Sunday on a Saturday Afternoon - 6/20
Previous Chapters: o1 o2 o3 o4 o5
Title: We Don't Have to Walk Alone
Pairing: Alex/Addison
Rating: PG
Summary: Nothing more than friends...
Author's Note: I really didn't want to read any more melodramas or work on a research paper, so I did this instead. I'll probably revert to the every Saturday schedule that I was operating on before, but because I'll be gone, I thought I'd get this up tonight.
We Don’t Have to Walk Alone
It had been some time since Alex had had a girlfriend. A real girlfriend, not awkward sexual encounters in an on-call room, not relationships built on making him feel guilty, not pining after someone who didn’t want him. It had been so long that Alex wasn’t even entirely sure what he would do when presented with the prospect of having a girlfriend. He wasn’t good at the dating part of things, the noticing and complimenting a woman on her clothes or making paying for dinner seem like a nonchalant act instead of a calculation of how much he could spend before the night was out. He was good at the picking up women in bars thing, the sleeping with them and not calling them thing. So he was surprised to find himself thinking about what it would be like to have Addison for a girlfriend.
Alex found himself noticing her clothes. Every article had been specifically picked out and matched to every other article. He appreciated the precision, even if he couldn’t really understand it. His method of getting dressed was smelling a shirt to see if its odor was unobtrusive enough to get away with wearing it in public and then picking up yesterday’s pants and pulling them on.
Just as Addison didn’t want to be another Derek or Preston, Alex didn’t want to be another Meredith or Cristina. He didn’t want to be just another intern sleeping with an attending. Even if that attending was a smoking hot babe. But sleeping with Addison wasn’t even really his focus. He began thinking of what she’d be like on a date. He sometimes found her presence in the hospital overbearing and wondered if she was like that naturally, or if she toned it down when she didn’t have to be somebody’s boss. There were moments every now and then, when she wasn’t ordering anyone about, where she seemed relaxed, like a real person and not like a goddess of neonatology. Those were the moments when Alex wanted nothing more than to ask her out.
“Karev. Stop mooning around and come help me with my patients. You do want to be a plastic surgeon, don’t you? That involves actually dealing with patients that need plastic surgery. Get a move on it!” Sloan barked, shaking Alex from his thoughts. It was probably for the best. Alex wasn’t going to ask her out anyway, and shouldn’t waste his time thinking about something that wasn’t going to happen.
---
Addison was grateful that Alex wasn’t on her service anymore. She had spent several days after their encounter in the bar dissecting every interaction for hidden subtext. When she found none, other than that he probably thought she was a lonely old hag, she had to drop it. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t continue to think about what it would be like if he didn’t think of her as a lonely old hag. So she needed time to collect herself, and if Alex was on her service, she wouldn’t have that opportunity.
There were patients to see, surgeries to perform, interns to forget. Addison was sure that she spent almost as much time telling herself not to think about Alex as she did thinking about Alex. She berated herself for thinking about an intern in that way. She, who prided herself on being the consummate professional, was thinking about dating an intern. Not that she would ever actually date him. She wouldn’t date an intern, it was against her principals.
Addison was able to distract herself for a good portion of her day, but when Alex sat himself across from her at a cafeteria table, she found it incredibly hard to not think about him.
“Okay, so I’ve been thinking about this. Not a lot, because I’m not that guy, but I’ve put some thought into this. We should go out.” Alex laid it out, short and simple. He was honest; it was his best quality.
Addison was less than blown away. She twisted her mouth, biting her bottom lip before deciding on the appropriate response. “No.”
He stared back at her. “That’s it? Just ‘no’?” Alex was half-tempted to get up and leave her with her limp salad and coffee.
“Yes. That wasn’t even close to the proper way to ask someone out. It wasn’t even really asking. You just told me we should go out. How do you expect a woman to respond to those kinds of advances?” Addison shook her head in disbelief. She knew that she was partially responsible for his medical education. She hadn’t thought she’d be responsible for his romantic education too.
“It usually works pretty well for me.” He shrugged as Addison’s eyes widened.
“Well, you usually ask out women in bars. Your standards are not high, and your pick-up lines do not have to be anything special. You’ve lost your touch.” She was toying with him a little. She might have said yes to his advances if he wasn’t an intern.
“I have not lost my touch. If anything, my touch has been honed. My touch is just fine. You just have impos - that’s not the point. The point is that we should go out.” Alex was unused to having his romantic requests denied. It had been too long since he’d had a girlfriend. Or even a decent date.
“No, the point is that you are my intern and I am not dating you.” Addison was proud of herself for sticking to her principles. Usually when confronted with an attractive male who was practically throwing himself at her, she did not show such restraint. “But, if you happened to see me in a bar, I would not leave the area if you sat next to me.”
“Would I be allowed to buy you a drink? Would I be able to call you Addison?”
“You already know that when we are drinking beer, you can call me Addison. You would not, however, be able to buy me a drink. That’s what men do in bars to get women to go home with them, and I would not be going home with you.” She was firm, and Alex found it endearing.
“So we can be friends?” Alex thought he could be friends. Meredith and Izzie were his friends. Sure, he had slept with Izzie, but they were friends now. He could have a woman friend. He could be that guy.
“Friends,” Addison confirmed. She’d had male friends. Weiss, for example. A few guys from med school that she didn’t really talk to anymore. Well, the point was that she could have a male friend. She was that mature.
“With benefits?” His proud, schoolboy grin made Addison laugh and Alex enjoyed the sound.
“No, Alex. No. Just friends. Nothing more than friends. You can sit next to me in a bar, we can talk about things, but that’s it. I’ll go to my hotel room, you’ll go…wherever it is you go.” Addison picked up her empty salad container and stood up. “If you happen to be in Joe’s tonight around eight o’clock, you might find me there as well.”
“It’s a date,” he said to her retreating back.
“No. It’s not,” she called over her shoulder and she heard Alex’s chuckle as she tossed her garbage into the trash can. But she made a mental note to change before going to the Emerald City Bar that night.
[ Chapter Seven]