Clearing out the files to ring in 2014! This is also Rach's request, something a little different - in its five parts, the story will touch on pre-show Addison exploring her sexuality, Addison and Derek's marriage, Addison and Mark, and get all the way up to Elizabeth Shepherd's visit to Seattle. Essentially, it's about Addison - isn't everything?
Five Times Addison Wore the Sweatshirt
It's as awkward as only an orientation weekend can be. She dons a silly sticker with her name on it - it's in blue sharpie because they made the wrong assumption about her name, but at least they look embarrassed about it. Whatever. Honestly, the whole trip seems like it's teetering just this edge of a mistake. She wasn't even planning to apply to Yale - visions of the Captain flirting with her classmates were enough to make her look askance at the application package. But then the Captain took the visiting professor chair at Duke, claiming the heat was better for his health. Addison remembered Duke from her undergrad college tour and is quite certain that while the Captain enjoys the warm weather, it's not because of his health. Then he extended it another year, flying back to the estate when it suited him but staying away from New Haven. So Addison figured she might as well drop in an app. What was the harm? She applied to Columbia too - Archer promised he'd let her go to at least one party with him - "until you embarrass me," he'd clarified - and to give her his outlines. Harvard was an obvious choice after four years at Wellesley. Her boards are great, her grades are better. She's not nervous or anything - yet. But then Yale was the first to get back to her and it's already almost February, cold winds with the sun behind it threatening spring. The idea of having no choice scared her so she accepted the invitation to the admit orientation weekend.
She suffers through tours and meetings, two "cocktail" parties - strictly soda, even though they're overage, something about campus rules. Listens to the same three questions everyone asks: where are you from? where do you go to school? where did you apply? until she's cornered by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves by an overeager type in horn-rimmed glasses who stands just a little bit too close as he peppers her with questions. She's always awkward around guys, but this is pushing it. After an all girls high school followed by an all girls college it's hard not to see boys - guys, she corrects herself - as stranger huddled across the room at an awkward get together. Even on dates she feels a whole room between them.
"What is your specialty going to be?" he barks.
"My... specialty?"
"You need to pick one."
"Well, yeah, eventually," she says, almost indignant, because are all the kids here going to be this crazy?
"You should pick one now," he says insistently and she tries to edge her way politely around him. She takes a mouthful of Tab, hoping he'll get the hint.
He doesn't. "Maybe I'll pick two," she says finally, to try to throw him off.
"Two? No. You can't have two specialties."
She tries her hardest not to roll her eyes - four years of deb classes and she's learned a few things, but this guy isn't letting up.
"Sam, is it? Sorry to interrupt. I think Professor Elgin is looking for you."
Addison looks gratefully at the interruption, a tall brunette holding a glass of what looks an awful lot like champagne.
"He is?" The guy - Sam, or whatever his name is - trots off, and Addison shoots her savior a grateful look.
"He's a live one, isn't he?"
"Really," Addison agrees. "Thank you - hey, is there even a Professor Elgin?"
"No." The other girl grins, and Addison notices her sparkling dark eyes that make it look like she's about to laugh. "But by the time he figures that out, we'll be long gone."
Addison feels a little frisson at the word we - always an outsider, it tugs at her heartstrings to hear herself caught up in another person's plans. "We will?"
"You bet." The other girl takes a sip of her drink.
"Where are we going, um -" she looks at the girl's name tag - "Liz?"
She shakes her head. "Liz is what people who don't know me call me."
"But I-"
"You can call me Elizabeth."
Addison feels warmth in her veins, her limbs, like the word we. Strange to feel you know someone so well after just a moment. For some reason she can't take her eyes off Liz - no, Elizabeth. She's one of those girls, Addison thinks, she must be. The queen bees she's both envied and feared all her school days, commanding respect and a certain sense of longing.
She hears a whispered bitch as they walk by.
"Don't mind her," Elizabeth says airily. "That's just Chrissy, my ex."
"Your - ex?"
"She was kind of a mistake, but you know how it is-"
She breaks off at Addison's expression.
"What?"
"You're..." Addison swallows, tries not to sound horribly uncool. "Oh, that's..."
Elizabeth grins, and Addison notices again the way her eyes crinkle up and almost disappear. "Haven't you ever met anyone bi before?"
Addison blinks.
"Gay?" Elizabeth suggests.
Addison flushes, hoping her embarrassment isn't too obvious but knowing it's in vain - fair-skinned redheads don't get the privilege of hiding their shame. She hates feeling like this - like everyone else knows things and she doesn't.
"Most people actually do know someone bi or gay, they just don't know they know - you know what I mean?"
Addison doesn't. "Sure," she lies bravely.
"Good." Elizabeth nods decisively. "So, shall we?"
That word again: we.
Elizabeth avoids the overrun pizza places, finds a hole-in-the-wall on Wooster where the thin-crust is somehow out of this world. Addison's chilly in her leather jacket; it's almost February, that time of winter when no one knows how to dress for the weather and everyone's caught off guard more often than not. She has her walkman in her purse and they stroll up the hill together, sharing the foam earpieces to listen to that Tracy Chapman song it turns out they both love. Addison always rewinds it to listen again whenever it comes up; it's gotten so she can almost pinpoint the spot in the tape.
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone
"So, do you want to-"
She doesn't want it to be over. She's leaving tomorrow, classes and cocktail parties are a thing of the past, but this part -
Not yet.
They end up in Elizabeth's dorm room, a little prison box of a place that somehow she's made into something more. Maybe it's the postcards clipped to a string across the top of her desk - black and white arty-looking photographs that make her feel a bit bigger to look at them. Or the red flannel sheets on the bed. Or the little bitty tree - more of a branch in a pot, really - that's sitting on the floor in one corner even though it's practically February.
"Your tree's still up," she says, then hates herself for being so stupid.
But Elizabeth just nods. "That way it's almost like it's still Christmas, don't you think?"
That's exactly what I think. Addison flushes, unused to being understood. "You, uh, you like Christmas?"
"Love it." Elizabeth smiles, and her whole face changes when she does so. Her lips, so bow-like in repose, stretch widely, and her big dark eyes scrunch up with happiness. Addison just watches, drinking in her warmth.
"I do too," she admits. "I know it's like, uncool to -" And then she breaks off, horribly embarrassed to have implied Elizabeth wasn't cool. But she somehow smoothes that over too.
"They don't know what they're missing," she shrugs. "My baby sister-"
"-still believes in Santa?" Addison finishes for her, overeager.
"Amy?" Elizabeth snorts. "No way. She hardly believes in things that are real. Santa's a lost cause. I was going to say she makes fun of me about it and says Christmas is for saps. I just - I've always loved Christmas. The whole season."
Addison fingers the tinsel on the small tree. "I never like to take mine down either."
"Your tree?"
"Yeah - I mean, the one in my wing" - if Bizzy knew how long she left it up there, she wouldn't be pleased; she knows for a fact Bizzy thinks her love of Christmas is t-a-c-k-y. "-I'm not supposed to or whatever but the day maid knows I like to keep it up at least a month so she doesn't say anything when -" she breaks off, seeing Elizabeth staring at her. "What?"
"Nothing," she says quickly.
Addison twists the sleeve of her fair isle sweater. She hates this, feeling different when she wants to feel the same. It's the words she uses maybe, the clothing she wears - why does she always feel so wrong - and then there's tinsel in her hair, soft lips against hers, and she suddenly feels right.
Elizabeth draws back after an all-too-brief moment. "Sorry," she murmurs.
I'm not. That's what Addison would say if she were brave but words fail her because oh my god a girl I kissed a girl what would Bizzy say? and also because she can't take her eyes off those lips now. They're something entirely different from what they were five minutes ago because now she knows what they can do. She's not sure she has the wherewithal to command her body but something draws it forward.
Maybe because it's January but it's Christmas in this room, or because she's awkward but somehow smooth in this room, letting Elizabeth gloss over her mistakes and we over her loneliness. She's inches in front of her, never done anything like this before.
"Addison-"
She kisses her back. She's poised to analyze it - to wonder and wait and take it apart but all of that falls away when their lips touch again. She's utterly different from anyone Addison's ever kissed, ever touched this closely - her body is softly firm, pliant and yielding where Addison is used to muscle, jutting bone, swelling arousal. For long moments they just stand by the reflected light of the out-of-date tree and let lips, tongue, hands explore for them. This is the first time she can remember wanting, tasting, testing, teasing - instead of letting herself be acted upon. It was always yes and then they ... did stuff. Or no and then she hoped they'd stop. It felt good sometimes, some better than others, but mostly clumsy fumbling and - oh! Elizabeth's worked her palms underneath Addison's sweater - her hands are only at her waist but they sear her anyway, burning warmth where she's been cold all day. A shiver starts in the knobs of her spine and works its way south. She doesn't know what she's doing here, why how who but oh her mouth works its way round with wonder again and again as her breathing speeds up.
Then it's over and she's alone again, gasping for breath. "Addison, look, I-"
"Please don't stop."
"Okay, but I just want to make sure-" Elizabeth is breathing heavily too. Addison can't help reaching to tuck a lock of her shiny dark hair behind her ear. All her life she's felt as if there was a script that others had, some set of rules for the game that no one showed her, so she was always a step behind, confused or awkward. For the first time - and the irony isn't lost on her that this is the first time she's done it - she feels like she knows what she's doing.
"Please," she says again, more firmly this time, and that's all it takes. They're tangled up in each other again, those succulent lips tugging at the flesh on Addison's neck while her fingers trace ticklish agony along the sensitive flesh at her hips. They make short work of her sweater - her Calvins are harder but Elizabeth, who must have her own, knows the trick. Addison stands in front of her in simple if unmatched bra and panties and is somehow alarmed at how unselfconscious she feels. Why is it in the gaze of this near-stranger she feels so unafraid? It's the warmth of her eyes, she thinks, the heat that come off of her. She doesn't feel gawky and overly tall standing there in her underwear. She feels actually beautiful.
You're beautiful. Elizabeth says it a beat later like she heard her, like she's in her head. Then they're both in her bed, on flannel sheets that warm them while Elizabeth's trailing fingers leave her shivering, shuddering. Her lips are warm, her tongue warmer. She knows what she's doing - Addison's never felt this before, deftly flicking fingers, confidence. Her hips undulate of their own accord; moans escape her lips. She thinks how and why, thinks about how she almost missed the train because she didn't want to come and thinks of the train, the train, chugging through the station faster and faster the engines throbbing and pulsing and-
"Elizabeth!"
She collapses against the pillows, sweat-soaked and exhausted. "What-" she pants, then tries again. "What the hell was that?"
"I guess that was your orientation," Elizabeth smirks. Addison hits her with a pillow and they both laugh. Addison comes down slowly from her high, breasts heaving, their tops still rosy from exertion. She catches Elizabeth looking at her, lets her dip her tongue gently into rise of her chest. Elizabeth kisses her way gently, so gently, down from the valley between her breasts to the dip of bone at the end of her belly. She shivers as sensation rips through her.
"You're cold."
Her teeth are starting to chatter. The heat of the moment drains from her. "Y-yeah."
Elizabeth jumps out of bed and Addison watches her legs as she walks away, the lean muscle, the length of them. She's beautiful.
"Here." She passes her a new-looking gray Yale sweatshirt. Addison's always shunned them because of the Captain but she's here and she's freezing so she pulls it on.
"You're shivering." Elizabeth slides into bed next to her in just her panties and takes her in her arms.
"Are you c-cold too?"
"No," Elizabeth whispers, kissing her neck, trailing warmth down to her shoulder. "I'm good."
"Elizabeth." She loves the way the syllables sound, loves testing them with their tongue, teasing each one out. Suddenly curious, she asks "Is that what your family-"
"They call me Liz."
"Oh." She nestles in closer, and between the sweatshirt and the other girl she's warm now. She's good.
"What does your family call you?"
"They don't," Addison says, as breezily as she can but maybe Elizabeth hears her sadness too, because she pulls her closer, into her arms. Addison's new at this. She's had sex before and everything, three guys - well, two, because Chip might not count because it was over so fast. But no one's held her like this, skin to skin, she's never felt the full weight of the warmth of limb and chest, belly and thigh, like she does now. It's such a peaceful feeling really. Safe. She wonders briefly how she can be both a romantic cliche and a girl who kissed another girl - though she supposes it IS the 80s and anything is possible. The last thought she has as she drifts off to sleep is less a thought than a name: each languorous, sensually swept syllable of her name: Elizabeth.
Sunlight streams in the small leaded windows to wake her. Their bare thighs are still tangled, dark and red hair mingling on the flat pillows. She swallows coffee and her words, doesn't ask is this real? and tries not to think it until she's at Phelps Gate waiting for a taxi to the station, her bomber jacket keeping her surprisingly warm this time and then she figures out why.
She realizes she's still wearing the Yale sweatshirt.
"Sorry, I - let me give it back-"
"No, keep it." Elizabeth's dark eyes are very soft. "It looks better on you."
"Thank you." The words stick in her throat - how can they be politely sufficient and at the same time utterly wrong? She doesn't know how to say I might be a different person. Or all out: I almost died today. Is that what it felt like? Death, reborn? Or maybe she was drunk. Or maybe it wasn't real, except Elizabeth is warm and alive under her hands when she hugs her goodbye and the firm contours of her body are as real as anything.
"Call me," Elizabeth says softly, just against her ear and she shivers even though she's warm.
"I will."
She intends to, she does, but she goes home and wraps herself in a comforter against the chill of the estate and then wraps herself back into her old life. She gets into Columbia, chooses New York, and spends the summer sailing.
She doesn't call.
