be the people we were meant to be, which is how we be the people we are together. We have zero expectations, we ask nothing and give nothing but harsh orgasms and harsher kisses.
Two miscarriages for Addison that broke her, and then there are the men.
A war that left me shattered, in a quieter way than Owen, and then the men.
When her nails scratch down my back, leaving a red path that sometimes draws blood, I shudder and ask for it harder. Her fingers are rough and her teeth bite and when I fuck her, I fuck her like I can fill the void that's left her as numb as I am.
I never wanted to be this broken.
And now Arizona is and I have a missed call from her and I need to call her back.
Because she's legless and she'll be broken and I'll want to help her and I can't.
And she'll want to fix me when she's completely broken herself and I don't want to be fixed. I'm lost in the safety of my misery.
Two broken people can not mend each other.
But I can't ignore her.
She's not called, once. Or emailed or messaged.
So this call means something. I need to call her back.
I had a voice mail from Callie, at the start.
That woman just utterly breaks my heart. Her voice wavered and I could just imagine her eyes when she spoke, broken and torn and begging. She wanted me to visit, to pull Arizona out of the bed because she couldn't and Sofia couldn't and she wanted her wife back.
Her voice had cracked over that last word, a plea, almost.
I didn't call back, because how do I tell her that I know her wife is gone for good? How do I tell her that I know Arizona well enough to know that she's going to be pretend she's still herself until it destroys her, all for Callie. It'll destroy her and in the process it'll destroy Callie and Sofia and their bubble.
How do you tell Callie Torres that?
That woman's been through enough.
Addison called Callie back, returning the multiple missed calls.
She's better at it, than I am.
She has it together that little bit more, she's is mildly less broken and therefore, she spewed lies at Callie like she was offering her peace.
I heard her say it'll all be okay.
It made me so angry she came in to her living room to find me drinking her tequila bottle dry. Her raised eyebrows questioned me and I asked her, "How the fuck do you lie to her like that?"
And she had shrugged, a look on her face, and said, "How do I not?"
She'd taken the bottle and sipped it, barely a grimace, then kissed me, tequila washing over my tongue like a salve. Her hands had pushed my skirt up, her fingers had been hard and I rode them until we ended up on the floor, her hand up my skirt as I straddled her, my fingers on her under her jeans, and our hips move almost viciously.
It was one of those painful releases, as most are with us, cathartic and destructive and cruel, leaving you craving that feeling again and again. That feeling as you hover on the edge, your body not knowing which way to fall and for that moment, there is nothing but her and I and the feeling of her wrapped around my fingers. Nothing else exists.
We claw for that moment, all the time, both of us living in an existence where we want to escape our realities.
I got my shit together.
I called her back.
Sitting on my floor, I hadn't seen Addison a few days, and I called her back.
Arizona and I had never spoken about the night I kissed her in the bathroom at Joes.
She had let me, and I thank her for that.
She hadn't pulled away or reproached me or yelled at me or slapped me.
Henry had been dead three months and she had found my at the bar that has seen too many doctors fall to pieces, drunk and sad and probably looking lost with my stupid eyes that give too much away. Doe like, I've heard.
She'd smiled and said it, saying my eyes were wide, like a deer's.
She tried to make me laugh, calling me Bambi. Her fingers ran down my cheek, she looked heartbroken on my behalf, and she murmured, "You look innocent and broken, Bambi. How's the world keep kicking you down?"
There was so much affection in her words that I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand being looked at like that when Henry couldn't look at me at all, and I'd ran to the bathroom, the world feeling like it was suffocating me.
She had followed, because she is that complexly good.
She had followed and hugged me and I pulled back and kissed her.
I kissed her because, fuck I was lonely and sad and craved touch and affection and because God, I don't know.
Because.
That's why.
She didn't move. She had stood still under me, her lips not responding, barely, and when I pulled back she looked at me and said, "You don't want that." Her eyes had looked at me, so damn blue, "And I'm not a cheater, I'm just not. I love her."
Only I did want that, but no, she wasn't a cheater, she's not. Her moral compass is strong.
I called her with that memory playing on my mind.
She answered on the third ring and her voice was utterly broken, "Teddy?"
And that, there, was why I hadn't called her.
I knew her too well and she knew me and we were both broken and shattered and we'd be no good to each other.
Which is probably why she hadn't called me, for almost a year.
Because she knew it and I knew it.
But she called, after not calling for so long.
And that's why I answered.
Because she called.
Simple, really.
"Arizona."
"I have really, really fucked up."
She is not a cheater.
But now she is.
That says more than I wished it did.
I picked her up at the bus station, her limp with her prosthetic was barely noticeable.
I slept with a guy from our platoon once, who had lost a leg. He was full of anger and retribution, but had made love to me like I was made of glass, and I held him afterwards while he cried. He had had a wife and kid back home, but had left them, he said, because they deserved more than a man so dead inside.
She stood in front of me and we sized each other up. She saw, no doubt, my thinness, the bruise on my neck, and who knows what my eyes are like, anymore.
I doubt I look like Bambi.
She's thin and she looks hard.
She doesn't look like Arizona.
There is something in her eye, she's gone.
She's changed.
Arizona had been perky, yes, had been bubbly and bright and fun and gave up anything and everything for her wife. She had stayed with her wife when she was pregnant with another man's baby, for crying out loud.
That's who this woman had been.
But what had drawn me to her, was there was a hardness underneath, she was complicated and a little selfish and fierce and complex.
It is the best word I can think of for this woman.
Complex.
Now what was underneath, that gave her edge, is all she is now. Her shiny outer coating is gone, faded to a layer so fine I don't think she's even aware of its existence anymore.
A plane fell from the sky and destroyed this woman.
She fell in to me, and God, she was light.
Her face pressed in to my neck and my fingers dug in to her skin and I'm really not sure how I held us both up, but I did.
And then she's pulled back, cocking her head and looking at me.
"I fucked her in an on call room while my wife and child were in the same building."
I just looked at her.
"Who does that?"
Her voice was hoarse, tight with emotion. I blinked.
"I don't do that, Teddy."
I nod.
She pauses, her face almost surprised.
"I never came back from that crash."
It's almost like I'm her psychiatrist and she is sitting there, only now realising something that I knew had occurred the second I found out what had happened. Before I'd even seen her.
It's like she's processing, right here in front of me, truth falling painfully from her tongue.
How did it take her this long?
I look at her, really look at her.
"You tried to be you."
She nodded, her voice is shredded, it sounds like she's been screaming, "I tried. She wanted me to try. How-" She looked up towards the sky, and then at me, her face so angry, eyes raw, "How the fuck do I love her and hate so much, at the same time?"
I took her hand, and I pulled her to the exit.
We drive mostly in silence.
At my apartment, I pull the wine from the fridge, prepared for this.
She sat at the counter, perched on a stool, pulling a bottle of tequila from her bag.
Why start easy?
I pour us a glass of wine each and we use it as a chaser.
The first two shots go down easy.
"So she told you to get out?"
The second two even more so.
Arizona sucks salt off her hand and throws a shot back, the lemon is between her lips, and she stares at the counter top, "No. She might have, but I left her. I broke her heart, I screamed at her, things I hadn't even realised I felt. And then I walked out. It's been two weeks and our contact is that we exchange Sofia like she's property."
She sips her wine and finally looks at me, and she's so hollow it's haunting, "I had to leave."
I nod, "I get that."
She tilted her head in that way she does when she's figuring you out, "I know you do. You did it, too." She's looking at me too closely, I had forgotten she could do that, "Has it worked?"
"No." I take a shot without the salt or lemon, needing to burn this truth out of me, "But it's better than sitting there and being smothered by it."
She nods and drinks more wine, already we are both fuzzy, "I slept with Lauren again, a few days after leaving her. Just to see if it was about her." I stay silent, and I watch how much she hates herself. Th next words are quiet, "It wasn't about her."
I nodded and pour her another shot. The bottle is half empty, and I feel that way, too.
"So then I slept with this blonde in the bathroom, to see if it was about sex."
A pass her the salt and she does her shot, lick, sip, suck like it's a prayer. She doesn't chase it, and to be honest I think she's so used to holding things in it doesn't matter what she swallows. She's been swallowing the truth for a year, lived with the burning in her throat.
I shoot my glass and listen.
"It wasn't about the sex." She turns to me, imploring, "So why do I keep fucking bar sluts? If Ca-if she finds out, it'll break her. But I can't stop."
"Maybe you want to hurt her?"
She blinks at the shock of the words, "There has to be another reason."
I nod, "I'm sleeping with Addison, so don't ask me."
She stops then, a glass part way to her lips. There's salt on her bottom lip, and I want to suck it off. She actually smiles, the first one, and gives a short burst of a laugh.
"Well, Teddy, I always wondered about you."
I watch her take the shot and her tongue goes out, swiping off that grain.
I almost groan in disappointment.
"So you have a girlfriend?"
I snort a laugh, "No. We are just each on the same level of fucked up."
She stared at her wine glass, swirling the liquid around. When did she refill it?
"I see your fucked up, and raise you just fucked." Her voice is quiet, distant. She checks out so easily.
I lean forward, my hand on her thigh, the right one, the one she still has a whole one of, "No. You don't get to claim all the fucked up."
And in leaning forward, I've moved my face so close to hers, so that when she turns our faces are inches apart. Her eyes are dark and lost and deep and we are both flushed from the alcohol. I lean forward, and she doesn't lean back.
She shakes her head, "Teddy. I'm not good. I'm not good, for you."
"Shut up, Arizona."
And then my lips are on hers, and there's that moment, like in Joes, where she responds but doesn't respond and then something in her snaps.
Something snaps that I think snaps easily for her, these days.
And she leans forward, her tongue in my mouth, tasting of tequila, the story of the women in my life.
Her hands tangle in my hair and pull me in and God, I don't know when I started wanting this but it feels like forever.
I pull her up and guide her backwards, and some how we are on the bed. Her pants are down, and it's strange that it is this leg that has done this to her, brought her here, led us to be stripping naked on my bed when we both know we shouldn't, yet she doesn't seem to care about having her pants off.
How many bar women did it take for that?
Or had she managed that already?
My mouth is on hers and we are both fumbling with her prosthetic, pulling at velcro and straps until it off and falling away. My lips are on her neck and she's pulled my shirt off and she asks, breathless, at the point where it's apparent I don't, "Do you care?"
I pull back and look at her, my hand on that thigh, skin smooth and amazing even if it's all she has left of that limb. She looks at me and bites her lip, her eyes barely unsure. And I realise, it's not that she's worried about it on her part, she doesn't want to put me off. Because no matter where she's at with her confidence with this, her leg is defining her.
Doesn't she realise how much else defines her? What everyone else sees?
The hard truth is no, she doesn't.
I answer her by gripping her skin, nails in, and watch her pupils dilate as I fall on her.
Because no, I don't care at all.
We are so destructive, we'll risk destroying each other and the fragile bond that's between us.
Though, I realise, as her fingers slide in to me, fracturing me apart while somehow bringing me back together, that it's not a fragile bond. We've been here, the whole time, protecting each other with our absence.
And now, we're trying to salvage what's left of who we were and find it in each other. And neither of us expect each other to be those people, anyway, which is why, maybe, it feels like Arizona is breathing for the first time since she felt turbulence hit her plane.
I come harder than I thought I could, and she follows not long after as I straddle her lap, two fingers buried in her and my thumb against her clit.
And there, in my arms, a sob leave her throat and her forehead falls against my collarbone. I can't help but wonder if she's done this, yet, at all.
I don't think she would have. At least not on someone, at least not where someone can see and wrap their arms around her.
And when I drop her back at the bus port tomorrow, her to go back to her life to try and fix it, and me to Addison, I doubt we'll speak of this again.
And that's okay.
Two broken people can not mend each other.
But maybe two broken people can be one almost whole one.
Even with her back in her life and me in mine.
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