Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They’re not friends. They can’t be.

They only talk on the phone—not even once a week. It’s been years since Addison’s been to Seattle, and Meredith has never been to L.A. They rarely talk about their days. They do not ever talk about Derek. They’re not friends.

But their lives were once deeply, irreversibly entangled, and while Addison thinks they never truly knew each other back then, she’s sure there is no one she knows better now than she knows Meredith Grey. It feels wrong to call whatever this is a friendship, but it’s something, and whatever that something is, it’s years in the making, complicated and unnameable, and Addison doesn’t care to name it.

So they are not friends, but they’ve both been married to the same man, and though they never talk about him, there must be some deranged kind of kinship that comes from being the only two people in the world who’ve known the loneliness that fills the empty side of the bed when he no longer comes home at night. This is the only way Addison can rationalize her almost-something with Meredith Grey. It’s the only way she can rationalize that first phone call, or any of the ones that follow. It’s the only way she can rationalize the hours they’ve spent talking in the dead of quiet nights, hidden away from the world like it’s some clandestine thing.

They’re not friends, not exactly, but Addison remembers what happens when you fall out of love with Derek Shepherd. This is why she gets on a plane in the middle of the night, takes a leave of absence from work, and books a hotel room in Seattle.

(And if she’s fallen a little in love with Meredith, somewhere along the telephone wires between Seattle and L.A., well. It hardly matters now.)

-

Addison wakes to the sound of her phone ringing. It’s dark and silent in her living room, the moonless sky outside the window overcast and reminiscent of Seattle and the clouds and the ever-present rain. There’s a warm weight draped over her chest—a small body. Her baby boy, his back rising and falling with each breath, his exhales soft and wispy against her collarbone. For a moment she just watches him, looks down at his downy baby hair and the way his eyelashes, soft like strands of a feather, flutter in his sleep. He is everything she has ever wanted.

She fumbles for the phone.

“Hello?” Her voice is heavy with sleep, and she clears her dry throat as silence stretches along the line. Furrowing her brow, Addison pulls the phone away from her ear to glance at the screen, but the call hasn’t dropped. She can hear someone breathing, quiet but fast like they’re trying to stave off panic.

It’s the middle of the night. No one else ever calls this late. Addison takes a leap.

“Meredith?” She asks, keeping her voice gentle and even, almost a whisper. There’s no response, but the quiet hitch of breath confirms her suspicions. After glancing down at the sleeping little boy tucked against her, clutching her shirt in his fist, drooling against her collarbone, Addison carefully sits up and pulls herself to her feet, still cradling Henry to her chest. Pressing the phone between her ear and shoulder, she heads for the stairs. “Meredith, can you take a deep breath for me? That’s right, now hold it in . . . and let go. Good.”

Addison hears her shaky exhale, and after a beat, another long inhale. As she makes her way upstairs to Henry’s crib, Meredith’s breathing evens out, and eventually, she says, her voice scratchy: “You’re whispering. Am I—”

“You’re not interrupting anything. I’m just putting Henry down and don’t want to wake him, that’s all.”

“Oh. Okay.”

After lowering her son into his crib, Addison brushes the tips of her fingers through his hair and down the side of his face. She presses a soft kiss to his forehead and watches his eyelids flutter. His fingers curl into the soft blanket, but he doesn’t wake, and she grabs the baby monitor off her dresser before heading back downstairs.

As Addison settles onto the couch, pulling a throw blanket over her legs, Meredith is quiet. She leans into the armrest, letting her head tip back against the couch, and Meredith says nothing. Sometimes they do this. Sometimes they need to sit together in silence before they can talk.

So for a while, they just listen to each other breathe. Addison watches the clouds move over the stars and makes a little noise every now and again so Meredith knows she’s still there, and her skin itches with worry. Addison has always been a worrier.

-

“What was he like?” Meredith says, finally. Addison opens her eyes. “When you were married.”

Suddenly, Addison feels very, very ill. She sits up, digging her fingers into the couch cushion as she pulls herself upright. The abrupt change makes the world spin for a moment, blood rushing to her head, and she blinks the feeling away.

“Meredith, where are you? It’s the middle of the night. Are you okay?”

Meredith draws a sharp breath, like some uncertain fear has been confirmed. “In my car. I pulled over on the side of the road.”

“Good, that’s . . . that’s good,” Addison says, pressing a closed fist over her mouth. She fights to keep it still, but her chin quivers and she wills it to stop, pressing harder with her fist until all sensations fade except the sting of her lips crushed against the front of her teeth.

“Addison?” The concern is heavy in Meredith’s voice, and if she weren’t so anxious, Addison might laugh at the irony of someone who called her to talk about their problems worrying if she’s okay.

“I’m alright,” she murmurs. After a pause and a heavy inhale, Addison squeezes her eyes shut and wonders if there is any true answer she could give to Meredith’s question that will make her feel better. But there isn’t, of course there isn’t, so eventually she settles for the unfiltered truth. Meredith has never been one to want things sugarcoated, anyway.

“Nothing about him changed, if that’s what you’re asking. Even at the end, he was still the same man he was when we met. It was more like, all the things about him that worried me got bigger. More frequent, harder to ignore.

“And then they just . . . didn’t matter anymore, because he was never home. It didn’t matter how much he hated being told ‘no,’ because he wasn’t there to want me to say ‘yes.’ It didn’t matter that he’d throw my things when we fought because he wasn’t there to fight with me. I always knew work was his top priority, but I wasn’t even second anymore. It was like he’d erased me from the list.”

Addison lets out a shaky breath as her words peter out, not having realized just how long those words have been lodged, painfully, in her throat. Meredith takes a minute to respond, but when she does, her voice is not much steadier than Addison’s.

“He threw my engagement ring into the woods, once.”

Unsure of what she’s meant to say, Addison just says: “Dick.” Meredith’s laugh is choked and guttural.

“We got married on post-it notes because we were too busy at work to go to the courthouse.”

Addison closes her eyes. The sardonic tone of Meredith’s voice isn’t enough to veil the hurt, and she can feel that same pain echo in her own body. 

“It made sense, in the moment,” Meredith says, and the rest of it all goes unspoken, but Addison can hear it, regardless. What kind of marriage is that? How can you start a life with someone by choosing work over your wedding?

Worry swirls in her gut. A heavy weight rises in her throat like she might cry if she opens her mouth, but she swallows her emotions and asks, as steady and gently as she can: “What do you need, Meredith?”

-

“What do you need, Meredith?”

Addison’s words echo in her head.

“What do you need, Meredith?”

Her thoughts spin and her stomach turns and suddenly Meredith feels so, so close to letting out a wretched sob that she clamps a hand over her mouth and chokes on the lump in her throat. When was the last time someone asked her that?

“Deep breaths,” Addison says, her soft and soothing voice not unlike the one Meredith has heard her use to calm newborns in the NICU. (Briefly, she thinks about the baby boy Addison adopted only a few months ago, and the warm joy in her voice when she talks about him. She wonders if it’s the same voice she uses with him. Suddenly, her whole body itches with a longing to be loved as gently and wholly as she knows Addison loves that baby boy. As neither of their mothers ever loved them.)

The small car and the enveloping darkness bear down on her—a crushing weight on her chest that sits beside the terror of finally saying out loud what she’s been pushing down for so long:

“I need to get out before he erases me from the list.”

The words itch and crawl across her skin. As she sinks into the reality of what they mean, Addison’s voice sounds across the line.

“Okay.” Calm and quiet. Meredith’s shoulders drop, and her eyes burn with a desire to cry, but she doesn’t. She pushes that feeling as far down as she can, imagining it as something physical that she could push away, but it doesn’t quite budge. Addison continues after a brief pause. “Lucky for you, I have experience in the area.”

Meredith chokes out a laugh because it’s funny, it’s funny in a way that’s not funny at all but instead is just dark and twisty and absurd, but it’s exactly the kind of thing she would say and of course Addison would too. (Meredith’s always thought they were a little too alike, in their sense of humor.)

So she chokes out a laugh, and it turns into a raw sob. And for once in her goddamn life, Meredith doesn’t stop it. For once, she lets herself hurt, even knowing that someone can hear her. And as she cries, Addison speaks to her, so gentle and kind and Meredith has no idea what she’s saying, too caught up in the violent wracking of her own body. She just knows it’s soothing, and that Addison’s voice in her ear is something she’s reaching for like a lighthouse in a storm. As her sobs quiet and her tears fade, leaving drying tracks on her cheeks that prick and pull at her skin, cold in the night air of her turned-off car, she catches the tail-end of Addison’s murmuring.

“—going to be just fine, honey. You’ll be okay.”

Warmth spreads through her bones. “Thanks,” she says hoarsely.

“There’s no need to thank me.”

“Still,” she says. “Thank you.”

Addison pauses. “You’re welcome.”

For a moment, neither of them speak. Meredith dries her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater. Shame swells in her body, and the urge to shove everything back down and pretend it’s all fine again grows and keeps growing until it’s sitting on her tongue, ready to be said. She might’ve said it, too, if Addison didn’t speak up instead.

“What can I do to help?”

Meredith pauses, still furiously rubbing at her eyes. “What?”

“I know what it’s like to leave him, Meredith,” she says, her voice gentle, oh-so-gentle. “He flashes those sad eyes and the rest of the world decides you’re Satan. They believe every word he says about you, and I won’t leave you alone in that.”

Emotion rises in Meredith’s throat and for a moment she almost feels as though Addison is right here with her in the car, on the curb of some random side-street in Seattle in the middle of the night. She can almost feel the ghost of a hand on her back, a comforting touch, a tight hug—a distorted memory of the only one they ever shared, which was in reality fleeting and light, almost like she was too afraid to really hold on. (And hidden behind all that is the prickling sensation of guilt. After all, she called Addison ‘Satan’ sometimes, too.)

“I don’t know,” is all she says in the end, and she loathes how weak and uncertain she sounds. There’s a quiet rustling on the other end of the line, like Addison is sitting up.

“Do you need me there?”

Meredith blinks. “Here?”

“Yes,” Addison says. “If you need me to be there—or if you want me there—I will be. For as long as you need.”

Longing fills Meredith’s chest like something has burst inside her, and all she wants in the world is something she didn’t even consider she could have. She realizes just how desperately she wants the support only Addison can offer, because Addison has lived this before. Addison knows exactly how this feels. With Addison, she won’t have to explain it. She won’t have to cut herself open and show someone how much it all hurts or find the words to describe it, because Addison already knows. Addison won’t ask: Why are you leaving him? You seemed so happy, because she already knows.

(And deep inside, some part of her knows that without someone to hold her accountable, someone who really understands why she needs to leave, she’ll just stay. She’ll fold all that pain back into herself, push it down until it barely exists and she won’t leave him. She’ll fester and rot, and he still won’t come home, and she won’t leave him.)

“Addie, I—” she stops short, not sure how to ask. Instead, she deflects. “You have a job, you have Henry. You can’t just come to Seattle.”

“I have plenty of time off saved up; I could get on a plane and be there in the morning. I can bring Henry. Supporting you would not be a burden to me, Meredith.”

The dam breaks.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

She wanted to say: Please. Please come to Seattle. I’m sorry to bother you but I need you here to make sure I don’t stop fighting, but the words don’t come. Addison seems to understand, anyway. Meredith can hear the creak of floorboards over the line like she’s already heading upstairs to pack a bag, and her voice is quiet but determined when she replies:

“I’ll be there in a few hours.”

Chapter Text

The car goes dark and cold when Meredith hangs up the phone. Silence looms over her and the night puts a chill in her bones, but there’s a flutter of something in her chest that she hasn’t had in a long time. 

Hope.

Addison is coming to Seattle. Addison is coming to Seattle, and Meredith feels like she can breathe for the first time in years. Like something tight released in her lungs with Addison’s promise to be there by morning.

In the dark on the side of the road, Meredith drops her head against the back of the seat and exhales, long and deep. She wants to smile, wants to fuel the small, flickering feeling that things are about to change, but can’t quite bring herself to. Instead, she raises her head, buckles her seatbelt, and turns the key still in the ignition. The car starts just as her phone goes off. 

Derek, 10:57 PM: Surgery ran late. Sleeping in an on-call room tonight.

It’s not the first time—and it won’t be the last—that she’s gotten a text like that. He stays at work all the time, and doesn’t always tell her first. But when he does, it’s a text that hurts deep inside her chest, a dull ache that grows with every hour that passes that she spends alone in their bed in that stupid house. 

She can’t sleep there tonight. Suddenly, Meredith longs to go home. And it hurts, god it hurts, that she doesn’t think that house is her home. But where else is there to go? At the end of the road, the red of a street light glows overhead and she slows to a stop, flips her turn signal to blink right. The intersection is empty and silent—just her and the glow of the light. She wants to go home. When was the last time she felt like she was at home?

Meredith thinks of the frat house and of living with all her friends, surrounded by people who loved her, who drove her insane almost every day but still came home every night. She thinks of how it’s just Amelia there now, and maybe she wouldn’t mind if Meredith crashed on the couch for the night. She changes her turn signal left as the light changes to green, and turns before she can change her mind.

-

Meredith finds herself standing, frozen, at the door, unable to knock. She has no right to be here. Amelia’s only her sister by marriage, and here she is, on her doorstep demanding comfort when she plans to leave her husband. How dare she? Amelia would hate her. Amelia should turn her away. 

Her phone pings. 

Amelia, 11:21 PM: i have ice cream

stop standing outside like a loser and come help me eat it

The voice in Meredith’s head quiets, and she unlocks the door with the key she was never quite able to bring herself to take off her main key ring, like some part of her always knew she would come back home. The front room is dark, but soft yellow lamp-light shines from the living room, and she can hear the television on quietly, like it’s just being used for background noise.

“Get your own spoon!” Amelia hollers, and she pokes her head over the back of the couch when Meredith passes by, heading toward the kitchen. “I’m happy to share my ice cream, but I draw the line at my spoon.” 

When Meredith joins her in the living room, dropping next to her on the couch, Amelia looks like she’s recently emerged from underneath a giant pile of blankets; her hair is a disheveled, staticy mess, and she’s got most of the blankets still tangled around her waist. Meredith reaches to tug one away from her and wrap it around her own shoulders before digging her spoon into the ice cream.

“Chocolate peanut butter, good choice,” she hums. “What’re we watching?”

“No idea. You can change it.”

“No, it’s fine, I don’t care.” Meredith lets a mouthful of ice cream melt on her tongue. They sit in silence until the carton is half empty, pretending to watch some unknown show that Meredith is getting less and less certain is even in English, but the volume is too low, and her attention too scattered to really tell for sure. She doesn’t care.

Eventually, Amelia gets sick of the silence. “Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong or do I need to waterboard it out of you?”

Meredith snorts. “We took an oath to do no harm, and you’re threatening to war-crime me?” 

“Whatever needs to be done,” Amelia says with a crooked grin. Hair still messy, buried in blankets by Meredith’s side, she looks so young, like she’s still just a girl, not all grown up. (Every day, Meredith understands more and more why Addison is so fiercely protective of Amelia. Why even after the divorce, she still considers them sisters.

Maybe Amelia will still want to be her sister, too, when she leaves Derek. Or maybe two ex-sister-in-laws will be too many. Maybe Meredith won’t be worth the trouble of keeping around when she no longer has to. Meredith shuts those thoughts up with a large bite of ice cream and a healthy blast of brain-freeze.)

“Have you found any new roommates yet?”

Amelia sighs and sags, limp, against Meredith’s shoulder, the ice cream carton tipping dangerously on its side into Meredith’s lap. 

“No,” she grumbles. “Everyone seems so annoying. My patience is too low for this.”

“You should stop looking,” Meredith says suddenly, and the words make her feel almost sick, but she pushes on, amending herself: “At least for now.”

“Why?”

“Addison’s visiting. Tomorrow.” Meredith’s heart climbs into her mouth. Her undefinable not-quite-but-almost-friendship thing with Addison has never been discussed with Amelia before. Amelia, who sometimes thinks it’s weird that Meredith and Addison don’t outright hate each other. (Meredith, truthfully, has never been able to hate Addison, even when she really, really thought she wanted to.)

Amelia, who was only half paying attention before, still intrigued enough by the definitely-not-English soap opera on the tv, turns to look at her. “Addie’s coming to Seattle?”

Meredith nods, focusing her gaze on the melty ice cream left in the bottom of the carton. 

“Is it for a case? Did Richard ask her to come?”

“Probably.” The lie feels sour in Meredith’s mouth. 

“How’d you find out?”

“Talked to her on the phone. Can she stay here with you?”

“Obviously. I’d be pissed if she stayed in a hotel. Why’d she call you?”

Meredith shoots Amelia a fake-glare and says, through a mouthful of ice cream: “Probably ‘cause I’m not her annoying little sister.”

Amelia snorts. “She had her chance to get rid of me in the divorce and didn’t take it. She’s stuck with me now.”

-

Addison has a clean diaper pinned between her chin and her collarbone in the dirty airport bathroom when Amelia calls her. After glancing around to make sure there’s no one there to be bothered by her taking the call, Addison fumbles for the phone. Henry, on the changing table, chews lazily on his fingers.

“You better not be planning to stay at a hotel,” Amelia says, in lieu of any normal human greeting. Addison’s brain, overtired and unaware her ex-sister-in-law even knew she was coming to Seattle, short circuits and she pauses. 

“What?”

Amelia huffs across the line. “There are several perfectly nice, empty rooms in my house. You and that handsome nephew of mine are staying with me.”

Addison swaps the diaper for the phone, pinning it between her shoulder and ear. 

“Okay,” she says, because what else is there to say? “Thank you, Amy, I would really appreciate that, actually.”

“Of course you would, I’m a fantastic host and a wonderful sister.” She says it with snark and humor in her tone, but Addison smiles softly because Amelia really is a wonderful sister. As she lifts Henry up to slide the diaper underneath him, Amelia continues: “So what brings you to our rainy corner of the world anyway?”

Addison pauses, too exhausted to be able to consider a way to ask what exactly Amelia knows about her visit without revealing things she’s fairly certain Meredith wouldn’t want Amelia to know. Her mind flashes back to the brief conversation they’d had before she’d hung up to leave for the airport.

“Do you want anyone to know I’m there, or would you rather keep it quiet?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Richard’s been asking me for months to come up for a few days and ‘impart my wisdom’ on the new interns, so I could be there at work with you. Or, we can pretend I’m not there.”

“Who would watch Henry if you’re at work?”

“Seattle Grace has a daycare, Meredith.”

She realizes she’s been standing there, motionless, in the bathroom, for slightly too long, because on the other end of the line, Amelia calls her name in a sing-songy voice: “Addison? You still there?”

Addison clears her throat. “Yes, sorry.” A jolt of pain radiates up from her palm, and when she glances down, she realizes that she’s curled her hand into a fist and dug her nails into her skin, and crumpled the backing paper she’d peeled off the diaper’s adhesive tabs beyond recognition. 

“It’s for work,” she says finally. Lying to Amelia makes her stomach ache. “Richard asked me to mentor some of the interns considering neonatal.” 

-

By the time Addison lands in Seattle, the black sky is bleeding orange, glowing at the horizon. Her ex-sister-in-law is waiting for her at the gate, and the very sight of her washes over Addison like a wave of relief; the deep exhaustion in her bones seems less heavy even if just for a moment. (The small part of her that hoped Meredith would be here too twists in her chest and she pushes it down, ashamed to have even let it rise.)

Amelia bounces into her arms for a tight, grounding hug, and presses a dozen kisses across Henry’s forehead and cheeks, beaming as he blinks sleepily up at her. She’s strangely silent as she grabs Addison’s suitcase without being asked and leads her outside, where Meredith’s car is waiting for them in the parking lot. Meredith is not inside, but her sweater is draped over the back of the driver’s seat and Addison can almost picture her sitting there only hours ago, admitting to the same heartbreak that she had drowned in for years, and never been brave enough to voice. 

“Meredith’s asleep on my couch,” Amelia says, unprompted, as she tries to unlock the door four times before getting it to work. She shoots Addison a grin over the roof of the car. “And her car sucks slightly less than mine, so I stole her keys.”

Deep in the pit of Addison’s chest, an anxiety she hadn’t realized had been lingering settles at the knowledge that Meredith has not been alone all night. (And, against her will, a small, shameful part of her is relieved in knowing that Meredith did not spend the night with her husband.)

(That treacherous part of her sinks into her stomach, heavy and somewhat resigned, reminding her that she is not supposed to feel like this about Meredith Grey.)

Chapter Text

Henry always wakes at six in the morning like clockwork. As a result, Addison wakes at six in the morning like clockwork. And most mornings, her body wakes her in anticipation before he’s even started stirring in his crib across the room.

But this morning, the clock hits six a.m. just as Amelia pulls into the driveway, and neither of them slept on the plane. His head is drooping tiredly against her chest and he slept through most of the car ride home from the airport. 

Amelia says something about having to leave at seven for her shift, but Addison barely hears her as she collapses onto the bed in one of the spare rooms, keeping Henry curled up next to her with a pillow on the other side of him, just in case he rolls.

-

When she wakes for the first time, it hasn’t even been a few hours, and it’s to the soft sound of him sniffling and the rustling of the sheet as he moves, his little feet pressing into her stomach. Her palm, resting protectively on his stomach, rises with his every breath. Her mind is slow to pull her out of sleep, so she lies there for a moment, just her and her son, curled against each other as the morning is still rising. 

She hovers at the edge of sleep and so does Henry, who wriggles closer to her chest, instinct seeking out the warmth of her body. He seems content to just lie there with her for a while, tucked close to her heart, where she has carried him since the day he was born. By the time he starts to fuss, she’s nearly back to sleep and is sluggish to respond. He whines, and her fingertips twitch against his belly. She needs to get up. 

The hardwood creaks by the door. Henry smacks his lips, babbling something in that soft and sleepy baby voice of his, and faintly, Addison hears someone hush him, equally quiet and soft. The bed dips beside her; someone lifts Henry from the blankets, from under her arm, and when she twitches, confused, a gentle voice murmurs: “It’s okay, Addison, sleep. I’ve got him,” and so she does. 

Something warm fizzes inside her chest and she melts back into the mattress, curling a hand under her head beneath the pillow that smells of lavender and laundry soap. Like Meredith. She drifts back to sleep.

-

Late morning is filtering through the window by the time she wakes again, blinking slowly out of sleep. Dust hovers in the rays of light, sparkling like gold flecks in the sun. The glow is bright, warm and pink-orange behind her closed eyelids. The first tangible thing Addison notices is that Henry is no longer beside her. She closes her hand, curling her fingers into the sheets where he was, and some terrible fear tightens in her chest. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes as she sits up, pulls the sheets away from where they’ve tangled around her legs, and stumbles out of bed. The t-shirt she’d worn to bed is twisted sideways from sleeping at an angle all night, and she yanks it straight as she heads for the door, which is cracked open even though she’d closed it before going to bed. 

A faint, sleep-addled memory comes back to her as she crosses the threshold of the doorway and pauses in her tracks. She remembers waking earlier to her son stirring, whining in a way that said he was ready to get up even if she wasn’t. (On usual mornings, he never wakes because he’s hungry, and sometimes Addison wonders if he knows the day is about to start, the night sky fading into the sunrise, and he wants to see it happen.) Someone’s voice, quiet and calming—reassuring. Hushing her back to sleep. A voice she knew; a voice she trusted. It must have been Meredith. Amelia would already be at work by now.

As she descends the stairs, a voice becomes audible, a quiet and chattering voice that seems to be talking for the calming effect and not the hope of being understood. 

“...surgery on Tuesday, and Dr. Bailey—she’s my boss and she’s very scary but also very smart, but don’t tell her I said that—told me I did good. I know, right? Sure, it was just an Appy—that means Appendectomy, it’s important you know these things since your mom’s a totally badass surgeon—shoot, I probably shouldn’t swear around you. Oh, whatever, it’s not like you know what it means.”

Addison stops in the kitchen doorway and leans against it, the side of her head dropping against the wood of the frame. Her body still feels slow and heavy with sleep now that she’s no longer worried about her son. 

Meredith is standing at the counter, Henry tucked against her chest with his chin tilted up as he looks at her, seemingly fascinated by the small tear in her t-shirt at the seam of the collar. She’s got a bowl of cereal she’s eating one-handed. The milk is still out and uncapped, and the box is open and lain flat on the marble countertop, honey nut cheerios threatening to spill out of the bag. Warmth buds in Addison’s chest and blossoms outwards until her entire body is filled with it, filled with soft warmth and a feeling of new growth.

It’s then that Meredith looks up and sees her where she’s still drooped against the doorframe, and smiles. It’s a slow-building smile, one that starts with a quirk of the lips and grows and keeps curling up, still closed-lipped but so, so bright. Addison’s stomach flips and her heart stutters at the sight of it: Meredith smiling at her and holding her son close— and it’s like some feeling is waking up inside of her. Something that has been dormant for a long time. Some longing she has never let herself linger on, has kept so buried she could’ve forgotten it was there if not for the feeling that something was just not quite right, all the time. 

“G’morning,” she says, even though it’s nearly twelve. Her voice is still heavy and gritty with sleep, her mouth dry as it always is when she wakes. She clears her throat. For a moment, Meredith just stands there and stares at her, then suddenly jolts into motion.

“Hi,” she says. “Sorry I took your kid without asking; I thought you might wanna sleep a little longer. Jet lag and stuff.”

Amused, Addison tilts her head and fails at fighting back a smile. “We live in the same time zone.” 

Meredith blinks, like she’d forgotten that part. (A thought crosses Addison’s mind, not for the first time, that there’s some strange side-effect to having a friend only through late night phone calls that makes it almost seem both not real and more real than anything else.) 

“Right,” Meredith says after a pause. “Still, you probably didn’t sleep on the plane.”

Addison just nods, and for a moment they just stare at each other, hesitant and uncertain in a way they haven’t been in a long time, not over the phone. Meredith glances down at the cheerio box, and with an awkward movement, pushes it toward Addison. 

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really, but I’m sure he is,” Addison replies, gesturing toward Henry. She steps further into the room and Meredith meets her halfway. As she reaches for him, the side of her hand touches Meredith’s; her forearm bumps against her elbow. It’s like a shock to the system. Something skittish and terrified shoots through her and she barely manages to not jump back, but instead to calmly take her son into her arms and pretend like her heart isn’t racing. It’s a strange thing, to be able to see Meredith. To be able to look her in the eye when they talk. To touch her; to be touched by her. It’s unfamiliar in the sense that they have not done this before, but familiar in the sense that she knows Meredith’s voice as well as she knows her own, and knows Meredith as well as she knows herself. 

She doesn’t know what to do with all of this uncertainty, so all she does is ask for a glass of water. Meredith nods, jolting into action rather awkwardly as she moves to get Addison a glass. She opens the wrong cupboard even though this was once her own home, her own cupboard—still is in a way—and nearly hits her head opening the right one. The corners of Addison’s lips twitch as she fights a smile, and she could tease her, she could be there when Meredith turns back around to smile at her and make some affectionate joke, but she doesn’t. Over the phone, she would have. But something is different, now. 

She turns to head upstairs instead, to grab Henry’s bag so she can prepare a bottle for him.

-

(When Addison finally contemplates lunch, she ends up dumping that carton of milk, two weeks expired, down the drain. She takes one look into Amelia’s fridge and decides to forgo lunch and settle for a granola bar, and makes a note to go grocery shopping before dinner.)

-

Cross-legged on the couch, Addison stares down at her phone. This should be easy. This is easy, she tells herself. It’s just a phone call. It’s just Richard.

But it’s more than that really, because calling Richard makes this real. It makes why she’s here real. She looks up at Meredith, who’s curled against the armrest of the couch, wiggling her fingers at Henry as he reaches out, trying to catch them. 

“It’s not too late to back out,” she says, carefully watching the way Meredith’s face changes with each silly face she makes at Henry, trying to make him smile. She sticks her tongue out at him and he giggles, his small hands grabbing at the ends of her hair. She doesn’t look up or react initially at all, but after a moment, she says: “Just call him already. Henry told me he’s bored and wants to order pizza for dinner.”

“Oh he did, did he?” Addison asks, amused. She finds herself smiling completely against her will and barely fights the feeling at all. There’s something so surreal about this, about being here in the same room as Meredith, watching her make silly expressions at Henry and pretend to bite at his fingers when he stretches them out toward her face. 

There’s something dangerous about this moment, Addison thinks, swallowing the longing that swells up in her throat. Something dangerous about sitting here with Meredith on the couch, easy conversation and warm smiles, tired bones at rest, the soft body of her son between them, reaching for them both. He presses his socked foot against her thigh and waves a hand at her, little fingers grasping and wiggling, and she reaches back, lets him clutch her ring finger in one small fist as he holds fast to Meredith with the other. There’s something dangerous about a moment she doesn’t ever want to leave, something dangerous about the way her heart beat beat beats when Meredith looks over at her, straight-faced and serious, and tells her, “He’s a man of taste, Addison. I bet he wants it from that place around the corner from the hospital, as well.”

Mentally, Addison crumples up her grocery list. She sighs. 

“You’d better call Amelia and see if she’s coming home for dinner. She’ll disown us if we don’t order garlic bread.”

-

“Addison Montgomery, as I live and breathe.” Richard’s voice is warm, and Addison can nearly hear him smiling across the line. 

“You’ve been calling for months, I figured it was about time I called back,” she returns, just as warmly. He laughs. 

“What can I do for you, Addie?” He’s still smiling, still happy to hear from her, she can hear it in his voice, but something inside her twists. He doesn’t mean it like that, but it’s true—she never calls just to say hello and maybe she should. She clears her throat.

“Is the offer to mentor your wayward interns still on the table?”

“Of course, any time,” he tells her. “There’s always a place for you here.”

She swallows the well of emotion rising within her. “My flight lands this evening. I could be there tomorrow, if that’s not too soon?”

“Tomorrow’s perfect. I’ll wrangle a few interns together and find you some interesting patients. Do you need an employee badge, or do you still have yours?”

“I’m only visiting, Richard.”

“Well, you never know.”

Addison laughs and so does he, his laughter warm and rich on the other end of the line, and she misses him. Her mentor, more a father to her than her own father has been. 

(It feels dangerous being back in Seattle. Like the longer she stays, the worse it will hurt to leave again.)

-

The elephant in the room gets bigger as the afternoon passes by in periods of small talk, conversations about work, and uncertain stretches of silence. They spent a few hours dancing around it, dancing around all the things they’ve always avoided talking about when they’d call late in the nights, and focusing instead on the interesting surgeries they’ve seen recently, on how Callie’s been shooting heart-eyes at the new pediatric surgeon and how Pete and Violet are failing miserably at couples’ therapy. How Henry crawled for the first time last month and has never again since. How the sparkly sunshine of Los Angeles doesn’t feel so zen anymore. (It’s starting to suffocate me, Addison doesn’t say. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.)

(The dream house doesn’t feel like home anymore, either, Meredith doesn’t say.)

After that, there’s a long stretch of quiet. Addison runs the tips of her fingers up and down Henry’s back as it rises and falls, steady and slow as in his sleep. His fingers are fisted tight into the yielding belly of his favorite stuffed rabbit, and with his body draped across her chest, his cheek rests just below her collarbone, pressed against the soft cotton of her shirt. Every once in a while, she finds Meredith watching them and catches her eyes for less than a heartbeat before Meredith looks away, her gaze falling to her hands, fiddling in her lap. 

Eventually, she says: “Amelia still hasn’t found any roommates. It’s been months—I’m starting to think she just doesn’t want any.” It’s casual. Plainly stated. But she’s still fidgeting with her fingers. “I told her to stop looking for now, so you can stay with her.” 

It’s a way of saying: I need you to stay here, without having to say it.

Do you want to stay here, too? Addison wants to ask, and nearly bites her tongue to keep the words inside her mouth. Voice quiet as to not wake her son, she says instead: “I can stay as long as you want me to. If Amelia gets sick of me and kicks me out, I’ll get a room at the Archfield.”

The corners of Meredith’s mouth twitch up—a tiny, almost-smile. Addison feels that warmth blooming bright and alive in her chest again, as though her body responds like a flower growing toward the sun when Meredith smiles.

“She wouldn’t do that,” Meredith says, and Addison doesn’t know what to say, so they fall back into silence. It isn’t awkward, per say, but it isn’t comfortable either. There’s a tension in the air like something is hanging between them—words unsaid and avoided. Eventually, Addison gets tired of holding them all behind her teeth, building in her throat, and speaks up, keeping her voice even and casual.

“What do you need from me right now? We can move as slow or as quickly with this as you want. I know how difficult it is.” 

Meredith shifts her weight, pulls at her fingers and scratches the tip of her thumbnail at her cuticles. But she looks up, meets Addison’s eyes ever-so-briefly before fixing her gaze on a spot somewhere over her shoulder. 

“If I don’t start now, I never will.” There’s almost no inflection in her tone, like she’s rehearsed this, like she knew Addison was going to ask and decided what she would say when she did.

“Okay,” Addison says, because really, what else is there to say? The heaviness of what she’s here to do sits like a stone in her chest. The still-healing wounds of her own divorce feel raw again, like she’s scratched off the scabs and left them like that, bloody and untended. Maybe she needs to open those wounds in order to help Meredith stitch hers closed. It’s not a difficult choice to make; they’ll scab over again, in time. So will Meredith’s. 

“Okay,” Meredith echoes. 

“I can call my divorce lawyer, if you’d like. He was great, and he didn’t like Derek. So.” Addison trails off, feeling suddenly overwhelmingly awkward. She resists the urge to clear her throat and maybe melt into the carpet. But Meredith nods and smiles again, a little bigger this time—a smile that lasts beyond a brief upward twitch, and the tension in Addison’s chest eases. Not all the way, because it never does, but her body relaxes further into the back of the couch and she breathes again. She said the right thing. Sometimes Addison thinks she spends most conversations taking shots in the dark, looking for the right thing to say, but it’s always just out of reach.

With Meredith, the right words seem easier to find.

Chapter Text

It’s strange being back at Seattle Grace. Strange in the sense that it really isn’t strange at all, but rather like something has slotted back into place, and Addison doesn’t quite know what to do with that feeling. That itch in her hands, that longing for surgery that she’s been shoving down ever since she left is bubbling to the surface. When Richard handed her a group of interns and a list of patients, and she saw her name scribbled on the surgical board, that longing settled for the first time in years.

What is strange is how no one is looking at her like she remembers being looked at in these halls: both pitied and hated, the bitter ex-wife. Satan. She’s a stranger to many of the people she sees, and those who do remember don’t seem interested in dredging up the past. Time has washed the malice in the moniker of Satan away. She’s not the same person she was back then, anyway.

Some people are even happy to see her. Callie greets her like they’ve spent decades apart even though she calls every other week, and Miranda greets her with a warm welcome and side-eyes the interns on her service, tells her, “Good luck with those ones,” like they’re trouble, but she says that about all the intern classes, so Addison just smiles in amusement. She pulls Miranda into a hug and laughs at her faux-irritated mumbling: “You’re too tall for me to hug, lose a few inches and then we can talk.”

Even Karev nods at her when they pass in the hallway and says: “Welcome back, Satan,” in that rough, brisk voice that means ‘I’m pretending to be detached and cool and like I don’t care. Shut up.’

“Congrats on your specialty, Evil Spawn,” she fires back at him, and he scowls. After they’ve passed each other, she calls over her shoulder: “I told you you’d pick peds,” and grins when she hears him grumble, “Shut up.”

She figures Derek will be unhappy to see her but decides that she doesn’t care, and ignores the anxiety spinning in the pit of her stomach, ignores the fact that after all this time, it still hurts that he can go on like none of it ever happened. Like being his wife didn’t break her apart.

They were best friends before they tried to be in love. Perhaps the first mistake she made was thinking that would be enough.

-

“I’ve missed you so much, you have no idea. It’s so boring without you. No one here is any fun,” Callie bemoans, leaning against the nurse’s station as Addison slips on her glasses to read through a patient’s chart. The gaggle of interns Richard gave her—with the request that she ‘impart her wisdom upon them’—are trying not to trip over each other in attempts to read over her shoulder.

“I won’t tell your other friends you said that,” she teases. 

Callie rolls her eyes, glances at the hovering interns and asks: “So how long are you here for?”

Addison shrugs. In all honesty, she has no idea. “Until they kick me out, I suppose.”

“If that’s your plan, you’ll never leave,” Callie jokes. “We both know Richard still hasn’t filled your old job in the desperate hope you’ll come back to us.”

Something wells up in Addison’s throat. She doesn’t let herself think about it often, but she does miss Seattle Grace. She misses surgery. As nice as the more relaxed schedule of the practice is, especially for a new mother, she knows she took that job because she was running away, not because she was meant to be there. It’s been good for her, of course it has. If nothing else, it brought her Henry. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.

And sometimes, as crazy as it sounds, she really, really misses the back-to-back surgeries. The complicated, crazy cases, the high-speed stakes. (She does not, however, miss the Seattle Grace gossip mill.)

But this is not the time nor the place to let her mind wander there, so she flounders for something to say that doesn’t make it sound like she’s planning to move back to Seattle but also doesn’t sound like she wouldn’t do it if asked nicely.

“He never does believe me when I tell him I’m leaving, does he,” she settles on, and Callie laughs.

“No, but in his defense, you do always come back when he calls.”

That’s also fair. Addison clears her throat. “Yes, well.” Well, nothing. She really has nothing to say to that; Callie is right. She does always come running back to Seattle when Richard (or Meredith) asks her to.

Shaking away the thought, she flips back to the first page of the chart and turns to face the four interns standing behind her, who scramble to look like they were doing anything other than eavesdropping and unsubtly peering over her shoulder for the last five minutes. It’s amusing, and Addison feels the corners of her mouth twitch against her will. God, she thinks. I’ve gone soft. She clears her throat again, suddenly feeling very awkward for no reason. She squares her shoulders and schools her expression, putting on the mask of confidence she’s been using to pull herself through life since she grew out of her gangly preteen years, when being shy and quiet and good at melting into the background stopped protecting her.

“I was going to brief you all on our first patient, but since you’ve been reading the chart over my shoulder—” Addison stops short. None of them are paying attention; they’re all looking over her shoulder, and for one terrifying moment, Addison hopes to god that her ex-husband isn’t standing behind her.

“You must be the Attending who’s been stealing my interns.”

Meredith. The tension bleeds out of Addison’s shoulders, her very bones relaxing at the sound of her voice. She barely has time to turn her head before Meredith’s shoulder bumps against hers and she’s standing so close, leaning to peek at the chart and smelling like lavender and laundry detergent and just generally disrupting Addison’s heart rate.

“Ooh, a TTTS case.” She glances up at Addison, a cheeky smile pulling at her lips. Addison’s stomach flips, and she tells her heart to calm the fuck down and act normal for once in her goddamn life. “That’s how we met.”

Addison rolls her eyes as though Meredith’s words have not just caused a giant cocoon of butterflies to explode in her stomach. “We met because you were sleeping with my husband.”

“Sure, but you came to Seattle for the case,” Meredith fires back, her grin unrelenting. And honestly, there’s nothing Addison can do but acquiesce.

“Well, you’ve got me there,” she says. She clears her throat and tucks her hair behind her ears, fighting every urge to fidget under Meredith’s gaze. “Did you need something, Dr. Grey?”

“Just wondering where my interns had gotten off to. I’ll get them back, right?”

“Dr. Grey,” she drawls, dropping the pitch of her voice and tilting her head down to meet Meredith’s eyes over the rim of her glasses. “You know I don’t like to share.”

Meredith laughs, bright and warm, and Addison doesn’t even try to stop it this time when her heart swells. She does, however, restrain herself from laughing, and just grins instead.

“Actually,” Meredith starts, “can I steal you for a consult? Won’t take long, and you can get right back to saving babies.”

“Of course.” Addison hands the chart off to one of the interns whose names she couldn’t remember right now even if there were a gun to her head, not with Meredith looking at her with that stupid smile still glittering in the grey-blue of her eyes. The intern, startled, fumbles slightly but takes the chart, and Addison glances between the four of them. “Familiarize yourselves with the case. We’ll meet the patient when I’m done with Dr. Grey.”

-

(Callie watches them leave, some unidentified and indescribable thought spinning around in her brain. She mumbles aloud: “If I didn’t know Addison was Meredith’s husband’s ex-wife, I’d almost think that…” her voice trails off. No. There’s no way. But beside her, one of Addison’s interns completes the thought.

“...that was the loudest, most blatant flirting you’ve ever seen in your entire life?”

She glances over at Schmitt and sighs, shaking her head as she flips the page of one of her own patient’s charts and scribbles a note in the margins.

“Yeah. That about sums it up.”)

-

“You’re worried about Henry, aren’t you?”

Addison glances over at Meredith, turning away from the ultrasound images she’d asked her to look at. She tilts her head.

“Is it that obvious?”

Meredith just shrugs, which isn’t really an answer, but feels like one anyway. “Go see him,” she says, “while everyone thinks you’re busy saving my patient from me.”

Addison snorts. “Hardly,” she says. “You didn’t need my help. The fetus is fine and you know it.” She pauses, ducking her head and tucking her hair behind her ears. “I will, however, take the excuse to see Henry. Thank you.” Her smile is small and close-mouthed but genuine, and Meredith bumps their elbows, says: “Any time,” like it’s all just that simple.

And god, does Addison wish everything were that simple.

-

Addison thinks there is nothing in the world quite as beautiful as the smile that blooms across her son’s face when he sees her approach. He has this way of being that contains the brightest joy she’s ever seen—joy that is brighter than she even knew existed. He smiles like a new flower in spring, like petals unfurling under the pink morning sun. It fills her with a soft lamb’s-ear kind of love she didn’t know she was capable of. For most of her life, Addison has been certain that her love wasn’t good enough, but for Henry, it always seems to be.

And she hopes desperately that as he grows up he doesn’t, when he looks at her, begin to see whatever it is inside of her that’s chased away everyone who’s loved her, that made her parents never want her at all and her husband push every good memory away. (It would be a blatant lie to say that Addison wasn’t terrified of motherhood almost as much as she was desperate for it, and though that fear has quieted down, not being enough for Henry is still a pit in her stomach that aches so much sometimes it’s hard to breathe.)

For now though, he sees her coming from across the daycare where he’s sitting on a soft carpet patterned with the alphabet, leaned against the knee of one of the workers, colored blocks in both hands. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything with them other than inspecting them, his eyes big and curious in the way only a baby’s can be. He reaches out for her, dropping the blocks and waving his small hands, his sweet, gummy smile wide across his face. 

Crouching down beside him, Addison reaches back, picking him up into her arms and pressing several kisses to his cheek.

“My sweet boy,” she murmurs, running the tips of her fingers through his soft baby hair. “Good morning, I hope?” She’s looking at him when she speaks, but the words are more directed to the daycare worker—an older gentleman whose smile she can see in the corner of her eye.

“Peachy keen, doctor,” he says. The crinkles around his eyes deepen as his smile widens. “He’s examined every block in the bin and picked these two as the best ones.”

Addison’s laugh is small and almost silent, but her smile is bright as she looks down at her son, whose curious fingers curl around the temple of her glasses and give a little tug. He seems startled by the easy way in which they fall, landing above the space where her collarbone meets his chest. Immediately, he pulls them up to his face and right into his mouth, where he chews experimentally on one of the temple tips.

The man laughs as she tries to gently take them back. “My grandchildren all did the same thing. I was half-blind around them for years,” he says.

“He usually sticks to fidgeting with my clothes—that must be losing its intrigue.”

“He’s a curious boy, that’s for sure. Are you taking him for lunch, or just visiting?”

“Just visiting. I’m not used to spending so much time away from him, yet,” she admits.

“I remember that feeling well,” he says. “I don’t think it ever really goes away.”

Emotion swells in Addison’s throat like words that mean too much to be said out loud. Feelings that can’t be described right anyway. 

She looks at her son, his big eyes looking back at her. The warm and deep brown color of them, the way they’re always so bright with life, the way his lashes fall against the soft skin under his eyes when he sleeps. There’s an ache that forms in her chest when he’s far from her, an ache that sits between her lungs, just as present and noticeable as a heartbeat.

-

“I saw Derek this morning.” 

Addison glances up from her sandwich to see Amelia staring at her. She’s got an elbow propped up on the table and her jaw leaned on the back of a closed fist as she speaks through a bite of an apple. There are a million things Addison could say in response, but she says none of them—just stares back, uncertainty and anxiety beginning to spin in her stomach.

“He asked how long you’re staying.” Amelia’s gaze is searching, and though Addison knows exactly what she’s looking for, she can’t bring herself to speak. The end of her marriage was less than amicable and full of a grief that still pours out of her, sometimes. Between them remain the jagged edges of a love that ended without closure, and the angry wound that opened inside them both after he signed the papers, when he looked at her with blame and told her they’d broken apart because she loved him less than he loved her. 

No, she’d whispered, her voice cracking as she felt was left of them break apart. The line he’d carved between them split and opened beneath her, collapsing into something chasm-deep and uncrossable. My love was no less than yours. It just stopped being something you wanted. Now, years later, she cannot be sure if the words ever left her mouth, or if her lips moved soundlessly. Either way, he had said nothing more.

“What did you tell him?” she asks. 

Amelia shrugs. “Until you leave, I guess.” 

Addison’s lips quirk into a brief, almost smile. She tilts her head, looking fondly but curiously at her sister—her sister who surprises her every time she stands by her side when her side opposes Derek’s. Her sister, who to the rest of the world is not her sister at all, who should’ve stopped being so the moment Addison signed her marriage away. Her sister, who reaches out and steals another of her pretzels. Addison, who thinks that the bag is almost empty and she hasn’t eaten a single one, pushes it across the table.

“Thanks,” Amelia says, smiling crookedly through a mouthful of pretzel. Addison laughs in a small huff that doesn’t leave her mouth with any sound, but shakes in her chest and crinkles beside her eyes. 

She shakes her head and tries to return to her sandwich, but finds herself unable to do more than pick pieces off the soft crust. They pile up on the unfolded plastic wrap. Eventually, she can’t help herself but ask: “Did he look upset?” 

It’s vague, but Amelia purses her lips and meets her eyes, and Addison knows she understands. There’s an awkward sympathy in her eyes like she wants to help but has no idea how. She’s always been like that: her body so full of emotion with no idea how to express it. She fidgets with the edge of a sticker on her water bottle and Addison is full of affection, reminded of the young girl Amelia once was and sometimes still is deep inside. The girl who was abandoned by her family and sought refuge with Addison.

“Not really?” she shrugs, sounding only half-sure of her answer. “Kinda awkward, though.”

Addison squishes a bread crumb between her fingers until it crumbles. “Oh,” is all she says because she has nothing else to say. There should be so much whirling inside her head, anxieties and fears and the dread of what seeing him again will do to her, but instead her mind is silent. Silent in a way that is not calm but rather empty, like everything inside of her has disappeared and left her body hollow.

On the other side of the table, Amelia says nothing in response, but pushes the almost-empty bag of pretzels back across to Addison. 

-

Meredith’s shift ends at six, but it’s ten minutes past and she’s standing in front of the surgical board counting the times her husband’s name is written there. Counting the surgeries he’s scheduled past the end of his shift and calculating how long they will take. She has done this many times before. (And on the other end of the country, nearly a decade ago, Addison was doing the same thing.)

It doesn’t make sense, but it hurts to realize that it no longer hurts—knowing his shift will end and he’ll keep working, long enough to bleed into the start of the next. He will sleep in an on-call room in the meager time between surgeries and change into one of the several pairs of spare scrubs in his locker and eat dinner in the middle of the night at the cafeteria and he will not come home. It hurts to realize just how long it’s been since she cared.

(And she’s wondered, too many times, if that is how Addison felt before it ended: like she was trying to hold on to a marriage she knew, deep down, she’d already let go of.

But Meredith doesn’t know, because while there was never a moment in which they agreed to never speak of him, in all their months of late-night phone calls they never did, in a way that felt deliberate, as though they both knew it would all fall apart the moment they did.)

-

It’s been a while since she’s done laundry. The hamper next to her dresser is full, and pulling open all the drawers, Meredith finds them depressingly near empty. Without thinking about it, she shoves the backpack she’d taken from the closet back in and pulls her duffle out instead, and without thinking about it, she takes everything left in the dresser out in sweeping armfuls and stuffs them into the bag.

As she zips it up, pushing everything down until it will close, Meredith’s eye catches the picture frame hanging above the bed. Their post-it-note marriage. A wedding that was more like checking something off a to-do list. Run to city hall. Come back. Check on Izzie. Monitor John Doe. Talk George out of joining the army. Make vows—a commitment, a contract. Love each other even when we hate each other. No running. Take care when old, senile, and smelly. And it’s forever.

Something pinches and stings in Meredith’s chest. She can’t remember when the first vow was broken or who broke it first, but as she reads them over again, she knows it must have been a long time ago. Long enough to have forgotten. 

She looks down at her wedding ring, twists the band in a circle around her finger. She’s been wearing it all day outside of surgeries, but somehow the metal still feels cold. Everything inside of her is unsteady, but her hands do not shake as she closes and locks the door of the dream house behind her, like breaking the final vow.

-

Addison is in the kitchen preparing a bottle for Henry when Meredith gets home. Her gaze drops to the duffle bag hanging off Meredith’s shoulder, but she says nothing. Henry, cradled against her chest, is playing with the collar of her sweater. The yellow-pink light that filters in through the window over the sink seems to glitter off her hair, bright and shiny and for a moment Meredith is frozen still, watching the sunset glow around her. 

“Meredith?” Addison tilts her head to the side, toward Henry, who immediately reaches up to grab at the small claw clip holding her hair away from her face. Without looking away from Meredith with that soft, questioning and concerned look of hers, she sets the bottle on the counter and catches her son’s hand before he can tug the clip free. Easily distracted, he begins to play with her fingers instead.

“Meredith?” Addison tries again to catch her attention and this time it works—she jolts into motion, stepping further into the room. “Are you alright?”

Meredith swallows a feeling she cannot identify that’s suddenly built up in her throat, heavy and thick.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m fine.”

Addison’s expression shifts into one that seems somehow worried, doubtful, and unimpressed all at the same time, that screams: ‘I won’t call you on it, but that’s a bullshit lie and don’t think for a second that you’re getting away with it.’

Meredith exhales deeply—some kind of silent sigh, and though she’s far from wanting to talk about it, there’s always been something about Addison that makes her just a bit impulsive, makes her feel like she could admit every horrible thing she’s been keeping inside, and Addison wouldn’t even flinch. So she gives a little.

“I packed a bag,” she says, shrugging the shoulder carrying her duffle. Addison’s gaze drops to it again before rising back up to meet Meredith’s. Her face softens, the blue of her eyes turning to water, warm with the reflection of the sun. That unnameable thing rises in Meredith again, sudden and overwhelming. There are words forming in her mouth and she has no idea what they are except that she should not say them, so instead she blurts out: “Leftover pizza for dinner?”

“I picked a few things up after work,” Addison says after a pause. Henry pulls her hand up to his mouth and starts chewing on her forefinger with his one barely-poking-through baby tooth. “I thought I’d cook.”

Meredith blinks, unable to remember the last time she had a home-cooked meal; she burned scrambled eggs last week after realizing she’d had cereal or takeout for every meal for almost a month.

Too much time must pass in her silence, because Addison’s expression falters, her smile wavering and turning into something hesitant and insecure. 

“We can reheat the pizza though, if you’d prefer,” she offers. Her voice is smaller now and it feels all wrong. The way she shifts her weight and looks away, seeming out of place in this house for the first time since she arrived, makes Meredith feel a little nauseous. She shakes her head.

“No, save the pizza for lunch tomorrow. I’m sure whatever you cook’ll be great.”

The tension in Addison’s body dissolves and there’s that look again—that soft and glittery way her smile is brighter in her eyes than it is on her lips. Meredith is beginning to think Addison is a lot like Amelia, in that way: full of so many emotions that are stuck swirling inside her body.

“Okay,” she says, and pries her fingers from Henry’s grip to reach for his bottle.

“Okay,” Meredith echoes. For a moment, they just stare at each other. Finally, she says: “I’m gonna unpack,” and turns abruptly on her heels, fleeing toward the stairs.

-

There are already clothes in her old dresser. Her clothes. A few shirts and pairs of pants she’d left behind and forgotten.

Meredith unzips and upends her duffle onto the bed that’s still made with her old comforter, but someone has recently changed the sheets. They smell faintly of laundry soap and there’s a dryer sheet sticking out from under one of the corners of the mattress, clinging to the jersey fabric. Meredith almost smiles; it must’ve been Amelia, this morning before her shift. (She decides not to think about why Amelia would’ve thought she would need a place to sleep.)

All the clothes she’d brought with her lie in a heap on the bedspread. Looking at it all now, it’s more than she’d thought it was when she was packing, and it’s more than she thinks she maybe should have brought. As she sifts through it, tossing shirts and pants and underwear and socks into separate piles, she starts to feel a little dizzy. Three shirts, four shirts, five, six, seven, eight shirts. Meredith stops counting. Too many shirts for an overnight bag. Too many clothes for someone who isn’t planning to never go back.

Meredith sinks down onto the mattress. Downstairs, the front door squeaks open and closes; Amelia’s voice calls out I’m home! How much did you miss me? and Addison’s warm laugh filters up from the kitchen through the heating grate on the floor of Meredith’s old bedroom. She can’t hear their words as they meet and fall into conversation, but she can hear the soft timbres of them speaking, and for the first time in months, Meredith is home, and home is alive and full.