Interlude (Come Fly With Me) by irinafan, NC-17 [ Part I ]
Title: Interlude (Come Fly With Me)
Author: irinafan
Recipient: hedgie125
Pairing(s): Alex/Addison
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Addison has a problem. Alex has a solution for it. Starts somewhere after Blues For Sister Someone, stretches the last few episodes of S2 into a few months and goes completely AU after the S2 finale until the end of S3.
Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy is not mine; I am making no profit.
Note: I did not plan for this to become so extraordinarily long, it just kinda happened. I have to split it into three posts because it exceeds LJ's allowed maximum word count. (Thought it would go into two, but it doesn't.)
Sorry for the delay with posting, I took too long and didn't give my beta enough time. Thanks so much to still_might_be for editing it practically over night. *hugs*
Interlude (Come Fly With Me) - Part I
She’d have been an easy target for anyone, but that it had to be Alex Karev of all people-arrogant, cocky, infuriating intern-who saved her from the sex-deprived last few months of her marriage, that was just so ironic that it made Addison want to laugh and cry at the same time.
After their latest, rather unsuccessful attempts at having halfway decent sex, Derek had apparently made up his mind that it was fruitless. He didn’t touch her anymore. He barely looked at her anymore. He stayed at the hospital every night it was possible, she was lucky to have him in “their” bed once a week. She’d tried joining him in an on-call room, but had been met with him turning his back on her grumpily. She’d bought new lingerie and dressed up for him, but he’d barely spared her a second glance. She gave up after he literally pushed her out of the shower when she attempted to get in with him, yelling at her that there wasn’t enough space for both of them over the sound of the water hitting his naked body. He didn’t want her anymore, and he made it so obvious she felt pathetic for even trying.
The whole thing had been going on for two months now, two months which was 8 weeks which was 56 days without sex. After three weeks (when her own hands weren’t enough anymore, instead they kinda made it worse) she started to throw the drawer where her old vibrator from her med school days pre Derek was hidden longing glances. Two weeks later, she dug it out even though it meant giving up somehow, but had to realize that her old friend hadn’t survived the move from New York to Seattle. She threw it against the wall of the trailer in a burst of anger, and it came impressively back to life by imploding in on itself and sending electric sparks in the direction of Derek’s rubber boots. She thought about buying a new one, but she refused to do it because she was married and supposed to have sex life with a real human being and not some technical gadget and dammit, that would mean giving up.
At this point, she was craving just simple human touch and was hypersensitive to everything male that crossed her way. The male nurse from the second floor brushed her arm accidentally, and she found herself shivering at the contact for a few seconds. The janitor with the glasses and the weird hairstyle suddenly seemed so much sexier. She could barely stand to be in a room with Preston Burke, and had to remind herself that he was taken and she was married over and over again. Interns weren’t just interns anymore-little, pitiful, clueless slaves-she was all of a sudden very much aware that they were also men. She caught herself staring at George O’Malley and had to bang her forehead against the cool tiles of the next bathroom a few times to get over her own disgust at herself. She tried to relieve a bit of the tension by yelling at Alex Karev, who’d been on her service for a few weeks now, but after she walked in on him in the locker room changing from scrubs back to every day clothes, that wasn’t an option anymore either. Especially because of the way his muscles had rippled when he’d tugged the scrub top over his head to reveal a black tank top and more muscles. And then the way his pants were hanging a little too low on his hips, and she’d just been staring, a weird ringing tone in her ear. He’d said something, but she hadn’t heard, and it had taken her a few seconds to come out of her trance. She could still remember the curious look on his face when she’d turned around and fled the scene without answering.
She had the feeling she was starting to embarrass herself, and if she couldn’t find a solution to this whole dilemma soon, she’d do something she’d clearly regret later. Crazy things had been on her mind the past few days, like going to New York for a few days to visit Mark or throwing herself at Derek again and begging him to please have sex with her, and those were only two of the more harmless ideas. (Not that she’d ever execute either-she would never beg anyone, and Mark had been a mistake she didn’t want to repeat.) While she was trying to come up with a more acceptable solution, Preston walked by, leaving the smell of his after-shave mixed with his post-surgery-sweat behind him, and she had to lean against the wall a little to keep her knees from giving in. She hated this, hated how she knew probably every man’s after-shave in this god damn hospital by now, how she could barely function, how she wasn’t thinking about anything but sex anymore. If this was what Mark felt like 24/7, she could almost understand why he’d cheated on her with half of the nursing staff in New York. A beeping sound from her hip shook her out of her thoughts, and when she reached down to take a look at her pager it was Alex Karev calling her to OR2 and shit, she’d forgotten her afternoon c-section.
She jogged through the hospital a little faster than she deemed dignified, shocked and annoyed at herself because this was the first time in Seattle, hell, the first time in her entire career that she was late for a surgery without having a professional reason for it. She cursed Derek with every step she took, after all he was the one at fault for her current state of mind, and she hated him for being able to do this to her. She reached the scrub room more than slightly out of breath, pushing the door open a little too forcefully, sending Alex Karev stumbling backwards a few steps. He laughed at her.
“Dude, you look like-”
“Shut THE HELL up, Karev and go give the patient the prep talk. I need to scrub in first.” She interrupted him, almost yelling, and he threw her a glance that she couldn’t quite classify, but then turned around without another word and entered the OR. She put her hands on the sink and took a few deep breaths before starting to scrub in, scolding herself for losing control in front of her intern like that: he’d pay her back with biting remarks and the like during the entire surgery now. When she entered the OR a few minutes later, Alex Karev wasn’t the only other surgeon in there, no, Derek and Preston were both standing next to him. Crap. Another thing she’d forgotten about: the mother was pregnant with twins, of which one had a suspected heart condition and the second suspiciously low brain activity. That meant being stuck in one room with Derek, Preston and Alex Karev for a few hours, who were just about the three best-looking men in the entire hospital. She started to sweat before she even stepped up to the table.
Fortunately enough, her sense of professionalism was still distinct enough to override her body’s needs and she managed to get through the entire four and a half hour surgery without killing one of her patients, embarrassing herself or jumping one of the three men around the table (fantasies of them naked aside). She was almost proud of herself, until she ended up stuck between Derek and Preston at the sink while scrubbing out. Preston bumped his left shoulder into her right one with every movement, and then Derek absently placed a hand on her waist for balance when he reached for a paper towel. Her entire body tingled at the touch, and she instinctively turned around and reached for her husband, one hand behind his head, the other on the way to his shoulder. “Not now, Addison,” he hissed and dodged her mouth, closing a hand around each of her wrists, dragging them away from his body.
He left her standing there, her arms still halfway raised, her face flushed with arousal and embarrassment. Preston hadn’t noticed, he was stills scrubbing out, lost in thought, but when she looked up her eyes locked with Alex Karev’s, whom she’d completely forgotten about with the other two men in the same room. The way he looked at her told her that he’d definitely seen what had just happened, the expression on his face between pity, anger and something else she was unable to interpret. She returned his silent stare defiantly but had to break it first when she felt tears of rage at her husband in her eyes. She pushed the door open violently, once again cursing Derek for turning her into a stupid fool and embarrassing her in front of her intern. And now she’d also lost a staring match with said annoying intern for the first time; by now he was probably jumping around in triumph in the scrub room and would be even worse to deal with than usual.
Of course, ten minutes later (five of which had been spent changing back into actual clothes and lab coat, the other five standing with her head pressed against the cool metal of her locker) he paged her to the nurse’s station on the second floor.
“Doctor Shepherd, I need your signature on the post-op notes, the-”
She stopped a few metres away from him, trying not to explode right there this second. “You need a SIGNATURE? That couldn’t have waited another ten or fifteen minutes?”
“But you always-”
“I don’t care what I always do! I just had a four hour surgery and it would be NICE to take a little break after that: you could have at least given me enough time to fix my hair!” she snapped at him, putting a hand to her head and pointing at the untidy bun at the back of it.
“Excuse me, but you usually sign the post-op notes BEFORE taking your break and fixing your hair or whatever, you said-”
“I don’t CARE what I said, I’m saying I wanted to take a break now BEFORE signing the damn chart, not that-”
“Well how would I KNOW that you want it like that THIS TIME; it’s not like I can read your mind, DOCTOR Montgomery-Shepherd!” he retorted, his voice getting louder too now.
“Do NOT yell at me like that!”
“You’re the one who started the yelling!” He crossed his arms and glared at her, a glare that he’d often sent her way and that she knew all too well. Usually it just made her roll her eyes, this time…not.
“You are COMPLETELY OUT OF LINE! I can yell whenever I want to: I am your BOSS!”
He pressed his lips together, obviously trying hard to keep in whatever he wanted to say next, but it came out anyways: “Well then ACT like it and not like some-”
“Some what? SOME WHAT???”
He didn’t dare answer that, and once again just returned her stare.
“You know what, get the hell out of my eyes. Get your ass down to the pit and do sutures until you pass out, but don’t you dare show up here again today.”
She didn’t wait for an answer but turned around fuming, stalking down the corridor to the next bathroom to take care of the mess on top of her head. Maybe she should just kick him off her service entirely and try to get Izzie Stevens back. Stevens wouldn’t yell, would sure as hell not disobey her orders, and on top of that she definitely didn’t look as nice as Karev without a shirt on. It took her some effort to get that image back out of her mind, and she hated him even more for it. But then again it was better than thinking of her husband half naked, getting out of the shower, not letting her touch him. He was always dangling himself right in front of her, just out of her reach. Her hands passing through her hair, she tried to straighten out the rebellious strands (and her adulterous thoughts), and she was almost done and content with the result when her pager beeped again.
It was Alex Karev, again. This time, he was paging her to the third floor, a floor that was almost entirely used for nothing but administrative stuff. What the hell? How did he get from the pit up to the third floor, and why did he need her up there? She briefly considered not answering the page, but there was her sense of professionalism again, coming up with various scenarios that all involved Karev finding a pregnant, needy woman in the administrative section of SGH.
Of course, when the elevator doors opened, the corridor was empty save for Karev, who was standing at the end, his arms crossed, sending that glare that she already knew her way. She threw up her arms in a gesture of annoyance and defeat and started to make her way down the hall. “What’s going on? Why the HELL did you page me here?” she yelled, but he didn’t answer. She heard the elevator doors close behind her, and only then did he start walking towards her, his jaw set, his steps wide and purposeful. She had the sudden urge to turn around and run, but that was ridiculous, he was just her intern and there was nothing about him that could scare her or make her want to run.
And then he was there, his hand closing around her upper arm, opening the door of the next best room and dragging her into it. She was too surprised to even react before he turned the key and pushed her backwards until her back hit the wall. “What the-” she tried to ask, but he was much too close all of a sudden and she was interrupted by him thrusting his hand between her legs and cupping her through her panties. She yelped in surprise, her hips jolting forwards into his touch, into that large and warm hand that was exactly in the right place. Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment and her own hands flew downwards, closing around his forearms (much like Derek had done to her earlier), but she somehow couldn’t bring herself to push him away entirely.
“What are you doing?” she almost screeched, a little breathless, staring at him wide-eyed, trying to ignore the flash of heat between her legs. He didn’t answer, at least not with words, but his hand started rubbing her a little, creating wonderful friction between her skirt, her panties and her skin, and her grip around his wrists loosened a little while she tried hard not to moan. She had to stop this. He was her intern, this was completely inappropriate and on top of that she was still married. To a man who didn’t want to touch her anymore, but still, the ring was still on her finger, as well as on his, so clearly married. She lost that particular train of thought when the man she was definitely not married to pressed his fingers against her a little harder, and then moved a little closer into her. His lips were on her neck, his tongue slowly swirling against her, and this time she did moan, instinctively turning her head a little to give him better access. She was so distracted by his mouth that she only noticed his hand sneaking under her skirt when he cupped her again, this time with one layer less between his and her skin. It had been so long since someone had touched her at all, she’d just let him continue for another thirty seconds and then push him away and yell at him and-oh-that was his tongue on her earlobe.
She gave up when he slipped a finger into her, slowly sliding in and out, pressing his thumb into her clit. She gave up pretending that she had a fulfilled married sex life and that she wasn’t completely sex-starved. Her head hit the wall with a thud when she pulled her intern closer, gasping when he added a second finger. She reached for the drawstring of his scrub bottom, but he stopped her midway, putting his free hand over hers.
“No,” he said quietly into her ear, “I know you don’t want to cheat on him again.”
She gave a breathless laugh, “This isn’t cheating?”
“Well, you’re not doing anything; I’m the one doing all the doing.”
“But-ah-” Now there was a third finger, and he started moving a little faster and harder. All of a sudden, talking wasn’t an option anymore, and she didn’t protest when he used his free hand to push her panties down and out of the way. She barely noticed herself stepping out of them, concentrating on nothing but his hands and his lips. One of his arms moved around her waist to steady her against the wall, and she couldn’t do anything anymore but screw her eyes shut and try not to be too loud when he sped up once again. She came with a long moan, contracting around his fingers violently, her whole body shuddering. It was pure bliss for a few seconds, her first orgasm in what seemed like ages, her body welcoming the release, her back arching off the wall.
He kept moving his fingers until he was sure she was finished, neither of them doing anything until the last contractions had ebbed out.
“There. Feel better now?” he finally asked, removing his arm from around her waist. She opened her eyes, expecting to see a smirk on his face. She was surprised to see that he’d asked in earnest, his eyes scanning her face (she hoped to god that it wasn’t pity that she was seeing in his expression).
“Why did you do that?” was all she could say, still leaning against the wall, her skirt dangerously high up her thighs. He leaned in again and whispered into her ear: “Because your husband is a fool…..and you’re a pain in the ass when you’re horny.”
When he pulled back, there was the smirk on his face she’d waited for, and she felt like laughing for a second in all her post-orgasmic bliss and embarrassment. He bent down and picked up her panties, but when she reached her hand out for them he snatched his own hand back and balled them into a tiny bundle of black fabric. “I think I’m gonna keep those.”
Her mouth opened in protest, but he’d already tucked them into the back pocket of his scrub bottom, the smirk turning into a wide grin.
“And now I’m going to do sutures until I “pass out,” like you said, Doctor Montgomery-Shepherd.”
He was out of the door before she had a chance to retort anything, leaving her standing panty-less against the wall, her hair a mess (again), her clothes crumpled. It was the best she’d felt in weeks.
* * *
Of course, once the initial high after getting off wore off, embarrassment gained the upper hand. She had no idea how she’d ever be able to look her intern in the eye again. It would have been less bad if they’d had actual sex, because then he’d have been in the panting and moaning category too, but instead she’d done all of that alone (head thrashing around included, oh god) while he had gotten literally nothing out of it but her panties. Lack of underwear and all her embarrassment aside, her body was nicely relaxed, no tingling nerves, no sudden heat waves, and she could finally work without getting sidetracked by fantasizing about the men around her. She went to sign the post-op notes and did some other over-due paperwork for the remaining one and a half hour of her shift, happy that for now, she didn’t have to figure out how to deal with the whole Karev thing. Or better, with the Karev’s-hands-between-her-legs thing. (Who knew that they weren’t only talented at cutting, but had other very interesting qualities too?)
When she got home to the trailer, she was immensely surprised to see light. She figured she’d left it on in the morning, but the shadow moving in one of the windows told her otherwise. Derek was home, for the first time that week. She took a deep breath and opened the door cautiously, expecting a rush of guilt upon seeing him, much like she had the first few months after Mark. Interestingly enough though, she felt absolutely nothing, except for anger upon seeing the silver, slippery trout in the kitchen sink. She sighed and Derek, coming out of the toilet, just laughed at her. “Come on Addie, it’s just a fish. You don’t have to look at it or eat it or anything.” She scoffed and went to take off her shoes, having a hard time resisting the urge to throw one of them at him. She hated how he was always pretending that everything was fine, that they were still all couple-y and happy together, that he hadn’t just pushed her away in the OR earlier, that he wouldn’t turn his back on her the second they got into bed. But as long as the lights were on, he’d pretend. She briefly considered telling him that Alex Karev had finger fucked her just a few hours ago (and she imagined herself using those exact, vulgar words-that would probably shock him more than the fact that she’d done it at all), but she scrapped that idea immediately. It would just make her look like the cheating whore again (which she probably was) and give him a reason to file, and maybe, just maybe, there was still a chance left for them somewhere.
Still, that night when they got into bed, she was the one turning her back on him first. Usually, she always tried to get at least a good-night kiss, but this time, she just got in, turned around and pretended to be dead tired, just like he always did. She left him the task of switching off the lights, and she couldn’t help the triumphant smile on her face when she heard him grumble something about it.
* * *
The next morning, Karev was still working in the pit, so she asked for Izzie Stevens as her intern and was secretly happy to get around having to face him for another few hours. Unfortunately, the few hours turned into only a half hour when he paged her from the pit. A single expecting mom had cut her arm and came in to have it sutured, and apparently Karev got out of her that she hadn’t had any pre-natal care at all so far, and she was five months along. Alex was his usual annoying self during presentation, making it clear that he wanted to be anywhere else but in the OBGYN department (Addison caught Izzie rolling her eyes from the corner of her eye), with no word indicating that he and she had engaged in more than strictly professional behaviour. She managed to thank him curtly for paging her and then went on to say that she’d already taken Stevens as her intern, but of course, the blonde was already bouncing up and down with excitement and before she knew what happened, Izzie ran off to her heart patient and she was stuck with Alex Karev as her intern again, who looked pissed, staring in the direction Stevens had vanished. Just great.
And then it turned out that her intern was at least as good at pretending as her husband was. She didn’t notice any difference in the way he treated her: there were no embarrassing talks, no saucy winks from his side (which she’d secretly expected) or dirty remarks or inappropriate touching. Everything was just the way it had been before he’d dragged her into that room on the third floor. At the end of the day, she herself had gone back to normal again too, ordering him around and sometimes yelling a little, and only caught herself staring at his hands once, something she was kinda proud of.
The incident with his hands under her skirt sustained her for a few days and she somehow managed to get through the rest of the week on the memory of it, but then the lack of touching and no-sex and what else not caught up with her. She got horribly cranky again and hated herself for it, but she couldn’t really do anything about it, and while Karev’s hands had been nice, he was still her subordinate, it was still terribly inappropriate and it had been a one-time thing, something he’d done out of pity. That made her even more angry, that she’d sunk so low as to accept a pity finger fuck from her intern, and she started yelling at him for no reason again.
Two days later, she found herself being dragged into a linen closet on the first floor after she’d gone off at Karev for standing around too long at the coffee chart. She was already embarrassingly wet the second he locked the door, and it took him barely two minutes to make her come after he’d dragged her panties down her legs. He kept them, again, and she walked around for the rest of the day feeling wonderfully sated and a little rebellious without panties.
It took her two more “incidents” to figure out that he wasn’t doing it out of pity. The third time, he kept her on the edge for a full five minutes, just always sliding in and out a little harder, but never hard enough. She didn’t beg (not with words, anyways), but she finally realized that he did it for the power. He liked having her moan and pant with his fingers inside of her, he liked that in that moment he was the one in charge, that she couldn’t do anything at all to make him do what she wanted, that she had to accept what he was giving. It was sick and twisted, but she didn’t care just as long as he made her come at least once a week.
They developed something like a set of rules, though some of them were more like habits. She never came to him, he was always the one to start it, but she could get him there if she just yelled loudly enough or dressed him down in front of his colleagues. They never had actual sex; it was just always his hands between her legs. She’d tried to initiate real sex once more, but he’d stopped her again, saying that he didn’t sleep with “married women.” He never kissed her on the mouth. It made her feel dirty, and she felt it turned him into a manwhore, but when she got drunk at Joe’s one day and ran into him in the parking lot, she finally drummed up the courage to ask him about it and he admitted that, if he kissed her, he might not be able to keep his no-sex-with-married-women vow. (She still wasn’t sure if that had really happened-maybe it’d been just a dream of her alcohol-hazy mind-but in any case, it gave her ego a much needed boost.) He always kept her panties as some kind of “prize” (which she found endearing), and she started to bring an extra pair with her to work. Sometimes she lost the second pair too in one day.
A few weeks later, she was running out of underwear. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone shopping, so she took the opportunity when she had an afternoon off work and had a blast in several lingerie shops around Seattle. She’d almost thought about asking him to come with her, but then she caught sight of the silver sparkling ring on her finger, and for the first time since this whole thing had started, got a bit of a bad conscience. She was still trying to get through to Derek, but it was getting increasingly hard to ignore the languishing looks he was throwing at Meredith Grey. She wondered if at least he had a bad conscience too, but that was probably asking too much. After all, he was Derek Shepherd, perfect neurosurgeon, who always did the right thing. She returned her attention to the underwear collection spread out on their bed in the trailer, and refused to feel guilty about consciously buying them for a man she was not married to. It had been fun, the most fun she’d had in ages, and she wouldn’t let anyone or anything ruin that now.
On Derek’s and her twelve year anniversary (he’d forgotten of course, but she never could), she felt all too aware of the horrible state her marriage was in, and she had a hard time not crying during an exhausting, three hour long hysterectomy. When she got out of the OR after scrubbing out, the first thing she saw was Meredith and Derek, glancing longingly at each other while waiting for the elevator. She watched, transfixed, as they got in and the door closed behind them, her jaw clenched, her hands balled to fists at her sides. She hadn’t heard him come out after her, but then Alex was there, closing a hand around the right fist, tugging at it. He wasn’t dragging her into the closet this time, it was more a gentle leading her along the way, and she went with him without protesting. His hands were slow and soft this time, their eyes locked and she searched for pity in his look and only let him continue when she didn’t find any. He divested her of her scrub bottoms and her panties, stroking her hips. She made a feeble sound of protest when he stopped touching her altogether, but then there was his tongue against the inside of her thigh and she jumped a little, gasping in surprise. “Alex, what-ohgod-” and that was his tongue on the inside of her other thigh. He chuckled a little and her legs almost gave way from the vibrations of his stubble against her skin, and then he dipped his tongue ever so slightly into her and her legs did give way. He halfway carried, halfway dragged her to a nearby chair, and once she was safely seated, returned his attention to between her legs. It took him barely ten minutes to make her come three times, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that another man managed to turn an anniversary with the man she was married to into one of the best in years.
Alex let her keep her panties this time, and once she’d gotten dressed again, she impulsively hugged him close for a second, whispering a quiet “Thank you” in his ear.
“I hate what he does to you,” he whispered back and tightened his own grip around her briefly before turning to leave the room. She stood there for a long time, wondering if her ears hadn’t played a trick on her, but once she’d pinched herself twice she finally started to believe that her horribly arrogant and cocky intern had actually been nice and comforting for a change. That evening, she left the hospital with the feeling that she had at least one friend in the city that hated her.
* * *
Sometimes she felt really bad for making him her scapegoat for whatever went wrong in her life. Granted, he usually paid her back by glaring at her while keeping her on the edge and making her squirm in desperation, but still, it wasn’t really fair to him. He’d been on her service for about three months now and the punishment for the thing he did with the Wards should have been over a while ago. But somehow she couldn’t get herself to finally let him off her service, because that meant she couldn’t yell at him anymore, and then that would lead to a definite decrease in the times he dragged her into closets or on-call rooms or other places in the hospital.
It was a vicious cycle, and it only became more twisted when he followed her into a bathroom after she’d yelled at him for misspelling a patient’s current condition on a chart. The day had already started out bad when she’d overheard Meredith and Cristina Yang talk at the nurse’s station about how Meredith and Derek were “friends” now and went out together for walks with Doc almost daily. Apparently, her husband had somehow forgotten to tell her about it.
It was still pretty early and the bathroom smelled like a mixture of disinfectant and polish when she leaned over a sink to check her eye makeup. The door opened and when she looked up at the mirror, her eyes locked with Alex Karev’s in the reflection. “Karev, this is a women’s bathroom. Get out,” she said, but he merely looked around and when he was sure that the room was empty except for the two of them, he stepped up behind her and placed a hand on the sink on either side of her, leaning in a little and pressing a soft kiss to her neck. She sighed and allowed herself to press back into him for a few seconds, but then his hands were on her hips, travelling inwards. She stopped them with her own, looking at their reflection in the mirror. It was a nice image, his arms wrapped around her, his head on her shoulder, peering at her in the mirror. “This is a bad idea, Alex. Anybody could come in: there’s no lock on the door.” She pointed at it demonstratively with one finger.
His eyes followed her outstretched hand, and then a smirk crossed his face. “Well, not on that door,” he answered and tugged her backwards. An incredibly short amount of time later, she was half lying, half sitting on a closed toilet seat in one of the cubicles, her skirt high up on her thighs, Alex kneeling between them, his mouth already hard at work. One of her hands was behind her to support her on the cold porcelain, the other was splayed against the thin wooden wall on her left, and she was trying hard to keep the moans and gasps to a quiet minimum. She’d just wrapped her legs around his neck when the door to the bathroom opened and two sets of footsteps made their way to the line of mirrors. She froze.
“I don’t know how it happened, but that was months ago, and I can’t do anything but kiss him anyways, otherwise he’d probably die from the strain or something.” That was Izzie Stevens, clearly gushing over her favourite patient.
“Izzie, you’re not just crossing the line, you’re more erasing it and if Bailey finds out you’re going to be in so much trouble!” Addison only barely managed to suppress a gasp of surprise, because that was clearly Meredith Grey, her husband’s favourite intern. Alex shifted a little between her legs, drawing his feet closer to his body to make sure they couldn’t be seen from the outside. She felt trapped, locked into this tiny cubicle with her intern while her husband’s ex-girlfriend and another one of her interns were discussing their love lives outside. She also felt weirdly excited; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a situation that came dangerously close to being caught during sex.
Her husband’s name fell on the other side of the wooden door, and her jaw tightened a little. “Derek and I are friends,” Meredith declared proudly, and luckily Addison’s angry snort was drowned out by Izzie’s laugh booming through the room. “Yeah, that’s why he’s mentally undressing you every time you’re in the same room.”
“IZZIE!” Meredith yelled, and Addison felt her hand tighten around the toilet seat.
“He’s married, and there’s nothing going on between Derek and me!” Addison almost opened her mouth to say something, but a slight tap on the inside of her thigh reminded her of the man still very much kneeling between her legs. Their eyes locked, and his mouth turned up into a wide, evil grin that gave her a sense of foreboding. He kept staring at her, and slowly lowered his head again, and her eyes turned wide with shock when she realized what he was planning. He touched his tongue against her clit softly, and it took her a great deal of effort to keep the noise down. She barely noticed Stevens mocking Meredith with a “Yeah, suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure” in the background, and when Alex sucked on her lightly, she gave a quiet gasp and tried to reach for his head to push him away. Unfortunately, taking her hand away from the wall made her lose her balance, and she almost fell of the toilet seat, only avoiding it by thrusting her hand against the wall with a loud THUD. The room grew quiet all of a sudden, and she threw Karev an angry look and felt ridiculous holding her breath for a few seconds.
“Hello?” came a voice from the other side of the room, “Is somebody in here?” Izzie Stevens asked, the sound of footsteps coming closer. Oh shit. Addison panicked. Her face was flushed with arousal, her panties on the floor…and her intern between her legs. Not a position she wanted to be seen in. The footsteps stopped right in front of the door, a light knock at the door following. She screwed her eyes shut and desperately tried to think of a way to get out of this. Alex was looking up at her expectantly, but she silently gestured to him not to make a single sound or move.
“Izzie, give it up. There’s probably nobody in there, and if there is, they obviously have no interest in company.” Meredith announced, her voice still coming from the sinks. Addison saw a shadow on the bit of floor that was visible from the inside, and when the shadow seemed to grow larger, she finally decided that it was time to do something. “I swear to god Stevens, if you bend down to look under the partition now, I’ll kick your ass so hard you won’t be able to walk for the next few days,” she blurted out, and the young woman on the other side of the door gave a surprised yelp.
“Doctor Montgomery-Shepherd?” Izzie screeched, at the same time Meredith said “Oh, crap” from somewhere behind her. Addison saw with relief how the shadow vanished, and Alex pressed his mouth into her thigh, his whole body shaking with suppressed laughter. She bit her lip and unlocked her legs from around his neck a little to bump her heel into his back warningly, if he didn’t manage to stay quiet now this whole thing would blow up gloriously. He seemed to have other plans though, with the imminent danger of getting caught gone, his tongue snuck out again against her, and she screwed her eyes shut, concentrating on not making noise.
“I’m so sorry, we’re just gonna…go…now,” Stevens announced from the other side, and Addison nodded in agreement before she realized that the other woman couldn’t see her (luckily). “Yeah, that’s a very good-ah-idea. And close the door behind you.” She tried to say with as much authority as she could muster what with Karev sucking on her clit. She heard the two women shuffle around, and the second the door closed, Alex thrust his tongue into her and started moving in and out in a merciless rhythm. She gasped and moaned and forgot all about scolding him when she finally came violently, her back arching off the toilet, her hips pressing forward.
“You’re fucking insane,” she told him, as soon as she was able to breathe again, and watched him slump down against the wall behind him as he laughed at her. She adjusted her skirt and smoothed down her hair while he picked up today’s panties and held them up in the light. They were of a light blue color, nicely decorated with lace and tied with satin ribbons at the side. She’d felt ridiculous buying that particular pair, but he seemed to like them. “Nice panties,” he deadpanned, still sitting on the floor (and was her mind playing tricks on her, or was he a little out of breath too?) and she laughed down at him when he balled them up and put them into his pocket.
He got up and unlocked the door for her, but didn’t follow her out after she’d brushed past him. When she turned around, he was bracing himself against the wall, taking deep breaths with his head hanging low. She threw him a questioning look, and got a pained half-smile back in return. “Go ahead, I’ll be out soon, I just…I think I need a cold shower first,” he grimaced, biting his lip. Her eyes travelled downward and when they met the obvious bulge in his pants, she felt her body give a jolt and swallowed hard. He wanted her. He definitely wanted her, and she’d slipped in between his arms and the wall before he even had a chance to react. She cupped him through his pants, and he groaned, one of his hands flying downward, stopping hers. “Don’t,” he managed to get out with great effort. “You’re still married.” She moved her free hand around his body and placed it against his butt, pressing his body into hers. He groaned again, and her eyes flew open when she felt him breathing hard against her lips. Their faces inches from each other, he glowered at her and she smirked at him a little. “No,” he said again, yanking his hips away from hers. She sighed, disappointed, and placed her hands against his chest, closing her eyes in defeat.
“But you know, when you and Shepherd get d-”
Her eyes flew open. “When we get what?” she asked sharply, glaring at him. “When we get WHAT?? We’re not getting ANYTHING!” she yelled and pushed him away from her forcefully. His back hit the opposite wall of the stall, and she stormed out of the room without sparing him a second glance.
Was that what everybody thought? There hadn’t even been an “if” in Alex’s sentence, no, he’d said “when,” as if the divorce was inevitable, as if it was just a matter of time until Derek would dump her and go back to his intern. She spent the rest of her shift snapping at each and everyone, looking for signs of pity in every nurse’s, every anaesthetist’s eyes, wondering if they all thought the same as her intern.
* * *
They barely spoke to each other for four days, and on the fifth day, after they’d made up, Richard almost caught them. She’d probably moaned a little too loud this time, so she opened the door to the linen closet cautiously and only stepped out after she was sure nobody was in the vicinity. She closed the door in relief and when she turned around, Richard was standing there, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his lips pressed into a thin line, his eyes sending her a scrutinizing look that reminded her a lot of her intern days. She swallowed.
“You were the last person I expected to come out of there, Addison.” He said, and she cursed inwardly when she felt herself blushing. “Especially because I just met Derek up on the third floor, and now I’m wondering why you’re coming out of a linen closet on the first floor, obviously dishevelled, and who in God’s name was with you in that room if it wasn’t your husband.” There was no humour in his voice, nothing of the usual warmth, and her throat went dry and she hoped to God that Alex wouldn’t choose this moment to come out.
She was trying desperately to come up with a way out of this, but when she opened her mouth, Richard silenced her with a raise of his hand. “No look, I know it’s none of my business, and while you and Derek are both my friends, you’re also my employees, and I can’t have my employees sleeping around, and-”
“I’m not sleeping around!” she hissed, absolutely mortified, but he just threw her a sceptical look.
“You want the truth?” she added. “The truth is that my husband refuses to touch me, so I have to…um…find other solutions to my …problems.”
She held her hands up a little and waved them, but he didn’t seem to get what she was implying. She could feel how hot her face was by now and she was absolutely mortified already, but if that got her out of this situation, she’d pay the prize.
“Look, you’re a surgeon, I’m a surgeon. Surgeons have usually very…er…talented hands. And they aren’t just good for cutting things open.” She waved them again, and his eyes wandered from her hands to her face and then back, and suddenly his face turned beet- red in realization.
“Oh,” he said. “OH!” a little louder. At this point, she was looking anywhere but at him, both of them shuffling around awkwardly. “God Addison, I’m so…I’m just….” He gave up and almost ran away, and she hung her head in embarrassment, placing a hand on each flaming red cheek. At least they hadn’t gotten caught, even if it meant that Richard wouldn’t be able to look her in the eyes for the next few weeks. Or months.
* * *
The next few days passed in a flurry of activity: Izzie Stevens almost killed Denny Duquette and got a heart for him along the way, Burke was shot, the chief’s niece was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Doc died…and Derek invited her to prom.
Addison was ecstatic. He’d smiled at her and sincerely asked her out, and for the first time in months she felt that they might actually have a chance. A few hours later, Karev tried to drag her into an on-call room, but she pushed him away and resisted his hands for once. He looked confused when she left him standing there, but left her alone for the rest of the day.
She spent hours in front of her wardrobe, trying to figure out what to wear. In the end she went for a red dress that she’d bought together with Derek years ago, but never gotten the chance to wear. She did her hair and make-up carefully, turning in front of the mirror one last time, feeling like the lucky girl who got to go to prom with the hottest guy in the entire school.
She passed Alex Karev in the hall, absently noticing that he looked good in a suit, but he was lost in thought and staring after a disappearing Izzie Stevens, and she was looking for her husband. The hospital was decorated beautifully, and she congratulated Miranda Bailey on a job well done before asking Derek to dance. He held her close, and she leaned into him, nuzzling her nose into his neck a little. A few minutes later, he excused himself to go check on a patient, and Doctor Dandridge walked up to her for some polite conversation. She should have figured it out then, but she’d been so happy the entire evening, her mind didn’t make the connection.
When her husband got back, he smelled like Meredith Grey’s perfume. She had to hold on to the vet for a few seconds because her legs threatened to give out when she saw the guilty look on Derek’s face. Luckily, nobody really noticed the Shepherd marriage ending quietly and unspectacularly; they were all too distracted by the drama surrounding Izzie Stevens and her heart patient. The other shoe had finally dropped. They were over, so over, in that moment in the hall, and she felt a little like she was in a different universe: every sound seemed to be extraordinarily loud, every vision especially colourful, the young blonde intern in her pink dress, the two men following her out of the hospital, Derek and Finn both staring at Meredith. She couldn’t take it anymore, she had to get out, and so she followed the chief and Miranda down the hallway, but they left her standing there too, and she stared at a clumsily drawn image of a kid riding a horse on the wall, completely lost.
A few minutes later, Derek appeared out of nowhere, and when he saw her shivering, draped his jacket around her shoulders, mumbling something about a car crash victim in the ER he had to attend to. Always pretending, even now after he’d put a definitive end to it, but of course, he thought she had no clue. The image in front of her turned slightly blurry, and she was still blinking the tears away when somebody else came barging down the corridor.
It was Alex, looking for Izzie’s shoes, and she just shook her head when he asked her about them: no, she hadn’t seen them. It was funny, that just hours ago she’d been standing in front of a mirror, her biggest problem her own shoes, and now she couldn’t even remember which pair she’d picked anymore, it was that insignificant compared to the rest of it. She raised her dress a little to peer at her feet, but when she looked up, Karev was standing in front of her, throwing her a concerned look, pink peep-toes dangling from his hand.
“You found them,” she noted with a voice that didn’t seem to be hers, and he took a step closer to her, one hand on her elbow. “You okay?” he asked, and she quickly nodded her head, “Yeah, fine. I’m fine.” Their eyes locked for a second, and she knew he didn’t believe a single word. “Where’s Shepherd?” he wanted to know, but when she pursed her lips and opened her mouth to say something, nothing would come out. He searched her face for an answer, and whatever he saw made his grip tighten around her elbow and his face scrunch up in anger.
“Come on, I’ll drive you home,” he said with more softness than she’d ever expected from him, and started to lead her away gently.
* * *
She had the side of her head pressed against the cool glass of his car window, and he turned off the engine after they arrived at the trailer, neither of them saying anything for a while.
“They had sex.” She finally broke the silence and turned her head to look at him. “He invited me to prom and then he went and had sex with Meredith.”
“He’s an ass,” Alex said, and it earned him a tiny smile on her part. It was nice that he didn’t try to tell her how sorry he was; sorry for something he hadn’t been involved in, faking sympathy. They watched each other silently for a few minutes, each of them pondering how they’d ended up there, in that car, in that moment.
“I should get inside,” she announced and reached for the door handle.
“Do you want me to-”
“No, it’s fine. Go take care of Izzie. I’ll be okay on my own,” she answered, sending him an understanding smile.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure.” She turned to open the door, but his hand on her free hand stopped her. He squeezed it lightly and smiled at her. “He’s an ass, so he probably hasn’t told you this, but … you look beautiful.”
She had to look away from him then because she felt her eyes water, but she still managed to press out a short “Thank you” and squeeze his hand back to make sure he knew she really appreciated it.
She watched his car disappear in the distance and hugged her husband’s jacket closer to her body. Her hands went into the pockets, her right hand absently closing around a piece of fabric. When she pulled it out, it was a pair of panties that definitely didn’t belong to her.
* * *
Part II
Author: irinafan
Recipient: hedgie125
Pairing(s): Alex/Addison
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Addison has a problem. Alex has a solution for it. Starts somewhere after Blues For Sister Someone, stretches the last few episodes of S2 into a few months and goes completely AU after the S2 finale until the end of S3.
Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy is not mine; I am making no profit.
Note: I did not plan for this to become so extraordinarily long, it just kinda happened. I have to split it into three posts because it exceeds LJ's allowed maximum word count. (Thought it would go into two, but it doesn't.)
Sorry for the delay with posting, I took too long and didn't give my beta enough time. Thanks so much to still_might_be for editing it practically over night. *hugs*
Interlude (Come Fly With Me) - Part I
She’d have been an easy target for anyone, but that it had to be Alex Karev of all people-arrogant, cocky, infuriating intern-who saved her from the sex-deprived last few months of her marriage, that was just so ironic that it made Addison want to laugh and cry at the same time.
After their latest, rather unsuccessful attempts at having halfway decent sex, Derek had apparently made up his mind that it was fruitless. He didn’t touch her anymore. He barely looked at her anymore. He stayed at the hospital every night it was possible, she was lucky to have him in “their” bed once a week. She’d tried joining him in an on-call room, but had been met with him turning his back on her grumpily. She’d bought new lingerie and dressed up for him, but he’d barely spared her a second glance. She gave up after he literally pushed her out of the shower when she attempted to get in with him, yelling at her that there wasn’t enough space for both of them over the sound of the water hitting his naked body. He didn’t want her anymore, and he made it so obvious she felt pathetic for even trying.
The whole thing had been going on for two months now, two months which was 8 weeks which was 56 days without sex. After three weeks (when her own hands weren’t enough anymore, instead they kinda made it worse) she started to throw the drawer where her old vibrator from her med school days pre Derek was hidden longing glances. Two weeks later, she dug it out even though it meant giving up somehow, but had to realize that her old friend hadn’t survived the move from New York to Seattle. She threw it against the wall of the trailer in a burst of anger, and it came impressively back to life by imploding in on itself and sending electric sparks in the direction of Derek’s rubber boots. She thought about buying a new one, but she refused to do it because she was married and supposed to have sex life with a real human being and not some technical gadget and dammit, that would mean giving up.
At this point, she was craving just simple human touch and was hypersensitive to everything male that crossed her way. The male nurse from the second floor brushed her arm accidentally, and she found herself shivering at the contact for a few seconds. The janitor with the glasses and the weird hairstyle suddenly seemed so much sexier. She could barely stand to be in a room with Preston Burke, and had to remind herself that he was taken and she was married over and over again. Interns weren’t just interns anymore-little, pitiful, clueless slaves-she was all of a sudden very much aware that they were also men. She caught herself staring at George O’Malley and had to bang her forehead against the cool tiles of the next bathroom a few times to get over her own disgust at herself. She tried to relieve a bit of the tension by yelling at Alex Karev, who’d been on her service for a few weeks now, but after she walked in on him in the locker room changing from scrubs back to every day clothes, that wasn’t an option anymore either. Especially because of the way his muscles had rippled when he’d tugged the scrub top over his head to reveal a black tank top and more muscles. And then the way his pants were hanging a little too low on his hips, and she’d just been staring, a weird ringing tone in her ear. He’d said something, but she hadn’t heard, and it had taken her a few seconds to come out of her trance. She could still remember the curious look on his face when she’d turned around and fled the scene without answering.
She had the feeling she was starting to embarrass herself, and if she couldn’t find a solution to this whole dilemma soon, she’d do something she’d clearly regret later. Crazy things had been on her mind the past few days, like going to New York for a few days to visit Mark or throwing herself at Derek again and begging him to please have sex with her, and those were only two of the more harmless ideas. (Not that she’d ever execute either-she would never beg anyone, and Mark had been a mistake she didn’t want to repeat.) While she was trying to come up with a more acceptable solution, Preston walked by, leaving the smell of his after-shave mixed with his post-surgery-sweat behind him, and she had to lean against the wall a little to keep her knees from giving in. She hated this, hated how she knew probably every man’s after-shave in this god damn hospital by now, how she could barely function, how she wasn’t thinking about anything but sex anymore. If this was what Mark felt like 24/7, she could almost understand why he’d cheated on her with half of the nursing staff in New York. A beeping sound from her hip shook her out of her thoughts, and when she reached down to take a look at her pager it was Alex Karev calling her to OR2 and shit, she’d forgotten her afternoon c-section.
She jogged through the hospital a little faster than she deemed dignified, shocked and annoyed at herself because this was the first time in Seattle, hell, the first time in her entire career that she was late for a surgery without having a professional reason for it. She cursed Derek with every step she took, after all he was the one at fault for her current state of mind, and she hated him for being able to do this to her. She reached the scrub room more than slightly out of breath, pushing the door open a little too forcefully, sending Alex Karev stumbling backwards a few steps. He laughed at her.
“Dude, you look like-”
“Shut THE HELL up, Karev and go give the patient the prep talk. I need to scrub in first.” She interrupted him, almost yelling, and he threw her a glance that she couldn’t quite classify, but then turned around without another word and entered the OR. She put her hands on the sink and took a few deep breaths before starting to scrub in, scolding herself for losing control in front of her intern like that: he’d pay her back with biting remarks and the like during the entire surgery now. When she entered the OR a few minutes later, Alex Karev wasn’t the only other surgeon in there, no, Derek and Preston were both standing next to him. Crap. Another thing she’d forgotten about: the mother was pregnant with twins, of which one had a suspected heart condition and the second suspiciously low brain activity. That meant being stuck in one room with Derek, Preston and Alex Karev for a few hours, who were just about the three best-looking men in the entire hospital. She started to sweat before she even stepped up to the table.
Fortunately enough, her sense of professionalism was still distinct enough to override her body’s needs and she managed to get through the entire four and a half hour surgery without killing one of her patients, embarrassing herself or jumping one of the three men around the table (fantasies of them naked aside). She was almost proud of herself, until she ended up stuck between Derek and Preston at the sink while scrubbing out. Preston bumped his left shoulder into her right one with every movement, and then Derek absently placed a hand on her waist for balance when he reached for a paper towel. Her entire body tingled at the touch, and she instinctively turned around and reached for her husband, one hand behind his head, the other on the way to his shoulder. “Not now, Addison,” he hissed and dodged her mouth, closing a hand around each of her wrists, dragging them away from his body.
He left her standing there, her arms still halfway raised, her face flushed with arousal and embarrassment. Preston hadn’t noticed, he was stills scrubbing out, lost in thought, but when she looked up her eyes locked with Alex Karev’s, whom she’d completely forgotten about with the other two men in the same room. The way he looked at her told her that he’d definitely seen what had just happened, the expression on his face between pity, anger and something else she was unable to interpret. She returned his silent stare defiantly but had to break it first when she felt tears of rage at her husband in her eyes. She pushed the door open violently, once again cursing Derek for turning her into a stupid fool and embarrassing her in front of her intern. And now she’d also lost a staring match with said annoying intern for the first time; by now he was probably jumping around in triumph in the scrub room and would be even worse to deal with than usual.
Of course, ten minutes later (five of which had been spent changing back into actual clothes and lab coat, the other five standing with her head pressed against the cool metal of her locker) he paged her to the nurse’s station on the second floor.
“Doctor Shepherd, I need your signature on the post-op notes, the-”
She stopped a few metres away from him, trying not to explode right there this second. “You need a SIGNATURE? That couldn’t have waited another ten or fifteen minutes?”
“But you always-”
“I don’t care what I always do! I just had a four hour surgery and it would be NICE to take a little break after that: you could have at least given me enough time to fix my hair!” she snapped at him, putting a hand to her head and pointing at the untidy bun at the back of it.
“Excuse me, but you usually sign the post-op notes BEFORE taking your break and fixing your hair or whatever, you said-”
“I don’t CARE what I said, I’m saying I wanted to take a break now BEFORE signing the damn chart, not that-”
“Well how would I KNOW that you want it like that THIS TIME; it’s not like I can read your mind, DOCTOR Montgomery-Shepherd!” he retorted, his voice getting louder too now.
“Do NOT yell at me like that!”
“You’re the one who started the yelling!” He crossed his arms and glared at her, a glare that he’d often sent her way and that she knew all too well. Usually it just made her roll her eyes, this time…not.
“You are COMPLETELY OUT OF LINE! I can yell whenever I want to: I am your BOSS!”
He pressed his lips together, obviously trying hard to keep in whatever he wanted to say next, but it came out anyways: “Well then ACT like it and not like some-”
“Some what? SOME WHAT???”
He didn’t dare answer that, and once again just returned her stare.
“You know what, get the hell out of my eyes. Get your ass down to the pit and do sutures until you pass out, but don’t you dare show up here again today.”
She didn’t wait for an answer but turned around fuming, stalking down the corridor to the next bathroom to take care of the mess on top of her head. Maybe she should just kick him off her service entirely and try to get Izzie Stevens back. Stevens wouldn’t yell, would sure as hell not disobey her orders, and on top of that she definitely didn’t look as nice as Karev without a shirt on. It took her some effort to get that image back out of her mind, and she hated him even more for it. But then again it was better than thinking of her husband half naked, getting out of the shower, not letting her touch him. He was always dangling himself right in front of her, just out of her reach. Her hands passing through her hair, she tried to straighten out the rebellious strands (and her adulterous thoughts), and she was almost done and content with the result when her pager beeped again.
It was Alex Karev, again. This time, he was paging her to the third floor, a floor that was almost entirely used for nothing but administrative stuff. What the hell? How did he get from the pit up to the third floor, and why did he need her up there? She briefly considered not answering the page, but there was her sense of professionalism again, coming up with various scenarios that all involved Karev finding a pregnant, needy woman in the administrative section of SGH.
Of course, when the elevator doors opened, the corridor was empty save for Karev, who was standing at the end, his arms crossed, sending that glare that she already knew her way. She threw up her arms in a gesture of annoyance and defeat and started to make her way down the hall. “What’s going on? Why the HELL did you page me here?” she yelled, but he didn’t answer. She heard the elevator doors close behind her, and only then did he start walking towards her, his jaw set, his steps wide and purposeful. She had the sudden urge to turn around and run, but that was ridiculous, he was just her intern and there was nothing about him that could scare her or make her want to run.
And then he was there, his hand closing around her upper arm, opening the door of the next best room and dragging her into it. She was too surprised to even react before he turned the key and pushed her backwards until her back hit the wall. “What the-” she tried to ask, but he was much too close all of a sudden and she was interrupted by him thrusting his hand between her legs and cupping her through her panties. She yelped in surprise, her hips jolting forwards into his touch, into that large and warm hand that was exactly in the right place. Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment and her own hands flew downwards, closing around his forearms (much like Derek had done to her earlier), but she somehow couldn’t bring herself to push him away entirely.
“What are you doing?” she almost screeched, a little breathless, staring at him wide-eyed, trying to ignore the flash of heat between her legs. He didn’t answer, at least not with words, but his hand started rubbing her a little, creating wonderful friction between her skirt, her panties and her skin, and her grip around his wrists loosened a little while she tried hard not to moan. She had to stop this. He was her intern, this was completely inappropriate and on top of that she was still married. To a man who didn’t want to touch her anymore, but still, the ring was still on her finger, as well as on his, so clearly married. She lost that particular train of thought when the man she was definitely not married to pressed his fingers against her a little harder, and then moved a little closer into her. His lips were on her neck, his tongue slowly swirling against her, and this time she did moan, instinctively turning her head a little to give him better access. She was so distracted by his mouth that she only noticed his hand sneaking under her skirt when he cupped her again, this time with one layer less between his and her skin. It had been so long since someone had touched her at all, she’d just let him continue for another thirty seconds and then push him away and yell at him and-oh-that was his tongue on her earlobe.
She gave up when he slipped a finger into her, slowly sliding in and out, pressing his thumb into her clit. She gave up pretending that she had a fulfilled married sex life and that she wasn’t completely sex-starved. Her head hit the wall with a thud when she pulled her intern closer, gasping when he added a second finger. She reached for the drawstring of his scrub bottom, but he stopped her midway, putting his free hand over hers.
“No,” he said quietly into her ear, “I know you don’t want to cheat on him again.”
She gave a breathless laugh, “This isn’t cheating?”
“Well, you’re not doing anything; I’m the one doing all the doing.”
“But-ah-” Now there was a third finger, and he started moving a little faster and harder. All of a sudden, talking wasn’t an option anymore, and she didn’t protest when he used his free hand to push her panties down and out of the way. She barely noticed herself stepping out of them, concentrating on nothing but his hands and his lips. One of his arms moved around her waist to steady her against the wall, and she couldn’t do anything anymore but screw her eyes shut and try not to be too loud when he sped up once again. She came with a long moan, contracting around his fingers violently, her whole body shuddering. It was pure bliss for a few seconds, her first orgasm in what seemed like ages, her body welcoming the release, her back arching off the wall.
He kept moving his fingers until he was sure she was finished, neither of them doing anything until the last contractions had ebbed out.
“There. Feel better now?” he finally asked, removing his arm from around her waist. She opened her eyes, expecting to see a smirk on his face. She was surprised to see that he’d asked in earnest, his eyes scanning her face (she hoped to god that it wasn’t pity that she was seeing in his expression).
“Why did you do that?” was all she could say, still leaning against the wall, her skirt dangerously high up her thighs. He leaned in again and whispered into her ear: “Because your husband is a fool…..and you’re a pain in the ass when you’re horny.”
When he pulled back, there was the smirk on his face she’d waited for, and she felt like laughing for a second in all her post-orgasmic bliss and embarrassment. He bent down and picked up her panties, but when she reached her hand out for them he snatched his own hand back and balled them into a tiny bundle of black fabric. “I think I’m gonna keep those.”
Her mouth opened in protest, but he’d already tucked them into the back pocket of his scrub bottom, the smirk turning into a wide grin.
“And now I’m going to do sutures until I “pass out,” like you said, Doctor Montgomery-Shepherd.”
He was out of the door before she had a chance to retort anything, leaving her standing panty-less against the wall, her hair a mess (again), her clothes crumpled. It was the best she’d felt in weeks.
* * *
Of course, once the initial high after getting off wore off, embarrassment gained the upper hand. She had no idea how she’d ever be able to look her intern in the eye again. It would have been less bad if they’d had actual sex, because then he’d have been in the panting and moaning category too, but instead she’d done all of that alone (head thrashing around included, oh god) while he had gotten literally nothing out of it but her panties. Lack of underwear and all her embarrassment aside, her body was nicely relaxed, no tingling nerves, no sudden heat waves, and she could finally work without getting sidetracked by fantasizing about the men around her. She went to sign the post-op notes and did some other over-due paperwork for the remaining one and a half hour of her shift, happy that for now, she didn’t have to figure out how to deal with the whole Karev thing. Or better, with the Karev’s-hands-between-her-legs thing. (Who knew that they weren’t only talented at cutting, but had other very interesting qualities too?)
When she got home to the trailer, she was immensely surprised to see light. She figured she’d left it on in the morning, but the shadow moving in one of the windows told her otherwise. Derek was home, for the first time that week. She took a deep breath and opened the door cautiously, expecting a rush of guilt upon seeing him, much like she had the first few months after Mark. Interestingly enough though, she felt absolutely nothing, except for anger upon seeing the silver, slippery trout in the kitchen sink. She sighed and Derek, coming out of the toilet, just laughed at her. “Come on Addie, it’s just a fish. You don’t have to look at it or eat it or anything.” She scoffed and went to take off her shoes, having a hard time resisting the urge to throw one of them at him. She hated how he was always pretending that everything was fine, that they were still all couple-y and happy together, that he hadn’t just pushed her away in the OR earlier, that he wouldn’t turn his back on her the second they got into bed. But as long as the lights were on, he’d pretend. She briefly considered telling him that Alex Karev had finger fucked her just a few hours ago (and she imagined herself using those exact, vulgar words-that would probably shock him more than the fact that she’d done it at all), but she scrapped that idea immediately. It would just make her look like the cheating whore again (which she probably was) and give him a reason to file, and maybe, just maybe, there was still a chance left for them somewhere.
Still, that night when they got into bed, she was the one turning her back on him first. Usually, she always tried to get at least a good-night kiss, but this time, she just got in, turned around and pretended to be dead tired, just like he always did. She left him the task of switching off the lights, and she couldn’t help the triumphant smile on her face when she heard him grumble something about it.
* * *
The next morning, Karev was still working in the pit, so she asked for Izzie Stevens as her intern and was secretly happy to get around having to face him for another few hours. Unfortunately, the few hours turned into only a half hour when he paged her from the pit. A single expecting mom had cut her arm and came in to have it sutured, and apparently Karev got out of her that she hadn’t had any pre-natal care at all so far, and she was five months along. Alex was his usual annoying self during presentation, making it clear that he wanted to be anywhere else but in the OBGYN department (Addison caught Izzie rolling her eyes from the corner of her eye), with no word indicating that he and she had engaged in more than strictly professional behaviour. She managed to thank him curtly for paging her and then went on to say that she’d already taken Stevens as her intern, but of course, the blonde was already bouncing up and down with excitement and before she knew what happened, Izzie ran off to her heart patient and she was stuck with Alex Karev as her intern again, who looked pissed, staring in the direction Stevens had vanished. Just great.
And then it turned out that her intern was at least as good at pretending as her husband was. She didn’t notice any difference in the way he treated her: there were no embarrassing talks, no saucy winks from his side (which she’d secretly expected) or dirty remarks or inappropriate touching. Everything was just the way it had been before he’d dragged her into that room on the third floor. At the end of the day, she herself had gone back to normal again too, ordering him around and sometimes yelling a little, and only caught herself staring at his hands once, something she was kinda proud of.
The incident with his hands under her skirt sustained her for a few days and she somehow managed to get through the rest of the week on the memory of it, but then the lack of touching and no-sex and what else not caught up with her. She got horribly cranky again and hated herself for it, but she couldn’t really do anything about it, and while Karev’s hands had been nice, he was still her subordinate, it was still terribly inappropriate and it had been a one-time thing, something he’d done out of pity. That made her even more angry, that she’d sunk so low as to accept a pity finger fuck from her intern, and she started yelling at him for no reason again.
Two days later, she found herself being dragged into a linen closet on the first floor after she’d gone off at Karev for standing around too long at the coffee chart. She was already embarrassingly wet the second he locked the door, and it took him barely two minutes to make her come after he’d dragged her panties down her legs. He kept them, again, and she walked around for the rest of the day feeling wonderfully sated and a little rebellious without panties.
It took her two more “incidents” to figure out that he wasn’t doing it out of pity. The third time, he kept her on the edge for a full five minutes, just always sliding in and out a little harder, but never hard enough. She didn’t beg (not with words, anyways), but she finally realized that he did it for the power. He liked having her moan and pant with his fingers inside of her, he liked that in that moment he was the one in charge, that she couldn’t do anything at all to make him do what she wanted, that she had to accept what he was giving. It was sick and twisted, but she didn’t care just as long as he made her come at least once a week.
They developed something like a set of rules, though some of them were more like habits. She never came to him, he was always the one to start it, but she could get him there if she just yelled loudly enough or dressed him down in front of his colleagues. They never had actual sex; it was just always his hands between her legs. She’d tried to initiate real sex once more, but he’d stopped her again, saying that he didn’t sleep with “married women.” He never kissed her on the mouth. It made her feel dirty, and she felt it turned him into a manwhore, but when she got drunk at Joe’s one day and ran into him in the parking lot, she finally drummed up the courage to ask him about it and he admitted that, if he kissed her, he might not be able to keep his no-sex-with-married-women vow. (She still wasn’t sure if that had really happened-maybe it’d been just a dream of her alcohol-hazy mind-but in any case, it gave her ego a much needed boost.) He always kept her panties as some kind of “prize” (which she found endearing), and she started to bring an extra pair with her to work. Sometimes she lost the second pair too in one day.
A few weeks later, she was running out of underwear. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone shopping, so she took the opportunity when she had an afternoon off work and had a blast in several lingerie shops around Seattle. She’d almost thought about asking him to come with her, but then she caught sight of the silver sparkling ring on her finger, and for the first time since this whole thing had started, got a bit of a bad conscience. She was still trying to get through to Derek, but it was getting increasingly hard to ignore the languishing looks he was throwing at Meredith Grey. She wondered if at least he had a bad conscience too, but that was probably asking too much. After all, he was Derek Shepherd, perfect neurosurgeon, who always did the right thing. She returned her attention to the underwear collection spread out on their bed in the trailer, and refused to feel guilty about consciously buying them for a man she was not married to. It had been fun, the most fun she’d had in ages, and she wouldn’t let anyone or anything ruin that now.
On Derek’s and her twelve year anniversary (he’d forgotten of course, but she never could), she felt all too aware of the horrible state her marriage was in, and she had a hard time not crying during an exhausting, three hour long hysterectomy. When she got out of the OR after scrubbing out, the first thing she saw was Meredith and Derek, glancing longingly at each other while waiting for the elevator. She watched, transfixed, as they got in and the door closed behind them, her jaw clenched, her hands balled to fists at her sides. She hadn’t heard him come out after her, but then Alex was there, closing a hand around the right fist, tugging at it. He wasn’t dragging her into the closet this time, it was more a gentle leading her along the way, and she went with him without protesting. His hands were slow and soft this time, their eyes locked and she searched for pity in his look and only let him continue when she didn’t find any. He divested her of her scrub bottoms and her panties, stroking her hips. She made a feeble sound of protest when he stopped touching her altogether, but then there was his tongue against the inside of her thigh and she jumped a little, gasping in surprise. “Alex, what-ohgod-” and that was his tongue on the inside of her other thigh. He chuckled a little and her legs almost gave way from the vibrations of his stubble against her skin, and then he dipped his tongue ever so slightly into her and her legs did give way. He halfway carried, halfway dragged her to a nearby chair, and once she was safely seated, returned his attention to between her legs. It took him barely ten minutes to make her come three times, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that another man managed to turn an anniversary with the man she was married to into one of the best in years.
Alex let her keep her panties this time, and once she’d gotten dressed again, she impulsively hugged him close for a second, whispering a quiet “Thank you” in his ear.
“I hate what he does to you,” he whispered back and tightened his own grip around her briefly before turning to leave the room. She stood there for a long time, wondering if her ears hadn’t played a trick on her, but once she’d pinched herself twice she finally started to believe that her horribly arrogant and cocky intern had actually been nice and comforting for a change. That evening, she left the hospital with the feeling that she had at least one friend in the city that hated her.
* * *
Sometimes she felt really bad for making him her scapegoat for whatever went wrong in her life. Granted, he usually paid her back by glaring at her while keeping her on the edge and making her squirm in desperation, but still, it wasn’t really fair to him. He’d been on her service for about three months now and the punishment for the thing he did with the Wards should have been over a while ago. But somehow she couldn’t get herself to finally let him off her service, because that meant she couldn’t yell at him anymore, and then that would lead to a definite decrease in the times he dragged her into closets or on-call rooms or other places in the hospital.
It was a vicious cycle, and it only became more twisted when he followed her into a bathroom after she’d yelled at him for misspelling a patient’s current condition on a chart. The day had already started out bad when she’d overheard Meredith and Cristina Yang talk at the nurse’s station about how Meredith and Derek were “friends” now and went out together for walks with Doc almost daily. Apparently, her husband had somehow forgotten to tell her about it.
It was still pretty early and the bathroom smelled like a mixture of disinfectant and polish when she leaned over a sink to check her eye makeup. The door opened and when she looked up at the mirror, her eyes locked with Alex Karev’s in the reflection. “Karev, this is a women’s bathroom. Get out,” she said, but he merely looked around and when he was sure that the room was empty except for the two of them, he stepped up behind her and placed a hand on the sink on either side of her, leaning in a little and pressing a soft kiss to her neck. She sighed and allowed herself to press back into him for a few seconds, but then his hands were on her hips, travelling inwards. She stopped them with her own, looking at their reflection in the mirror. It was a nice image, his arms wrapped around her, his head on her shoulder, peering at her in the mirror. “This is a bad idea, Alex. Anybody could come in: there’s no lock on the door.” She pointed at it demonstratively with one finger.
His eyes followed her outstretched hand, and then a smirk crossed his face. “Well, not on that door,” he answered and tugged her backwards. An incredibly short amount of time later, she was half lying, half sitting on a closed toilet seat in one of the cubicles, her skirt high up on her thighs, Alex kneeling between them, his mouth already hard at work. One of her hands was behind her to support her on the cold porcelain, the other was splayed against the thin wooden wall on her left, and she was trying hard to keep the moans and gasps to a quiet minimum. She’d just wrapped her legs around his neck when the door to the bathroom opened and two sets of footsteps made their way to the line of mirrors. She froze.
“I don’t know how it happened, but that was months ago, and I can’t do anything but kiss him anyways, otherwise he’d probably die from the strain or something.” That was Izzie Stevens, clearly gushing over her favourite patient.
“Izzie, you’re not just crossing the line, you’re more erasing it and if Bailey finds out you’re going to be in so much trouble!” Addison only barely managed to suppress a gasp of surprise, because that was clearly Meredith Grey, her husband’s favourite intern. Alex shifted a little between her legs, drawing his feet closer to his body to make sure they couldn’t be seen from the outside. She felt trapped, locked into this tiny cubicle with her intern while her husband’s ex-girlfriend and another one of her interns were discussing their love lives outside. She also felt weirdly excited; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a situation that came dangerously close to being caught during sex.
Her husband’s name fell on the other side of the wooden door, and her jaw tightened a little. “Derek and I are friends,” Meredith declared proudly, and luckily Addison’s angry snort was drowned out by Izzie’s laugh booming through the room. “Yeah, that’s why he’s mentally undressing you every time you’re in the same room.”
“IZZIE!” Meredith yelled, and Addison felt her hand tighten around the toilet seat.
“He’s married, and there’s nothing going on between Derek and me!” Addison almost opened her mouth to say something, but a slight tap on the inside of her thigh reminded her of the man still very much kneeling between her legs. Their eyes locked, and his mouth turned up into a wide, evil grin that gave her a sense of foreboding. He kept staring at her, and slowly lowered his head again, and her eyes turned wide with shock when she realized what he was planning. He touched his tongue against her clit softly, and it took her a great deal of effort to keep the noise down. She barely noticed Stevens mocking Meredith with a “Yeah, suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure” in the background, and when Alex sucked on her lightly, she gave a quiet gasp and tried to reach for his head to push him away. Unfortunately, taking her hand away from the wall made her lose her balance, and she almost fell of the toilet seat, only avoiding it by thrusting her hand against the wall with a loud THUD. The room grew quiet all of a sudden, and she threw Karev an angry look and felt ridiculous holding her breath for a few seconds.
“Hello?” came a voice from the other side of the room, “Is somebody in here?” Izzie Stevens asked, the sound of footsteps coming closer. Oh shit. Addison panicked. Her face was flushed with arousal, her panties on the floor…and her intern between her legs. Not a position she wanted to be seen in. The footsteps stopped right in front of the door, a light knock at the door following. She screwed her eyes shut and desperately tried to think of a way to get out of this. Alex was looking up at her expectantly, but she silently gestured to him not to make a single sound or move.
“Izzie, give it up. There’s probably nobody in there, and if there is, they obviously have no interest in company.” Meredith announced, her voice still coming from the sinks. Addison saw a shadow on the bit of floor that was visible from the inside, and when the shadow seemed to grow larger, she finally decided that it was time to do something. “I swear to god Stevens, if you bend down to look under the partition now, I’ll kick your ass so hard you won’t be able to walk for the next few days,” she blurted out, and the young woman on the other side of the door gave a surprised yelp.
“Doctor Montgomery-Shepherd?” Izzie screeched, at the same time Meredith said “Oh, crap” from somewhere behind her. Addison saw with relief how the shadow vanished, and Alex pressed his mouth into her thigh, his whole body shaking with suppressed laughter. She bit her lip and unlocked her legs from around his neck a little to bump her heel into his back warningly, if he didn’t manage to stay quiet now this whole thing would blow up gloriously. He seemed to have other plans though, with the imminent danger of getting caught gone, his tongue snuck out again against her, and she screwed her eyes shut, concentrating on not making noise.
“I’m so sorry, we’re just gonna…go…now,” Stevens announced from the other side, and Addison nodded in agreement before she realized that the other woman couldn’t see her (luckily). “Yeah, that’s a very good-ah-idea. And close the door behind you.” She tried to say with as much authority as she could muster what with Karev sucking on her clit. She heard the two women shuffle around, and the second the door closed, Alex thrust his tongue into her and started moving in and out in a merciless rhythm. She gasped and moaned and forgot all about scolding him when she finally came violently, her back arching off the toilet, her hips pressing forward.
“You’re fucking insane,” she told him, as soon as she was able to breathe again, and watched him slump down against the wall behind him as he laughed at her. She adjusted her skirt and smoothed down her hair while he picked up today’s panties and held them up in the light. They were of a light blue color, nicely decorated with lace and tied with satin ribbons at the side. She’d felt ridiculous buying that particular pair, but he seemed to like them. “Nice panties,” he deadpanned, still sitting on the floor (and was her mind playing tricks on her, or was he a little out of breath too?) and she laughed down at him when he balled them up and put them into his pocket.
He got up and unlocked the door for her, but didn’t follow her out after she’d brushed past him. When she turned around, he was bracing himself against the wall, taking deep breaths with his head hanging low. She threw him a questioning look, and got a pained half-smile back in return. “Go ahead, I’ll be out soon, I just…I think I need a cold shower first,” he grimaced, biting his lip. Her eyes travelled downward and when they met the obvious bulge in his pants, she felt her body give a jolt and swallowed hard. He wanted her. He definitely wanted her, and she’d slipped in between his arms and the wall before he even had a chance to react. She cupped him through his pants, and he groaned, one of his hands flying downward, stopping hers. “Don’t,” he managed to get out with great effort. “You’re still married.” She moved her free hand around his body and placed it against his butt, pressing his body into hers. He groaned again, and her eyes flew open when she felt him breathing hard against her lips. Their faces inches from each other, he glowered at her and she smirked at him a little. “No,” he said again, yanking his hips away from hers. She sighed, disappointed, and placed her hands against his chest, closing her eyes in defeat.
“But you know, when you and Shepherd get d-”
Her eyes flew open. “When we get what?” she asked sharply, glaring at him. “When we get WHAT?? We’re not getting ANYTHING!” she yelled and pushed him away from her forcefully. His back hit the opposite wall of the stall, and she stormed out of the room without sparing him a second glance.
Was that what everybody thought? There hadn’t even been an “if” in Alex’s sentence, no, he’d said “when,” as if the divorce was inevitable, as if it was just a matter of time until Derek would dump her and go back to his intern. She spent the rest of her shift snapping at each and everyone, looking for signs of pity in every nurse’s, every anaesthetist’s eyes, wondering if they all thought the same as her intern.
* * *
They barely spoke to each other for four days, and on the fifth day, after they’d made up, Richard almost caught them. She’d probably moaned a little too loud this time, so she opened the door to the linen closet cautiously and only stepped out after she was sure nobody was in the vicinity. She closed the door in relief and when she turned around, Richard was standing there, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his lips pressed into a thin line, his eyes sending her a scrutinizing look that reminded her a lot of her intern days. She swallowed.
“You were the last person I expected to come out of there, Addison.” He said, and she cursed inwardly when she felt herself blushing. “Especially because I just met Derek up on the third floor, and now I’m wondering why you’re coming out of a linen closet on the first floor, obviously dishevelled, and who in God’s name was with you in that room if it wasn’t your husband.” There was no humour in his voice, nothing of the usual warmth, and her throat went dry and she hoped to God that Alex wouldn’t choose this moment to come out.
She was trying desperately to come up with a way out of this, but when she opened her mouth, Richard silenced her with a raise of his hand. “No look, I know it’s none of my business, and while you and Derek are both my friends, you’re also my employees, and I can’t have my employees sleeping around, and-”
“I’m not sleeping around!” she hissed, absolutely mortified, but he just threw her a sceptical look.
“You want the truth?” she added. “The truth is that my husband refuses to touch me, so I have to…um…find other solutions to my …problems.”
She held her hands up a little and waved them, but he didn’t seem to get what she was implying. She could feel how hot her face was by now and she was absolutely mortified already, but if that got her out of this situation, she’d pay the prize.
“Look, you’re a surgeon, I’m a surgeon. Surgeons have usually very…er…talented hands. And they aren’t just good for cutting things open.” She waved them again, and his eyes wandered from her hands to her face and then back, and suddenly his face turned beet- red in realization.
“Oh,” he said. “OH!” a little louder. At this point, she was looking anywhere but at him, both of them shuffling around awkwardly. “God Addison, I’m so…I’m just….” He gave up and almost ran away, and she hung her head in embarrassment, placing a hand on each flaming red cheek. At least they hadn’t gotten caught, even if it meant that Richard wouldn’t be able to look her in the eyes for the next few weeks. Or months.
* * *
The next few days passed in a flurry of activity: Izzie Stevens almost killed Denny Duquette and got a heart for him along the way, Burke was shot, the chief’s niece was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Doc died…and Derek invited her to prom.
Addison was ecstatic. He’d smiled at her and sincerely asked her out, and for the first time in months she felt that they might actually have a chance. A few hours later, Karev tried to drag her into an on-call room, but she pushed him away and resisted his hands for once. He looked confused when she left him standing there, but left her alone for the rest of the day.
She spent hours in front of her wardrobe, trying to figure out what to wear. In the end she went for a red dress that she’d bought together with Derek years ago, but never gotten the chance to wear. She did her hair and make-up carefully, turning in front of the mirror one last time, feeling like the lucky girl who got to go to prom with the hottest guy in the entire school.
She passed Alex Karev in the hall, absently noticing that he looked good in a suit, but he was lost in thought and staring after a disappearing Izzie Stevens, and she was looking for her husband. The hospital was decorated beautifully, and she congratulated Miranda Bailey on a job well done before asking Derek to dance. He held her close, and she leaned into him, nuzzling her nose into his neck a little. A few minutes later, he excused himself to go check on a patient, and Doctor Dandridge walked up to her for some polite conversation. She should have figured it out then, but she’d been so happy the entire evening, her mind didn’t make the connection.
When her husband got back, he smelled like Meredith Grey’s perfume. She had to hold on to the vet for a few seconds because her legs threatened to give out when she saw the guilty look on Derek’s face. Luckily, nobody really noticed the Shepherd marriage ending quietly and unspectacularly; they were all too distracted by the drama surrounding Izzie Stevens and her heart patient. The other shoe had finally dropped. They were over, so over, in that moment in the hall, and she felt a little like she was in a different universe: every sound seemed to be extraordinarily loud, every vision especially colourful, the young blonde intern in her pink dress, the two men following her out of the hospital, Derek and Finn both staring at Meredith. She couldn’t take it anymore, she had to get out, and so she followed the chief and Miranda down the hallway, but they left her standing there too, and she stared at a clumsily drawn image of a kid riding a horse on the wall, completely lost.
A few minutes later, Derek appeared out of nowhere, and when he saw her shivering, draped his jacket around her shoulders, mumbling something about a car crash victim in the ER he had to attend to. Always pretending, even now after he’d put a definitive end to it, but of course, he thought she had no clue. The image in front of her turned slightly blurry, and she was still blinking the tears away when somebody else came barging down the corridor.
It was Alex, looking for Izzie’s shoes, and she just shook her head when he asked her about them: no, she hadn’t seen them. It was funny, that just hours ago she’d been standing in front of a mirror, her biggest problem her own shoes, and now she couldn’t even remember which pair she’d picked anymore, it was that insignificant compared to the rest of it. She raised her dress a little to peer at her feet, but when she looked up, Karev was standing in front of her, throwing her a concerned look, pink peep-toes dangling from his hand.
“You found them,” she noted with a voice that didn’t seem to be hers, and he took a step closer to her, one hand on her elbow. “You okay?” he asked, and she quickly nodded her head, “Yeah, fine. I’m fine.” Their eyes locked for a second, and she knew he didn’t believe a single word. “Where’s Shepherd?” he wanted to know, but when she pursed her lips and opened her mouth to say something, nothing would come out. He searched her face for an answer, and whatever he saw made his grip tighten around her elbow and his face scrunch up in anger.
“Come on, I’ll drive you home,” he said with more softness than she’d ever expected from him, and started to lead her away gently.
* * *
She had the side of her head pressed against the cool glass of his car window, and he turned off the engine after they arrived at the trailer, neither of them saying anything for a while.
“They had sex.” She finally broke the silence and turned her head to look at him. “He invited me to prom and then he went and had sex with Meredith.”
“He’s an ass,” Alex said, and it earned him a tiny smile on her part. It was nice that he didn’t try to tell her how sorry he was; sorry for something he hadn’t been involved in, faking sympathy. They watched each other silently for a few minutes, each of them pondering how they’d ended up there, in that car, in that moment.
“I should get inside,” she announced and reached for the door handle.
“Do you want me to-”
“No, it’s fine. Go take care of Izzie. I’ll be okay on my own,” she answered, sending him an understanding smile.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure.” She turned to open the door, but his hand on her free hand stopped her. He squeezed it lightly and smiled at her. “He’s an ass, so he probably hasn’t told you this, but … you look beautiful.”
She had to look away from him then because she felt her eyes water, but she still managed to press out a short “Thank you” and squeeze his hand back to make sure he knew she really appreciated it.
She watched his car disappear in the distance and hugged her husband’s jacket closer to her body. Her hands went into the pockets, her right hand absently closing around a piece of fabric. When she pulled it out, it was a pair of panties that definitely didn’t belong to her.
* * *
Part II