A/N: The title is taken from She Wants to Wrap Her Legs Around the World by Slow Runner.
"Guess who's the dirty mistress now?" Addison says. Then she gives a little sub-hysterical laugh; the kind that comes with too much red wine, too little sleep and the fragile self-hatred that always manages to pull him in again.
Mark cups his hand over the phone as Lexie turns over in her sleep. "Who'sit?" she murmurs. "Hospital?"
"I've got it," he says, giving her shoulder a distracted but still affectionate rub. "Go back to sleep."
He contemplates hanging up. It would be the right thing to do and easier on all of them, but somehow he can't. There's that old compulsion; that old thing he likes to think belongs to the past – the pathologically self-destructive thing. She's still a trigger – his worst episodes always did happen around her and total abstinence is the only sure form of remission. He should never have picked up when he saw her number; but then he should have deleted her number when he decided he was falling for Lexie.
Picking up the cardkey from the desk, he carries it and the phone outside into the hallway and shuts the door with a soft, discreet click. He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the carpeted floor, legs stretched out in front of him, crossed loosely, simulating a relaxation he definitely doesn't feel.
A minute ago he was part of a couple, friendly, loving, a few hours past sex, in a nice hotel room. Now he's furtive, sitting in a hallway, hiding from his girlfriend. It's amazing — disturbing — how quickly she can shift his reality from functional to all fucked up.
He clears his throat, wishes he'd thought to add a glass of scotch to his cache of secreted items, then lifts the phone to his ear again. "What do you want, Addison?" he asks. He appreciates the weary effect his voice gives off, but there's a little tinge of arousal there, involuntary and one beat off breathless, that, when he notices it, his mind running a second behind his feelings, prompts a sigh.
"I'm the bad guy. The dirty, dirty mistress. The dirtiest," she says. And there's the little laugh again. "I'm flawed. So flawed. I thought you'd like to know. I thought it might . . . even things out between us."
He wants to say that he always thought she was flawed anyway. But that would be a lie and they both know it.
Instead, he says, "I'm with Lexie." Boundaries are a new thing for him. But if he can set one with Derek he can set one with her and, even though she's sneaking past it as he speaks, at least, when he looks at Lexie again, he'll know he tried. Because another thing they both know is the reason she called. There are only two reasons she ever calls: a shoulder to cry on and sex, implicit or explicit.
"I don't want to have sex with you," he says firmly - almost. He means it, but the antithesis breaks through the tiny, hoarse cracks in his voice.
"I don't want to have sex with you either," she says, flowing without the smallest hiatus from mischievous indignation to softly pleading gravity. "I just need to talk to someone who understands."
She's playing with him, because she feels bad, and bad equates with reckless and she always has to bring him down with her, because that's the way it goes.
"I can't, Addie," he says. "You don't get to . . ." But who is he kidding? She does get to. She is. She always fucking will.
He hates her for that – really hates her - and on the back of that hatred he finds the wherewithal to hang up.
Back in the room with Lexie, he nudges her half-awake, abrupt in his need to immerse himself in the simplicity they create together. For a little while, it works; and there's a sense of accomplishment, of rightness in the world.
Until he realizes that the only thing he hung up was the phone.
