Unhinged

(AddisonandDerekandMark)

Chapter 13

2006 : present (2)

fight sickness with sickness

"In your life, you meet people. Some you never think about again. Some, you wonder what happened to them. There are some that you wonder if they ever think about you. And then there are some you wish you never had to think about again. But you do."

— C. S. Lewis

"Come on, please."

Derek murmured these words to himself, again and again, as he tried to shake Addison awake. The bright rays of sunshine making their way over the horizon made his head throb with a blinding migraine, and his cheek sent sharp waves of pain through his body as he attempts to shove three fingers down her throat.

"Please, please, please, Addison."

He remembered her telling him about how she used to do that in high school and in college too, though less frequently, before she met Savvy, who had helped her through the nasty habit.

He felt as though his lungs barely had enough air to sustain his own faintly beating heart, still, he pushed his fingers further into the back of her throat, alternating between shoving and pressing his fingers down at the back of her tongue. He felt light-headed with the effort, the shock of finding Addison in the bathroom on the edge, in between life and death — it wasn't the first but with an empty bottle of pills was.

Come on, please.

Time passed, and Derek was just on the verge of a hysterical fit of panic, thinking it was too late. But then —

She choked out a vomit.

A muffled groan.

Steady streams of bitterly pungent fluid poured out of her swollen mouth, a mixture of little white pills, saliva and bile dripping down her chin. Addison's eyes, turned to look at him; sun reflecting in the light blue of her irises.

Derek knew, then and there, that he would never be able to do this again.

The traffic light screams bright green and all Derek remembers is his son's favourite flavour of ice cream. Mint chocolate chip. He remembers Jesse begging for it even in the dead of winter, and Addison soundly refusing him.

"No, Jesse. It's too cold outside."

Derek had heard it through the walls of their home. Her tut tut and sending him away and his large, elongated whine. Then, like a sudden halt of an orchestra, there was a cut-off of the groan as if at that very second the boy realised there was another option.

He had listened carefully from his study upstairs. Addison's methodical footsteps: slowish and soft in the kitchen, padded by her plush house slippers. They grew further away and closer were tinier footsteps, quick and bare against the lacquered floors and the staircase, the fourth one that always creaked even under just eighty pounds of weight.

He remembers turning in his chair from his desk just in time to see that red curls and pale face peer in around the jamb. The tiny fingertips that held steady there. From behind him, the mid-afternoon sun streamed in through the blinds, illuminating his son's face in stripes. Dust motes floating before him, like infinitesimal galaxies between them.

Jesse had looked at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, his face broke out in a grin. Derek could not help but smile back, and he counted himself lucky to have Jesse as his boy.

"Alright. C'mon. Go get your coat and mittens and put on your boots. Let's go take Gus for a walk."

And they did. Jesse had gotten dressed in lightening speed and was waiting for him with Gus' leash in hand as he goes to tell Addison that they were going to take the dog for a walk.

She wasn't stupid; she knew what they were up.

"You're spoiling him, Derek. He's never going to follow me now because he had you to let him have whatever he wants."

"He's a kid, Addie. He's five. Let him live a little. Didn't you used to do the same thing as a child?"

"That was different. The Captain was bribing me with ice cream because he was screwing his secretaries."

"Okay. But, pretty please."

"Fine. Just one scoop, though."

That was the last day off he had that he spent with his son.

When ice cream was smeared across Jesse's mouth and chin, when he was giggling at how they had fooled his mother, Derek leaned in as though he were telling him a secret, and told him that she won't be fooled any longer if the evidence were all over his mouth.

Jesse had only giggled then, and wiped his mouth with a tissue, legs swinging happily as they sit on the bench.

His phone begins vibrating aggressively and Derek's eyes are wet. He wipes them against his shoulder and looks up to see that the light has turned red again.

His fists bunched into the fabric of his jeans. He looked at his knees, tears obstructed slightly by the edges of his glasses. Then pattering, softly, on his knuckles. "I don't want anything else but justice for my son. For Jesse."

..

"I'd never get to see my son again!" Derek shouted, his mouth caving in. "It wasn't an accident! Don't tell me it was an accident!" He pushed the heel of one hand to the corner of his mouth, his cheek, to swipe away a tear and saliva.

..

"Does it ever stop? ... The pain?" He pressed his palm fully to his mouth and shuts his eyes, spilling hot tears across his face. Into his hand he said something which is badly slurred and muffled, "You're tearing my guts out, Addison."

The car is quiet again, save Derek's soft crying.

"These people that you sleep with — do you desire them?"

"That's usually how it works," Derek said, fighting down the urge to fidget in his seat.

"You want something from them — to get close to them, to be transported outside of yourself for a time. Escapism. You crave a distraction. But do you desire them sexually?"

Derek sighed. He's never actually thought about it — has tried pretty hard to avoid thinking about it, in fact. "I don't not want them. It's ... complicated."

"That's not a very satisfying answer."

Dr. Larson actually sounded surprised and Derek, in turn, finds some petty measure of delight in denying him.

"It wasn't a very satisfying question."

Thursday turns into Friday, and Derek pulls back into his driveway in the wee hours of dawn. The world is softly lit in tones of grey around him, and his breath comes in little puffs of fog where his window is rolled down. Everything is still and quiet, and he breathes in, savouring the air and letting it sting his nose. He's always liked being awake when the rest of the world isn't.

His head is throbbing with the promise of a hangover to come, and he has his sights set on a hot shower and a hotter cup of coffee, in that order. He takes another deep breath and steels himself before getting out of the car. The slam of his car door is loud in the silence, setting off an answering string of barks from the neighbours' dogs.

He frowns and is very much surprised to find Addison sitting on the couch by the fire. He checks the clock on the mantle — it's almost four in the morning. A prickle of something that might be shame and might be suspicion noses at the edges of his tired mind.

Addison seems just as shocked to see him, just as surprised to have her solitude disturbed. She looks like she'd been interrupted mid-conversation.

"Hey. Why're you still up?"

She stares at him, wary. She holds very still until he comes closer, eyeing him up like she's trying to figure him out. The corner of her mouth twitches upward, then. "I ... I couldn't sleep."

Derek is tired. The feel of someone else on his skin — someone else's fluids, the echo of someone else's pleasure — is starting to grow uncomfortable. He just wants a shower.

"You smell like ... jasmine."

She knows.

He's not in the mood for the clever wordplay that marks his relationship with Addison. He watches the play of firelight across each log, each individual ridge is thrown into sharp relief by the shadows. She watches him with flat black eyes, slow and unblinking. Her nose twitches, and it's almost an invitation. Derek goes and walks to the sofa, immediately missing the distance between them as the warmth rushes in, warming his skin with something akin to shame and guilt.

"I'm going to take a shower."

He closes the bathroom door to the sounds of Addison puttering around in the living room, clinking of glasses and the dull echoes of her voice vibrates through the whole house as she continues to talk to someone that isn't there.

Above the marbled twin sinks is a grand, silver-edged mirror that reflects to one standing in it all that is behind them and to either sides. Derek's hair is but wild dark curls and his eyes are tired. Yet he takes his time in front of it; languidly removes his shirt, unties the belt from his waist. From outside, he hears a car down the street, which is odd because it's well past midnight and suburbia Rye.

Standing bare upon the cold tile, he sighs. Places his hands in the mass of his hair, pushes it back, up, out of his eyes. He tugs at his cheeks to pull taut the skin beneath his eyes. Rubs at the stubble upon his chin.

I have to go take a shower so I can't tell if I'm crying or not.

The shower is squared and surrounded by frosted glass. He stays in until the water turns tepid, and all the while, he attempts not to cry. He thinks he has enough fortitude to avoid it; and knows that giving in to weak urges will only slow his pace when he does return to his tasks.

"You did this to yourself," he mumbles into his wet hands.

The words ring true and not without a degree of self-loathing. It is unequivocally his fault, yet can he say he is not in turn, in some way, blessed by this strange outcome? He had imagined something like this when he was but in his early twenties, drifting through days heavy with the oppressive and oft-sickening aromas of Arabica and Robusta, the ever-present hum of conversation, machines whirring and acoustic music sifting down from overhead speakers. He imagined a house much like this, wide and deep and too big but all he deserved, all he could ever want. Family. He imagined going to work, greeting neighbours a pleasant morning and coming home to his wife and children. Maybe even going over to a neighbours' house for dinner, or having them come over. But Addison wanted a brownstone in the city, in Upper East Side.

They settled for Upper West, overlooking Central Park. But now, they're here.

Derek turns the water off when he is drenched in cold. He shivers stepping onto a towel strewn to the floor. Sees himself through the dissipating steam on the mirror. Cheeks red, eyes, the same colour. The sodden line of hair below his navel.

He squints, and sees beyond himself. Into the mirror, into the window that is behind him at the left of the shower. And over the ravine of grass and trees, to the bathroom window of the neighbouring house in which stands a stiff shadow, unmoving and shaped unmistakably like a person.

If someone is really watching him right now, he won't even march over there in the morning, because it feels good to be seen again.

Dr. Larson was in his element here, in his domain, leg crossed parallel to the floor, a flash of pale, bony ankle visible where it rested on his impeccably clad knee. "Tell me, Derek, what do you get out of these encounters?"

Something angry and dark stirs in him at the thought of divulging pieces of himself to his therapist. He smiled, pinched and self-deprecating. "That part isn't terribly complicated. Orgasms, mostly? For me and for them."

"You desire closeness?"

"Not really? I mean, touching and being touched — that's nice, but it's not really what it's about."

"And what is it about?"

Derek feels like a new man by the time he steps out of the shower, wrapped in clean clothes and still toweling his hair dry as he steps into the kitchen. The smell of coffee hits him as soon as he crosses the threshold, rich and strong. And he's very much thankful for Addison. He might thank her later. Taking the cup in his hands, it's still steaming in his cup, and it tastes like heaven itself, its rich bitterness cut by just enough sugar. Derek smiles despite himself.

He is only a little surprised to find Addison waiting in bed by the time he gets upstairs. She's propped against their pillows, wearing the reading glasses he had bought her. She's engrossed in whatever she's reading, enough that Derek has the chance to study her face for a minute, tracking the play of light over her high cheekbones, the soft slope of her mouth.

She's not fooling him.

She looks up and smiles, closing the book and setting it on the nightstand. She carefully folds her reading glasses and sets them back in their case. He forces a smile and gets into bed with a sigh, letting the last bit of tension bleed out of him.

"Did you have a pleasant time with your friend?" she asks boldly.

He twists around to look at her, propping on a elbow. "Yes." he sighs, reaching out to tuck a lock of red hair behind her ear. "I did."

"Good."

Addison's brow furrows. She opens her mouth. Closes it again. Then, brings her hand back up to his shoulder and gives him a little push.

"Roll over. I'll rub your back."

Derek goes, hiding his face in a pillow that smells like their shared shampoo. He tries not to think of what Addison won't promise him. Tries not to hate her for it. Fails on both counts.

She tries to tug his shirt up but can't get it further than his arms without cooperation, which he isn't currently inclined to give. She is unbothered. She simply smooths the shirt back down and begins running her hands over him through the fabric, long strokes made of light touches that have him letting go of tension he didn't know he was holding.

He turns his head to the side so he can breathe, and Addison digs her thumb into something that makes a tingling numbness radiate through his entire back. He groans aloud, and she does it again and again. She works up the back of his neck, kneading and squeezing the muscles there and making him sink further into the mattress. She threads her fingers through his hair and pulls from the roots with steady pressure that stays on just the right side of pain.

"Releases endorphins," she murmurs, and he can only sigh in agreement.

She reaches the top of his head and works her way back down until his whole body is singing with the simple pleasure of it. It wipes away the unease that's been plaguing him, like houses swept away in a flood, and he wonders if that isn't Addison's answer after all.

"You can't promise not to hurt me, but you can make me feel good, is that it?"

She doesn't answer except to walk her fingers along the curve of his spine. She doesn't need to. He can see right through her — he's always been able to understand her, see her, even when he wishes he couldn't.

..

"It's about ..." Derek closed his eyes and took himself back to all those frenzied nights with a clawing need under his skin. The way he got so hot in his own skin, shackled by his bones, on nights when everything is pressing in too close. Jittery agitation for the cure. "It's about getting outside of my house. Outside of my life. About having somewhere to sleep for the night, anywhere that isn't my bed." He met Dr. Lasron's eyes, then. "Somewhere safe, where I can't get hurt."

"Your wife hurts you?"

He huffed a laugh like broken glass, small and jagged, destined to pierce the unsuspecting. "Not intentionally."

"Do you hurt your wife?"

He contemplates, frowning as he thinks of the right answer. Yes or no. "No. Not physically."

"What do you think you both get out in hurting each other?"

"I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"

"Avoidance of pain isn't the same as pleasure."

"Isn't it?"

..

He sighs and rolls back onto his back, catching Addison's wrist in the process. He tugs her toward him, and she goes. He pulls her until they're lying face to face, pressed close so they can feel each other from toes to hips. He suddenly feels very sober.

He brings her hand up to his face and turns it so he can study the veins that runs through it, the wrist decorated with thin white lines — the scars of fights won and lost. Long, articulate fingers that end in blunt, trimmed fingernails. He brings it to his mouth and presses the sharp point of a canine tooth lightly into the pad of one finger. Surgeon's hands, musician's hands. Killer's hands. Doctors are essentially killers, too. You save a life and you take a life. He presses a kiss to the pulse beating inside her wrist, fragile and human.

Addison watches him, rapt.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks again.

"Because you've had a very long day," she says.

It's not an answer. Not a real answer.

Derek sighs and threads their fingers together.

He is content in their life together. Mostly content.

A casual observer would think they aren't the type to compromise, but they are. They do.

Okay, maybe he is just somewhat content. Seventy-thirty percent.

Their entire life together is predicated on compromise, on the ebb and flow of giving and taking.

He turns a blind eye when he hears her conversing through their walls, or sees her set another place at the dinner table when there's clearly only two of them in the house. Over the dining table, he raises his brows and lifts a mocking toast to Addison, who smiles like the cat who ate the canary as she taps through the flaky crust with her fork. And she sighs when he comes home with yet another dog, but she says nothing, and a new dog bed shows up in the house a few days later.

He has always loved dogs and Jesse did, too. Gus loved Jesse and Jesse loved Gus. Gus was but a puppy when they first got him. They were as brothers. Gus still waits for Jesse at door after all these years, thinking Jesse would come back home from preschool.

The dogs aren't allowed on the bed — fine — and Derek doesn't want to listen in on Addison's 'conversations' with whomever she talks to.

It works. They compromise.

The one thing Addison had not been willing to compromise on is Derek's drinking habit. He'd picked it up in the years after they were forced apart due to fate and circumstances, a time when he still had God to trust in. Because that's how he thinks of it in his head — not when 'Addison was institutionalised' and not even when 'Jesse died' — just, before.

In those years, he drank too much. But he still wouldn't call himself an alcoholic, not so much as slowly sinking into it, to be honest.

One drink after dinner turned into three or four. Addison was mostly working to avoid him when she's home, and he was avoiding coming back home altogether.

He'd needed it, for a while. Loneliness, to be alone. The chance to get other people out of his head so he could sort through what was them and what was him. It worked, or it kind of did. He found a way to get everyone out of his head.

Everyone but Addison.

She was always there, no matter what. Constant as the seasons. Taking a leave from work when Addison was institutionalised, forcing his patients to vacate the premises — it only made more room for Addison and Jesse.

He was all alone for too long.

So, Derek started drinking.

He doesn't have a good excuse, but he doesn't need one. He drank because it made the part of him that was screaming all the wrongs in his life shut the fuck up, at least for a little while. It was a terrible habit and a crutch, but he had no one but his dogs that year, and his dogs didn't judge him.

"At least I'm not talking to a person that isn't here," he said to Gus, gesturing with a tumbler of whisky in his hand. He was a little shaky on his feet, and he caught himself with a hand on Gus's flank. The fur soft and plush beneath his fingers, and Derek sank his hand into it. He scratched behind the ears for good measure. "Good boy," he said. "You're a good boy."

Woof, Gus agreed.

He wasn't alone for long. She came back to him good as new and he thought they could finally start anew. Then, one day he heard her voice echoing through the walls and he peeked to see whom she was talking to but there was no one else but them and the dogs at home. Cannot see what you will not. He chose to turn the other cheek because he didn't see the harm in what she was doing. He didn't want to send her away again. She wasn't a danger to anyone or herself. She wasn't doing anything wrong. So, he let her stay. It wasn't a whirlwind of romance so much as clinging to an anchor in a very long and very fucked up storm that had left him tired.

He loves her and he needs her. And she thought he would stop drinking eventually. To be fair, he did too.

He had thought the easy tide of domesticity would pull him into its current and wash away all his sharp edges — and it did, but not completely. There were still parts of him that ached for their loss, and he drank to drown them night by night, diligent as any soldier.

Addison never said two words to him about it. About the drinking or any of the rest of it. He never said why. She never asked.

They shared most things, but not everything. It felt safer that way.

He fell asleep on the couch sometimes on the bad nights, tumbler in hand, staring at the door as though Jesse might walk through it at any moment. He didn't fall asleep so much as pass out on those nights. In the morning he'd wake covered in blankets, glasses sitting neatly on the table beside him. His stomach curdled with shame in the aftermath, sour breath and pale amber whisky in a glass on the coffee table accusing him of things he'd done.

He woke up to a pair of small, angry eyes once — one of Kathleen's children, Jack (Addison had offered to babysit the weekend), staring at him with a look of confusion that gradually resolved into concern before Addison hustled him into the bathroom to get ready for the day.

"Don't tell your mom!" he shouted after them.

Kathleen would kill him if she knew.

"Do we need to talk about this, Derek?" She asked once they were alone. Her, quiet and wounded. Her, giving and kind.

Him, the mangy stray with a broken heart who misses his son and his wife.

"No," he said.

And he doesn't stop drinking, but he does stop doing it in the living room.

He does start hiding it better. And he's still not an alcoholic.

Derek had been skeptical about having a beach day. But he did suggest for them to go out together for some fresh air, for a change of pace and scenery, and the beach was where she wanted to go.

Being out in public with Addison still makes him nervous because any little thing could set her mood off. Sometimes when they get back home, she'll be a whole different person than she was before they left.

And right now, she's lovely.

Love.

It's such a strange, common word for what they are to each other, inadequate and boring, but he looks at Addison, sees her quirk a puzzled smile in his direction, and he knows it to be true.

Love.

Huh. Go figure.

The beach isn't deserted yet. The beaches here never really are, even during winters, but they tend to clear out as the sun sinks below the horizon. Tonight, it's quiet and peaceful beyond the occasional peal of ringing laughter from the kids smoking pot further down the shore. The wind carries the pungent, sweet scent of burning marijuana along with little snatches of their conversation. They work at some place called 'The Sea Ridge', apparently, and their boss is a real asshole.

Also, all the young families have already gone home, loading sandy, sunburnt kids into cars waiting to carry them elsewhere — and thank goodness for that, nothing to remind them of what they're missing out on.

He tips his head back and inhales the salted air, slitting his eyes against the vibrant orange of the setting sun. He opens them again when he feels a light touch on his hand, Addison's fingers brushing his.

"What are you thinking of?" she asks.

Derek lets his head loll against her shoulder and speaks without bothering to open his eyes. This is new between them too.

Trust. Forgiveness. Kindness.

It's young and frail, but it grows a little every day. Sometimes it goes ten steps backwards and she'd push him away. They water it and feed it little chips of honesty, all the parts of them they can bear to spare.

Well, some days are better than others.

"No one but us here," he says. He grins, and it stretches the edges of his scar from where she'd thrown a vase at him in their last fight, healed and filled in with a shiny, pink layer of tissue — that's new too. It's still raw. Still tender.

He feels the ghost of violence and pain with every smile, and the poetry of it makes him smile wider, ripping the nerve endings and making them scream.

He sits up. Picks up his can of beer (It's illegal to drink on the beach, but who's going to stop them?) and frowns when he finds it empty of everything but sand. "Your eyes glow like this, you know."

"Is that so?"

Addison sits with her knees drawn up and her elbows resting on top of them. Her hair is tousled with wind and sea salt, and there's a cherry flush painted across the bridge of her nose, along the tops of her cheekbones. There's a freckle near the corner of her eye that Derek wants to taste.

"They're astonishing."

She looks so human like this, so imperfect and solid and touchable that Derek just wants to sink his hands into it and tear. He wants to spread her out and roll around in the viscera of her, every impossible bit of it.

"In what way?"

Addison's eyes crinkle when she smiles. When she really smiles, with perfect teeth that make her look happy and feral.

"So clear," he says, "So cold."

"You think I'm cold?"

"I think you want to be."

"So what am I?"

"Lovely," he murmurs.

"Prosaic, for you."

"Simple, because you prefer it."

"You don't."

"You don't care what I want," he says again. She bites her lip. She used to care. "I want to be able to care. To trust you."

"So do I, Derek. I love you just the way you are."

It makes him feel too much to look at her when they get like this — open, honest, like spreading their entrails out to the sun — impossibly together after all they've done to and for and against each other. It's better taken in small sips; there's time for more later, so Derek looks back at the water, the vast, inky expanse of the Pacific putting thousands of miles between them and everything else.

Improbably, he thinks of his grandfather.

He says it aloud. There's no real reason not to, no secrets here at the edge of the world.

Nothing to separate you and me.

"Did I ever tell you about my grandpa?"

"Maternal or paternal?" she asks without missing a beat.

There's a keen interest in it, a sharp delight at being given the knowledge that there's still more to learn. More of Derek, more of each other. He is happy to provide.

"Maternal," he offers, a bloodless sacrifice. "I only met him a few times. He and my dad didn't get along, but I think my dad tried for a while. Grandpa wanted Mom to marry a lawyer or a doctor, I guess. And my dad wasn't any of that."

Well, he married a doctor.

He turns his head to look, and he sees what he was expecting — Addison watching him with patient interest, swallowing each new piece of Derek's history whole.

"We stayed with them for a few weeks in the summer once. Dad was between jobs, and school was out. Amy was just born and we were a handful. It was actually — it was a lot of fun, to tell you the truth. I got so sunburned I peeled like a lizard, and when I finally went back to school in the fall, I was brown as toast."

He kicks at a spot of sand and watches a sand crab scuttle.

"It was so hot that summer — it's always fucking hot in Florida, you know — so one day, my sisters, cousins and I went outside to eat popsicles. There was a whole herd of us, and as luck would have it, there was just enough for everyone to have one. I think mine was strawberry? It was so good after yelling ourselves hoarse outside all day." he shrugs. "Only I guess there wasn't enough for everyone. We'd forgotten one of my cousins, and my grandpa was livid. But he didn't hit us or take our popsicles or anything. He just sat us all down and told us that one day we'd know how it felt to be left out." Derek laughs. "I think that was honestly worse. I walked around for years feeling like my grandpa had literally cursed me."

"It's not an unusual thing for a child to think," she says.

Derek shrugs. "He wasn't wrong."

The waves fill the silence.

"He scared the shit out of me."

He wonders what the inside of Addison's mind looks like. If she is imagining him and his cousins as they were, skinny legs and scraped knees, sticky with humidity in the Florida summer. He wonders if she imagines them at all.

He doesn't ask, and Addison doesn't offer.

He thinks of his grandpa, the gruff man he'd only met a handful of times, so few he could count them on one hand.

That's life, he thinks.

You lose and lose and lose again.

He puts his head back again and breathes, letting the ocean fill him.

There's a little patch in the world where nothing hurts, just a small one. It's not very big — just big enough to fit two people if they squeeze together real tight. Jesse's there too. There's honey-coloured sunlight and the soft whisper of leaves rustling in a breeze. It's warm but not too warm, soft but not too soft.

There, he meets Addison, and nothing terrible happens. Nothing more than stubbed toes and noses that bump during kisses. Pets that die and alarms that ring too soon. Kids that goes off to college and build a family of their own. Normal things. Bearable sorrows.

Love is just love, and it's never confused with pain.

They have normal fights, the kinds that people have. The kind born of comfort and familiarity that means, "I know you; I see you. You're so human, and I am too."

The fights always end, and that's the best part,

"I'm sorry —" forgive me

"I love you —" I do

"I'll never —" I know

It ends in a casket because all loves do, but in the meantime there are kisses. In the meantime there is love and nights curled together like the leaves of young ferns, pushing back the darkness through sheer force of will. In the meantime they bear witness.

They die when they're old. After nothing at all happens to them.

It's so much better that way, Derek thinks desperately.

But that's not his life. That's not his destiny. It's a fantasy.

So much for a happy ending.

Derek inhales, inhales, and holds his breath.

/

Hey, guys! Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think.

If you want more Addek stories, read "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" aka Addison Incarcerated.