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Radio
- Alkaline Trio
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He'll never forget it, what just happened. He'll never live down the sounds of Addison's voice drying up and shriveling in her throat or the sights of Mark scurrying for his clothes. Every detail is carved into his memory. How much the bedroom door was left cracked open, the way the house smelled like candles hand just been extinguished by their own drowning, what her hands looked like across the streaked glass of his front door. The rain splattering across his coated back as he trekked dangerously through the park in the early morning hour, the wicked cackling of tired birds searching for crumbs, her terrified face as he made a move for the door handle.
When the sun rises he's played out the scene about a hundred times, made the same loop about fifty, and gone back to the brownstone approximately once to find that Mark was already there checking on her. Safe in his decision to run, he hails a cab uptown to the hospital and firmly resigns without citing any reasoning. Then another cab back to the place he once called home in order to make good on the promise of picking up some stuff.
It's the second time he's been back in ten hours, after he vowed to himself he wouldn't return, even if the world was ending. His life is dead. Shattered. Lying motionless, witness to the foot traffic this morning. He turns it on again, the unfortunate circumstance that led him here, as he bounces along in the sticky backseat. The feeling was there all day, the nudge of being wrong-footed. He was made a fool and yet...he needs to know. He wants to know if she's a liar, or if it was the first time. He wants to understand how they could even consider the possibility, what it takes to betray the most important person in your life.
Right now it all seems too outrageous to even believe. He would have put zero dollars down on this bet if someone would've approached him a year ago, hell, yesterday even. Maybe he'll ask her. Maybe that will make this more real.
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"Derek-"
"Addison please," he holds his hands up in defeat and swallows the vomit beginning to form. He was hoping that sensation would be leaving sooner rather than later.
"Where are you going?"
He shoves another shirt into the tiny suitcase and decides he doesn't care about anything else, he'll just buy new crap. It really doesn't matter. Nothing matters. "I don't know."
"How long are you-"
"I don't know Addison," he growls and pushes the ancient zipper forward, almost catching and tearing his skin.
"Derek-"
'I can't do this." If he stays he's going to cry and that won't be happening in front of her. No, that's being saved for another time, another place. Where the alcohol is plentiful and no one knows his name or how damn much it hurts.
And maybe no one will ever get it, maybe they'll all blame him for not seeing it, but he loves his wife. He loves her so much he has to forget it entirely because if he doesn't he'll never get past it. And this, he needs to get over, immediately. One cannot live in such a constant state of pain. He already misses that blessed numbness that inhibited his body earlier.
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On his way out of New York he finds a sacred old rock station and tries to scream along with the almost unrecognizable lyrics. The beats suit him. Erratic and unforgivably loud. By the time he hits Pennsylvania he's turning around.
Seven hours later he's staring out at the darkened windows that used to greet him every night.
He could go back in. He has the key. She'd do whatever he wanted. She'd be self-sacrificing until the end of time. But that's not his Addison, not a good look for her. And he doesn't want her like that. He wants old, fun, nerdy, ambitious Addison. He wants to be drug out to a tree farm in Connecticut for their Christmas tradition. He wants to be woken up at four a.m. with a cup of strong coffee and the promise of an amazing shower, wants to hold her when it's been a bad year and every death reminds her of whatever they have mucked about into.
He wants to look at her and not see anything but their wedding day and her nervous fingers tangling with his as they headed out onto the floor for their first dance. Desires to smell her and not have the hint of anything but shampoo and the sterile hallways of their careers, to touch her and not wonder if she liked it better with someone else's hands, to hear her and not wonder if she's holding anything back because she wants to be easier to deal with, to speak to her and not question everything.
He stays there, sitting on the pre-warmed concrete steps, waiting for the sun to break early in the sky. Then he rises, balls his hands into fists and heads down a few blocks to start the journey over.
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The car makes it to Chicago with the melancholy hits of classic rock. Weaving stories of heartbreak and sadness, his fingers drumming along steadily on the steering wheel. He makes deals with himself, to keep progressing. Ten more miles and a break for coffee. Twenty miles and maybe a nice bar to start drinking in. Fifty more miles and you can sleep Derek. Just keep going.
He's back on his doorstep two days later. It's better when it's dark outside. The neon light from across the street still makes him easily identifiable and he's not sure what he'd do if anyone saw him but he sits anyway, unafraid of the consequences, unable to leave.
Derek misses their old routines, their date nights, the way she squirms when he threatens to tickle her, the cute little sounds she makes when she's trying to sleep and he's tossing from side to side, her serious face when he gets a little too blasé about the conversation at hand.
He's beginning to think he could do this. They could try counseling or something, couldn't they? It may just work. Surely not everything they've shared is gone. The stupid sex with his whore of a best friend doesn't diminish what they have, the love they've felt, the connection and spark. Christmases, birthdays, Thanksgivings. Griefs, joys, losses, gains. Personal and professional. That's all still there. He remembers them, knows exactly what they all feel like now, what they felt like then.
This...thing, it is, negotiable.
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"Have you...heard from him?" Mark asks, an arm daringly wrapped around her wavering waist, keeping her upright.
"I ask you...stop asking that," she slurs and teeters from side to side.
"He'll call, right? He'd call if it was important," Mark reasons, lost in his own world.
"He's gone M-ark," Addison says bluntly, getting a heel tangled in the sidewalk crack. "I miss him," she points out to no one in particular.
Derek hears them long before he sees them, brain over-thinking, heart hopefully overreacting. They wouldn't be together.
"Me too," Mark tells her, stopping to brush hair out of her eyes.
He knows it then. The sadness crushes over him like a cement truck. Crashes, anguished and fearful. Mark loves her. And maybe they have a thing, a thing that he can never compete with. So he dips to the side and crouches next to the stairs straining to hear over the light hum of car engines. Half wanting to be discovered, half terrified of loosing the right to spy.
There's a few more wobbly sentences, him leading her toward their home, remarking over how he needs to remember to get his bike out of the garage tomorrow morning, and then she kisses him. From Derek's vantage point he can't tell if it's drunk and sloppy or premeditated and lustful.
It doesn't matter.
When they finally get the door shut he bolts, arms pumping, legs striding. He'll never come back, he'll never say aloud anything he doesn't want to admit.
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It takes three whole weeks to get to Seattle. He turns around seven more times, each time more confused than before, each time never making it back into the city.
He drinks copiously, screws whatever woman will have him, and sleeps on the rackety old backseat in parking lots. When Sioux Falls passes by he refuses to stop for anything but gas and sleep. He drinks warm water from melting bottles, tinged with the taste of hot plastic. Eats sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out onto the highway, enjoying the way the asphalt destroys its victims. He neglects to take a shower for days on end, his stubble fleshing out, clothes mildewed by humidity and an outright refusal to use air conditioning. The wind chaps his face and lips, the sun burns his arm and hand as they hang out the window.
The second he finds Seattle, raining and clouded with doom, he knows it's for him. He drives around the crowded streets awhile before finding a hotel and fixing what nature has done to him. When he emerges from the steam, clean and fresh, he makes a plan. He'll let it go.
This is his do-over. A new beginning. A bleak spot of hope in the despair.
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"Where's Addison?" Richard asks, rolling a pen from finger to finger, eying his former intern suspiciously.
"New York," Derek grunts and pushes the stack of papers over, not caring whether or not he's taking a pay cut.
"I see."
"See you tomorrow Richard," Derek ventures, already leaning halfway out the door, ready to escape to the bar across the street.
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He has that feeling again, like things are suddenly going too well, like the Meredith thing is about to blow up. Plus his cellphone has been ringing all day. He knows who it is and no, he didn't change his number. He didn't change his voicemail, email, or mailing address either. He's still paying bills automatically for another residence and sharing too many accounts with another name to be considered sane.
He's still holding on, but he's selectively forgotten.
He fixes Meredith's collar ignoring the gnawing tug of impending disaster and then he sees her. A quick flash of red and it's all coming tumbling down. In all fairness the blonde never stood a chance and what's worse is they both know it. Unwilling partners in the crime of the century.
A great heist – of his heart and her personal limitations.
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"Addison, what are you doing here?"
He went back eleven times. It's her turn to do the chase scene.
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