{chapter one :: never had a shotgun shot in the dark || "getaway car," taylor swift}

Addison stares at the pair of scuffed brown heels scattered across the entryway in front of her. She stares harder, trying to make them into something they're not. But the living room lamps are on timers during the week and the ugly one on the end table turns on, illuminating a woman's shirt tossed over the back of the couch and a pair of black men's shoes toed off in the hall.

The shirt isn't hers, either. She doesn't do shiny and hot pink, separately or in combination.

"Fine," she says to the empty room.

A muffled moan from the master bedroom answers her.

She clenches her jaw and sets her shoulders and walks into the darkened kitchen. Without turning on any lights, she takes the shopping list pad off the fridge, rips off the reminder to buy toothpaste and bread and throws it in the trash, and picks a pen out of the cup sitting beside the toaster. She writes her note, clicks the pen before putting it back, and puts the paper on the fridge again, perfectly centered.

She opens the refrigerator, removes a bottle of water, an apple, and the chocolate bar she's kept in there so it doesn't melt while their heating's on the fritz. Without another glance toward the master bedroom, she walks out of the apartment, carefully stepping over the scuffed heels on her way.

Mark finds the note several hours later.

We're done, now. – A

From the walkway, Derek watches Addison storm out of her car and up the sidewalk. Before she walks through the open doors, she pauses – a little pause he doubts anyone else notices – and lets out a short exhale. She nods. The storm clouds haven't entirely cleared from her face, but they're not quite threatening tornadoes anymore. She walks inside and disappears from his view.

He frowns.

It's four hours before he finally has a chance to talk to her.

"Don't," she says.

"Addison." He follows her into the empty elevator.

"I thought I was okay with it, and I was, but then I woke up. And actually I think I'm going to kill him. Killing him seems like a good idea."

He blinks. "I wouldn't recommend murder. You'd get blood all over you and that's a very nice dress." They're surgeons, scrubs aren't exactly difficult to find. And they're surgeons, bloody scrubs aren't exactly odd. But she's clearly standing on a ledge and he still cares enough to keep her from jumping off of it.

She slowly turns and stares at him. "I'd use poison," she says flatly, as if it should've been obvious.

He pulls out the emergency stop. "What we talking about?" He has a theory, one he doesn't really like, but there's always a chance that he's wrong.

"I came home to someone else's shoes in the hallway."

Not wrong, then. It was a small chance.

"I know that feeling," he says without thinking. Gauging her reaction, he decides to let the sentence stand; she's calm for the situation, proclamations of murder aside. It's like she expected this of Mark, was waiting for it to happen. Derek supposes he was waiting for it, too.

She scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Anyway." She pushes the emergency stop. The alarm silences and the elevator begins rising again.

"For what it's worth," he says just before they stop at her floor, "I'm sorry." They're divorced, and it's for the best, but he still wishes her happiness – even if it was with the guy she cheated on him with.

"Thanks," she says. With a steadying breath, she steps off the elevator.

Derek's brow furrows when his headlights land on her car. She's parked outside the trailer exactly where, up until a month and a half ago, Meredith had parked. He tries not to make too many parallels.

Addison never gave her keys back after the divorce and he kept forgetting to ask. She hated the trailer so much, he honestly never expected her to set foot out here again. The lights are off and that's enough to push his brain from confusion into concern.

"Addison?" He calls out softly, shutting the door behind him.

"In here," she says from the bedroom.

He pauses in the doorway; he made the bed this morning and even in the shadows he sees the rumpled covers still in place.

"Down here," she specifies.

He looks down and finds her sitting on the floor in a corner. "Why are you on the floor?" That seems a more important question than why she's in his trailer at all. He can take a guess at that one, but he has no idea about the floor.

She exhales sharply and looks up at him. "I was going for the bed, but then I started to feel weird about it and none of those chairs," she gestures out toward the small living area, "are comfortable."

"And the floor is?" He offers her his hand. She takes it and he helps her up.

"No," she says. She tucks her hair behind her ear. "But it was better than just standing around or waiting in my car."

He gently leads her out of the bedroom to one of the chairs she finds so objectionable. He flips on low lights so they aren't sitting in total darkness. "Why are you here?" Time to get an answer to that one.

Derek turns to make something that could pass for dinner; they were both in surgery when dinner should have happened, and if he still knows her as well as he thinks he does, she didn't stop anywhere on the way from the hospital. She changed, at least, exchanging the green patterned dress for black leggings and a blue long-sleeved shirt.

She tucks her long legs up and to her chest, resting her bare heels on the red seat. "I actually don't have anywhere else to go and the Archfield's booked until tomorrow."

He looks over his shoulder. "Where'd you stay last night?" She and Mark moved in together a few months ago, which he thought was a good sign for the two of them. He supposes it was, for a while.

"Crashed on Burke's couch," she says. At his raised eyebrow, she explains. "He doesn't ask questions and I knew Cristina was on call."

He turns the dial to four, just how she likes it, and pulls the lever on her toast. He leans against the counter, pressing his palms on the laminate top behind him. "Are you okay?"

Addison sighs. "No." She looks at her pale reflection in the window. Tree branches blow heavily in the wind, heralding an oncoming storm. "I thought it was going to work this time, you know? Finally. We'd been together a year, moved in together, everything was fine. But," she shrugs, "instead, I'm sitting inside my ex-husband's trailer – which I still hate, by the way – because I can't go home and the stupid hotel is booked."

He decides not to mention that there are plenty of other hotels in Seattle, even plenty of other hotels close to the hospital. Her toast pops up and he leans the two pieces of bread together on the plate to cool off. "Butter and jam?" He turns the dial to six and puts up his own toast.

She nods. "Please." She looks down at her hands. "Sorry I just showed up. By the time I thought about calling, I was already here and there's still no service."

Derek shrugs. "It's okay," he says, because it is. If Meredith were here, it'd be a different story, but Meredith isn't here. Meredith hasn't been here for a month and a half and Addison knew that. "I know you were set on poison, but do you want me to kill him for you?"

She laughs roughly at that and shakes her head. "He'll suffer more if I just never speak to him again. Thank you, though."

He spreads butter and strawberry jam on her toast, does the same for his, pours them both a glass of water, and sits opposite her at the table.

They eat in silence. He keeps an eye on Addison and watches her grow more and more distant as her toast disappears.

"Addison," he says when he stands to put their plates into the dishwasher.

"I'm fine," she says, though she's clearly everything but. She sniffles, takes a quiet breath, and looks back out the window.

He turns the lights off, letting her stare into the woods instead of back at her own reflection. His eyes slowly adjust to the clouded moonlight and he watches as her shoulders start to shake. He takes a step forward across the tiny galley kitchen and then hesitates. "Do you need a hug?"

It's a stupid question, of course she needs a hug, but they're in strange territory right now: divorced, but friends, in his trailer as she cries over the guy that kickstarted their divorce.

After a moment's pause, she nods. He slides into the booth beside her and settles his arm around her shoulders. She turns toward him, trying to curl into his embrace, and hits her knee on the table. She wasn't quite crying before, but banging her knee on the metal kitchen table pushes her over the edge.

Derek senses immediately that this isn't going to work: the booth is too narrow for the two of them and she's about to lose it entirely. Keeping his arm around her, he slides back out and encourages her to follow him. It's only three steps into the bedroom, where he settles them on his bed.

A split second of tension passes through her body, but he knows the exact moment she lets go. She buries her face in his shoulder, loops her arms around his shoulders, and starts to cry.

As a soft rain starts outside, he holds her close and strong. He should have known that everything he saw today in the hospital was an act: a carefully-constructed façade of Addison being Totally Okay. He's seen it before, though at the time it was him she was pretending to be okay with, not Mark.

He doesn't say anything, just rubs her back and lets her cry.

Addison calms after a while and pulls back from him. She reaches behind her, grabs the box of tissues on the nightstand and blows her nose. She toys with the edges of the tissue for a moment before crumpling it up into a ball and tossing it toward the basket in the corner; she makes the shot. "I'm not actually surprised," she says, her voice hoarse. She coughs, clearing her throat, and stares at her hands. "He cheated on me in New York, too," she admits.

Derek frowns. He hadn't known that. Then again, there's a lot about New York that he doesn't know.

"Still sucks though," she says. She looks up with a defeated look in her eyes.

He reaches out and brushes a stray tear away from her cheek. "He doesn't deserve you," he says quietly.

She laughs humorlessly and looks away, shaking her head. "Yeah, no kidding." Her teeth worry at her lower lip. "Thanks for saying it, though."

The rain picks up into a proper storm. Wind blows through the trees, rustling leaves that haven't yet fallen. Something shifts between them, in the very air inside the trailer. She's hurting, he's hurting, and for the first time in years, the hurt isn't the other's fault.

He leans in closer and brushes a kiss against her temple. She smiles; he can see it even in the dim light. He leans back, giving her space again, but she leans with him, keeping the scant distance between them. Raindrops plink on the metal roof of the trailer and he settles his palm on her lower back. Her shirt's ridden up and his thumb catches bare skin.

"This is not a thing," she whispers, leaning closer as his fingers drift across her spine.

"No," Derek agrees, dropping his gaze to her lips, "it's not." He closes the distance between them, kissing her as lightning flashes outside.

Her reason for being here forgotten, Addison settles her arms around his neck, threading her fingers through his hair as she kisses him in return while thunder rolls across the lake.

And that would've been the end of it, had Addison not found herself sitting in front of a toilet eight weeks later, throwing up breakfast for the third day in a row.