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At first, it's just revenge. Addison calls Mark and tells him about how Derek ripped her heart out by screwing Meredith
Grey at the prom, and she does it knowing that Mark still loves her--the evidence is sitting in her e-mail in the folder marked
"MS" that is filled with unread messages she couldn't bear to read because she knew they'd make her feel loved and
wanted; the polar opposite of how her husband makes her feel.
Addison also knows that when she hangs up the phone, her former lover will get on the first plane to Seattle because they
both know her marriage is done now... and he'll come to try to win her back, but that's not what's important to her after
that first call. What matters is knowing that seeing Mark will make Derek want to put his fist through a wall... and right
now, she wants her husband to feel just as crappy as she does.
The fact that she's using Mark to get at Derek makes her sick to her stomach and makes her feel like a complete and total
bitch... but she doesn't call back to try and stop him from coming.
Later, it's about taking the pain away. Every time she looks in the mirror, she sees failure and incompletion, she sees
something staring back at her that wasn't enough to hold on to her husband and she hates herself. So Addison gives in to
the lightheaded sensation that washes over her every time Mark comes up behind her in the halls at SGH and presses a soft
kiss against the back of her neck. He's found a reason to find her and kiss her every day since he convinced Richard to take
him on staff at Seattle Grace, and she doesn't doubt that he'll invent new excuses every day in the future to keep doing it.
And even though it doesn't push all the things she loathes in herself away, it helps ease the burden of them a little. So
she leans back when he kisses her, and she smiles when his arm wraps around her waist and he whispers his plans for the night
into her ear.
In their bed... or wherever they happen to make it to on a particular night... Addison forgets. Being unwanted and incomplete
and second best disappears as her body moves beneath Mark, over him, as he holds her trembling form close, and especially
when the water in the shower hides the tears she cries because it feels so good to just feel desired again, to know she's
being seen.
He tells her every night that he loves her, that it's okay for her not to say it back. Addison marvels at Mark's willingness
to just take what she has to give. She hopes she doesn't make him live to regret it.
It's not for months... not until after Mark and Derek have gotten the knack of passing each other in the halls without
a glare, not until Addison has learned to ride in elevators with Derek and Meredith without forgetting to breathe, not until
the whispers about all the musical partners and broken vows stop... that Addison notices it's become about something else.
It happens on their morning walk to work. They stop for coffee at their favorite local shop and stroll toward Seattle
Grace. The conversation is about the weekend and whether they should try to fly down to San Francisco for shopping and the
ballet or just stay home and hide in their apartment with takeout and no clothes. She laughs at the idea of Mark running
to and from the bed naked, returning with one food delivery after the other. She laughs all the time now, and he smiles when
she does, and this time is no different. Addison opts for home and no clothes, and Mark kisses her, hands her his cup of
coffee and runs across the street, dodging cars as he goes.
She calls out to ask him what he's doing, but her voice is lost in the traffic noise around them. Then Addison sees him
stop at the flower stand across the street, and she can't help but laugh when he turns around with a dozen white roses in
his hand and a single red rose held between his teeth. He glances both ways and darts back into the road to race back to
her, his right arm aloft with the flowers as if he's a knight holding up his sword.
She laughs again, but then her giggles die out because Addison hears the horn and the screeching tires before she really
understands what's happening. And her heart stops--literally stops--as she watches Mark jump towards the curb of the sidewalk
she's standing on in an effort to save himself.
The stems of the roses break at odd angles from his impact on the ground, and Mark's favorite jeans suffer what is probably
irreparable damage. But he gets up to his feet as the onlookers around them rush up to see if he's okay, and Addison starts
to breathe again, and she moves toward him and wraps her arms around his neck tightly. He squeezes her, his hands pressing
into her lower back, and she feels the desperation that's making her gasp mirrored in the way he holds on to her.
And now she knows from the way her heart stopped and from the way her mind narrowed to thoughts only of him and the way
her soul screamed in protest at the notion she might lose him--she knows that whatever it was before... in New York, when
she lured him to Seattle, yesterday... whatever it was before today, it's all become about love.
She tells him that she loves him right there on the corner with a gaggle of strangers around them. Addison cries when
he pulls her closer and whispers to her that he knows.
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