Falling Apart, Barely Breathing

Chapter 17: Break On Through, Part Seven

Chapter 17: Break on Through, Part Seven

By the time Addison finishes her clean-up after Izzie Stevens leaves her along in the prep room, Addison is completely starving. She's craving salt and sugar again, and embarrassingly enough she has no more of those snacks from the other day still stored in her office.

She'd munched on all of those while nervously imagining hypothetical conversations she may or may never have with the Meredith Grey. And while she's been freaking out internally about all of this, Addison has been burning through all those raw calories like a bonfire.

So she's standing in front of the vending machines again, trying to feed it her dollar. But for whatever reason, the machine just doesn't seem to want to give her anything that she wants.

"Motherfucker!" Addison curses loudly at the vending machine, kicking it slightly with the tip of her high-heeled shoes.

"Jeez, what did it do to you, now?" Addison hears a voice call out to her teasingly behind her and she swivels around to see who is behind her. She's startled because she instantly recognizes the sweet voice of the blonde and she's somehow overjoyed now to hear it directed at her.

So Addison spins around herself, albeit much too fast apparently for these 6-inch Prada pump heels. She's extremely off-balance now and she feels like she's heading right for the ground. "Ahh" she screams out involuntarily as the world starts to whiz right around her.

"Oh, Addie, watch out" Meredith calls out to her as she's heading to hit her head hard on the wall. "Steady" Meredith soothes her as Addison feels a small but strong pair of arms wrap around her waist tightly. "Relax" Meredith coos at her so she stops tensing her body up.

Addison listens to Meredith's recommendation and stops struggling. She sinks into Meredith's arms as Meredith steadies her back on her feet again. Addison just barely manages to not fall over.

As Meredith holds her, so tightly for a moment Addison's body stops spinning but her mind starts spinning even faster and faster than before. A flurry of emotions fly through Addison's brain as she indulges herself in how damn good her body just fits inside of Meredith's smaller one.

Meredith's head rests so sweetly into the crook of Addison's neck and Addison can't stop herself before she's pulling the Grey girl closer and wrapping her arms in return around Meredith's back and shoulders. She can feel Meredith tuck her head now, into the space right above her chest.

Addison inhales sharply as she regains her balance. The cool scent of lavender invades all her senses. Addison feels suddenly like she's gotten a bit drunk off of the sweetness of how Meredith smells and feels to her and all of this makes Addison cling onto Meredith even more.

Meredith nuzzles herself into Addison's chest and her eyes are closed lightly as she holds Addison as she stops swaying back and forth. She can feel Addison's heartbeat as she presses her ear to listen to it. It was beating fast before when she caught her, but now Meredith feels Addison's heart rate speed up even more (as her own does as well...)

Sensing that Addison is a bit nervous around her but not willing to pull away from her just yet, Meredith rubs soothing circles on Addison's back in an attempt to calm her down after her unfortunate near-fall.

(From her height of 5'10'', Meredith thinks, Addison having hit her head on the way - had Meredith not having been there to catch her, that is -would have been reason enough to have needed to have gotten Addie here a DAMN head CT!)

Meredith so close to her now, Addison thinks to herself. She is closer to her than she's ever physically been before, even more than that first night when Addie held up Mer's hair and sat next to the girl on the floor. Addison has never had a reason to hug Meredith before now.