The case revolves around a twelve year old girl.
Like a sickly television drama, something tells the whole hospital, she's going to die. The gruesome, looming inclinations and facts do nothing to ease the discomfort and dread they're all consumed with, as the moments tick by, one at a time.
Bailey has to make Addison go home, with a signed order straight from the chief. She's half asleep on her feet, two hours later, when Meredith gets a similar slip of paper, and catches up to her in the store.
"Half the hospital has bought her a bear." Meredith sighs, as they survey a shelf filled with little, stuffed toys. She feels the warmth of Addison's palm in her own, fingers wound tight. Addison smiles, and holds one up, makes her decision right there on the spot.
"I went with a horse." Meredith lets a sad smile cross her lips, a mirror of her girlfriend's own facial expression.
"There's no little girl on the planet that doesn't want her own horse." Meredith agrees with a serious nod, breaking into a smile as she follows Addison out.
Twenty- five minutes later, Meredith steps out of the shower, hair piled up high on her head. The steam did little to ease her feelings of dread, and she knows, instantly, Addison feels the same. The ruffled lay of the comforter upon their bed betrays the cross of her legs, how her attention is lost, far from the page in her hands. Meredith drops her marker into her book, closing it with a soft thud as she gently takes it away, guiding herself to crawl beneath the covers they share.
"I was…" Addison let's her words die on her lips as a hand palms at the soft expanse of her stomach, her waist and her hips each in a slow turn. She doesn't make an excuse, as Meredith already knows, and a soft sigh passes through her lips as mouth presses open to the side of her neck. She hadn't been reading, any more than she had been thinking, traveling down a logical train of thought.
Yet the illogical one had been so much more comforting, so much softer and better, that everything could and would be okay; that she could play at being a God, could fix every problem, and everyone would live to see another day.
"Mer-" Addison doesn't remember what she did with these feelings before she started dating Meredith Grey. She cannot simply drown in an oppressive line of depressive thought when lips find the line of her collar, and deft fingers peel away at straps, ridding her of her bra. Patients die all the time, Addison tries to remind herself, letting her head roll forward so that her nose is buried within the tendrils of Meredith's hair. The sent of her own melon shampoo, to her, is like an almost sudden breath of fresh air.
"Hey." Addison squeaks, as though it's the first time she's spoken all day and all night, and Meredith's head jerks up so that their eyes will meet. Her crinkled smile is infected with the same relief that she herself feels; that this isn't about the sex they could have, but the mutual trust and the touch of skin upon skin. She runs the base of her palm over the base of her cheek, rubbing away at her tears, and Meredith meets her halfway once again with the swell of her lips. "Thank you." She breathed into the shared space taken over by the air that they share, and when she rubs the outsides of Meredith's arms the blonde lets them flare further out to the side, chin pressing into the bone of her chest as she laughs, because her Addie is finally back from wherever she'd gone.
The roles are reversed the next day, when Addison's hand finds the back of Meredith's neck and tangles into her hair. The blinds over the window aren't drawn all the way, and they're caught with Meredith's back bent a little bit the wrong way as they both lose themselves in the glide and the lock of lips meeting teeth, the little sound Addison makes when she pushes her tongue to the roof of Meredith's mouth.
It's not about the hurt or the pain or even the death, at the end of the day, but the comfort they've found, that manages to make even the hurt fade away.
Yet it's Cristina that turns her back to the gap in the blinds, pressing the glass pane of the window that peeks into the hall into the line of her back. She'll keep their secret for them, even if just for today, as she risks a glance back; and finds two surgeons talking, one with her hands braced on the desk, the other with hers laid gently on top, their voices hushed and kept quiet. But it's the smile that graces each of their lips, a mirrored expressions that's so soft and sweet it makes even Cristina re- decide; she'll wait just a couple more days, at the least.