A/N: I'm freakishly obsessed with this song. By Train. Okay, now this thing is mofo long so you all owe me freakishly long reviews:) And because it's so long, I only double checked the first like fourth of this so my apologies if it gets progressively worse. hahaha, and Maddison is waning! Which isn't good! But Mark and Lexie are over FOR GOOD (or at least for a little while) according to Eric Dane, who I have decided is amazing. And yeah... that's all I have to say, join our community Maddyson!
Hey Soul Sister
Your lip-stick stain, on the front lobe of my left-side brain…
He knows nothing but the empty haze before him, thickened by the heavy breaths of drunkards and the nonchalant stumbling of cigarette smoke. The gin and tonic in front of him feels magically fuller and his eyes rise to meet the bartender's wink; he smiles weakly in thanks. Addison once told him he reminded her of her father and for awhile he'd stopped trying to drink this particular drink but he gave that up. Her subconscious wasn't the reason they couldn't be together. He might as well get to drink his goddamn drink.
He hears the violent purr of a motorcycle and then the slight jingle of the door as a man walks through, leather gloves slapping against his back pocket; heavy helmet shifting from arm to arm. Sometimes he misses his bike and the simplicity of the open road. He misses the thrill of a woman a night, getting ass drunk and waking up in dumpsters, or rolling pot and dancing around, obnoxiously singing songs whose words he didn't know. Life doesn't seem the same when he's stuck in real-time.
He doesn't move when he feels the leather of the other man's pants squeak softly against the leather on the stool beside him.
"Guinness." Mark glances over when the man orders, surprised by the growling rasp of his voice. He meets two eyes sunken in leather skin that falls behind a leather coat. A mess of snowy white hair spilled over the man's forehead and wisdom weaved itself into his hands, which rubbed at the corner of crooked lips. Mark stared a little too blatantly, because the lips opened to a crooked smile saying, "You okay there fella?"
Mark turns back to his drink, fingering it, picking up a straw and swirling the bronze liquid around absently. "I don't really know." He manages with a shrug.
"Well you look like shit," the older man tells him, "horse-shit."
Mark's eyes flick upward at that insight but he doesn't comment, instead he focuses on trying to fight the urge to drink but he doesn't win at that; he tilts his head back and slides the entire thing down his throat. "I feel like I've been chasing a ghost all my life." He slams the glass down and gestures for a refill.
His drinking partner nods and Mark thinks he maybe understands because there's recognition in his eyes when he asks, "You come close to catching it?"
Mark stares blankly into the rows of booze lining the counter, "Today." He says quietly.
"Then why are you sittin' here?"
He laughs a little bit, but his laughter is dry and without humor, then he grabs at his refilled drink, "Because I beat it good, and then I left it there for dead."
XXXXXX
I knew I wouldn't forget you…
She first stumbled into his life on a Friday night, party night by normal standrards but he was stricken with flu like symptoms and the pounding music filtering up through the common room of his frat-house was burning deep into his skull. He hears the drunken trot of footsteps in the hall outside and groans into his pillow, upset with his painfully sober state. The giggles turn into shrieks and then yelling and he covers his ears, trying not to hear. A shred of light abruptly spills onto his bed and he sighs and glances up to see red hair swirling in front of him, pushed from side to side as a face tried to emerge.
Finally two blue eyes blink up at him and he blinks right back, utterly intrigued. They don't break eye-contact for awhile until he sneezes and the unintentional silence ends and she grins a little lazily, "I didn't know there were people left upstairs."
If he were in a better state of mind he'd find some way to twist the words into something inappropriate, but as it is, he can barely scrounge up a smirk much less a pick-up line so he settles for observing her quietly, waiting for her to explain.
"What's the matter," she giggles, "cat got your tongue?"
He settles into another coughing fit and her eyebrows quirk in concern and she flocks to his bed-side. "Do you have a fever?" She asks.
"I think I need a sponge-bath," he manages with a weak grin and she sticks her tongue out and makes a face.
"Shush," she demands and suddenly, seeming rather sober for the amount of alcohol he can smell on her breath, she stands and walks over to his roommate's bed, unscrewing a water bottle and dumping it unceremoniously onto a clean sock. She sniffs it to make sure it's fresh and then she brings the dripping cloth over to him and lays it gently on his forehead. "Here," her lips twisted into a crooked smirk, "I've fixed you."
He's a little transfixed and a bit dazed from the cough syrup he was forced to take so he smiles goofily and asks, "What are you doing up here?"
"Running away," she says, swaying violently above him and she throws her head back and laughs a bit, "the music's getting a little too loud."
"Who are you here with?" He asks and she smiles at him, swinging her legs onto the bed and then laying down beside him, "My best-friend is going out with Sam Benett, and she dragged me along to this thing."
"Oh," is all he can say;he and Sam were never really too close.
She sighs and her eyelids flutter and her head falls sleepily against his chest, red hair tumbling over his stomach, "Can I stay here with you?" She asks him quietly and he kisses her forehead and nods, immediately regretting it when she settles her body into his. He watches her breathe for a few moments before hesitating and curling an arm around her shoulders and pulling her body into his. He closes his eyes and with confusion, he breathes in the smell of her scent and drifts into himself, dreaming of red velvet and blue oceans. She's gone when he wakes, and he begins to think she was only a figment ofhis imagination, brought on by an overdose of decongestants, but he swears in the post-insanity morning, that there's a hint of her smell lingering on the air and he sighs soaking it in. He thinks it'll be one of those things he never really knows for sure but he's not a romantic so it really doesn't matter. He turns back over, but he can't fall asleep.
XXXXXX
And so I went and let you, blow my mind…
He's a jerk. The first time they met, despite a comfortable blanket of haze that engulfed her, she thought he was special, that he was different. It turns out that he was worse than anyone might have imagined and she hates him. Absolutely loathes him.
The only problem is she's pretty sure she's in lust with him.
She doesn't know why he keeps popping up in her subconscious, her mind randomly drifts to him while she scans the margins of her textbooks, or when she's making her bed, or rolling around in it with Derek. She said his name once in the throes, consciously, not loud enough for her boyfriend to hear but just to see what it would taste like coming off of her tongue. It was strangely sweet and dark and it frightened her so much that she couldn'tsay his name at all for the next week.
She absolutely hates him for it; she hates him for a lot of things. She has a beautiful boyfriend, is on track to her dream job, and is about move into a New York brownstone with a view of the Twin Towers and Central Park. Why must he be in her life?
It's not that she hates him; it's not necessarily that he drives her insane with his insensitive act and his annoyingly sexy facial hair. It's just that aside from the beauty and the late night cuddle session they once shared, he is completely worthless.
And in this moment, he has officially crossed-over from being worthless to being a burden.
"Please?" He's staring at her with those widened blue eyes and she hates him for being so damn attractive because she feels herself giving in.
"Fine." She snaps, "But you have to help with the babies."
When his smile turns into a grin, she can't help but notice how her knees buckle slightly and she glares at them for their betrayal. He walks around the rocking chair that he'd been standing behind and gratefully plants a kiss on her forehead. She frowns when it tingles. He is a gorgeous man. God damn him.
He doesn't notice her inner warfare and instead walks up to a newborn and gently wrests her from her crib and cradles her so earnestly that she can't help but swoon a bit, despite how his large hands completely engulf the poor child and he's staring down at the girl completely terrified. She doesn't correct his technique, instead, she watches him intently; an eyebrow quirked as he grows in comfort and the smile on his face grows confident."Hey honey," he starts to coo at her and rock softly back and forth. After a brief moment of this scene he looks up and fixes Addison with a beautiful smile, "I think I love her." He announces and Addison laughs, "I think she loves you too."
He smiles to himself and shifts the girl into one hand and tickles her stomach. Addison looks on horrified but he doesn't drop the baby.
She tentatively hands him a bottle and he takes it, feeding his charge. She takes the moment of silence to ask, "So why are you here? I mean, no offense, but you're the one who calls this place pink and squishy."
He grins, "That's cause it is." He informs her.
She hits him lightly on the shoulders and smiles as he elaborates, "I'm just waiting for the Chief and Derek to realize that I didn't kill their patient."
"Why would they think that?"
"I didn't hand him the right scalpel," he shrugs, "it was his own damn fault anyway, for making me play scrub nurse… but the dude bleed out from the left vascular artery and they were both so damn concentrated on the right artery," he places the girl back into her bed and folds the blanket back over her, smoothing the corners back into the folds, "I'm just waiting for them to do an autopsy and tell me I'm right."
She is always increasingly mortified by the disparity between his actions and his words, she doesn't understand how he can be so caring, how he could tuck this little girl beneath her sheets and how he could kiss her forehead so gently, and then turn around and be completely laize-faire about death. "How can you be so sure of yourself Mark Sloan?" She admonishes, even when she's one-hundred percent sure that she's right there's always the slightest doubt that rests in her mind.
He winks at her, "I am talented at many things," he says, "and I know I'm right." He looks down at his beeping pager and grins at her, "that'll be them telling me I'm right," he tells her and bends to kiss Addison on the cheek and whispers in her ear, "Call me later and we'll celebrate."
"You're an ass Mark Sloan!" She yells after him and he waves back while she presses a hand against her cheek, unsure of whether she is aggravated or just a little bit smitten.
XXXXXX
Your sweet moving, the smell of you in every single dream I dream…
He raised his hand to the door and closed his eyes, feeling incredibly stupid. He knocked and then stepped back, shifting the bottle of champagne from arm to arm, fiddling with the collar of his shirt.
She opens the door slowly and suspiciously and demands, "What do you want?"
"Um…" he blushes a bit and fumbles with the label on the bottle. Even with the entire walk from the hospital to their home, he couldn't come up with a reasonable excuse to drop-in and hang-out and eat her food. He scuffs circles into the floor and hands over the bottle as if it were some kind of explanation. When she continues to glare, the excuse tumbles out, "Derek said you were at home," he tells her gruffly, "I thought you might want some company." And her features miraculously turn into a smile and she teases, "Mark Sloan? Wants to hang out with me?"
Relieved he hides a smile, "Shut up."
"No I'm honored," she makes a big show of gasping and holding her hand over her heart, "what in the world did I do to deserve that?"
He laughs, "Were you a good girl this year?"
She winks and saunters back into the house, feeling feisty. "Mostly," she tells him, and he shutters, thinking about the times she wasn't. She seems to guess at what he's thinking, but she's in a good mood so she doesn't rebuke him, instead she says, "Well I was going to go with Derek," she twists her wedding rings around habitually, "but he's been busy lately, and you're a suitable stand-in," she scoffs at his pout and continues, "so you're coming ice-skating with me."
"What?" He groans, but he's really not all that dismayed, he spent five years of his childhood playing goalie in his local ice hockey team before basketball enticed him away. He can still hold his own on skates.
She pushes her lips out and widens her eyes and offers an incredibly cute "Pwease?" And there's so much happiness and hope in her eyes that he can't imagine not giving in, so he sighs and agrees and then watches with a smirk as she squeals and offers him a scarf (which he refuses) and then grabs at his hand, pulling him out of the door.
"You're such a romantic Addy," he tells her as she explains how drinking juju and gazing up at the gigantic Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center is a annual tradition and is to be revered. She makes a face and then replies, "You say that like it's a bad thing, and that's just what you call people who aren't pessimists like you."
He shakes his head, "Oh I don't know Addy," he laughs, tapping her nose, "you might have reached a whole new level." But despite his teasing, he sort of likes the subtle spirit she has: red and green colored earrings and snowflakes on her scarf are the only thing that betray her for the Christmas worshipper she is.
"Hush you," she says with sparkling eyes, "and take me ice-skating. I'll bet I can skate circles around you."
"I'll bet you can't," he shoots back and gestures to her scarf and her cup and her purse, "especially with all that weighing you down."
"Oh so you're willing to bet?"
He narrowed his eyes into thin slits, "Well that depends, what's in it for me?"
"You name your price, but if I win, you get to take me shopping and carry all my bags."
He tilts his head and contemplates and then nods, "Fine, but if I win, you have to kiss me."
She crinkled her nose in contemplation and then sighed, "Fine," she agreed, heart pounding a little faster, "Shake on it," and he laughed at her because she said it with such solemnity, but she glared and he shook and then they walked over to the ice arena.
Mark won, like they both knew he would, especially since halfway around the first lap, Addison's blade caught on a stray chunk of ice and she was sent swirling. She had been better at tricks anyway. She pouted and complained that he cheated and sulked until he offered to take her shopping anyway, and then considerably brighten. She sighed, "So I suppose you want your prize now," he shrugged, and replied with, "I should have asked for something more, kisses are never too special anyway."
She looked at him in amazement, "Are you serious?"
"It's foreplay," he shrugs.
She shakes her head, "Everything you need to know is in that first kiss," she tells him and then she squints in his direction, "let's save your prize," she giggles and turns a lap around him and he smiles in spite of himself.
"Fine," he says smirking, "and I will take you shopping, if only because I can watch you pick out lingerie."
She sticks out her tongue, "Which Derek will take off of me?" She says it sweetly and he groans, "You had to ruin it didn't you."
She tugs on his hand and twirls around so she's skating backwards, "Spin me," she says, and he does.
They retire to an abandoned swing set in Central Park and sit reminiscing of days gone by, she coaxes the stories out of him, and he proves to be an enrapturing storyteller, she proves to be an extremely good audience. She looks at him for the first time that night, studies his face almost methodically. There's something in his eyes that light up whenever he talks about basketball, there's a certain pride when he talks of his teammates and their victories. She learns that he keeps in touch with every single one of the starting varsity members from college, one of them just had a baby and he'd gone with a basket of books and chocolates. She notices how his mouth twitches into a frown at the mention of his parents. How his nose crinkles when he talks about cooking, although apparently he can cook quite well. But his hands are what give him away, they are impatient and flighty, they dive and collapse in the air, he squeezes them into fists when he's angry and he lifts them to rub her shoulder when she recounts a particularly sad story.
She doesn't understand how he can be such a jerk sometimes, but have such loving hands.
She doesn't understand a lot of things anymore.
When the conversation slowly flows less, she stands up and brushes the grass from her outfit, tugging on his hand. "Let's climb a tree," she tells him and he laughs at her but follows.
They settle down some fifteen feet above the ground and he turns to face her noticing the color in her eyes had shifted and the rhythm of her breathing had slowed. "Addy?" He asked her nervously, but she shook her head and tilted it to his grazing softly against his mouth. He shivers but doesn't move, in fear of scaring her, so she snakes a hand until it strokes the back of his head, and she pulls him deeper. A few fleeting seconds later and she pulls away, smiling at him breathlessly, and then whispers, "Congratulations." She throws her head back and laughs a little and then starts climbing down the tree.
He lingers for a moment before he follows her, when he hops down the last few branches he can't help but think that he's falling; in more ways than one.
XXXXXX
I knew when we collided…
He's flirting with some bimbo behind the nurse's counter. She really, really doesn't like that. And she knows that he's not really hers, and that this fling they have going is just that, a fling. But she is his friend and she wants what's best for him. What's best for him isn't the bimbo counter girl.
Mark grins widely when she approaches and she can't help but smile back. Then he turns and introduces her to said bimbo. "This is Dr. Marsha Tilhorn."
Marsha Tilhorn? What kind of name is that?
When Tilhorn strokes at Mark's bicep suggestively and throws furtive glances in Mark's direction, she decides she's had it and makes her excuses and hastily walks away. Mark catches up with her a few seconds later. "Addison!" He calls at her, pulling her into an exam room, "What was that?"
She doesn't look at him and tries to struggle out of his grasp.
"Addison!" He holds onto her wrists more firmly, "you need to get a grip!" She calms down and huffs and then sighs, "Now tell me what's wrong." He says to her, tenderly swiping the curls away from her face and rubbing her shoulder. She hates that he can be so comforting to her, that he can make her long for him because that makes her weak, and there is nothing she hates more than being weak.
"Nothing…" she growls slightly, avoiding his gaze, "I'm fine."
"Addy, you're really not."
"I am!" She protests.
"Addison," and when he looks at her, she feels as if he can she through her soul and she breaks down. "I hate this," she wails, "I hate that I'm crying in front of you because I don't cry, I don't! I hate people who cry! And I hate that I haven't seen Derek in the last forty-eight hours, and the only reason I saw him before that was because I scrubbed in on one of his surgeries. I hate that you're flirting with other doctors, and I hate that I have no right to hate that because this thing we are… whatever it is, isn't something that I can hold you to. I hate that you never sleep alone, when that's all I seem to do these days."
He pulls her against his chest and holds her there, trying to hold her together, and she finishes in a whisper, the cadence of her voice low and chilling, "I hate," she hesitates and then buries her head in his chest, "I hate that I'm falling in-love with you, because that's not something I'm allowed to do."
And he kisses her, because he seems to be addicted to it and he holds her until she stops shaking and then he whispers into her ear, "I love you Addison Forbes Montgomery, and I know I'm not allowed to, and I know I get lonely and I sleep with other people but they mean nothing if they are not you. None of them have made an indent into this heart of mine because you carved your name in there that night you came into my life." She hiccups and looks up at him and says, "I love my husband Mark, I can't leave him, I can't… but I don't want this to end. I don't think I could handle it if you left me."
He brushes his lips against her forehead, "You don't have to worry about that," he tells her, "because I'd never leave you okay? Never. Not in a million years."
When she kisses him again, it's hard and desperate, because despite his whispered words, despite his fervent assurances, she can't help but feel that they are all going to hell. She can feel the ground rumbling and the walls are going to come tumbling down.
XXXXXX
He doesn't notice when the other man leaves, he's withdrawn into himself, and he can't feel the presence of liquor anymore. He didn't like that man that she made him, and if he took a few moments to think he realized that. She was destructive, she was selfish, and she made him settle for second best. But despite his rigid promise of change, despite the fact that he remodeled his life, despite it all, he hated himself for the despair he splayed across her face. He can't get it out of his head. It haunts him.
He wasn't used to her being the one to beg. He didn't think that she could still affect him. He's here again, sitting in a bar, alone and miserable because of the same woman.
He can't do this.
He picks himself up and automatically moves himself; he closes his eyes and heads to his car.
The road ahead seems empty and dank, the life ahead miserable; but still he goes on.
XXXXXX
You're the one I have decided, who's one of my kind…
She resents people, in fact, she hates them all. Ironically, it's Valentine's Day and she's fighting her way through traffic in an attempt to reach the airport. There's a fucking couple on every street corner.
She settles into her first class seat and smiles when a kindly elder sits beside her. She frowns again when the first words he says is, "Do you mind switching seats with my wife? It's our honeymoon."
She hits her head against the back of her new chair repeatedly.
Seattle Grace seems to have been caught in the festivities, and she winces when Derek catches Meredith with a kiss and sighs when Christina and her new boyfriend, whoever, walk together, laughing in time.
She tries to avoid Mark and Lexie, she doesn't think she could handle it. It doesn't work out so well when she walks onto the elevator and the first person she sees is the younger Grey sister. Her life is further ruined when Mark spots her getting in the elevator and yells after her, "Addison! Wait up!"
Then the door closed behind them.
Then the elevator didn't move.
Then the door wouldn't open.
She hates her life.
The three of them sink slowly to the ground and glance awkwardly at each other. They are all very, very confused.
Then he says it, "I read your dissertation on Kant the other day, it was a piece of crap."
And she glared, though playfully, because it's how he always starts their philosophical discussions, she recites the line that she knows so well, "That's because you're a masochist who doesn't believe in questions."
"That's because I'm a realist and I know that questions only waste time."
Lexie looks between the two of them confused and sighs. This is going to be a long elevator ride.
Somehow they end up on this subject, and he implies, "Maybe, opposites don't truly attract. I think it's an urban myth"
Addison pouts her lips a little and scrunches her forehead before she shakes her head, "Maybe its dimensional, maybe love or whatever, is when you have two opposite poles that exist on the same plane."
Mark contemplates the thought for awhile and then slowly starts to nod his head, "Like mutual understanding but mutual disagreement…" they both don't acknowledge that they've crossed into familiar territory, "makes sense."
"Or maybe," Lexie declares, mind hurting trying to follow the endless analytical discussion, "There isn't a given formula for love."
She regrets saying anything at all when both Doctors look at her in surprise that she talked, and she tries to shrink away and hide. Finally, Addison benevolently sighs, "We're not saying that its always correct," she winces slightly at the collective pronoun, "just that in some cases, the connection is so bizarre, that it's impossible to understand. Maybe that can be rationalized by saying they don't agree, but since nobody else understands them, they are ultimately destined for each other."
"That kind of kills the romance of the whole thing doesn't it?"
Mark laughs a little and says, "Isn't that why we become doctors though? Once you know the function of a human body, it destroys the whole romanticism that we have about it."
"Yeah," Addison nods in agreement, "I mean I'm all for some things remaining a mystery and such, but I don't need it to be, I don't lose anything if it isn't, and I gain some sort of understanding, which I guess can be equated with control."
Lexie looks swiftly from one to the other and then says softly and calmly, "It's a façade Dr. Montgomery, and I've seen it in him," Mark looks up as Lexie nods at him, "and now I see it in you. There's a part of you that you don't allow the world to see." She shakes her head and offers the older woman a kind smile, "Mark and I are over," she tells her as if he wasn't in the elevator with them, "because we exist on different planes."
She turns away, slightly mortified by her speech, and she sighs into the corner of the elevator, trying to escape by means of sleep.
XXXXXX
Hey soul sister, ain't that mister mister on the radio, stereo…
They're both adequately convinced that Lexie's asleep half an hour later, and he crawls on his hands and knees to sit beside Addison. She shakes her head, "She's right you know," Addison tells him, "we're the same you and me."
Mark nods, staring at his feet.
"My psychologist tells me that I'm lonely and running away from something, she thinks I'm chasing a ghost."
Mark looks up abruptly at her usage of words, but she doesn't notice, instead she continues, "I really loved you, you know, once upon a time. Before we made each other so mad we couldn't function, before our relationship became a pissing contest, I loved you. I wanted your baby. I wanted to be the mother of your children… but that was a long time ago, and things change, the world changes, people change…" she shakes her head, "I liked the way you could read me."
"Yeah," he rasps, the tears threatening to tumble, "I liked the way you could read me too."
XXXXXX
You see, I can be myself now finally…
He goes back to New York because some part of him knows she'll be there too. They meet on the same corner, under the same tree where they had their first kiss so many months ago. She's holding a Yankee's onesie, threading it through her fingers and he smiles when he sees her, she smiles carefully back.
"I think I've loved you all my life," he tells her.
"I'm pregnant," is her reply.
And he smiles and takes her in his arms, and pulls her close until he can feel his child pressed into his abs. "We don't agree on anything, but at least we speak the same language, at least we argue about the same things," he tells her, "and I would take the pain and the conflict everyday for the rest of my life if you'd agree to spend it with me, sitting by my side, holding only me at night."
She smiles and leans in towards his ear and whispers her response, "I have loved you," she says, pausing to catch her breath, "since the first time I ever dreamed you up."
"Will you marry me?" He asks suddenly, wanting to ensure all of eternity.
She nods and kisses him, crying tears of joy, "You know when we made the bet that led to our first kiss? I think I tripped on purpose subconsciously."
He laughs and sticks out his tongue, "You just don't want to admit that I actually beat you fair and square… But you did change my mind about kisses that day."
So she smiles and kisses him again, "Eh. Well at least that counts for something."
Hey Soul Sister,
I don't want to miss a,
Single thing you do,
Tonight.