B O S T O N
Yes, it's long. Hang in for the end. I hope the time jumping isn't too confusing. Title is the song Boston by Augustana.
.oOo.
She finds it exactly forty-seven minutes after consummating her marriage to a kind, beautiful, and (almost) perfect man who has promised to love her forever. The moonlight is crawling over the bare, milky skin of her back from her position sideways across the bed. Her fingers are mapping out every detail of her wedding dress, the tiny pearls that dot the chiffon princess skirt, the lacey bodice that clutched her torso so tight she almost couldn't breathe. Or maybe that was because the best man seemed more attentive to her trip down the isle than Derek.
She can't decide, and furthermore she doesn't want to know. Instead she convinces herself that this fairytale she's scrapped together will be perfect, that she and Derek will love each other forever because she can't fathom the concept that it was all for naught.
Her husband is filling the periwinkle-tinged hotel room with soft, rhythmic snoring, and she could be asleep also but doubt clings to her consciousness, daring her to think of another man on her wedding night.
She always wondered what he would taste like on those long nights they stayed up studying long after Derek had gone to bed when he teased her about her nerdiness and then proceeded to engage her in a discussion about quantum physics. She wanted to see if eternity was contained in those soft cerulean eyes, she wanted know what it would be like to have his stubble scrape across her stomach after lingering kisses, she wanted to know if his lips, an island of softness on a cynical face, were really as gentle as they looked.
But it's too late now, she reminds herself. For better or for worse, she is married to Derek and she will never know what it will feel like to be pressed up against Mark, trading air and yet somehow unable to breathe.
Fingers collide with the smooth, wrinkly texture of folded paper in the box that cradles her wedding dress, and Addison withdraws her hand, a note brushing up against her wedding and engagement rings. Hands shaking, she undoes the folds, sneaking guilty glances at the peacefully slumbering Derek, and when the moon reveals to her the truth written on that paper she has to clap her hands over her mouth and sprint to the bathroom so he won't hear her sobs.
One desperate, aching ball of limbs later, Addison is staring beseechingly at the heavens, wondering why the hell she couldn't have found this note on her wedding dress where her husband's best friend must have left it that morning. She now knows why he refused to take his eyes off of her, seeking a hint of hesitation that she had no reason to show because she didn't know the true manifestation of Mark's feelings.
The paper is clutched in one limp hand and she wishes with all her heart that Mark Sloan never existed.
Addie –
It may be too late to say this. Hell, it probably is, it's your wedding day, but if I don't say it, I'll regret it forever. Don't marry him, Addie. I know he's my best friend and all, but please, don't marry him. He's not … he doesn't love … he's not right for you. You're going to hate me for saying it, I know. Just please. Don't do it. I want the chance with you I was never brave enough to take.
It was me who picked out the calla lilies for your first date. Derek wanted to get roses but I knew you'd hate the cliché. It was me who told Derek you didn't want a yellow gold engagement ring but a platinum one instead. I sent the chocolates to you the day you lost your first preemie – Emily – not Derek; he wanted to go get a beer to celebrate a successful craniotomy.
I just wanted you to be happy, but now I realize that half the things you love about Derek are things you actually love about me. I love you, Addie. Please don't do it.
– Mark
The next morning she releases the note out over the deep turquoise water of her honeymoon before Derek wakes. When she next sees Mark, he doesn't mention it but she knows he can tell from her eyes that she read it.
.oOo.
"You know what I decided? It's rude, because really, it is. You think I want to go stay with his family every year even though his mother hates me and makes pointed comments about our marriage and us not having kids? You think I like it when he sleeps over at the hospital? Well, I don't, but I don't complain … much … and then when I want to go to the Hamptons …"
"Addison," Mark sighs, because when she talks like this he might as well be crunching on glass and keeping decidedly negative comments about her husband (he has become, in Mark's mind, her absent husband instead of his best friend) to himself becomes damn near impossible. In another life, it could have been just the two of them there, but this isn't another life and he's always been on the farthest end of the isosceles triangle. "Shut up. And eat your taco. We're almost there."
She pouts and he tries to focus on the cars vying for the best positions on the freeway instead of the way the dying sun glints off the bare patches of skin displayed by her distressed jeans. It's been eight years. He never thought he'd survive that long watching his best friend and the woman he loved in a marriage, but now this struggling is getting harder to watch because every time she frowns he finds himself hurting, a directly proportional relationship of linear pain.
"Derek was in surgery," he offers, hoping to lighten her mood. "He's said to tell you sorry and that we can all go next month."
"He wasn't in surgery," Addison says tiredly and his indulgent euphemism dissolves into plain acceptance that she will spend the weekend moping about Derek's absence. "He'd never allow an interruption for something so trite as the Hamptons. He wasn't in surgery yet, was he? He probably even volunteered to do it."
Neither comfort nor denial are going to help her at this point, so when he opens his mouth the truth spills out. "Addison … I like your hair like that."
"Like this?" She rakes her fingers through the strawberry locks impatiently. "Mark, the wind has completely ruined it."
"That's why I like it. It looks like sex hair. I mean, I like the uptight hairdos too …"
"You're incorrigible," she mutters, but he has gleaned a smile and when their eyes meet again hers are dancing with reluctant amusement. "You really think it looks like sex hair?"
"Uh, yeah, it kinda does."
"So you think Derek would be jealous if he saw me like this?" she asks, tossing her head so the hair drags gently across his forearm and he shivers. She smiles at his reaction and edges closer.
"Addison – " He exhales sharply. "Don't do that. Just don't."
She pouts all the rest of the way to the whitewashed beachfront house but still 'allows' him to carry her bags inside, where she untucks her blouse and sheds her jeans without a second thought and pulls on light cotton shorts instead. She is waiting on his bed, long legs crossed, when he steps out of the shower.
"I'm sorry, Mark, really," she apologizes earnestly while he hunts for jeans. "It's not your fault. I just … I don't know what's happening to our marriage." Her eyes are focused demurely on the bedspread during this admission but then she looks up and sees him staring at her she scoots closer, eyeing his lips curiously as she snuggles up beside his shoulder.
"This isn't going to do it any good," he warns frankly, feeling it is only fair to say it before she has him utterly intoxicated, before resistance is futile. He's waited for this moment for so long, and yes, she may be married but he's fucked plenty of married women throughout his years as a manwhore, trying to find a hint of what he sees in her in someone else.
Her next words steal his breath away, cliché as it is. "At this point, I'm beyond caring. And besides … I've always been curious."
That's all it takes for the first tentative brushing of lips and uncertain meeting of tongues and before long it has escalated and their teeth scrape together as a result of their desperation and her tongue is slipping around his. They are an uncoordinated tangle of limbs and she ends up sprawled on his lap, effectively straddling him, which, of course, he has no desire to complain about.
At first the excuse of 'just kissing' is still viable but when her fingertips rest gently on his ribs and he begins playing with the hem of her button down blouse they both become aware of the significance of what they're doing and hesitation makes itself known. And then she is pulling the blouse over her head and he is drinking in the sight of her, his palms pressed up against her bare chest …
"Addison? Mark?" Addison squeals softly in alarm and bites down on his lip as he rolls her off him and they both struggle to get her back in the shirt. At any other time, Mark would have found it arousing but now it is just desperate and he feels the loss of warmth when she stumbles out to meet her husband and he squeezes his eyes shut, feigning sleep.
"Derek?" Her voice is a little too breathless. "I thought you couldn't come."
"I gave the surgery to Jefferies -" Derek begins, but stops when he sees Mark emerge and head for the door. "Mark, hey. What are you doing?"
"I thought I'd give you two the weekend alone," he says tonelessly. "See you Addie, Derek."
The slam of the front door echoes in his ears for twenty-nine seconds before Addison comes sprinting out in just the thin white shirt and little shorts. Her feet are being cut by the gravel and apologies are encrypted deep in her eyes when she shoves a crumpled up piece of paper in his hand.
I'm so sorry, Mark. I never expected him to come. I'm just … I'm sorry. Please don't tell him.
It is the better of the souvenirs of their almost adultery, the other being his bleeding lip.
.oOo.
The note is haphazardly stuck to the door of the brownstone and she marvels that the autumn bluster has not yet swept it into the street with the various other debris, some of which is much heavier than the note. Maybe it means she is meant to read it, which makes her angry because the last thing she wants to do is hear Mark Sloan's rehearsed excuses for infidelity.
The day had already worn her thin with gossipy nurses wondering whether her husband would return and what exactly her relationship with Mark was. She had a blinding headache and was looking forward to lazing on Mark's couch as he massaged the headache away (his fingers worked wonders on the pressure points of her skull). But she opened the door instead to soft giggles emitting from his bedroom and the sight him hovering over some ditzy blonde nurse from the hospital.
She thinks she finally knew what Derek felt when he walked in on them.
Except that was different. He was absent; she's been at his apartment every night for the last six weeks.
Except (she's learning to hate excepts), apparently Mark sees it differently.
Shit, Addison, I'm so sorry. I was just drunk and stupid and I'm so in love with you, Adds, but I'm worried that you don't feel the same way. I guess I hoped that if you cared, you would fight for me – for us. It was dumb. I'm sorry. Charlene means nothing to me, I swear to you. Please come home. Please stop pretending you don't hear me when I call you at the hospital. I still love you.
But she's learned not to believe his empty, broken promises anymore.
.oOo.
It's frigid. Cold. Deprived of warmth, however you would like to put it, Mark knows when he opens the door to his freezing apartment that she's gone. No designer shoes kicked chaotically across the carpet. No mail tucked neatly under a coffee mug, the only thing she can make without causing raging house fires (he knows, unfortunately, from experience).
It's just him and all the things he doesn't want to feel.
He knew all along that she still loved Derek, but he hoped his love was enough to hold her there even when she sobbed for hours and refused to let him touch her. And he knows that it was partially his fault that all he could ever do was kiss her tears away and immerse himself in her heartrending game of pretend, pretending that Derek didn't exist. Maybe he knew all along that she would leave, but if he did, he thinks, staring at the unfriendly apartment, he wonders why the shock is impelling him.
There is something else out of place, and he almost laughs aloud when he sees the note which is apparently next in their parade of tragic goodbyes.
Mark,
I would say all the meaningless crap I'm supposed to say but I know it won't mean much to you. You never really cared about all that anyway.
You must have figured it out already, but I'm leaving. Richard called and Derek's in Seattle and I can't just throw eleven years of marriage away for someone who can't stay faithful for two months.
I think it's best this way, because honestly, I think we both knew it wouldn't have worked. We're different people, Mark, and now I know you never really knew me. Maybe I didn't know you either. But it doesn't matter now.
Thank you for everything.
It becomes his personal bible in the months of her absence. He still wanted to hear the meaningless crap.
.oOo.
Her shitty, no-good day is improved by the presence of a sunset on her desk, with lilies blotted in rich shades of gold and apricot and cherry and delicate orchids twisting out of the bunch and carnations the color of passion fruit. For an instant basked in the flowers' brilliance it doesn't matter that Derek was touching Meredith's chin when the elevator doors opened that morning. It doesn't matter that one of her names has officially been stolen by divorce.
Because as these flowers gaze at her, she's knows she's not the only one who cares that a preemie threw up all over her scrubs, that Derek didn't even say hello when he passed her going into the scrub room, that the interns suspect the source of her grumpiness is that she isn't getting laid.
Although she has sent him away countless times so he doesn't have to involved in the mess she has created in Seattle, Mark is her ray of sunshine. (And she'll never admit this to him, at least sober. He would probably make something worse than an innuendo out of it anyway.)
Sorry. No calla lilies, this was the best I could find.
I know you're having a hard time and that it can't be easy so I just wanted to let you know that I'm here. I'm here, whenever you're ready, for whatever part of me you want.
I won't say it until you want me to. But Addie, you know I do.
P.S. I washed those scrubs for you and informed those interns that you are indeed getting laid. Don't be mad. I refrained from punching Derek for being rude just for you.
She resolves to keep the two old friends as far apart as possible for the next week and only smiles mysteriously when the interns wonder what has made her so happy. She's less happy, however, when they deduce it must be sex with a certain McSteamy.
.oOo.
She's gone again and this time he has to learn it from Alex fucking Karev who tells him with such nonchalance that just weeks after Addison disappeared to LA she is moving there that Mark is forced to put his hand through the wall instead of Karev's head.
He traverses the hospital in a whirlwind of bitter anger for the next month, the note she left behind tucked tenderly in the pocket of his scrubs which is, incidentally, right over his heart. Callie handed it to him sympathetically about twenty minutes after Karev gave him the news that turned him into a scrub-clothed cappuccino-carrying zombie.
The nightmare born of her absence is something in which he is surprised he finds the incentive to survive, but really, there's not much to existing besides mindless surgeries and drinking binges at Joe's. Mark doesn't read her words until one night Joe forgets to cut him off and he consumes one too many double scotch, single malts and the words are all fuzzy and black and inscrutable but even in his inebriated state the familiar writing is endearing.
God, how many times have we done this now, Mark? How many notes have we left over the years? How many times have we said goodbye? I am compelled to continue the tradition.
I'm just so messed up here, Mark. There's you, there's Derek, there's K …just everything and I need to get away from it all for a while. Sam and Naomi are in LA, so it'll be nice to catch up with them. They started a private co-op that I'm joining. And there's sun here, no rain. I've learned to hate the rain.
I need you to know that it's not you, it's me. Yes, that is horribly cliché and I hate that it's cliché but it's true. I need to fix myself, Mark, because I've been messed up for too long. Unfortunately I have to do it by myself.
Also unfortunately, I think I still love you. Please don't come after me this time. I don't think I'll be able to resist you.
He wants to tell her there's still rain in LA, there's rain practically everywhere except maybe the Sahara. But she changes her cell number.
.oOo.
The sunset mocks their latest goodbye, casting dancing, rosy-pink shadows over the towering columns and endless seas of clouds. The flight home from Seattle to LA will be over in less than three hours but to Addison, each instant is an eternity.
It is the epitome of selfishness but she supposes she always assumed that Mark would be just there, her rock, a solid foundation in her uprooted, chaotic life, because after all this time she finally knows that it is the fight and not the fairytale ending that matters.
She has come unto her fully bloomed love for Mark months too late, years too late, more than a decade too late, but when he entered her brother's room singing that ridiculous song of her ex-husband's she was swamped by reassurance. Of course, she snapped at him less than a minute later because Archer was dying and refusing surgery and Mark was making her almost smile while they awaited the verdict.
Sure, they'd fallen straight into that old trap of self-destructiveness that has surely paved the mysteriously enticing road to Hell, but she knew she couldn't fight for Mark anymore. Whatever broken pieces of their relationship are left are not worth salvaging and besides, he's happy. So what if the intern is fifteen years younger than him? So what if she's Meredith Grey's fucking sister? So what if she's more in awe of Mark than in love with him? So what if she saw him slip a crumpled note into her Gucci bag?
Hey, Addie, we didn't get to talk much or anything, especially after my little … spat with Derek but I just wanted to say I wish Archer the best (even if he screwed half my past girlfriends) and that … I wish you the best too, wherever you are.
It was great to see you, but I have a feeling that you know we're different people now. I found someone, and she's great. Really. I'm happy. I love her and I think she might be the one. But seeing you makes me forget it all.
I won't be calling for a while, but I'll always love you, Addison, even if we were never meant to be.
With the stunted, under-salted peanuts provided by the airline, she plays a game on her fold-down tray as they shoot through the air. She names one peanut Mark and one peanut Addison and one peanut Derek and one Meredith and even adds one for Lexie (although that particular specimen is a bit rotten.)
Soon all members of the Seattle Grace love-fest have a nut named after them and she arranges them according to their respective relationships and is perversely pleased that the gossip mill supplies her so much in-depth info into her co-workers lives for all that she tries not to listen. No sooner is the configuration completed than the plane hits turbulence and her neighbor has to tap her and remind her to fasten her seatbelt. The peanuts converge into one big disorganized muddle and she hopes it's not a forecast of the future.
Little does she know there's another peanut on the way.
.oOo.
"You give it to him!"
"Why me?"
"Because I'm your resident, dammit, and I told you to!"
"He's scary. He never talks, never smiles, never anything. I'm not giving it to him."
"Somebody has to."
"Izzie, she gave it to you."
"Only because I was the only one in the NICU! And you're my husband and you owe me a favor for the mindblowing sex last night so you should do it, Alex."
"She gave it to you two weeks ago!"
"And she said not to give it to him for a month but he just looks so miserable -"
"Guys -"
"Shut it, Bambi."
"One of you interns do it. That's what you're here for."
"Cristina, I don't think -"
"Then you do it, Mer!"
"Okay, interns, who volunteers? Nobody? Okay, how about Little Grey?"
"In case you've forgotten again, I'm not an intern anymore!"
"No, Alex, besides, she dated Mark!"
"Yeah, like three years ago!"
"Guys … he's standing right there."
It is almost comical how they all turn, see him, and assume appropriately contrite expressions. Almost. But really, they needn't bother, because Mark is so numb that all levels of tragedy wash over him like oil over water. He doesn't think he's compatible with things like happiness anymore; nothing in his life is synonymous with joy.
Not because she's been gone for over four years. She's left before and he has learned to associate her with any news of LA, of rippling water eating gently away at golden sand. He can live with her gone if hallucinations of her contentment haunt his dreams, masochistic as it is.
No, what has driven him to the point of Zombieland is that he doesn't possess anything anymore. Not her sunshiny laugh that lights her entire face up like the rising sun, not her opinions of LA, which he finds of greater value than jewels and that slip back layers of pretention to give him perspective on his own life. The memories are starting to fade and it's killing him.
Alex finally slides the manila envelope down the counter of the nurses' station and the onlookers watch curiously for his reaction. Mark grabs it, steels his heart against the incessant hurt, and locks himself in an on-call room.
The embellished paper that flutters slowly to the floor, arcing from side to side, is so beyond what he expected that for a minute he cannot move. Finally with shaking fingers he lifts it so the colored lines can spill their secrets.
The heads are sadly misshapen and the eyes too large, but to him, it might as well be Van Gogh for all the immersed adoration on his face. It is a classic, mother, father, and a child between them, their overlarge, many-fingered hands overlapping. He learns that Addison's hair is as brilliantly crimson as ever and that the child he apparently fathered has the exact same tresses and grey-blue eyes. He discovers that Addison must have talked of his blue eyes (the crayon color his son used is Robin's Egg Blue, Crayola hasn't changed and he recognizes it from his own coloring days) but not his hair because on the paper his head is a mix of the four prominent hair colors, a scribbled mess of black and brown and blonde and red.
To: Daddy
From: Asher
Maybe, Mark realizes, clichés aren't so bad. Which is a cliché in itself but he's grinning so widely his face might crack and he's never cared less in his life. There's also a picture of a dinosaur (irrelevant but wonderful all the same).
Before you say (or think) anything, I know. I know you're angry that I kept him from you but you said you wouldn't be calling for a while and apparently you meant it because he's three now. And if you're married to your intern and happy and you don't want us then you can just ignore this letter. But Asher's been asking about his father and I had to at least try.
Archer, of course, is under the mistaken impression that I named Asher after him, but I know it's your great-grandfather's name because we looked at your old family album once when we were cleaning out your apartment, remember?
I gave him a picture of you. He hero worships you; he wants to be a 'spastic' surgeon when he grows up.
I'm giving you this because we're getting out of California. We're going somewhere where no one knows us and I don't know where that is yet but if you want I'll tell you when I figure it out.
I've always loved you, I was just too scared and stupid to admit it.
Then he is running, sprinting, and he wants to be mad at Addie for keeping his son in the glistening rays of the south but he can't because all he can think is I need to find her.
Map splayed in front of him, Sharpie clutched in one fist, Mark contemplates the forty-eight continental United States and hopes she hasn't left them because then he's really lost.
He immediately rules out anywhere even near Midwest. (Addison hates cows. And his son? Does Asher hate cows?)
She said she wanted out of California, Oregon is not her style, and there's nothing for her to return to in Washington.
She hates the humidity, no south. She thinks people from Texas are unfailingly hicks or cowboys, or both.
New York has too many memories. Derek grew up in Connecticut. New Jersey's just too crowded and she hates New Hampshire and her father died in a freak accident in Vermont …
When he sees it, he knows. Boston.
.oOo.
"Dr. Montgomery?"
"Mommy!" Asher wraps himself around her knees and clings on and figures she should call him Monkey-boy instead of Peanut.
"Hey, Caroline, thanks for watching him," she says gratefully to the kind nurse before scooping up her son and feeling the motherly fluttering of her heart when he hugs back with all his strength.
"A Mark Sloan called. Said he's staying at the hotel on the other side of Bakersfield Park in room 405 and …"
Before Caroline can finish, she's already moving. "Give this to him if he comes here," she instructs, handing the nurse the mess of scrawls before grabbing Asher's hand and hurrying out the door.
Mark – I'm headed over to the hotel but in case you come here I'll meet you in the middle of Bakersfield Park …
.oOo.
As he lopes over crisp leaves, golden orange before they hit the ground and glimmering in the fallen sun, he thinks back to the note he tucked carefully under his hotel room door.
Addie – I'm headed over to the hospital because I figure that's where you'll be but if not I'll meet you back here. I've missed you. I can't wait to meet him.
This park of sprawling pathways thick with dew and sherbert colored foliage is all that separates him from the hospital Addie works at and although his chest is heaving because the place is several miles long and sweat is soaking his form-fitting tee, he doesn't stop.
He hears them before he sees them, before they round the next hill to be silhouetted by the sun.
"Mommy, wait up!"
"I thought you were a speedy dragon, bud!"
"The speedy dragon is tired!"
"Tell the speedy dragon that - "
They stop. Swallow vast quantities of nerves and assimilate the things etched in their consciousness but forgotten in their immediate memories. He bridges the distance between them to hand her the note.
I've loved you forever and I still love you and I've never stopped loving you, Addie.
And because she is far more romantic than she will ever admit, she grabs the paper, digs in her purse for a pen, and scrawls I love you too before crushing her mouth to his.
.oOo.
Why did Addison go to Boston? I don't know. Because I felt like it. And I love that song. And you should review. Because I actually dug through my little sister's art supplies to find the color of that crayon.