Second Person, Twenty-Eight
You don't look at Meredith Grey's test results when the technician finally hands them to you. You want to wait to know when Meredith knows with you at the exact same time. You want to be together with her for this, even if whatever this paper says means that it's last time you two will ever talk.
You want to buy her chocolate first, the honey and nut kind she likes from the gift shop that you get from time-to-time when she's not well enough to go on a road trip.
You figure the motion sickness just makes her nausea worse, and sometimes, as you mentioned before, she can hardly stomach the chocolate. But it's the thought that counts, and the tradition, really. So you always get chocolate, both of you do, because that's you're thing; it's how you spend time together.
You want to make this special, so you want to go get a bow or something to put on the Toblerone.
But you don't sneak by her room without her spying you first, so you end up just going in without any chocolate for her, at all. You hope this isn't a sign that this is all soon going to be over, in the worst of ways, and that the pattern will cease to exist...
"Addison! Doctor Montgomery-Shepherd!" Meredith called out from her hospital bed.
Addison you close your eyes and you take a deep breath before entering the room with her results.
"You bellowed Doctor Grey.." you say, pretending to be busy, but you know she knows you much better than that.
"Hi," Meredith says. It's all she says and it's really heartbreakingly adorable.
"You certainly are, aren't you.." you respond, gesturing to the nurse for Meredith's chart which you flip through the page until you paste in the lab report to the back cover.
"But you're not pregnant," you conclude from the notes and you realize this as you're saying it out loud to Meredith.
"No." Meredith pauses as she says this in relief, before asking you what she really called you in the room for, after all.
"Are you okay?" Meredith Grey asks you, and you're stunned that she wants to console you as her pain is through the roof and her life is in crisis.
She must have read a look in your face again, and you're not sure you like that she can see through you like glass, but at the same time you would never trade it for anything.
"Fine," you pause a minute, before asking her a slightly different question: "How are you?"
"I'm trying to choose between two people," Meredith sighs before you cut her off immediately.
You don't want to hear about her cheating on Derek.
You don't want to hear her talk about being in love with someone else who isn't you.
You don't want to talk to her about her love problems with your own damn ex-husband.
You don't want to hear her talk about boys or girls or people she wants to date.
You don't want to hear her talk about people 'throwing their hat in the ring' for her, not while you can't and won't throw yours in her ring, and not while she's still wearing your physical ring as a reminder she loves you, too, as much as she loves him, maybe, even but just as a friend.
"Well, okay, good luck with that," you deadpan as you head to walk out the door.
Meredith's voice stops you with a question as you reach the damn doorjamb.
"How did you know Derek was the one?" She asks you this casually, and you realize she's never asked you about this before.
You spin back around on your high heels and you almost take a tumble by how fast your physical and mental world is all spinning.
"Excuse me?" You ask, and it comes out more menacing than you would normally talk to any patient, much less one you're in love with, and who is one of your very best friends...
"I know you hate me and all," Meredith begins and your eyebrows arch because you wonder why the hell on earth she could think you could hate her.
Even if you hate her sometimes, secretly, because you know that she doesn't love you 'like that' right back.
"And you don't owe me anything… nothing.. no thing.. what was I saying?" Meredith keeps rambling on, not noticing the inner monologue that's running all through your head.
You roll your eyes. You're not mad at her in her drugged-up state, you're just mad that you have to say his name for her, over again.
"Derek," you prompt, and this seems to help Meredith remember.
Idly, your mind flashes to how her mother is sick, and you feel a pang in your heart for her, as you imagine her sitting in front of her shell of a mother.
You picture her introducing herself to her own mom, as she calls her a nurse or a doctor or someone else from her past.
You want to be there for her through that, even more than you already are, but you have no idea how that could ever pan out...
"Oh right" Meredith says, pausing until you look back into her eyes. "I would know if he was the one right? I mean you knew, right?"
Meredith is looking at you and you know she's really high as a kite! Because you know she knows your divorce was because you didn't want a man in the first place.
But she's looking at you intently, and her question still has not changed. And then you realize she's still asking, because you did pick him for some reason, even just as your best friend.
So you start to try to remember why you picked Derek Christopher Shepherd as your best friend you trusted enough to marry. And you begin to answer, hoping the drugs will make her forget it all, anyway.
"I didn't know.." you fumble for every word "Derek's the kind of guy... I just knew he wouldn't hurt me. Not on purpose anyway. Not the way I hurt him."
You realize you're answering honestly and you've never told anyone this before, not Derek, not Mark, not Callie. You never knew until you said it that it was true.
Meredith keeps talking, and you just watch her speak, stuttering less than you even though you're stone-cold sober and she's stoned out of her mind.
"He hurt me, you know when he chose you... Even though you didn't take him back... Because, you know..." Meredith trails off again.
She does that a lot when she's high. You find it sweet, actually. Not that you'd ever want to get high with Meredith. You don't like getting high, personally. But that's way far beyond the point...
Meredith looks down at her hands, you notice she's looking at her/your ring and holding it, willing you to finally start speaking again. You do.
You start saying thins to Meredith. You're saying a lot of things. You're doing a lot of things. You're making the most of this moment- because you know it might be the last you'll ever share with her, this way.
"I should have let him go," you start to announce to Meredith as if this weren't obvious in the first place.
"I should have stepped aside, been a better person…" You say this and you see she wants to say something to you but you keep going before she gets a word in edgewise.
You figure she was going to cut in, you figure Meredith was going to defend you, to you. You figure Meredith wanted to tell you you're a 'good enough' person, that you're good enough, and that 'good enough' is already enough for her, as your friend it's enough for her, for you to be just 'good enough', even if you never think you're 'good enough' for yourself, or that you'll ever be 'good enough' for her or for anyone else.
"I should have done a lot of things," you say, and it's the closest thing you've ever said about regretting not picking her out loud like you've been tempted to, but would never do to hurt her chances with Derek.
"Me too." Meredith agrees "A lot of things."
You have no idea what the fuck she is thinking.
But you imagine she's not implying what you just implied in your words.
You don't let yourself think that, even as she twirls her/your ring, the friendship ring, your little connection, over and over in your hand and you know it hasn't left her left hand since you gave it to her, that day, and slid it onto her delicate finger.
"I don't hate you," you conclude, because it's the closest thing you're gonna say to 'I love you' while she's in a medically inebriated morphine stupor.
"How come we've never talked like this before?" Meredith asks, and you know she's asking about 'why we never talked about our mutual Derek, or why you loved him, or why I loved him, or why we never talk about relationships, even though we are really close friends...'
You know she's asking you because she sort-of wants to. It feels like the last thing you two have never talked about with each other.
You've shared every other qualm under the sun except about boys and girls and people, in general, you 'like-like, like that'.
You realize she wants to know because she wants to share every possible inch of her friendship with you.
And you want to give her this, too. But you know you can't with her, not again. You can't slip up with her, like this, again.
Because you know if she asks you, with her big baby blue eyes, that you'll confess your love for her, to her, the 'more than a friend' love you've been holding close to your chest for so long.
And you don't want her to know that even if there's the faintest possibility she might like-like you back (she is bisexual, and she did come out to you, and she did offer to kiss you and all...)
But you don't want her to know while she is still dating Derek. Because you're not going to say 'pick me, choose me, love me,' to her.
You're not going to force a choice she might not want to make.
You're not going to throw your hat in her metaphorical ring.
You're not going to take the shot she might never talk to you again if you speak. Even if you know you miss all the shots you don't take. You're not going to take this shot, because if you miss and she doesn't want you 'like that' or she wants you 'like that' without having to leave Derek or she wants you 'like that' maybe and she strings you along...
You're not going to wait around, pitted against your ex-husband, an inverse of your love triangle, at the bar drinking yourself under the table as you wait for her to never show up for you at all.
"The only reason we're talking like this now, is because, I know you won't remember any of it when the drugs wear off." You almost shout this at her, even if your voice is hardly above a whisper.
You say this and she doesn't talk for a while. And you don't talk for a while. And then Meredith Grey reaches her arm out for you.
She says she knows she's high but she's still in pain even with all the morphine.
She says she knows she can hardly talk straight but she wants to keep talking to you.
She says she knows she can hardly think straight but she wants you to come closer to cuddle with you.
You tell her it's really not a good idea, at all, given what a state that she's in.
Meredith whines for you to come to hold her hand, or crawl onto her hospital bed, or for you to spoon her and lay beside her, tucking her into your arms.
She knows you've snuggled close before, it's not like there's anything wrong with friends lying next to each other, and just on a bed.
She knows you're gay and she's kinda some kind of gay and yet you still promised each other you wouldn't kiss while she's still with Derek.
But you know it's a slippery slope to hold her like this. You can't let her have you like this. While your heart is beating out of your chest.
You can't let her use you as a blanket when she's got a perfectly fine boyfriend to be keeping her warm.
You can't let her bury her face into your arm when she has your ex-husband she's picked, chosen and loved, for her to be by her side.
So even though it kills you to end this moment, that could be the last of your moments, that you get to share with her like this...
You turn her down for the snuggles, as you turned her down for the kissing like you never admitted your feelings aloud.
You say you wish it didn't have to be this way, that you wish you could give her more, and Meredith says she believes you.
And then you say you'll send Derek in for her, and you think you hallucinate the wince that forms on her face when you say her boyfriend's name to her.
"He has to know, you know. He has to know you're not pregnant from him and he needs to know the truth from you, you know," you offer and she nods because it's the truth.
You say you'll see her after her appendectomy, you know it was just a random occurrence, after all, no fault of his or yours or anyone else's.
You tell her you'll still bring her chocolate, then, if she still wants it from you, and she nods, at this moment, to say she still wants you as her friend.
You reassure her you wanted to bring her chocolate this time, with a pretty red bow. And she laughs and just says she can't eat it anyway now, and you laugh too because you realize she is right.
You laugh together, just like the first time you laughed together, only this time no one is stubbing their toe.
Derek is not there. Mark is not there. No one else is there with you both.
Just Meredith Grey and Addison Montgomery, laughing together, at an inside joke.
And you decide you'll hold onto this moment, in case she leaves you as a friend after this. You'll remember, and you'll make it be enough for you, after all, and forever.
You wonder who the hell her second potential suitor could be. She doesn't ask you not to tell Derek about him/her, but she knows that you won't and you would never tell anyone about something like this, from her, anyway.
You leave her be, telling her to page you if she needs you as an actual Doctor, but that George is doing her appendectomy because you're a baby doctor.
She says she's glad she doesn't need you for your specialty in neonatal/fetal as your surgical specialty.
You nod and you say to Meredith that you understand.
But then she says to you "I wish it was your hands in and on my body, you know because I think your hands on me and inside of me would be fantastic... Much better than 007... Even though I know because you're there and Bailey is there and Richard is there and all my friends might be there that I won't die on the table... I wish it was gonna be you..."
Your eyes fly open and wide and darken despite yourself as you hear her say to you, even probably by accident, that she thinks 'your hands on me and inside of me would be fantastic'.
You try very hard not to take this as some sort of double-entendre, or euphemism, or sexual innuendo.
You try very hard not to combust on the spot from the images that flashed through your mind that you might go to Hell for, for thinking of, of your current patient.
You try very hard not to show that you're reddening, and blushing, and flushing out of control.
Instead, you don't answer Grey about that. You tell her you don't want to talk about that while she is still hopped up on morphine, and if she wants to talk to you more she can do it once she recovers from surgery and she sobers up.
Meredith starts to whine and protest, but you don't fall for her pout.
You leave and say "goodbye for now" and "see you soon" and "good luck, Meredith, stay strong," with your back turned to her as you really do exit the room.
You don't turn to look back at her, because you know she will read your mind.
You don't think about how you have to send Derek in now, and how she could tell him all the things she said to you about wanting surgeon hands, on and inside of her body.
And that he'd have every right to say dirty, lusty, flirty things back to her, as a boyfriend and as her sexual and romantic partner.
You almost trip on Derek as you bump into him on the way.
"Were you just talking to Meredith?" he says as more as a question than a statement, half-surprised but more 'not' that you were. You are her doctor, after all, you can always remind him.
"Yeah," you say more wistfully than you might have liked to, as you look at the floor.
"What?" He asks you, as you compose yourself and look up to meet him in the eye for the first time in this conversation, with him.
You shake your head as you swallow hard, and you finally form words...
"Don't, ah-" you start and you realize you're still stuttering. "Don't hurt her. Again."
You look down at the floor as his so-called-McDreamy-eyes swirl with shapeless emotions as you can tell he's trying to figure you out.
You don't let him diagnose you though, you don't let him know your guilty and shame, or your friendship and love.
You don't let him find out that you're gay, that you've been gay all along, and that you're in love with his girlfriend.
You walk away from Derek, and he walks in, to talk to Meredith. He walks in, you walk out. Everything is the same for all of you, as always.
You don't talk to Callie or Mark or anyone else for that matter. You sort of bump into Cristina on the way, and she asks if you are alright and you say "Meredith is okay".
And she doesn't correct that you're answer does not match her question but it seemed to be what she needed to hear from you, anyway.
So you push on past her, just like you pushed on past Derek and you push past anyone else who stands in your way.
You lock yourself in your office, rearranging the vegetable soup and Gatorade and IV fluids in case Meredith has a flare-up after her operation.
You sit down in your chair and hang your coat on the coatrack. And you put your head on your desk as you write in your diary.
You write in a pink pen this time. It's salmon-colored, the pen ink is, just like your old scrubs.
Meredith got it for you because she said you remind her of that color.
You don't know where she got it, but you know it's not from the gift shop or from the RiteAid because you looked at their pen racks and they have nothing to match it.
You keep this pen tucked in your diary, holding it and caressing it as if you were holding on to Meredith, herself.
You allow yourself to handle your keepsake as you open up the pages and fill in the last one with this entry.
You wonder if you could survive, on the very, very slim chance that Meredith Grey does not make it off of the O.R table.
You stop thinking about this at all, because you know you could live on if you had to, but that you would never be the same if that happened.
-Addison Montgomery
In her personal diary. As she waits to be paged to take Meredith Grey to the operating theater for her appendectomy, with Miranda Bailey as primary and George O'Malley as her first assist. You made the nurses page you and you squeezed in as a 'teacher'. You wonder why Miranda didn't look at you funny when she found out you wanted to be there. You guess she knows something is up with all the chocolate outings you snuck off with her, too. Meredith is her intern, and she is Bailey and she knows everything about everyone all the time, of course, she always does. You go super pale as you wonder if she already knows that you are in love with her...
***** END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Author's Note:
Transcript for the first part of the morphine scene was taken from "I'll Feel Better When The Headaches Go Away" by StepIsInsanity on Ao3.
The rest was written from watching it over and over. God, such a good MerAdd scene. You really think Addie is in love with Mer from it, in canon...
Thanks for reading, friends. Who do you think Mer's super special secret surprising second lover might be? Any guesses? Do we think it's the vet...?
Leave me a note I'll laugh at each of your guesses! This one was storyboarded yesterday and I was so excited to write it, hope you like how it all turned out.
Ps. If you didn't notice the last entry was a direct parody of the opener of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" the good cartoon version, well, it is. (Thanks, AddisonAddek. You're good people.)
Pps. THANK YOU FOR THE LOVELY REVIEWS I AM LITERALLY READING THEM AS I AM POSTING THIS NOW!
Ppps. Thanks for those who follow this one in particular. Who could imagine a phone-fic could be so much more? Wow!
bobbiejelly
And of course, onto the dedications:
Ao3:
LordOfLezzies you are the MVP for commenting on EVERY CHAPTER! Thanks to Arahneia for the lovely words and Also, of course, thanks to AddisonAddek and LordOfLezzies, all on Ao3
AddisonAddek for wanting more and commenting (a heck-ton) today, plus LordOfLezzies (also, because you're super) and Hotgitay who commented on Chapter 1.
Arahneia, AddisonAddek, Dragoncatcher123, LordofLezzies, and Hotgitay as well as 1 guest left kudos on this work! 1 subscription, 156 hits so far. 100 comments!
Fanfiction:
smountain for the lovely review. 654 views.
Wattpad:
Comments and suggestions from Eleven_256, and naylorholby always make my day.
Thanks for the most WONDERFUL shout-out comment from JordynMarie05.
myfairlilymunster for the comments on Chapter 1.
danielaperezsurga, JordynMarie05, Unicornbaby78, myfairlilymunster, outlawqueenpercabeth, naylorholby, AddisonAddek, and probably some others who don't show up on my phone, voted on this, thanks. 367 reads, 21 comments, and 132 stars.
Also THANKS to everyone else who reads this someday, and to a friend in 'real-life' who beta'ed this for me. Much love.
Ps. Two new MerAdd fics are up:
New Honeymoon In Hawaii Pillow Talk BuzzkillFeel free to check them out, hopefully after you leave a note, and have a great day!
bobbiejelly