Strike Twice
The hospital was abuzz with gossip about Dr. Bailey and her group of interns, and Mark understood for the first time the comments about how there were no secrets and no clean slates at Seattle Grace. Everywhere he went after the morning's M and M he heard the whispered words. "Duquette," "LVAD," "out of control interns." He was pleased that the mindless chatter was, finally, about something other than himself, but the commotion about the patient who Izzie Stevens had killed drowned out the gossip that was sure to have been spreading in any other circumstance, the gossip that Mark wanted to hear. Addison was divorced, and he craved knowledge of it but hated the idea of swallowing enough of his pride to ask anything personal of the woman who had made it so clear that she scorned his presence. As he heard the conspicuous clacking of Addie's heels rounding a corner of the hallway, however, he gave in and chased after her.
"Hey!" he called as he caught up to Addison.
"Hey," she glanced up from the chart she was writing in as she walked, sounding amicable enough.
"So," Mark asked, determined to be up front with her, "who got the Brownstone?"
"You heard?" She didn't seem very surprised, and slowed down enough so that Mark could walk next to her and talk properly.
"People talk around here, I listen." Mark refused to be distracted. "Who got the Brownstone?"
"It's none of your business," Addison said in a voice the was still casual and at ease, betraying the fact that if Mark pursued she would answer him eventually.
Mark paused for a moment, trying to find a legitimate reason for to care. "I left my bike in the basement," he lied, "I just want to know who to talk to, to get it back."
"Buy a new bike," Addison said curtly, sounding irritated this time. Mark looked carefully at her face, narrowing his eyes slightly as he scrutinized her expression. He could tell that she knew he was lying about the bike.
"You know this angry divorcee thing really turns me on," he said, reverting, as he always did out of habit, to an inappropriate comment when he didn't know what else to say.
Addison stopped and nodded slightly to herself, as if she knew that this unpleasant conversation would come eventually and had resigned herself to getting it over with as soon as possible. She rolled her eyes at his and set her jaw, something Mark was familiar with from every time they'd ever argued. "I got the Brownstone," she admitted. "And you'll get your bike back. When you come to your senses and go back home." Mark winced internally. Addison had always know exactly where to strike. Her remarks were always like that, short and simple and biting. She knew as well as he did that New York could never be his home again. Mark passed over that and moved on to search for the chink in her own armor as she began to walk away again. This time he wouldn't run after her.
"Derek took the Hamptons?" he called after her, saying the first thing that came to mind.
She stopped walking. Mark smirked slightly at his quick success, and then narrowed his eyes skeptically as he remembered. "Derek hates the Hamptons." Realization struck. "Derek gave you the Hamptons, too?"
Addison turned back around to face him, and Mark moved closer, so that he was right in front of her, making himself finally unavoidable. "He still doesn't know the whole story, does he?"
"No." Addiosn's voice was stubborn, her usually soft blue eyes now the color of stormy seas. That was his Addison.
"And as long as you don't tell him, you get to be the good guy, and I'm just the chump who seduced his wife for the hell of it," Mark said, hating that the words were true, hating to admit it, hating himself for allowing himself to become that guy. "Real fair." There was worlds more that he wanted to say, but he didn't trust his voice to contain them, so he spun around and stalked away, leaving her there, for the first time, leaving her staring after him.
Mark was walking down the corridor, his arms full of charts to update, when the faint sound of his name caught his attention and made his head automatically turn. He looked around the corner of the hallway in the direction from which he'd heard his name, and was surprised to see Addison and Derek standing a short distance away, facing each other. "Mark and I," Addison was saying to him. "It wasn't a one-night stand, I was in love with him. Or, at least… I thought I was."
Mark turned swiftly against the wall so that he was out of sight, pressing his back against the wall and breathing quickly. He knew he ought to be happy that she'd confessed their relationship to Derek, but all he could find in himself was pain that she didn't think what they'd had was real, that she was taking it back, every moment they'd spent as a couple, because she'd only thought that she was in love with him.
Mark noticed a cart with supplies nearby in the hallway, and he stepped behind it so that he could watch the exchange through the shelves and remain unseen.
Addison had her back to him, but over her white clad shoulder Mark had a perfectly clear view of Derek's face, shocked and hurt, as if she'd slapped him. Guilt and doubt joined his own pain as Mark wondered if he'd been right to think that Derek should know. He would have been happier in the dark.
"I wanted to believe that I hadn't thrown my life away on… a fling," Addison was saying. Is that what I am? A fling? Mark thought. Now Addison had found a word for it. Something more eloquent than a "transcontinental booty call." Something that could be wrapped up into one syllable and thrown around when convenient. Mark curled his hand around the metal railing of the supply cart, clenching it as powerfully as he could, hard enough to know that when he pulled his hand away it would leave a mark there.
He wanted to look away, didn't want to be there for this, shouldn't be there. It was something Addison hadn't intended for him to see. But Derek was biting his lip, and looking down, to the side, past Addison, anywhere but at her, and as much as Mark wanted to leave, he couldn't make himself turn away because no matter how much Derek hated him, Derek was still somehow his best friend.
Finally Derek looked up, and though Mark couldn't hear the words Derek was saying, he heard the tenor of his voice, low, barely there, as if speaking any louder would shatter him. Mark recognized it, recognized it as the same pained sound that had been Derek's voice when his father was murdered.
He wanted to do something, but knew that making an appearance now would be the opposite of helpful, so instead he sprang back against the wall, out of sight, as Derek stepped around Addison and fled to the elevator.
Derek was in the lounge, seated in an armchair, his laptop open in front of him. Mark could tell that Derek wasn't really looking at it. He knew this because he'd spent the last ten minutes hovering pathetically outside the lounge, peering in through the narrow slits between the blinds, wondering if he should enter, and what he could possibly say if he did. During that time Derek hadn't moved at inch, as if by keeping still he could disappear. Mark sighed slowly, and opened the door to the lounge, still with no plan, but unable to leave Derek sitting there like a statue. If nothing else, he could provide something for Derek to be angry at, which, Mark supposed, was better for Derek than this silent brooding.
"She told you," Mark said, shutting the door behind him and perching himself on a table. Derek's eyes had flickered toward the door when it had opened, then done a double take as he realized who it was. Now Derek stared blankly at his laptop again as if Mark weren't there, but nodded almost imperceptibly at Mark's words. Mark saw that he wasn't going to get an answer, but he had been aware of that possibility, and was undeterred.
"I've known you my whole life, I grew up with you, so I know what you're thinking," Mark said, watching Derek warily, searching for any flicker of a response in his too-motionless form. "That there is a year of your life wasted, trying to make it work with Addison when you could have been with Meredith."
A muscle in Derek's jaw twitched, and Mark saw that Derek didn't like him to talk about Meredith. "That you could be happy right now," Mark forged on. "That all this… everything… that you and Meredith could have had a real chance." What's happening to me? Mark wondered as he heard what he was saying. I'm turning into Sydney Heron.
Derek looked up, not directly at Mark, but somewhere in the direction of his knee. It brought his face out of shadow just enough for Mark to see the betrayal etched into the handsome lines of it. Mark fixed faces for a living. It was the one part of himself he had entire confidence in. So to know that not only could he not smooth away the tortured expression on Derek's face with a scalpel, but to know that he was the cause of it, was physically painful. Mark took a deep breath and stood, nearly finished. "Still," he said, crossing his arms and saying the words in his mind before he question them, "I thought you should know the truth. I thought I owed you that. As a friend," Mark added, meaning it with every part of who he was.
Derek finally looked Mark in the eye. "You're not my friend," he said quietly, and shut his laptop with slightly more force than was necessary before standing and walking around Mark to leave.
Mark stood there, motionless, wondering what he had left to give that would make Derek want to forgive him. He closed his eyes and crossed his arms more tightly over his chest, becoming the silent statue that Derek had been moments earlier.
It could have been minutes or hours later when Mark was vaguely aware of the door behind him opening, and cool hands putting a gentle pressure on his shoulders, sliding over his biceps and down, and slipping under his elbows to give him a soft hug from behind.
"I told Derek. That I stayed with you. But I guess you already knew that," Addison's voice told him.
Mark placed his large, warm palms over the hands that were clasped across his abdomen and found himself fingering Addison's wedding ring.
"I'm not ready to take them off yet," she said quietly, answering the question that he hadn't had to ask.
Mark tipped his head back a bit and breathed in the smell of her shampoo, the same one she used when they were living together. It was moments like these in New York during which he forgot that she was married, that she had aborted his baby, that they would never - could never - work out.
Addison's hands freed themselves from his and moved up to run her fingers through his hair as she pressed a kiss to the back of his neck. His breath caught as her fingers trailed just under his ear and he closed his eyes, savoring the moment while it lasted. Too soon, the hands disappeared and Mark could hear her crossing her arms. She was like lightning, blinding and wonderful and gone in an instant, leaving only shock and pain behind.
"Are you going to turn around? Or, I don't know, say something?" Addie asked lightly.
Mark whirled to face her so rapidly that they both nearly lost their balance and crushed his lips against hers. He could be like lightning, too.
Her hands slid up the length of his torso and Mark moaned in satisfaction as he anticipated that she would lock her arms around his neck. Instead, her hands flattened against his chest and pushed him away, gently at first, and then more insistently when he ignored them. "Wait," she mumbled into his mouth.
"What?" Mark snapped in frustration, pulling away. "What do you want from me Addison, if not that? What? What did you ever want?"
"I'm free now. We are free. We can take our time, and I have a hotel room that we can take our time in," Addison reminded him. "With a bed. A bed that's a lot more comfortable than the ones in the on-call rooms here." She looked up at him, a small smile on her lips and mischievous twinkles in her eyes. "Come on."
This time, Mark knew better than to expect more than a one-night stand, no matter how honest she was with Derek or what she said about "time" and "we." He was just a drug, her painkiller, and this was just a response to her earlier confrontation with Derek. Mark brought her mouth back to his despite that and kissed her fiercely, unable to let her walk out of his life without taking every chance he had to keep her at his side. He would show her that she had been in love with him, that she still could be. After all, maybe lightning could strike the same place twice.
A/N: I'm updating sooner than usual, and with a fairly long chapter, so yay! I have no more chapters pre-written, though, so the next update might not be for a while. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. It took me a while to get the end of this chapter right, and I'm still not sure if it's in character, so I hope you all think it turned out alright. Thank you for the kind reviews, please keep 'em coming! Anyway, thanks for reading.
