A/N: Thanks so much for the warm welcome back and the feedback on this new story. I have plenty of other updates planned, but this one decided it needed to be posted today, and who am I to argue with a story? I hope you enjoy!
Bait
Gestational Age: Seven weeks, two days
People Who Know So Far: Two (if you count the embryo)
..
Addison can keep a secret.
It's a family trait, you could say, whether that secret is her father's latest tryst with one in a long line of blondes or the unsavory provenance of the original Bradford fortune.
And she can keep this one, if she has to.
Both of them.
She may have lost track of time before – she may have lost track of it twice – but she's paying attention now.
Seven weeks and two days LMP. Two weeks of extra credit from her last period to the presumptive date of conception. Which means five weeks and two days of development.
You know how there are glass half empty people, and glass half full?
You could say fetal development is like that too. On the one hand, there's all the miraculous things the embryo, and then the fetus, is doing week by week – doubling in size, growing organs, for crying out loud. And then on the other side there's all the risks to the fetus. There's the color-wheel chart in her office she rarely shares with patients – though they can probably find it on the internet these days – tracking risk of miscarriage day by day through all forty weeks until finally drops to 0% once the baby is born.
Growth, and decline: OBGYNs track from both sides.
Sometimes, they don't even seem that different.
But … seven weeks, and two days. She only has to close her eyes to see its exact stage of development. Which means two things: first, her baby (her baby!) still has a tail. Second, the spotting a few weeks ago that she assumed was part of the Seattle-has-no-pattern-and-also-the-thing-she-doesn't-like-to-think-about?
Yeah. That wasn't a period. And she should have realized.
As a very well trained OBGYN, among other professional accomplishments, she should have picked up on this earlier. Then again, NCOG conferences are filled with female OBGYNs telling stories of surprise pregnancies – usually over drinks – and the occasional male colleague missing obvious signs of pregnancy in their wives.
Work is one thing. Her body is another.
The main difference, as she can see it? She actually has control over one of those things.
The point is, she's pregnant.
The issue is … that early pregnancy symptoms mirror, with unfortunate accuracy, the symptoms of Living in Seattle With a Husband Who Hates You.
Exhaustion. Yeah, since her heels touched the ground in Washington state.
Nausea. That started right about the moment she first saw her husband with Meredith Grey.
The same hormone that turned the stick an alarmingly quick pink is responsible for both of those things.
And actually – she glances automatically down to see if – no, nothing interesting in the way of growth.
She still has no idea what she would have told Derek yesterday if he'd been willing to talk to her in the hallway, or why it suddenly seems impossible to tell him.
She's fairly certain what Derek would say – that she's passive-aggressive down to the bone, that she's waiting for him to … prove something, by figuring it out himself. By noticing.
No, honey, I realized a while ago now that you'd stopped noticing me. Long before Seattle.
So she's stuck drinking in the tiniest bits of his attention: this morning's ride in the car, when Derek listens with such focus to the news on NPR that you'd think he was prepping for nuclear war, or at least a term paper, but does glance at her when she attempts to start conversation during sponsor breaks. That's something. And he weighs in with genuine interest on a neuroendocrine issue with one of her patients, but then she's never had a problem engaging him with medicine. So that doesn't count. Not really.
"Good morning, Dr. Shepherd!"
Not really.
She returns the greeting without really taking stock. That's it for the dwindling chart of attention from her husband; he dropped a dutiful kiss on her cheek when she turned her face up to him, out of habit, at the elevators, and then they separated … and that was that.
She needs coffee.
She needs coffee, but she had coffee, this morning. In the trailer.
Okay, fine.
The studies on caffeine are … what they are, and she's of grudgingly advanced maternal age, so she'll limit herself to two. Fine. She'll revisit if she falls asleep in the OR. But since no one is pelting her with cold cuts or trying to coerce her into a scuba dive or even a sauna – and since no one is exactly offering her coffee here, or noticing what she does at all, or –
But she's not going to spiral.
It's just coffee.
..
"Coffee?"
Derek looks with some suspicion at the intern holding out the paper cup. It's not that he doesn't trust her – in the OR, certainly, he would be a fool not to notice her talents. But she made her position on him, personally, clear, and she's Meredith's best friend.
"Did you poison it?"
"No," Yang says seriously, as if it's a perfectly normal question. "There are very few poisons that you can disguise in black coffee. The bitterness is too apparent. Now, if you drank your coffee with sugar – "
"I'll take your word for it." He accepts the cup and takes a few welcome sips. It tastes … burned, and old, and not much like the coffee Addison insists on. But just as she insists on buying it, he insists on pretending he doesn't like it much.
That's just how it is.
"Thank you, Dr. Yang," he says and turns to leave.
"Dr. Shepherd!"
"Yes?" He turns around, playing along as if he expected the coffee was the end of it.
"I, uh, I may have overheard that you have an atypical rhabdoid tumor this afternoon … the one Mercy West misdiagnosed as a medulloblastoma." She speaks very quickly and then bares her teeth in what he supposes is intended as a smile.
"I do," Derek says, a little amused. "Did you have a question?"
"Just – may I assist? Sir," she adds, and he has to fight down a smile.
"Dr. Bailey is in charge of your assignments," he points out mildly.
"Yes! I asked her already. Well, I told her I was going to ask you. She said it was fine."
Derek blinks. That doesn't sound much like Bailey, and Yang seems to take his point.
"She said I could ask you at my own risk, and that she was too tired to remind me yet again what happens to interns who pester busy attendings." She says all this very fast too.
"You can assist."
Her eyes widen. "Thank you!"
"You're welcome." He pauses. "Not because of the coffee, though, to be clear."
Yang nods. "It's clear." She pauses, then looks at him for a second. "And not because of – "
"No, Dr. Yang, not because of that either." He takes a final sip. "You can tell Dr. Bailey you'll be assisting."
He's pretty sure, as he walks away, that he can hear a rather undignified yes! from Yang.
It's amusing, or it would be, if he could remember his own intern days – chasing after the attendings whose surgeries he longed to watch, surviving on little more than caffeine and enthusiasm for days on end – if that period of his life weren't tainted now.
The problem, when your childhood best friend and the wife you started dating in medical school join forces to betray you?
They pretty much taint every memory you have.
But please, Addison, tell me more about how I'm the bad guy in all this, and you're the victim.
It's not like she says it out loud – much – but it's very clear. Then again, Addison has never had trouble being both loud and clear without saying anything at all.
..
Tonight's going to be a call-Savvy-from-the-porch night. She can just feel it.
First of all, her arm is still sore from the stupid tetanus shot. Then again, maybe she can put it to good use and make Derek take her fishing – the rusty fish hooks are no match for now, not after yesterday's tetanus shot.
The concept makes her smile, a little. Which is nice, because – something needs to. And it's not like people are cracking a lot of jokes around her, here.
Or talking to her much at all.
She has a light-ish day, for her, although things can change in the blink of an eye.
(That much … is definitely clear.)
She has a straightforward BSO at noon. It's an ideal procedure to involve an intern, and since every day in Seattle in her lucky day –
Okay, it's not Grey.
But it's a close runner-up.
"Looks like you're on my service today, Dr. Stevens." She says it brightly, like there's such a thing as good news in Seattle. Kind and patient, right? Changing Satan's narrative.
"Yes, it looks like I am … Dr. Shepherd."
… yeah, so Stevens isn't going to make this easy.
The intern is just this side of insolent, but it's not like Addison can't sympathize. She didn't speak to Richard for a year after what he did to her. All of the rest of her intern year. And then a solid chunk of the second year of her residency. She assured Derek she didn't mind if he talked to the man she called Dr. Webber then – in fact, she encouraged it, because as angry as she was she didn't want to miss out on learning. And to his credit, once in a while Derek would come back to her in the library or one of their dusty little student apartments and pass along some tidbit from Richard that he must have meant, even if he didn't say so, for Addison.
But did she learn distance, from his little game?
Well.
Addison, don't do this. Don't get attached. Don't get involved.
Maybe not so much.
..
She eats lunch alone, which is normal for her here, and it's a granola bar and it's ten-fifteen in the morning. But she's operating at noon, and even though she's alone, she's also … not.
Not like she used to be.
Not anymore.
And even though she hasn't told Derek yet – or anyone – and even though she hasn't heard the heartbeat yet, she knows it's there. The secret thumps within her.
..
"Will you wait for me to go home tonight?"
He doesn't have to turn around, and anyway only one person would ask him that. Her plaintive tone grates a little.
"Derek?"
She's standing next to him now.
"I heard you," he says. His gaze flickers automatically back to the board. "I don't know how long this procedure will go."
"I don't have my car," she adds. "I could, uh, I could take the ferry, I guess, and then take a cab from the ferry terminal but I'm not actually sure what I would tell them in terms of where I'm going. Does your … trailer … have an address? Coordinate points or a line of latitude or something, or… ."
"I'll wait for you," he says, effectively cutting off what was working from a ramble into a rant. She can keep going for quite a while on the subject of the trailer. The more she hates it, the more he'll dig his heels in, and it's not like she doesn't know that. It's elementary Shepherd Marriage, the kindergarten science experiment as compared to the level of fluency required now to understand their marriage. Which is more like Orgo.
Orgo the time Mark talked him into going out on a Tuesday night and he was actually still tipsy for their eight a.m. lecture the next morning.
"Okay." Her mouth quirks a little like she's going to smile. "I have patients and then … paperwork, so I'll just see you later."
..
She does have paperwork. She has plenty to do.
Work isn't the issue. It never has been.
The issue is that she needs to tell him.
The issue is that she knows from experience that the longer she waits, the harder it will be.
She could tell him in the car, tonight. They'll drive home together, and – no, Derek won't want to talk to her. He'll want to listen to the news – he's never been as well informed as he has been since he decided he no longer likes talking to her in the car, and that didn't start in Seattle, either. They used to drive all the way out to the Hamptons in mid-summer traffic with music or the Yankees or nothing at all humming in the background, talking to each other. There was a time when being alone in the car, together, was a treat.
There was a time when … a lot of things. When she had a marriage, a real one. When she had friends who lived in the same city she did.
Just to take stock, briefly, of her friends in Seattle:
One: Derek – former best friend, current technically-speaking husband and sometime lover, tends to avoid her at all cost during the workday, might be better defined as a frenemy.
Two: Richard – current boss, former mentor, once and future puppetmaster, see number 3.
Three: Stevens – current intern, former maybe-going-to-be-protegee, currently hates her because of number 2, and also Stevens's friend used to date number 1, and Seattle is too damned small for all this.
Four: Grey – current intern, former mistress of number 1, also works for number 2 – and number 1, come to think of it, seriously Derek, and friend of number 3. Other than their unfortunate shared entry on The List, not much in common. Oh, and probably hates her for stealing her perfect boyfriend and turning him back into a pumpkin, aka a not-so-perfect husband.
Five: ... N/A
"Join a club," Savvy suggests when she calls. Addison won't even have to wait for the porch, Savvy – bless her – calls while she was waiting for Derek to get out of surgery. Just hearing her best friend's voice was a relief, even if it sounds like she's having trouble keeping a straight face. "You can meet people that way. Or take a class."
"Don't mention Pilates again, Sav, or I'll hang up." She glances at her office door, confirming it's firmly closed, and then props her feet up on her desk and tips her chair back in a most undignified way.
"You won't hang up." She can tell Savvy is smiling.
"I won't, but I'll want to." Addison pauses. "So, have your new Pilates friends replaced me yet?"
"No one could replace you, Addie," Savvy says and she feels warmth spread through her. Even if she set herself up for the validation she desperately needed … it still feels good. She can always hate herself for it later … just add it to the list.
"Why are you working so late, anyway?" Addison asks, glancing at the time.
"I have a filing, and I don't trust the children my partner hired." Savvy sighs a little into the phone. "Plus, Weiss's trial starts tomorrow so it's not like he's home either."
Well. She can identify with that.
"Don't you have a dog?" Savvy asks.
"That's a little bit of a non-sequitur."
"Not really. Take him to a dog park or something."
"He's more of a hiker."
Savvy sighs into the phone. "Did you ever think, Addie, that part of the problem is that you don't look outside of – hospitals – for friends?"
She appreciates, at least, that Savvy doesn't say, and more, even though she and Derek are both walking clichés with their affair partners. Then again, who do you talk to if you don't talk to people at work, and who do you screw other than people you talk to?
"You're not inside the hospital," Addison points out, "and you'd better not be anytime soon."
"That's sweet. In an Addison way, but still … sweet." Savvy pauses. "I miss you, you know."
There it is. What she needed to hear.
"I miss you too."
"Are you two planning any trips back to New York?"
You two. The most they plan these days is who gets to shower first, and it's generally Derek because Addison lost shower-first privileges when she screwed his best friend. That's the kind of plans they have.
"Um … I'm not sure."
"I ran into Nancy the other day, did she tell you?"
"No." She swallows, digesting the news. She and Nancy played a bit of phone tag, after Derek left, and had a quick awkward drink, but – she's Derek's sister, she has no idea what really happened between Addison and Mark, and as much as they were as close as sisters … Addison is fairly certain Nancy would be less than thrilled to know what actually went down.
And she can't really blame her.
"Yeah, I ran into her at Barney's, actually. She told me Catherine got in early to Harvard." Savvy groans a little into the phone. "Do we really know people with kids old enough to go to Harvard?"
"She's not old enough to go – just to get in," Addison corrects, to cover her drumming heartbeat. "Nancy's a couple years older too," she adds.
But Catherine was born the same year Derek and Addison met. She's the first Shepherd baby from her tenure in the family, the first one she held under a Christmas tree, and they have a special – and she didn't even know she was applying. Archie gives a ridiculous amount of money every year, she could have – but Nancy clearly didn't want to tell her, and Katie didn't need her help. Fine.
"Nice distinction, Addie, I have a job as a junior associate for you if you're interested."
"Not if it's working for you – I've heard what you put your juniors through."
"It can't be worse than what you put your interns through."
Fair enough. Addison checks the time – Derek has at least another hour in surgery. Maybe she should have told him she'd take his car … but then he's still Derek, and unlikely to hand over the keys.
"How's Weiss?" she asks.
"He's Weiss." Savvy's smiling into the phone, she can tell. "How's Derek?"
"He's the same."
"He's Weiss, too?"
"Very funny." Addison fidgets with a strand of long hair. Okay, here goes.
She's going to tell Savvy.
She needs to tell Savvy.
And now's the time.
"Sav – "
But her friend is cursing into the phone in a most unladylike way. "Addie, I'm so sorry, I need to run. I need to go murder someone who apparently can't proofread no matter how much we overpay him when the ink on his degree hasn't even dried yet – "
"Go, go," Addison says hastily, figuring Savvy should save the rest of her rant for the unfortunate associate who crossed her.
Which means the current tally of people who know she's pregnant is still … two, if you count the embryo.
Great.
..
"That was amazing. Seriously amazing. Incredible."
Derek pulls off his scrub cap, letting the breathless intern continue. Interrupting her seems futile, anyway, and he's faintly flattered – and a fair bit impressed. She really is very good, if a little abrasive.
Maybe a lot abrasive.
He lets her go on a bit longer, enjoying being somewhat indulgent, before makes his escape.
And then he lingers. Admittedly, he lingers.
He showers in the attendings' lounge, letting the hot water pound the ache out of his neck muscles. He sits for a while on one of the padded benches, toweling his hair dry. It's cold out, that's what he tells himself. Early spring. He's almost forty and he still remembers vividly what his mother's reaction would be to wet hair plus cold weather plus no hat.
He stops in his office and even though he doesn't really need to do it, not this second and not from here, updates his chart, records some of his notes. Props his feet on his desk – Addison isn't here to tell him it's undignified, at least – and studies a few pre-op scans.
He's aware Addison is waiting for him. He's aware she'd read into this, in her typical way, assume he's punishing her by making her stay later than she'd like. Getting her back for pushing him to drive in together this morning. She got what she wanted this morning, didn't she? So now, if she has to stay a little longer than she'd like …
Well. For better or for worse, right?
It's about the vows.
..
It's just past nine-thirty when he decides he's made his point. After all, she could have called his office, she could have messaged him – she'll have plenty of ways to find out he's out of surgery, that he's taken his time in letting her know.
It's not about her, anyway. He's not doing this to her. He's trying, with some desperation at times, to get a moment alone. Just a moment or two without her.
He messages her, and she doesn't respond.
With the barest whiff of embarrassment, he realizes he has no idea what her extension is. And the idea of calling the main number to be routed to her – when they can tell the call comes from him – let's just say he's been the subject of enough gossip.
So now he's annoyed. Is she getting him back, for taking so long? Does everything have to be a chess game – not two moves ahead but ten, twelve, impossible to keep up?
He stands to stretch his legs, then figures he might as well just drop by her office. It's on his way. In a way.
Outside her door, he knocks a few times. He's mostly avoided her office, in all honesty. For a variety of reasons.
No answer.
Annoyed, he knocks again. He'll give her one more chance, and then he's leaving without her.
He wouldn't put it past her to have left hours ago, made her way back to the trailer, where she'll be waiting for him and somehow turn this into his crime.
Still no response.
That's it. He's leaving without her.
He pushes the door open anyway – it's unlocked, and he's just confirming.
She's there.
She's sleeping.
She's … sleeping with her head on the desk resting on her folded arms, her long hair spread out everywhere. He can see the movement of her rib cage through the fabric of her blouse, breathing deeply, as if she's been asleep for a while.
She doesn't wake as he approaches, either, confirming his suspicion.
They're both trained to sleep through as much as possible, so he's not surprised.
"Addison."
Nothing.
He says her name again. He takes one of her shoulders – it's warm from sleep, and shakes her lightly. "Addison."
She startles awake then, pulling away from his hand and sitting up. Her eyes are huge and confused when she turns them up to him, her long hair in disarray.
"You were sleeping," he says, hearing a note of defensiveness in his voice even though he's not sure why.
"I was sleeping," she repeats slowly. Then she blinks, coming fully awake and pushing her hair behind her ears. "What time is it?" She glances down at her notes when he tells her.
"Don't worry, you only drooled a little," he says lightly, the way he used to tease her if she'd fall asleep on her notes in the library. He's not sure the last time he's seen her sleep on a pile of work like that.
Her face flushes. "Did you, um, were you able to get the whole mass?" she asks.
He nods, and she smiles. "Congratulations."
Some of her makeup is smudged around her eyes, presumably from sleeping in it.
"It's not that late," he says, unprompted, feeling a little defensive.
"I know." She pushes back her chair, her movements slow and logy like her body still wants to sleep, even if the rest of her is alert.
"Why are you so tired?" he asks.
"I was operating too," she says; now it's her turn to be defensive.
"An uncomplicated BSO? You could do that in your sleep."
There's a pause where he's embarrassed and tries valiantly not to show it, that he's let her see he still checks the board for her surgeries. It's habit, that's all. Plus, it's his surname up there, so of course his eye is drawn to it. It's no different from anyone else with that name: he's be just as aware of an unrelated Dr. Shepherd.
There's no question she notices, it's just a question of whether she's going to push it – but she doesn't. He assumes she's filing it away to use against him later. She has whole filing cabinets at her disposal.
"It was long," she says. "Or it felt long, anyway. Stevens was assisting," she adds.
He half-nods, waiting for her to explain why that's an issue.
"Stevens," she repeats.
"I heard you the first time. Was there a problem?"
She pauses, looking at him.
He's missed something, clearly, but it's not his job to follow up, to be at the beck and call of her hints and tricks.
Not anymore.
"Never mind," she says finally, and he nods as if that's the end of it.
Are you all right? He could ask her, and it's not really like her to fall asleep so fully like that but – it's fine. She's fine.
He throws her a bone by forcing himself to be patient while she gathers the five hundred things she apparently needs before she's finished packing the bag that probably weighs more than she does. There's a moment where she glances at him and he considers helping her on with her coat and then he decides not to; it's all over in a blink, but he knows she saw it too.
They don't speak again until they've traveled side by side, silent, in the elevator and across the parking lot.
"Did you eat?" he asks finally, glancing at her across the top of his jeep.
She shakes her head.
"We can stop, if you want." He pauses with a hand on the door. "Pick something up."
"It's okay. I'm not hungry."
More bait.
For someone who hates literal fishing, she's a damned expert at the figurative kind.
He doesn't take the bait, though.
He avoids her hooks.
He waits until she's fussed sufficiently with her seat belt, as always, to back out of his parking space, and once they've pulled onto the road, he can't resist.
"This is why it doesn't make sense to drive in together," he says.
He's concentrating on the road, eyes forward, but he can still tell she's looking at him.
He could really use a drink.
Most likely … so could she.
He may not know much, these days, but he knows that can't have changed.
I love second-season Addek. Let's be real, I love all Addek, anytime, any place, any anything. And I love Savvy, too. And I am loving writing this story so I hope you are enjoying reading it too. There's lots more where this came from. What else do I love? Reviews. Am I shameless? F yeah. I love hearing from you, so I hope you'll let me know your thoughts. Thank you for reading!