A/N: Mostly just a shipper need for fluff and warm, fuzzy closure. Thanks for the prompt Irene, I enjoyed playing with this.
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Patriarch On A Vespa
- Metric
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There were thoughts of laying out Dr. Karev cold on the hospital floor, thoughts that circulated when he had too much liquor coursing through his veins and had already forwent trying to find a pretty blonde to take home to bed. Memories of her, the way she always chastised him for using and abusing his interns, the daily guess of how her hair would be- swept back or haphazardly invading her line of sight, wondering if he'd ever hear those ridiculous heels that made her legs look absolutely delicious again. These things, they liked to invade. Work their way out into the real world and then sit on his heart, suffocating his normal routines, leading him to slinking around the hospital trying to pick up on the tiniest piece of information involving where Addison could be and why she disappeared in the middle of the night like the ghost she wasn't.
"This look, the dead dog that got kicked thing," Callie pointed at him with a pen, "it does not suit you. Stop pouting. It's pathetic."
He attempts a glare and then somehow it turns into a sigh instead, "I'm not pouting."
"Oh, that was convincing." She shakes her head and then slides across the nurses' station to get closer. "Look at this." She shoves her chart under his nose and he frowns, actually frowns.
"I don't-"
"No," she drops her voice, "You stare at this and pretend to be interested and I'll tell you where Addison skipped off to."
"Ok." He agrees easily. He scans the lines of the lucky schmuck who is getting a hip replacement.
"So this guy, Mr. Kilger, he's from Los Angeles." Callie tells him, hoping he'll catch on, "He is visiting some friends up here, not used to the rain of course, and then bam, next thing he knows he's flat on his ass on the sidewalk."
"Fun." Mark growls.
Callie rolls her eyes and speaks painfully slow, "Since he is from L.A. he wasn't expecting rain. He didn't even bring his red umbrella from his home in southern California."
"That's great Cal, you going to drag me around the ring some more or are-"
"You're an idiot." Callie grumbles, eyes down on the chart, avoiding the gaze of Nurse Debbie who has hot on the trail of any juicy gossip all morning.
"You said-"
"Los Angeles Mark."
"Yeah, I got it. This guy is an peon who can't walk in the rain."
Callie hangs her head. She certainly thought Mark was more observant than this. "Addison and Mr. Kilger have something in common, you know."
"They hate the rain." Mark fills in immediately. God, how he has heard about the rain.
"No. I give up," Callie drops her blue pen on the papers and throws her hands in the air, "L.A. Addison is in L.A."
Mark's nose instinctively crinkles, "Why?"
The younger doctor hesitates briefly. Addison never mentioned why. She just assumed a vacation was in order, "I don't know."
"Helpful." Mark snarls and pushes off the counter on his way to find someone who doesn't suck at life.
~-~-~-~-~-~
He tried Stevens, even baited her by offering a surgery, attempted Meredith who said to leave her alone, and O'Malley who knew less than everyone else combined. His futile attempt with Miranda Bailey nearly got him knocked upside the head and resulted in him tracking down a mocha latte in her name so that the whole situation would be forgotten. Richard refused to work with him, claiming he was busy and Addison being gone put a crimp in his style as it was so he didn't have time to dilly-dally outside in the halls. All of which led him to Derek. In hindsight he has had better ideas but he couldn't help but feel the brotherly camaraderie when Derek snickered over the fact that Addison had cheated on him as well. But Derek doesn't know the whole story, he never does.
"I don't think she'd want you there." Callie tells him later at Joe's, before he even has the chance to ask. "She left to get away from all you fools."
He almost bursts out with a, "Not me! I didn't do it!" but keeps his lips shut looking at the amber liquid in his cup. "Wanna get out of here?"
"Married." Callie lifts her left hand and reminds him, sending his shoulders more forward and his head following suit until it's carefully nestled on his forearms, almost level with the sticky, filthy bar top. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Nothin'." He murmurs into his still damp leather jacket.
"Something." She corrects. "You're acting like you're four years old."
"Maybe I am."
Callie chuckles to herself, "You miss her? You really are helpless."
"Not. Helpless."
"But you do miss her." She watches his body shrug in response, "Then go get her for fuck's sake and stop being a big baby." She slaps his shoulder, a message for him to man up, because seeing him like this is unnerving. Last she heard today he handed off the reigns to a resident to finish up a surgery and was sulking in an on call room staring at his phone.
"She doesn't want me." And to that he sits up and drinks. Then orders another and drinks again.
"It's Addison for crying out loud. She never knows what she wants." That's about all Callie has learned in her recent stint with the redhead. She doesn't know until it's too late and she's made the wrong decision. Oh and she hates blueberry muffins. Too many memories or something.
"This time," he gulps again, "I think she does."
"And you're just going to sit back on your hands and watch?" He nods, "That's not like you."
"You don't know me." He instantly pipes up. Besides loving the woman does weird things to him. He'd do anything she asked, even if it included staying on the sidelines for the rest of his life.
"I know you're a fighter." Callie squeezes his shoulder to get his attention when his eyes travel to the door, "She's not going to come back the next day, moron. Listen, maybe I don't know you. Maybe no one here does but you came for a reason right?"
"Derek." He says quietly.
"And Addison." Callie fills in when he leaves it out.
"No." He objects. He came for his family. That was the safe bet.
"Yes."
"No."
"Ugh," Callie groans and spins on her seat, "You honestly expect us all to believe that you moved across the country for the asshole who still hates your guts? You think we all don't know it's because you're in love with Addison and have been for...god knows how long."
"I'm not." He clarifies, picking up his glass and silently demanding more.
"Please." Callie feels his fingers tightening. All she wants to do in land one solid punch to his jaw. Patience was never her strong suit.
"She told you?" Mark asks quietly after a few minutes pass.
"She didn't have to. It's written all over your damn face everyday. You know, you aren't half the liar you seem to think you are."
"We were going to make a go of it. Try and make it work."
"She told me that." Callie sips her drink, finally relaxing a little, "Except you are both sex driven obsessed little freaks and you decided to go about it the one way you knew it wouldn't work."
"It was her idea." He states plainly. He remembers that evening very clearly, the day's events making all their wounds that much more fresh and raw. She opened the window and he jumped, head first into a dumpster full of multicolored broken glass. Yet he only blames himself for all of the lacerations. Funny how life works.
"Then tell her she is an idiot and move on. Stand up to her for once."
"I could've done it." He argues for argument's sake.
"Yeah," Callie nods, "But if she really wanted you...you shouldn't have had to prove it like that. We aren't in junior high anymore."
"I-Before she left New York, I...she found me with someone else. She was just taking precautions. I get that."
Callie shakes her head in disappointment. Sure she's a touch naïve, and maybe she likes to dangle on a hope thread but even she understands that just because you did it once, doesn't mean you'll do it again and there is nothing, short of death, to ensure that the other party isn't going to get hurt again. That's a risk you have to take, a ledge you need to dive off of, praying the person who has the parachute isn't going to let go. She takes a deep breath, thinking of something that will get to him. "She wants a baby."
"I know." Mark grimaces.
"She went down there to have a baby." Callie reluctantly tells him. She's going to catch a lot of flack next week if this doesn't go correctly.
"What?"
"She said one of her friends is a fertility specialist or something. She wants a baby now." Callie orders another beer and looks around for George. He is, as usual, late and leaving her alone.
"Oh," He huffs in one long expel of air, "well that's good, I guess."
"You are infuriating." He looks up at her for the first time all evening, "You whine and pout and sulk all damn week and the second I tell you where she is going and the idiotic choices she is making you say 'Oh well'? Get up off your ass and tell her how you feel because you're the only one who has any say in Addisonland other than the ruler herself."
"If it is what she wants-"
"What she wants is something stable and that is not a child. She's grasping at straws and it's not my place to tell her she's wrong. She listens to you so why don't you go tell her what we are all thinking."
"And that is?" He glances at her cluelessly.
"That she needs to grow up and deal with the fact that not everything is perfect and that even though you don't bbq or play catch, you still like steak and baseball."
He shakes his head in confusion, "That's the stupidest thing you've said all night Torres. But I do like baseball. Yankees, that is."
"And steak." She tells him.
"It's alright." He complies.
"So go." She pushes his torso, mostly hoping he will lose balance and hit the ground and come back with some common sense.
"Go?"
"Go!" She urges. It really is the best idea for everyone involved.
He paces to the door, pulls the zipper up on his coat nearly catching it on his black button up, and then pauses. "Where am I going?"
"To get Addison." Callie groans in frustration, she really thought it was going better than that.
"Yeah but I don't know where she is." He implores with a pointed look that leaves Callie scrambling through her huge purse.
"Here." She slaps the paper into his palm. "And don't call her. I know maybe somewhere in that heart of yours, you're polite to other people and like to let them know they'll have a guest but refrain. Just do something wild and go."
"I'm wild." He counters.
"I remember." She smirks and then turns back to grab some darts, just to pass the time until her friend calls her screaming.
It's going to be a good night.
~-~-~-~-~-~
The three additional drinks in the cramped coach class of flight 6997 nonstop to LAX did not help in the slightest. Neither did rushing through the doors to find the first available cab and the traffic on his way out to the Santa Monica house has only served to get his nerves more amped. He paces his breathing and checks his watch for the hundredth time. There are two options, mostly because it's nearly midnight. One head straight out there, where the cab driver is presently driving to, or scream stop and go to the closest hotel. The second very well may lead to him just hopping back on a plane tomorrow, no words with the fleeing gynecologist (/double board certified etc...blah, blah, blah) having occurred, so he bites his tongue and twists around in his seat to stretch his back. It cracks as his stomach flips and the cab slides to a sudden halt.
"This is it." The guy in the front tells him and Mark's thankful that the accent he sports doesn't make life any more difficult than it needs to be.
"'K." Mark reaches for his wallet, checks the toll, and hands over a few bills.
"You want me wait?" He asks knowingly.
"Umm...no." Mark decides and bids him goodbye, a weird unspoken bond severing as the car speeds off. Ten paces to the large wood door and he notes that the outside light is still on so that must be a good sign. His finger pushes the doorbell before he's ready and the heavy contraption swings back before he can throw up on his own shoes.
"Mark?" Naomi tilts her head to the side.
"Hi Naomi."
"Long time no talk." Naomi remarks unimpressed. She's heard every detail, or at least what she prays is every detail involving this guy and her "ex-best-friend".
"Yeah."
"Be nice, she's had a bad day...week," Naomi warns and steps aside for him to enter her home, "Addison!"
"Nae, I told you I'm fine. Really, I don't need ice cream or- Mark." She sputters to a stop, her bare feet catching on the wood floor. Her hands fly up to tangle in the bottom of her shirt. Somehow he has a radar for whenever she needs him most.
"I'm going to bed." Naomi gives a predatory smile and drifts up the stairs leaving them to their own devices and hopes she will come downstairs to a whole Addison in the morning, not an wrecked puddle of tears and regret.
~-~-~-~-~-~
"Callie told me." He offers by way of a hello.
"Come in." She grins weakly and leads him into the living room unsure of the action, it just feels like the right thing to do. She sits across the room, curled into a chair, and waits for him to find another piece of furniture to occupy. Instead she finds him on the floor in front of her, perched on Naomi's rug, begging forgiveness for whatever crime he's committed this time.
"I like baseball." He smiles.
She scans his face for any trace of heavy narcotics, "Yeah, I'm aware."
"And I like steak."
She tugs on her ponytail, letting the red tresses come cascading down, feeling his hand as it comes up to tuck a chunk behind her ear, skimming across her cheek on the way down. She exhales shakily. She always does so much better when it's just her. She's stronger on her own. Mark just bumps her down a few notches and lets her feel all of the tiny pin pricks of every horrible day. Not that he doesn't try to help soothe the irritated skin, she just doesn't allow it in any traditional manner and she's so not in the mood for sympathy sex right now. It would only be patronizing somehow. "Ok."
He sighs for the millionth time this week and pulls away, hands resting on her knees, "I'm saying I still want to try Addison."
"Mark-"
"And I know you don't want me. I know...why you're here and I'm angry that you'd pick some sperm donor over me, that'd you'd pick someone else's baby, anyone else's baby but ours...but I get it."
"You get it." She squeaks, tears threatening to spill at any moment.
"I get to be angry and hurt." He interjects immediately, his blood still boiling after the comparison.
"And I'm not going to apologize." Addison tells him. She did what she thought was right. Apologizing would admit defeat; would only go to prove how terribly in the wrong she has been for the last year and a half. And she cannot handle that kind of suffering right now.
As they reach the impasse Mark tugs her up and then steals her spot, gently guiding her onto his lap seconds later. They may be the people who torture one another but they are the only ones who make it all better too. A horrible conundrum to say the least.
"You're changing your life." He says softly to the wall that holds baby pictures by the truck load. Somewhere subconsciously he realizes that this could be them, would have been them, and no matter how often he says she was doing what she had to, it still stings.
"Trying."
"What's so wrong with what you've got?"
She blinks, holding her eyes open to dry out and begins, "Everything. I have no one. I have nothing. This was not...the dream."
"Dreams change." He reminds her, certain that his four year old dream of growing up and becoming a teenage mutant ninja turtle has clearly passed. He breathes in her refusal to reply and loops a hand around her back when she burrows into his chest. Leaning towards her ear he gently whispers, "You have me. Always."
Normally she would retort some smart remark about how she has to share him with every scrub wearing nurse in the continental United States. Generally she would tell him that she never really had him to begin with and that he never had her. But today is different. Today is a day where she needs to be cuddled against her askance, loved despite her many flaws, and wanted without regard to history. The second the water breaks free from her eyes though, that's when she hates him, a little, deep down in a place that they don't talk about. She actually hates him.
He ruined the façade because she told him to. He destroyed her world after just one glance. He put doubt into every minute of every hour of her marriage. She hates him because she could've been happy. She could have never known the difference. To understand what really being loved felt like. Riding the rough waves of ups and downs together without the obligatory notion of a signed contract looming just around the corner.
She could have been blissfully ignorant her entire adult life.
Head tilted up for the kiss that they always share in these moments, she finds fingers wiping tears away instead of lips healing all the wounds band-aids will never be plentiful enough to cover. "I-"
"We're not going there. Cause I like baseball-"
"And steak-"
"And you got rid of my child." He adds to even out the childish nature the conversation. "And you broke our deal." He jumps in again when she refutes, "And I didn't."
She falls quiet again, trying to disappear into his arms when her indiscretions are aired aloud. She's always found it odd that he'll comfort her long before ever attempting to comfort himself.
"You aren't perfect Addison."
"Neither-"
"I never claimed to be. You just decided to hold me against that impossible standard."
"I'm still not apologizing."
"And I'm not asking you to." Because he knows that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. The only thing life has taught him is that while "Sorry" is supposed to fix everything, it is just a word and what's done is done. He settles in for the long haul, head clunking against the back of the plush chair, arms tugging her a little closer than they would've had he not known, had he not been able to tell, that today is not a day to punish her.
They've both had enough.
~-~-~-~-~-~
"So..." Mark begins nervously after breakfast the next morning is finished and Naomi has left to drop off Maya at school, "are you? Did you?"
"No." She clears their cereal bowls, rinsing and placing them in the dishwasher, before pouring them both another cup of coffee. At least she still has coffee.
"Can I ask why?" Mark doesn't even look up. He doesn't think it's a big thing, just flips through the paper in front of him. He barely hears her reply.
"I can't have kids anymore."
"What?"
"I'm out of time." She smiles pitifully, the corners of her mouth actually turned down.
"But you were-"
"Ironic huh? I figure it's payback-"
"Addison-" he interrupts consolingly. A tone she wants nothing to do with.
She shirks out of his giving hug and wanders around to the other side of the kitchen island to put space in between them. "Don't. Just...I deserve this...so don't."
"You in no way deserve this." He watches her trace patterns on top of the methodically cleaned counter, "What did Naomi say?"
"What did Naomi say? Hrm...Naomi said no fertility potential...and then she said she was sorry."
"There are, if you wanted to have, there are other ways."
"Yeah, I know the options." She sighs.
"Ok." He nods and then grabs her hand and tugs until she's pressed against his chest. She may not want a hug but he wants to give one and he figures it's his turn to get something anyway.
He watches her white flag raise, conceding the victory, and relaxes a little. There will still be battles. But with any luck he'll be on her side once in a while.
~-~-~-~-~-~
Sometimes he still thinks about decking Alex Karev but at the moment he's not going to lay a hand on him, no matter how much he hates the fact that he is presently between Addison's legs. As it is he is stuck in place, fingers crushed together, listening to the wonderful obscenities leaving her mouth. He never thought he'd be so happy to get a death threat in all of his life.
It took nearly three years for Rowan and Quinn to arrive but every penny spent, every heartache endured is entirely worth it, just for this. The minutes whiz by in a complete blur of tears, screams and pure elated joy.
Mark and Addison the couple aren't perfect and on their best days the relationship takes a tremendous amount of effort but it's also easy, like an old sweater, a mishmash that neither will ever understand but will always be thankful for.
These will be their only children, and it's a wonder after all the herbal concoctions Pete cooked up and all the prodding Naomi has done that they were able to conceive, so Mark lives the moment to its fullest. Tucking warm blankets tighter, straightening little hats and socks, pressing kisses to cheeks he'll never get enough of.
The dream changed. It evolved into modern times. He just had to prove to her that it was for the best.
"Thank you." Addison says simply, hours later, fresh from a drug/exhaustion induced nap and holding her new son. She watches Mark with their daughter, positive that she's never been more wrong in her entire life and tacks on a, "Sorry" just for good measure.
He smiles in reply, brings the other half of their matching redheaded pair back, and tells Addison that he loves her, even when she tries to kill him. Then he looks down at his little family, inspecting every new line and eyelash, observing the pattern of yawns and tiny squirms, "Think they'll like baseball?"
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