January 17, 2010

She's hot. In more ways than one. It's not just the gritty sweat that creeps up in the silky black night, forming droplets that chase each other down her neck. It's not just that monsoon season is approaching and she can feel the humidity leeching her energy. No, it's just that it's been a little too long.

Okay, a lot too long.

She's wearing just a cotton candy pink ribbed tank top and a pair of white boyshort panties, and her hand creeps down to rest on the area of skin just below her bellybutton. It's tempting, but it won't be the kind of release she needs.

Voices sound outside the hut amongst the distant, building thunder, and she allows the diaphanous sheet to flutter to her knees as she swings her long, tanned legs out of bed, crimson locks damp with sweat as they frame her face. A figure approaches. Her heart beats in overtime, because this is impossible.

Not even the normal kind of impossible. The kind where she wonders where the hell Addison Forbes Montgomery is because she sure as hell can't remember being replaced by Cinderella.

"Derek."

His smile is brilliantly wicked against the shock of white sand, and all else melts away at the sight of him, even the unfeasibility of the situation, even the improbability, the hesitation, the doubt. It doesn't occur to her how thin the walls of her hut are, how damp and sweaty the cot they fall onto is, the fact that she barely trusts him and slightly resents him.

It all fades at the touch of his hungry lips, nipping, sucking, pecking hers until they are cherry red and swollen. The heat overwhelms her, rendering her not only incoherent but insensible as well. She can only blindly seek out his lips through a veil of passion and desperate need, but he evades her, moving his mouth to the taut cream skin of her neck. He's going to leave marks, she's sure, but she can't bring herself to care.

The soft, pale pink fabric of her tank top is lifted off her body by his impossibly gentle hands, and his lips replace the material, quieting her shivers and leaving trails of fire behind. He dips his tongue into her bellybutton as she struggles to pull his shirt from his shoulders, and she can't help the faint, surprised shriek that she emits. Her hands clutch at his bare shoulders as they both turn toward the entrance in slow motion, breathing labored, but not a sound is heard in the village.

He hooks his thumbs into the top of her panties, brushing the delicate skin there, and she writhes delightedly in his arms, trying to keep her eyes open long enough to get lost in an ocean of blue. She can't, though. This is far too wonderful to bear.

The white material has reached her knees, the cool night breeze teasing her bare skin, when from far away languid voices sound. She sits bolt upright and finds herself clothed again, breathing heavily, the sheet constricting her tangled limbs.

Derek isn't there.

Tears sting her eyes as she quickly stills her breathing, glancing at the other side of the hut before crossing to the door and letting the wind cool the beads of sweat decorating the nape of her neck. A little ways away, she spots Pete with his hand on the small of Violet's back, leading her away from civilization. She can still hear their voices.

And Addison wants to be angry at them for interrupting, but she can't, because what they have is real, viable and tangible. What she has is a few leftover memories, a fantasy, and a secret.

So she channels her anger into the letter she's writing to the man in question, because truth be told her wreck of a life is at least partially his fault.

How DARE you, Derek Christopher Shepherd? How dare you! Just hand out all our old possessions like freaking candy, why don't you? In fact, I wouldn't give a shit if you handed out the China or the silverware or even my antique reindeer from Switzerland. But sex toys? Seriously? Seriously!

Remind me to murder you when I get back. Maybe they even have a witch doctor here. They still have those, right? I have lots of money, Derek. Lots. I can probably pay for them to make a voodoo doll of you, you know.

Or I could just ask Callie to stab you with a scalpel for me. She'd probably do it.

I don't know what to do with the memories, or all the old sex toys either, I guess. We were happy, and I suppose we just have to remember those times and move on, because they're over and we're never getting them back. I don't want to say they mean nothing, but really, besides us, who really cares? I don't think Meredith wants to hear about how you broke your ankle hanging Christmas lights one year, or about the sugar cookies that were pretty much the only thing I knew how to bake. I guess we just have to leave it all behind.

You did divorce me, Derek. You made the choice to sleep with Meredith and get a divorce, not me. You have to let me go – not for your sake, but for mine. You have Meredith, but I don't have anyone. I need you to let me go so I can stop thinking of you every time some guy kisses me, because I don't want to die alone.

I'm not really sure about motherhood at this point. I just … I don't know. But take Meredith up to see the newborns. Maybe that will change her mind. I don't know why I'm giving you advice on how to convince your sort-of-wife to have a child other than the fact that you deserve to be a father, no matter what happened between us.

You shouldn't think about if things had been different. They never will be. You're right, we don't get a redo, and trust me, no matter how much you think you want one right now, you really don't. For the last two or three years of our marriage, we were messed up, Derek. I … before Mark … I was planning on leaving you. Just so you know. I don't want to hurt you, but … it wouldn't have been different.

Don't make fun of my cooking. It isn't that bad – people eat it, you know.

Christmas here was interesting. Hot, and very sandy, with homemade gifts made out of things in the nearby junkyard, but satisfying all the same. We taught the kids Christmas carols in English, and although I'm sure they had no idea what they meant, it was still fun. Take care of Callie for me, will you? She told me about the fight with Arizona. And tell Mark he's an idiot.

You don't always get to know everything, Derek. That's part of life. Sometimes you get lost – stop whining and do something about it. I'm not always going to be here to help you figure it out. Life is about falling down – living is about getting back up. Trust me. The last few times I barely managed to get myself off the ground.

Addison

P.S. It's not that I regret it. It's just that it should have never happened – it shouldn't have ever entered our minds.

The paper drifts slowly toward the floor, like a dying bird, right before his eyes, but he can't bring himself to stop its motion. He can't move at all, in fact.

Before Mark … I was planning on leaving you. I was planning on leaving you. I was planning …

Derek abruptly shuts his eyes, trying to block out his ex-wife's torturing words. Lately he has taken to imagining him and her and a brood of kids in the Brownstone, assuming he hadn't left, assuming he had forgiven her then and not several years too late.

But she was going to leave.

We're Addison-and-Derek and we don't quit!

The couch, over starlit hours, molds itself to his frozen form. Discordantly, his mind can't seem to keep still, mulling over lost memories almost faster than he can comprehend, trying to picture his ex-wife, scarlet hair cascading around her shoulders, as she wrote the letter. There was a bitter edge of anger he hadn't detected from her previously, not the 'you let a bunch of residents find our sex toys' anger, but deep buried anger, directed, he guessed, at his second thoughts.

Displaying his insecurities for her to see was almost disturbingly easy, but when he ripped bandages off her healed wounds too, well, apparently she didn't appreciate that. What did it mean? Did she wish things had gone differently too?

One thing was for sure, if she didn't care, surely she would find it simple to brush off all his hooded suggestions of other lives that didn't exist. She must think about it too, sometimes; the very idea causes pleasure to bloom in his heart. Even if he can't have her, he doesn't want to completely lose her.

Lost in his thoughts as he is, he doesn't register Meredith hovering, unsure, at the foot of the stairs, afraid to enter the living room that technically belongs to her. Still, the paper catches her eye, and he comes to his senses in time to find her sage eyes filled with anger and hurt as she scans Addison's letter.

"Derek, what the hell -"

"Give it to me. Give me the letter, Mer."

Against her will, it seems, she places it in his hands, and he tucks it away, but there's no erasing what she's read. "You knew I was writing to Addison," he accuses softly.

"Yeah, I knew you wrote one letter. One letter, Derek, one. I don't think one letter between exes is much cause for worry. But you wrote that in September, and now it's January."

"We're friends."

"Really? Cause I don't think you talk about us having kids with Mark or Richard, Derek. You don't tell them that sometimes you wonder what would have happened if you'd stayed with your ex-wife! How would you feel if I was talking to Finn about something like that?"

"Don't bring Finn into this!" Derek explodes.

"Why the fuck not?"

"Because you dated him for, what, a few weeks? I spent eleven years married to Addison, and a year and a half with her before that!"

"Well, you'd think after more than three years of being divorced you wouldn't feel the need to write to her all the time!"

"You talk to Cristina every freaking day, Meredith! Why is Addison any different?"

"I've never had sex with Cristina. I've never left you for Cristina. I was never married to Cristina!"

"Well, neither was I," Derek points out.

"You're unbelievable," Meredith shouts, her skinny form rigid with anger as she glares at him. "Figure out what you want, Derek, or you're going to end up alone and it's going to be your own damn fault."