A&E [Alex/Addison, PG-13]
Title: A&E
Pairing: Alex/Addison
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Come to bed, Alex,” she breathes after his laptop screensaver has kicked on, letting her know that he hasn’t even played a procrastinating game of Minesweeper in half an hour and that nothing more will be accomplished tonight despite any protest he could mount.
Warnings: Spoilers for the S5 Grey’s Anatomy finale if you squint hard enough.
Note: I know I said I was putting down my fandom pencil, but I’ve been pulling extraordinarily late nights for work these past two weeks and this sort of happened in between curses.
The beginnings of an oceanside thunderstorm rumble across the beach, faint enough to know that there’s plenty of time to shut the windows but strong enough to make those same windows rattle slightly and jar Addison awake, out of her pleasantly dreamless sleep. She sighs quietly and stretches a little in the way that people do while they’re sleepily considering ignoring that they’ve ever woken up at all. She wakes up enough to open her eyes when she turns over and reaches her hand out to rest on the chest of a person who isn’t there. Blinking to clear her eyes, she squints at the bright red lights of the alarm clock on the other nightstand, trying to bring the numbers into focus. Though she can’t quite make out the exact time without her glasses, she knows enough to know that it’s long past the half an hour, an hour tops she was promised when she left him downstairs staring at countless pages of notes with a laptop containing the latest research somewhere in the mess.
Addison sits up and slowly swings her legs to the side of the bed, all hope of going back to sleep completely vanished when she sees the light filtering up the stairs from the kitchen, a sign that he’s still awake and not simply fallen asleep on the couch in a rash (and unnecessary) decision to not disturb her. She grabs the nearest sweatshirt from the floor - one of his - and pulls it over her head to ward off the chill coming into the house from the wind that’s just picked up. She pads quietly down the stairs, taking care to hold onto the railing because she knows she isn’t quite awake enough yet to avoid running her shoulder into the wall without a little help with her balance.
“You’re still up,” she says softly, blinking against the comparatively bright light of the kitchen.
Her voice startles him, so used to the quite lapping of the waves against the sand interspersed with the occasional roll of thunder. Nodding, he finishes off what he thinks is his fifth energy drink of the evening, a number assumed solely by the line of four empty cans at the edge of the counter, poised to be taken out to the recycling in the morning. “I want to make sure I know this. It’s a huge surgery tomorrow. I’ve never done it before.”
She chooses not to point out that perhaps the best thing would be to get eight solid hours of sleep, but that ship sailed at least three hours ago and she understands the feeling well. The feeling of wanting to get it right, to impress, to be a rock star. That she’s the one he’s trying to impress is a fact she neatly tucks away in a mental file she’s labeled Alex Being Sweet. It’s unnecessary, too, like many sweet things he does for her: the one he really needs to impress is Charlotte King so she’ll officially offer him a job at St. Ambrose rather than his current position of moonlighting as Dr. Montgomery’s Favorite Resident whenever Addison needs an operating room. She tells herself that she isn’t playing favorites, that she simply knows that he’s a little behind from the others because of an ill-advised (yet brief) stint into plastics and an unfortunate personal tragedy that set him back more than he’ll ever admit so he needs all the OR time he can get. But she hears the whispers and hopes that he can do enough impressing and dazzling today that she can go back to rolling a die to pick a resident and quiet the complaints of Karev again? Man, I’m tired of that guy getting all the good cases for good.
“You’ll do great,” she says with a smile, knowing it’s the truth. They had a rocky start professionally, but he’s never once let her down, not even when she expected it. “Plus, I’ll be in there with you. In case you do screw up,” she teases, widening her smile in case the unpronounceable chemicals in the energy drinks have clouded his ability to interpret a joke.
He chuckles at that and pushes back from her kitchen table and twirls a highlighter around in his fingers. “Thanks for the confidence.”
She smiles at him for a moment, knowing that it’s okay to stand still in silence with him, that a lack of words doesn’t mean anything at all and neither one of them will attempt to derive meaning from the comfortable way their eyes meet across the kitchen. “Come to bed, Alex,” she breathes after his laptop screensaver has kicked on, letting her know that he hasn’t even played a procrastinating game of Minesweeper in half an hour and that nothing more will be accomplished tonight despite any protest he could mount. She offers him her hand.
With one last look at the sea of paper covering the kitchen table, he comes to her same conclusion and wakes up his computer just enough to turn it off. He winces a little at the stiffness in his joints that’s accumulated over hours of sitting in a chair that wasn’t meant to be occupied for any real length of time. Blatantly ignoring the friendly, yet still mildly disapproving, shake of her head, he laces his fingers through hers and lets her gently tug him up the stairs and he flips light switches as they go, leaving them in darkness by the time they reach the bedroom.
Their eyes quickly adjust to the ambient light of Los Angeles and they easily make their way around hall tables and stacks of books and a few boxes he hasn’t yet found the time or need to unpack and step into their bedroom just as the first drops of rain start to hit the roof.
Though they’re both tired, she never truly woke up and even that last sip of concentrated caffeine isn’t doing anything to keep his eyelids open, there’s an energy that hums through the room and draws them even closer together. Their lips meet and are soon parted by tongues as his fingers dance down her sides to skim her hips and her arms circle around his neck to allow her own fingers to comb through his hair.
Three months ago, they were both standing dangerously close to the edge, mechanically making their way through the day under the extreme and desperate hope that soon the universe would throw them a free pass and they’d get a break from tragedy and death and betrayal and failure and everything that had them both so close to breaking. Though neither is one to comment or believe in such things, they will both always remember the day they were in the same scrub room at the same time and as their eyes met in surprise over their surgical masks, they both genuinely smiled at each other and thanked the universe for finally letting them win one.
And now, as he tugs her shirt over her head and casts it aside as he lays her down underneath him on the only bed he’s ever known in this city, and as her moan is drowned out by a rumbling roll of thunder as his mouth finds its way to her breasts and her fingers clutch at the muscles of his shoulders, shoulders that have seen her tears more times than she’d like to admit, they know that no matter how much sleep they don’t get tonight, they are going to succeed. Still reeling and recovering from the demons they’ve faced, separately and together, and only recently able to truthfully voice their happiness, they aren’t ready to admit to each other that this is real and this is forever.
They simply make love surrounded by a fantastic thunderstorm that will cut their power soon and breathe in the shared comfort of the other’s touch.
goldfrapp :: a&e
Pairing: Alex/Addison
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Come to bed, Alex,” she breathes after his laptop screensaver has kicked on, letting her know that he hasn’t even played a procrastinating game of Minesweeper in half an hour and that nothing more will be accomplished tonight despite any protest he could mount.
Warnings: Spoilers for the S5 Grey’s Anatomy finale if you squint hard enough.
Note: I know I said I was putting down my fandom pencil, but I’ve been pulling extraordinarily late nights for work these past two weeks and this sort of happened in between curses.
The beginnings of an oceanside thunderstorm rumble across the beach, faint enough to know that there’s plenty of time to shut the windows but strong enough to make those same windows rattle slightly and jar Addison awake, out of her pleasantly dreamless sleep. She sighs quietly and stretches a little in the way that people do while they’re sleepily considering ignoring that they’ve ever woken up at all. She wakes up enough to open her eyes when she turns over and reaches her hand out to rest on the chest of a person who isn’t there. Blinking to clear her eyes, she squints at the bright red lights of the alarm clock on the other nightstand, trying to bring the numbers into focus. Though she can’t quite make out the exact time without her glasses, she knows enough to know that it’s long past the half an hour, an hour tops she was promised when she left him downstairs staring at countless pages of notes with a laptop containing the latest research somewhere in the mess.
Addison sits up and slowly swings her legs to the side of the bed, all hope of going back to sleep completely vanished when she sees the light filtering up the stairs from the kitchen, a sign that he’s still awake and not simply fallen asleep on the couch in a rash (and unnecessary) decision to not disturb her. She grabs the nearest sweatshirt from the floor - one of his - and pulls it over her head to ward off the chill coming into the house from the wind that’s just picked up. She pads quietly down the stairs, taking care to hold onto the railing because she knows she isn’t quite awake enough yet to avoid running her shoulder into the wall without a little help with her balance.
“You’re still up,” she says softly, blinking against the comparatively bright light of the kitchen.
Her voice startles him, so used to the quite lapping of the waves against the sand interspersed with the occasional roll of thunder. Nodding, he finishes off what he thinks is his fifth energy drink of the evening, a number assumed solely by the line of four empty cans at the edge of the counter, poised to be taken out to the recycling in the morning. “I want to make sure I know this. It’s a huge surgery tomorrow. I’ve never done it before.”
She chooses not to point out that perhaps the best thing would be to get eight solid hours of sleep, but that ship sailed at least three hours ago and she understands the feeling well. The feeling of wanting to get it right, to impress, to be a rock star. That she’s the one he’s trying to impress is a fact she neatly tucks away in a mental file she’s labeled Alex Being Sweet. It’s unnecessary, too, like many sweet things he does for her: the one he really needs to impress is Charlotte King so she’ll officially offer him a job at St. Ambrose rather than his current position of moonlighting as Dr. Montgomery’s Favorite Resident whenever Addison needs an operating room. She tells herself that she isn’t playing favorites, that she simply knows that he’s a little behind from the others because of an ill-advised (yet brief) stint into plastics and an unfortunate personal tragedy that set him back more than he’ll ever admit so he needs all the OR time he can get. But she hears the whispers and hopes that he can do enough impressing and dazzling today that she can go back to rolling a die to pick a resident and quiet the complaints of Karev again? Man, I’m tired of that guy getting all the good cases for good.
“You’ll do great,” she says with a smile, knowing it’s the truth. They had a rocky start professionally, but he’s never once let her down, not even when she expected it. “Plus, I’ll be in there with you. In case you do screw up,” she teases, widening her smile in case the unpronounceable chemicals in the energy drinks have clouded his ability to interpret a joke.
He chuckles at that and pushes back from her kitchen table and twirls a highlighter around in his fingers. “Thanks for the confidence.”
She smiles at him for a moment, knowing that it’s okay to stand still in silence with him, that a lack of words doesn’t mean anything at all and neither one of them will attempt to derive meaning from the comfortable way their eyes meet across the kitchen. “Come to bed, Alex,” she breathes after his laptop screensaver has kicked on, letting her know that he hasn’t even played a procrastinating game of Minesweeper in half an hour and that nothing more will be accomplished tonight despite any protest he could mount. She offers him her hand.
With one last look at the sea of paper covering the kitchen table, he comes to her same conclusion and wakes up his computer just enough to turn it off. He winces a little at the stiffness in his joints that’s accumulated over hours of sitting in a chair that wasn’t meant to be occupied for any real length of time. Blatantly ignoring the friendly, yet still mildly disapproving, shake of her head, he laces his fingers through hers and lets her gently tug him up the stairs and he flips light switches as they go, leaving them in darkness by the time they reach the bedroom.
Their eyes quickly adjust to the ambient light of Los Angeles and they easily make their way around hall tables and stacks of books and a few boxes he hasn’t yet found the time or need to unpack and step into their bedroom just as the first drops of rain start to hit the roof.
Though they’re both tired, she never truly woke up and even that last sip of concentrated caffeine isn’t doing anything to keep his eyelids open, there’s an energy that hums through the room and draws them even closer together. Their lips meet and are soon parted by tongues as his fingers dance down her sides to skim her hips and her arms circle around his neck to allow her own fingers to comb through his hair.
Three months ago, they were both standing dangerously close to the edge, mechanically making their way through the day under the extreme and desperate hope that soon the universe would throw them a free pass and they’d get a break from tragedy and death and betrayal and failure and everything that had them both so close to breaking. Though neither is one to comment or believe in such things, they will both always remember the day they were in the same scrub room at the same time and as their eyes met in surprise over their surgical masks, they both genuinely smiled at each other and thanked the universe for finally letting them win one.
And now, as he tugs her shirt over her head and casts it aside as he lays her down underneath him on the only bed he’s ever known in this city, and as her moan is drowned out by a rumbling roll of thunder as his mouth finds its way to her breasts and her fingers clutch at the muscles of his shoulders, shoulders that have seen her tears more times than she’d like to admit, they know that no matter how much sleep they don’t get tonight, they are going to succeed. Still reeling and recovering from the demons they’ve faced, separately and together, and only recently able to truthfully voice their happiness, they aren’t ready to admit to each other that this is real and this is forever.
They simply make love surrounded by a fantastic thunderstorm that will cut their power soon and breathe in the shared comfort of the other’s touch.
goldfrapp :: a&e