Written for livejournal's ga_fanfic comment fic-a-thon.
Across the room, Addison's drinking champagne and charming Callie's father. She's sad, though, he can tell; he always could and that, maybe, was the biggest part of his downfall. Her smile's a little forced and her dress, beautiful and effortlessly couture though it is, is older and less formal than she'd usually choose for a wedding. He knows because he's seen it before, ripped the dazzling colors off her, actually, in L.A., a few days before she bared the portion of her soul that's reserved for wanting him on the rebound, and he told her he was in love with Lexie Grey.
Ironic, huh? The boot (or booty call) on the other foot, and maybe a part of him took a little petty satisfaction in that, shielded by what he thought he had with Lexie. But now that he watches her, trying not to be noticed because life's already too damn complicated, he gets, finally, that it wasn't quite so simple. She had hurt him once too often. She terminated his kid, their kid, their family, and it still gnaws at him, even now; she ditched him - twice; and she never got, and probably never will, how much he loved her. The irony was never real because, when it comes to Addison, he's always the sucker, always caught up just a little in a past he can't excise from his memories and his feelings however much time passes and however hard he tries, and she's always just that little, crucial bit detached.
It was never going to work out - he knew that, or should have, from day one. He was an ass and she was still in love with the husband he was subbing for, and so in the end he moved on - if that's the right euphemism for breaking apart and stopping just shy of getting put back together again - and now he's not even sure about that. Because she's a little sad, and a little drunk, and her eyes are alive and extinguished at the same time, and that's exactly, fucking exactly when she always gets to him the most.
He has a kid with Callie and that's . . . hell, great and wonderful and more than he ever really expected; and he's in love with Lexie and one of these days, if his hopes pan out, he's going to get back with her. But right now, as he turns away, makes small talk, cracks a couple of jokes on autopilot, a part of him knows that the kid he really wanted, the love he really wanted, were the ones he never got to have with the messed-up, beautiful, heartbreak of a woman across the room.