I Tried To Hate You (But Somewhere Along The Line I Fell In Love)

Chapter 1

This was not how Meredith Grey's life was supposed to work out. She never really had a solid plan for her life after medical school besides starting her internship, but this? She certainly would not have planned this.

For the first time in a while, things had really started to look up for her. Sure things weren't perfect, she still hadn't properly spoken to her father in almost twenty years, her mother still had Alzheimer's and as a doctor, she was starting to worry about her liver with the amount of alcohol she had been putting into her body, but some things just couldn't be fixed. Or at least she didn't have the money at the moment to pay a good enough therapist to fix them.

Despite all that, things were finally going well. She had moved back into the house in Seattle that she had lived in as a child, the place that still held all her mother's old medical tapes and things from her childhood. There were still some bad memories that lingered around the house for Meredith but in the end, it was home. It felt less empty now with George and Izzy living there too. At first, she had hated the idea of having roommates but she had caved when she realised she wouldn't be able to afford rent without them. As it turned out they were good company and as a bonus point Izzy was a great baker and there was almost always freshly baked goods in the house.

She was a surgical intern in a programme that was praised as one of the best in the country. In the same programme and hospital that her mother had done her internship at. The same place that her mother had learned, grown and thrived in as a young female surgeon.

She had him. The Guy From The Bar, McDreamy, Her Knight In Shining Whatever, Derek Shepherd. She was in love and in what was turning out to be a steady relationship for the first time in a long time. She was happy with him, and hell she had even adopted a freaking dog.

Everything had started to come down around her when she showed up in Seattle for the first time. The She-Shepherd, Satan, The Adulterous Bitch, Addison Montgomery. Whatever you wanted to call her, she was his fucking wife. Derek was married. Everything about this perfect relationship she had was built on a lie and it had turned to chaos. She felt like she had been thrown into freezing water and she didn't know how to deal with any of it.

Maybe she wouldn't have cared so much if Addison had just come to Seattle to win Derek back, to take him home to New York with her, sure it would have hurt but she would have drowned her pain in tequila and boys and gotten over it eventually. No, what bothered Meredith the most was that Addison was tall, glamorous, just all around beautiful and showed no signs of actually leaving Seattle as long as she had a chance of fixing her marriage with Derek.

It would have helped if she had hated Addison - and she really had tried to - but Meredith found her actually easy to work with and Addison didn't seem to hate her despite the fact that she had been sleeping with her husband. Or was it ex-husband? There had been some talk thrown around about divorce papers but Meredith wasn't sure if that was just Derek's attempt to get her back because it didn't seem like anything had been signed. After all, Addison was still calling herself Montgomery-Shepherd and Meredith couldn't help but notice the wedding rings Addison still slipped back on her finger after scrubbing out of surgery. She couldn't help but notice the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach every time she saw her wearing the rings either.

Every morning Meredith found herself standing in the locker room with her friends hoping that when Bailey showed up to give them their assignments she would tell her that Doctor Montgomery-Shepherd had once again requested her on her service. At this point, Meredith found her easier to work with than Derek who she still wasn't entirely on speaking terms with yet. Sometimes if she was put on Derek's service she would ask to be moved to Addison's. It had gotten to the point that her friends had started to pick up on it and Alex would make fun of her for working with "the vagina squad," the newest nickname on a long list of them that they had for OB/GYN. Bailey would reluctantly agree to move her, claiming that she had brought her sex life into the hospital and she had to deal with the fall out of that but she also wanted to avoid any further drama with her interns who seems prone to it.

Meredith had tried to hate Addison at first or at least that was what she had tried to convince herself when she would catch herself staring at the other woman or when she had started to pick up on her habits. She had just been looking for any reason to hate her, that was all.

Bullshit.

It wasn't hatred. The way that now every time Derek walked into a room Meredith found herself letting her glaze glide past him to see if Addison was following behind him and the disappointment she would feel when she wasn't, wasn't hatred. The more of Addison's habits that she picked up on the more she felt herself being drawn to her. Habits like the way she would always sit her glasses in the middle of her nose rather than fully pushing them up or the way her nose would scrunch up when she was really concentrating on something, pushing her glasses even more off centre. Or how if she was holding a pen while she read over charts she would worry it between her teeth.

Meredith had noticed that when Addison was alone or when the room was quiet she would talk to the premature babies on the floor in a hushed voice, whispering words of encouragement or just rambling about life. She would watch her moving around the hospital, sometimes in her pink scrubs - that were somehow so different from her regular clothes but yet so Addison - and sometimes just in her lab coat with her own expensive, stylish clothes underneath. She had gotten used to having her around and the unique things she did in the hospital, like bringing Meredith hot chocolate whenever she lost a patient even if she hadn't been on her service that day.

Before Meredith was able to just push it all to the back of her mind and ignore it. Addison was married to Derek so what did it matter what she thought about her? Or how she felt about her? Of course, that was up until that morning. Meredith had made her way to the floor she had been paged to but after she hadn't been able to find Addison she had approached a nurse, telling her that she been paged by Doctor Montgomery-Shepherd. It was at that moment that Addison had rounded the corner onto the hallway.

"It's um, just Montgomery now," Addison corrected her coming to stand next to Meredith, the chart for their consult under her arm. She caught the nervous look on her face as she lifted her hand and tucked her hair back behind her ear.

"What?" Meredith asked staring at her blankly.

"My name. The divorce was finalised this morning so, Montgomery." Addison explained brushing past Meredith to lead her down the hall to their consult. Meredith moved to follow her but her mind was racing now, taking in absolutely none of the information she was giving her about the case.

The divorce had been finalised. Addison wasn't married to Derek anymore. Maybe what Meredith thought about her did matter after all.

~~~

"Oh my god." Meredith groaned, rolling over onto her stomach she buried her face into the gurney she was lying on. It was lunchtime now and she hadn't been able to stop thinking about what Addison had said about the divorce. She was still dodging Derek in the halls but all she wanted to do was talk to Addison, but she didn't know what she wanted to talk about.

"What's the matter with you?" Cristina asked not lifting her eyes from the textbook in her hands, she was scrubbing in on a surgery and was trying to cram as much research as she could in during their break. "Regretting that tequila from last night? Realising how screwed up your love life is? Thinking about sticking your hand in another chest cavity of a patient with a bomb inside them?"

"I'm having a serious crisis here." She said turning her head so she was looking up at Cristina, her cheek now pressed against the gurney.

"Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want me to come over after work and we can drink and dance it out?"

"That's the problem I don't know! Maybe both? I just-" Meredith pushed herself up again moving to sit with her back to the wall. She couldn't get comfortable. Part of her wanted to get up and move, to do something but she was already exhausted. Whether the tiredness from work or the overthinking, she wasn't sure. She felt defeated. None of it made sense to her, she had tried to hate Addison, she really had but it had just made her feel closer to her, had just given her more mixed, confusing feelings.

"Addison and Derek finalised the divorce and I think I chose the wrong Shepherd." Meredith blurted out. She didn't quite know what she was saying but she needed to say something. Especially to Cristina, she was her best friend, her person. She knew that she would eventually notice that there was something going on and she didn't want to lie to her. Even if she couldn't help her out of this one she needed someone she could vent to. "I think- I think I might be in love with Addison."

Meredith heard Cristian's textbook snap shut next to her. Looks like she finally had her full attention.