"Somewhere on the 22nd Floor"

By Bleu

"What in heavens name brought you to Casablanca?"

"Addison, open the door."

"For my health…"

"It's me."

"...I came to Casablanca for the waters."

"You're being ridiculous."

"The waters? What waters? We're in the middle of a desert."

"Addison!"

"I was misinformed."

"I'm not leaving until you at least say something."

With a begrudging, almost vicious jab of her finger, Addison hit the "Pause" button on the remote, threw the layers of hotel blankets and tissues from her lap, and stalked to the door. She stood in front of it, and crossed her arms.

"What do you want, Mark?" she asked, barely containing her patience.

"To talk."

"So talk."

"I don't want to make the Pattersons' in 2213 blush."

The door opened, but by the time it swung entirely open revealing the inside of the room to him, she had already turned her back and walked back to the bed.

He smiled anyway. The open door itself was a small victory.

She plopped her weight onto the bed and huffed in disgust for her own weakness.

"It's a pleasure to see you, too, Addison." Mark began, advancing toward her solicitously with flowers. Four white roses. She doubted the white was a symbol of surrender.

Her glare stopped him a few feet from the bed.

"What. Do. You. Want?" she very nearly growled, her eyes burning. He shrugged easily.

"Well, seeing as I'm in a strange city—,"

"Which could easily be amended by one phone call."

"—I don't have nearly the Saturday night social life I used to." He spared a glance at the frozen Humphrey Bogart, and then to her appearance—an over-sized NYU medical school tee shirt and black cotton shorts, no shoes or makeup, topped off with a haphazard, now-sagging ponytail. "And apparently, I came to the right place to change that."

She folded her arms over her chest. He sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Addison, I'm staying in Seattle."

"No."

"Yes."

"I don't want you here."

"That's a lie."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Are we going to reduce ourselves to nu-uhs and yu-huhs, soon?"

"Leave."

"Nu-uh."

In very great spite of herself, a smile slipped quickly out, but was gone just as quickly.

Another small victory for the jackass. Not wanting to regress, he opted to sit in the chair aside the entertainment center as opposed to beside her on the bed.

"Can we talk?" he offered, leaning forward, parting his hands, and holding his palms upward diplomatically. A well-shaped eyebrow rose.

"About?"

"How in love I am with you."

"Mark!"

"Okay. The Seahawks."

With that, Addison jumped up.

"Mark…" she began, reigning in her patience and temper before continuing. "…I need to be alone right now."

She snagged her lip between her teeth and stepped back when he stood, also, moving closer.

"No, Addie." He corrected seriously, his specific and spicy cologne tickling her senses. "You've been alone in this rainy Hellhole too long."

She was silent, taking in the statement and its various meanings. He was right.

"That…aside." She continued, a little less harsh and little more somber, eyes lingering on his. "I don't want any company tonight."

"Why? You used to love my Bogart impression." He smiled, almost sadly, pushing a few strands of her hair so they didn't obscure her eye as they had been. She sighed.

"That's why you can't stay. You talk too much during movies."

He made a zipper motion across his lips.

"I doubt it." She replied.

"Seriously. Not a word." He slid out of his jacket, revealing close-fitting black button-up shirt, undone casually at the top. His jeans were dark, and made to accent a hard, masculine body like his without being obvious.

He noted her glances, and smiled. She worked very hard to make her glare convincing.

He hung his jacket on the back of the chair, and moved in front of her.

"You know, you keep frowning like that, you'll be in my office before you're 50 for Botox." He observed playfully, touching gently the wrinkle in the middle of her forehead.

"You sure know the way into a woman's pants." She commented wryly, letting her face relax but keeping a glare in her eyes, she hoped.

"With most women, I do. With you…" he trailed off, his voice softening. "You're not most women, Addison. Not for me."

A moment of silence, tense and heavy, passed. Her mouth moves in odd ways, not sure if it wanted to smile, frown, smirk, bite...or kiss. Before she or it decided, he spoke.

"Besides…" Mark began, moving around her, and falling onto the tangle of sheets and blankets right where she had been laying. "What makes you think I want to get into your pants?" he wriggled his eyebrows slightly and grinned, folding his arms behind his head. Seeing the trap, Addison deferred.

"A pathological addiction to sex."

"Only when it's good."

She snorted. He put his hands up.

"I promise, I will not lay a sexually-suggestive hand on you."

Still skeptical, she did ease herself down next to him. He smiled victoriously, laid an arm around the back of her pillow—not touching her—and focused on the screen. Incredulous to this platonic arrangement, Addison watched him for a moment.

"Um…movie?" he gestured towards blurred figures. She hit "Play".

He didn't say a word, and was asleep in an hour. Jet lag was a powerful thing.

When Bogart and Raines' heads disappeared into the black and white fog onscreen, Addison carefully maneuvered around him to hit "Stop" and place the remote on the bed stand, which was on his side. It wasn't easy, but she managed to do it without waking him.

In the now-silent room, only occasionally interrupted by footfalls and distant voices in the hallway beyond the door and traffic in the Seattle streets below, Addison could hear every breath he took. He snored.

She had heard of couples having to sleep in separate rooms due to one's inability to stand the other's snoring. She could understand, in theory. The few experiences, when Derek had been sick, that she had with snoring were unpleasant. It had no cadence, so there was no way to adjust. And when it would lapse for an extended period, the body would begin the slow descent into unconsciousness, but somehow it always worked out that right when the body was just about asleep, an even louder, harsher, invasive snore would jolt it right back to consciousness. If someone did that every night, in theory, Addison could understand separate bedrooms.

But listening to Mark snore and feeling his warmth in the bed, she decided in reality, she would prefer to have a snoring man. She had spent too many months, years, next to a silence. Mostly, the silence was generated by absence. She woke up often, and had just as often, had no comfort except an expanse of expensive sheets. And even when he was there, he didn't snore. So when she awoke, she had to open her eyes and look to make sure. A strange symbol, she decided, of their marriage. He was there in physical form, but not really. She always had to make an effort to make sure. One can't sleep or live like that for very long.

She pursed her lips.

Why did Derek always come into her thoughts? Even when they started about other men, Derek was there, eventually. Not snoring. Being that ridiculous, newly-anointed "McDreamy."

Mark stirred, and his snoring got deeper. She brushed a hand over his forehead, barely touching it.

He wasn't "McDreamy." He never would be. "McDreamy" would have suffered, being eternally in love with her without action. Not that adultery was a virtue in any way, but in the very least, Mark didn't deny his feelings for her or his failings as a friend to Derek. "McDreamy" was just...dreamy. In theory.

And being married to "McDreamy" had been hell. Pure Hell. The few brief moments in the past months when she was actually married to Derek were the moments when they would recollect what life had been like before. In those moments, she saw the Derek she had loved, and the Addison he had loved. The unstoppable "Derek and Addison."

She wasn't that Addison anymore, and he wasn't that Derek anymore.

This was obvious when the moments came rarer and rarer, eventually lapsing completely.

He was irrevocably "McDreamy," now. He lived in a trailer. He brought dead fish into said trailer. He wore hiking boots. He didn't shave religiously. Flannel dominated his weekend wardrobe. He was sensitive, wounded, tortured. He tried to do the "right thing"; he was the martyr. He loved Meredith Grey, but stayed with Addison "because of the ring." He had tried to be Derek and "McDreamy" for a little while, too, but the personas could not coexist. "McDreamy" won out.

He didn't want Addison.

Frankly, she didn't want "McDreamy." And, in retrospect, she didn't want Derek, either. It was clear, now. If she had, really, truly had wanted Derek, would she have slept with Mark? No. She just…wouldn't have. But at the time, out of habit or the belief that it was what she "should" feel, she had thought Mark had been a device to wake Derek up, a catalyst to change and improve their marriage. She knew now it wasn't. The marriage had been Hell, and she had wanted out. She also wanted Mark…but that was just so complicated…She shook away the distracting thought.

She wished she could have realized all of this that night—it would have saved her a lot of painful months in Seattle.

She wondered why she had tried to hold onto that for so long. Habit? Hope that maybe it would miraculously change? Probably a lot of both.

But it was over, now. She and Derek. It was sad that they couldn't make it work, but the fact remained, they could not make it work.

She was relieved to realize that she was, indeed, relieved to be done trying.

She brushed her lips over the scar on Mark's cheek where he had been punched months prior.

"We were being good." He said slyly, not opening his eyes but allowing a grin to creep over his face.

"You said no hands."