It starts with a smile, across the room from where you're sitting with Derek and half-heartedly listening to his tirade against Dr. Sheffield, who rebuked him in surgery this morning. Mark Sloan's too cocky; too annoying, too arrogant, but you have to admit, he is good-looking. And the way he tips back his chair, legs crossed, blue scrubs bringing out his ice-blue eyes, well, it's sexy. But you're with Derek and it's perfect, and so you turn your attention back to your rumple-haired fiancé who's now stirring his soup glumly and complaining.
You do, however, cross and uncross your long legs and shoot him a second smile, though, because you know his eyes are on the curve of your hips in your scrubs and like Cristina Yang will say ten years later, you can do hot in your sleep.
At your wedding, he's the best man, and you're a vision in white and silver, with your flame hair piled under your veil. It's a typical nineties wedding, but it's still fairytale-esque, with your parents proudly sitting in the front pew and Derek's mother smiling through her tears at her proud neurosurgeon son, standing at your side. The priest begins and you suddenly feel panicky, just for a moment, but Mark's smile steadies you and you throw your head up, just imagining what he'd say if you ran out of the church because you panicked.
Derek squeezes your hand and you say your vows in a voice that doesn't tremble, and just at the last, a sliver of sunlight falls through the stained glass onto the cathedral floor, but instead of falling on you or Derek, it bathes Mark in coloured light for a moment and lights his polite smile. After you sign the register, you make Derek stand between you and Mark and the rest of the ceremony goes all right after that.
Married life isn't what you thought it would be; of course, it's not like you ever had much to go on. Your parents barely spent time together, and Derek's mother was widowed before you met him. It's not even the dirty dishes in the sink or the fact that Derek leaves his clothes on the floor; it's more that the sex just isn't as good, and you run out of things to talk about. You like it best when you're pretending for friends or family; you like to think of how other people must see you – some sort of perfect couple on a Sears catalog, sharing a glass of hot wine beside a roaring fire or tracing each other's cheeks by the Christmas tree. You love it when your nieces and nephews on Derek's side lean against your knee and show you toys that they've gotten or exclaim over the special jewellery that you picked out for them at the local dollar store, because hey – everyone needs glitter, and you're happy to play the part of awesome Auntie Addie.
Mark is in the background; Derek's mom invites him to holidays and you feel his eyes on you. Sometimes it's flattering; other times you wish he'd take his lecherous gaze elsewhere. Derek is always oblivious, but you've had to pull him aside to talk to him because one day Derek will look up at the wrong moment and you'll be screwed; because you know your eyes light up at the sight of Mark swinging one of Derek's nephews into the air and getting down on the floor to play trains with the boys. You can't help your smile when he tells little Emily that she's so beautiful and the boys at school are wrong. He's so good with the kids, but you know it's all for show because when you watch him covertly across the room, he's always aware of it.
You corner him in the kitchen at the Shepherds and sigh in annoyance. "This has got to stop."
"What has got to stop?" His ignorance sure as hell isn't endearing. You feel like smacking him, but you refrain and fix him with your blue gaze.
"You know what's got to stop. This staring; this flirting. Derek doesn't know yet but it's not going to be long before he figures it out. He's practically your brother, Mark."
"What makes you think I'm flirting with you?" He's giving you what Meredith Grey will call the McSteamy smile, leaning back against the counter. Mark always dresses in some sort of dress pants and a grey shirt, and sometimes you wish he'd just wear blue so that his eyes would pop. With this in mind, you'd given him a blue shirt, and he's wearing it today. He's distracting, and you turn your back.
"Just stop, okay?" You feel his hands on your back and you lift your shoulders. "Mark, please."
He takes his hands away and smiles again. "Okay."
Derek's being an ass tonight; he's had a rough day in surgery and of course, when he has a rough day, it means that you have to suffer for it. You're balled up on the couch, in the corner of the sectional, and he's shaking out the paper bad-temperedly and bitching about the surgery. He hasn't even asked you about your day, and you had a surgery that was life-threatening, and tough, and you saved your patient, but he hasn't even remembered that you were so stressed that you cried about it the night before.
"Derek. You didn't ask about my surgery today." You try the sentence in a careful voice; you don't want to annoy him any more than you have to, but you're hurt that he'd rather sit with the newspaper than talk to you. You haven't spent a night at home together in a week; one of you has always been on-call. He sighs. "I forgot, okay?"
"Well, you could ask now." Your voice is a bit trembly and he sighs again. "Well, how did it go?"
"Now you're just asking because I asked you to." You realize you're being defensive and whiny, but for once you wish he'd just ask without having to be prompted. He gets up, dropping the paper on the chair. "I can't deal with you like this, Addison. I've had a hard day, and I'm tired, and you're whining."
"Well, maybe you should think about other people besides yourself once in awhile!" Your voice rises, and you attempt to control it. It's been a long day, and you can feel your guards breaking down. "I just want you to care."
"I do care!"
"You don't. We sleep beside each other at night and you never cuddle me. You never want sex unless I initiate it first. I want a baby, Derek, and you won't have sex with me." Your voice breaks and you bring your hands up to your face. He makes a disgusted noise; he hates it when you cry. "Just stop, Addison."
"Derek –"
"I'm going out for awhile. I just need to get away from you for awhile." He picks up his keys and leaves the room. A moment later, you hear the front door slam and you curl up on the couch and cry.
An hour later, you hear a knock at the door and wonder who it could be at nine PM at night. You stumble to the door and see Mark standing there, and you just can't deal with it, so you turn your back on the door. "No."
"Addison, come on. It's raining. Let me in."
"I can't deal with you right now."
"So don't deal with me. But I don't want to get a cold, so at least be human and let me in."
You slide the lock from the door and let him in. He's wet, his leather coat spotted with rain and his hair spiky, starting to curl a little in the humidity. He takes one look at you and his face falls into the sympathetic gaze that makes your lips tremble a little, because not once, ever, has Derek looked like that at you.
"What's wrong?" He shucks off his coat and shakes his hair, a little like a dog. You get sprayed, but you don't care. He puts his hands on your arm and you draw back, like you've been burned. "Derek and I had a fight."
"Another fight?" He follows you into the living room and sits beside you, just a little too close, on the couch. "What about?"
"Does it matter?" You sigh shakily, play with your bracelet. "I'm so tired of it. He's so absent. He's never there emotionally."
Mark doesn't say anything, but he puts his arms around you again and this time, you let him. "I'm sorry, Addie."
"I don't know what to do. I can't live like this. I perform a seven-hour surgery and when I come home, I just want him to care, and he doesn't, because he's too tired from his own seven-hour surgery, and we eat dinner over the sink while he fumbles through the fridge for the last beer and he never, ever offers it to me, never, Mark." Your voice is foggy and you suddenly break down, turning into his chest.
He holds you close for a minute, then whispers, "You don't like beer, Addison."
"What does it matter?" You pull away and shove him a little, so that he sinks back further into the plushy couch cushions. "He doesn't even know that. He never even asks. We used to be able to talk about anything. Now it's like drawing water from a stone."
Mark sighs. "Addison –"
"No, seriously. You probably think I'm whining, but it's true. He's not the same as when we lived together before we got married. It's been almost eleven years and he's just been emotionally declining the more successful he gets."
"Addie –"
"Shut up. Why do you think he's like this, Mark? You know him better than anyone."
"Addison!" His voice is sharp and it makes you suddenly wince and sob a little. He settles with you on the couch and whispers into your ear, "I don't know what Derek's problem is. You're hot and beautiful, and you've always been hot and beautiful. You're hot even dressed in a sweatshirt and shorts."
You pull back to look at him, and that's when he kisses you. The kiss is soft at first, but you're hungry and you suddenly, desperately tangle your hands through his hair and thrust your tongue into his mouth, knowing it's wrong, but not caring, needing something in your life besides eggshells and tiptoes.
One thing leads to another. He backs you up the stairs, still kissing you, and you fall against the wooden treads and feel the sharp bite of the wood on your back. He lifts you after that, carries you to the sleigh bed that Derek's mother bought you two years ago for Christmas and proceeds to remove your sweatshirt and shorts, peeling the layers back, revealing your body one part at a time. He runs his tongue down your chest; you curl your fingers into his back, and admire his sculpted torso with its slight fuzz just between his pecs. He goes down on you and you come almost immediately, explosively, with a scream that echoes off the ceiling.
Time loses all meaning. He grinds you into the mattress and you ride him, his head arched against the pillow. You're aware that it's nearly midnight and Derek still isn't home, but you almost don't care, because he's insatiable and every time your eyes turn to the clock, he turns your cheek so that your eyes are locked on each other. You've never fucked anyone who refuses to break your gaze.
Somewhere downstairs, the door clicks open and your heart skips a beat, but instead of backing off, Mark just fucks you harder. When Derek explodes into the bedroom, you're arched against the mattress, your arms gripping the sharp wood of the headboard, and Mark, instead of stopping, simply fixes Derek with a look and finishes what he's doing. It's amazingly reckless of him, and you have to admire that kind of confidence. Without a word, he dismounts, but you don't see him leave, because you're a little lost in the stomach-sinking feeling that's guilt.
Derek leaves that night; you don't see him for four months. Somehow, though, it doesn't matter as much when you start to see Mark every day.
The stick turns blue – what a cliché. You realized you should have taken the morning-after pill the day after you realized that the condom broke, but work's been busy and you've been a little preoccupied trying to save other women's babies to worry about one of your own. You sit there on the toilet with the stick in your hand, and for once, you're glad Mark isn't there to burst in on you. Today, you need privacy, because you've got to consider what the hell to do.
It's been a tumultuous, dirty affair based on the very fact that he thinks you're absolutely gorgeous. He's creative in bed; you've been tied up and tied him up. He brought home handcuffs and you spent days inventing new sexual positions involving those. The sex is amazing, and it helps to think that after losing a patient or having a long day in surgery, he's there to chase it all away with one of his fire-hot kisses. But you've always kept it as a side thing; he's a good fuck, and you're not letting it go further.
When you tell him, he's overjoyed. He goes out and buys the Yankee onesie which you promptly fold up and shove in a box in the back of your closet. He's not father material. He plays with children to impress you. He's more obsessed with the fall of your flame-coloured hair than with changing diapers or reading stories. And having this baby would mean that you're admitting you have something with him. You don't want his baby. You want Derek's baby, although at this point, the reason why is lost in all the confusion of missed calls and unanswered messages.
You make the appointment for the clinic the next day, feeling like a bitch for telling him about the baby when it's not going to be a baby for too much longer. When you lie in the stirrups, you try to ignore the dizzying feeling of the anaesthetic as they count you back from ten. You pass out at seven and when you wake up in the recovery room, he's there stroking back your hair. His touch is gentle, but his face is stony.
He doesn't speak to you for a month after that, and that's when you book your ticket to Seattle, because you've never lived alone and you're not going to start now.
Derek's cold and it's almost worse than when you were actually pretending to be married. He fawns over that twelve-year-old intern as you curl your hair in a too-small trailer and blow the fuse with your hair dryer. He never says anything, but his passive-aggressiveness leads you to cry on the front porch one night, a cold bag of smelly Chinese beside you, because anything you do, from picking up dinner to trying to clean the mud from the trailer's threshold, isn't good enough. It seems to break him; you have some lukewarm sex that makes you think that maybe things will be all right.
It's become rather static; you go about your day and he goes about his. You try to work with Meredith Grey and ignore the whispers behind your back. You know you're good at your job, and Richard Webber's overjoyed, but when you catch Mark Sloan getting punched by Derek, it's almost like someone's given your heart an extra jump.
Suddenly life is interesting again. You catch the gleam in his ice-blue eyes and imagine his lips on your own, and you know: whatever it was; whatever it will end up being, he never loved you just because you were gorgeous. He wouldn't have come back if that were the case.
The minuet goes on, but you've never been one to refuse to dance.