Summer's prompt: library sex. The angsty post-divorce Addison/Derek was my contribution. To coin a phrase from my angsty Addek heroine, Xyliette, this could be the kind of thing that happens and then they just never speak of it again. Takes place now/in the near future.
Infectious Diseases
Neither of them would have shown up to an actual reunion - he doesn't need the reminders, and she fears them - but the prestige of this conference pulls them both in. Maybe they're not as different as they liked to think.
Derek's on before lunch; she's on after; they're both scheduled for an early afternoon panel. She swallows a tasteless sandwich while she checks her blackberry and scans her notes one more time. They greeted each other briefly before the conference started, of course, but it's not until the shadow of him crosses her neatly typed outline that she looks up and directly into his eyes.
"Hi," he says briefly and when his mouth twitches twenty years fall away.
"You were great," she offers, because it's true and because praising him comes naturally for her. She's come to see that his arrogance was always more everyone else's fault than his. He was the sum of their praise, only as golden as they colored him. There are new lines around his blue eyes, now. The tie is not one she bought she him. The last phase is the hardest: acceptance.
"I want to see the library," he says abruptly, and because a third of her life has been harder to slough off than she wants him to know, she agrees immediately.
She should have known better.
The library looks just the way they left it: the portrait that remained youthful while they aged. Self-consciously she tucks freshly colored hair behind her ear, mindful of how young and agile her body was the last time she studied here. How smooth and unlined were both her face and her relationship with Derek.
"I haven't been back here since we graduated," she offers unnecessarily. She was always the one to fill the silences with small talk. In the beginning he said it was cute; he'd respond with affection - kisses instead of conversation. Later that turned to silence and finally the loudest of all, chilly resentment.
But that was years ago. There are miles between them now, nearly three quarters of a decade. The wounds have healed, the scars faded. They could be anyone.
And if anyone asks later, she'll tell them she's not sure who led whom or who was following. (Isn't that how a marriage should be?) She'll just say they found themselves there, in that remote section, and stood between metal shelving with matching slightly-open-mouthed stares.
The Infectious Diseases section. Pre-1990, the shelves no one would bother unless they themselves didn't want to be bothered.
"You remember?"
Of course she does. She remembers every bit of it. The smell: old pages and dust. The taste: her own cherry chapstick, the clean Ivory soap bite of his neck. The feel of it, the cracked linoleum, the stiffness of his cheap jeans. The way she felt: Exhilarated. Exhausted. Seen. She'd always loved libraries; all the words and pages and shelves surrounding her like an embrace. She could throw herself into them; instead, she lay on her back, long red hair fanning out all the way to "Report of the Dahlem Workshop on Population Biology of Infectious Disease Agents, 1982." They'd feasted on each other, and she was suddenly, wonderfully full. Filled with him the way the shelves were filled with books, the way her head was filled with words, and the scent of them was in the air mixing with the comforting library environs until she thought she'd explode. And then she did.
("Good came later. And after that, really good came.")
She remembers more than she'd like to. Forgetting is the kind of balm she only wishes she could apply. He's silent, watching her and maybe even (could it be?) - seeing her.
There's a moment - it happens in surgery sometimes, a frozen second - where anything could happen.
And then it does.
His wife and child are waiting for him in Seattle. Her son is in Maya's tender care not twenty blocks away. They both have everything they want now - and maybe that's what makes them careless. Maybe that's what broke them the first time too.
The cracked linoleum is the same. His smell is different - woodsier than Ivory and somehow more expensive and it tugs at her heart. It was she who changed him first, who upgraded his products and his wardrobe and his ambition. There was a time when all they had was the library and it was all she wanted and she didn't tell him that because she couldn't. Now she'd like to forget it again. She slides her hands into his hair like she used to - god, it's been so long - and that's different too. He's salt and pepper now, each white hair an accusation of time, coarser than the silky black, and the sum of it is a totally changed texture that clings to her fingers with interest. She hasn't been this close to him in years, felt the weight of him on top of her - he settles automatically between her thighs like he never left; she opens to him with the casual practice of a marital decade. This was what they were supposed to do, fumble with the buttons on middle-aged blouses, accept soft aging flesh into palms and lips. The hair on his chest, wirier than it used to be - she trails a finger until it hits grey and then she has to bury her face in the side of his neck, let sweat hide the unexpected tears.
He touches her like he remembers, too. Like he never forgot her. Those delicate perfect surgeon's fingers - it's been good since, it's been great, but there's no real substitute for thirteen years of intimacy.
Unlucky thirteen.
It's true though, the gentle hands of a shy med student, the exhausted fumblings of two interns who've been up all night - the arrogance that she used to tease made his hair curly made his fingers cockier too. He was good and he knew it but he was good at her. And damn it, she missed that. She doesn't have another thirteen years in her. Anyone new will be new. Sam, who looked at her accusingly when they finally joined the others after that long-ago night in the library - he has her past but never her present. Forgetting him was a mercy; this might be all that she has.
She feels older in every movement now, the hard floor rising up to meet her, the unfamiliar coarseness in his curls. Embarrassed at how ridiculous it would seem to anyone else, still she's aware that even her body seems to remember. Opening to him, pulling him in, welcoming him back. He moves like he used to, against her, and when she closes her eyes she indulges in dangerous fantasy, just for a second. Maybe they could have done it. They could have lasted. They could have been that couple, the double-header Shepherds, can't make it through a medical conference without sneaking off to make out in the stacks.
Except she's a Montgomery - again and still - and she's not even sure his lips have touched hers once. She arches her neck to change the story, presses her mouth to his. His lips open with something like surprise but the kiss is softer than she expected. It feels gentle for a moment, until she realizes what she is sensing is sadness. She lies back again then, lets the lineoleum swallow her up. She stares at the stacks, at the ceiling, at the words and pages that offer her no protection. It's not just the man on top of her but middle age itself pressing between her thighs. Wanting her. Scaring her. Needing her.
He sighs her name into her neck - half-plea, half-accusation, and she lets her fingers play at the nape of his neck like she used to. Guilty and angry at herself for needing this, she nonetheless slides her arms shamefully around him, lets herself feel the warm wanting weight of him. What she would have given, years ago, to have him this close. How stupid they were.
No - how stupid they are, because the present rushes back into her as swiftly as the unexpected passion rushes out of him. Who do they think they are? No, worse, who do they think they were?
Her legs shake when she stands; her world shakes more.
She buttons her blouse swiftly. Red pinpricks, not dark enough to be called angry, rise away from her lapels. The scar of him on her skin. She sees nothing of hers on him and is unsurprised. He's always been the one to walk away unmarked.
Impulsively - or maybe because she senses time running out - she leans into him. He leans into the bookshelf, offers her the briefest of comforts, an arm across her back, a moment allowing her to rest her cheek on the shoulder of his expensive suit.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly into her hair. She doesn't ask: for what? For New York, for forgetting her even as she begged him to remember? For Seattle? For turning on her in a freezing operating room while she labored to save his patient? Or for this, the reckless tumble of limbs, the danger of memory, the revisiting of the best of their past? Maybe that's stained too now, as obviously marked as her own skin.
"I'm sorry," he whispers one more time. She's not sorry and that's the problem. That's always been the problem. She disentangles herself gently, a point of pride because she'd probably follow him if he asked her and yes, she hates herself for it but she can't fix it now. The oldest of dogs and the newest of tricks. She breathes his scent in one more time, the way it's mixed with hers and never will be again. She's always been willing to make his mistakes for him; today's no different. She tells him it's okay. It's Derek - forgiving him is as natural as breathing, and only slightly more painful.
They walk back to Lerner Hall: side by side, miles apart.
He says only a single word to her before her presentation begins. "Coffee?" and he passes her a paper cup, hand shaking almost imperceptibly. The first swallow tastes like regret.
That's the real infectious disease.