Sunday on a Saturday Afternoon - 8/20
Previous Chapters: o1 o2 o3 o4 o5 o6 o7
Title: I've Tried to Page You Twice
Pairing: Alex/Addison
Rating: PG
Summary: A friendship date that leads to something that ends up leading nowhere.
I’ve Tried to Page You Twice
Alex had many undesirable traits, this he knew. But among these many undesirable traits, he possessed a few good ones. He was respectful of women when they told him they weren’t interested and he was conscientious towards all of his women friends. Not that he had too many of those, but the few he did have were treated to the kinder, gentler Alex Karev.
So when Addison Montgomery started flirting with him, Alex was a little confused. He knew that he wasn’t sending out any of those kinds of vibes, so she was the only one making any moves. She would lean forward so that her hair fell around her face, begging to be pushed back and tucked behind an ear. Her warm hand would find his wrist when he was telling a story, her thumb tracing lines on the underside of his arm. The first time she started playing these little games, Alex had chalked it up to too much alcohol, but it became more and more commonplace: her gentle touches, her sultry looks.
“And then O’Malley just comes in like - .” He stopped when Addison set down her drink and let her hand drift over to his. “What are you doing?” Her hand was gone, once more fingering the neck of her beer bottle.
“Nothing,” she said, but the biting of her lip and the twist of her mouth betrayed something more. “It’s…Well, it’s just that you’re a good guy, Alex. A decent guy. It’s been a while since I’ve been around that.”
“You are around Dr. Webber all the time. Are you trying to tell me that our Chief of surgery isn’t a good and decent guy?” He toyed with the idea of grabbing her hand that was now nervously tapping its fingers against the bottle, but decided to wait until he knew her intentions.
“You know what I mean, Alex. I haven’t been around a good and decent guy when there’s potential for something…,” she trailed off, her hand falling silent as she looked dully at her lap.
“Are you saying that there’s no potential with Dr. Webber?” Alex just wanted to make her smile again. She hit his knee playfully as she chuckled, and Alex did grab her hand then. “What about you not being Preston Burke or Derek Shepherd?” he asked as Addison moved closer, her hand leaving his to find his thigh.
“Are you saying you want to be doing this with Preston or Derek?” Alex felt her smile rather than seeing it, and all of a sudden, he was kissing Addison Montgomery. Her arms found their way around him and his hands had moved up to tangle in her hair.
When she pulled away, he said a little breathlessly, “Well, you are no Derek or Preston, but you do kiss pretty well.”
Addison laughed and finished her beer in one final gulp. “I’m not inviting you to my hotel room,” she told him as she stood, brushing the wrinkles from her skirt.
“And I’m not inviting you to my apartment,” he answered with a grin. “But I will see you outside and into your car.”
Addison pulled her coat on and lifted hair out from underneath the collar. “Maybe we should say good night here.” Without waiting for an answer, she placed a chaste kiss on his cheek and exited.
---
Addison wasn’t sure when she had stopped thinking of Alex as an intern and started thinking of him as potential boyfriend material, but somewhere in the midst of their friendship dates, the switch had occurred and her opinion of him changed. And then they had kissed. And it wasn’t that she regretted it, however brief it had been, it was that she really didn’t want to be another Derek or Preston and she didn’t want to be gossiped about because of her personal life again. Boyfriend material or not, she didn’t really think that she could be Alex Karev’s girlfriend. Even those words, ‘Alex Karev’s girlfriend,’ made her nose wrinkle in slight disgust.
As she stood at the nurse’s station, going over charts, Alex greeted her with his hand placed lightly at the small of her back and a low, “good morning” whispered in her ear. She jumped at his touch, but he was gone. She didn’t mind be greeted that way at all, but it really wasn’t professional. There were many things she didn’t mind about Alex Karev, like the way his lips felt against hers, or how strong his hands felt, but it really wasn’t professional.
They managed to not cross paths for the rest of the day and it was only when she was buttoning up her coat that she saw him. “Karev!” she called out after him. He turned and walked back towards her with a grin on his face. She wasn’t going to enjoy making that grin go away.
“Yes, Dr. Montgomery? Is there something you need me urgently for?” His suggestive tone made Addison’s resolve weaken a little, but she did her best to stay firm. When she didn’t smile, Alex’s face fell a little. “You know, I knew you were going to do this.” He started to move away from her, but she grabbed his arm.
“It’s not what you think,” she said, wincing at the clichéd phrase. Alex extricated his arm from her grasp.
“You don’t want to be another attending sleeping with an intern. You don’t want to be gossiped about. So you’ll kiss me in a bar, but then pretend like you never wanted to, like it was in the heat of the moment. It’s not fair.”
“All right, it’s exactly what you think, but Alex -”
“It’s Karev. Dr. Karev.” He spun away, leaving Addison standing alone, looking defeated.
---
As much as Alex had wanted to be friends with Addison, he had known that there was an element of danger to it. He had known that it would be hard to keep things platonic when neither one of them really wanted it to be platonic. He hadn’t known which of them would crack first, but he had known that no matter which of them it was, Addison would be the one to pull away first.
He silently raged in his car as he drove back to his apartment. This was the danger of the kinder, gentler Alex Karev. Women liked that Alex.
He didn’t like when his personal and professional lives mixed, and especially not at this juncture in his life, because he was currently waning in his love for plastics, and finding that he just wanted to be saving the lives of babies instead.
Alex didn’t make decisions lightly. He had weighed his options carefully. He listed pros and cons. Neonatology came out ahead every time he thought it out. Even now, when Addison had been moved over to the con list, neonatology still had a strong lead.
How could he avoid Addison and work on her service at the same time? He didn’t really want to slip back into the ungrateful intern who needed to be goaded into every job that Addison needed done, but he didn’t want to be the lustful intern pining after his attending.
---
Addison kind of dreaded seeing Alex again, and was surprised to see him headed straight for her. She thought about turning tail, feigning a page. Alex reached her before she could do anything. He stood in front of her, a safe distance apart, looking for all the world like he wasn’t angry at her, like she hadn’t fulfilled all his expectations in the worst possible way.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this, Dr. Montgomery.” It was Addison’s turn to be annoyed by the professional manner. “Even though I’ve been on Dr. Sloan’s service, I’ve been following all your cases and find myself more interested in what you have to teach than what Dr. Sloan has to teach.”
Addison understood what he was doing. He was distancing himself. He wasn’t slipping into the less respectful way that he usually spoke, adding the ‘Dr.’ in front of Sloan’s name, keeping strictly professional, like they barely knew each other.
“You want to come back to my service? Voluntarily?” She processed what he had actually said, rather than the way he said it. He nodded. “All right. You can finish out today on plastics, and report to me tomorrow morning. Make sure that both Bailey and Sloan know that you’re switching.”
He left without another word to her.
---
Alex spent his first day of being officially and voluntarily on neonatology avoiding Addison. He had talked to her briefly in the morning, then vanished. She paged him several times, and each time he appeared, saying as little as possible, then disappearing to the abandoned third floor hallway and sat on the gurney that he and the other interns of his year had claimed as their own. He filled out charts, assessed patient’s histories, and generally stayed out of the way.
Addison found him, eventually. He ignored her as she pulled herself up next to him. She had charts of her own, and didn’t say anything for a while. He stole glances in her direction every few moments, and it was only when he saw a small smile that he knew she wasn’t completely immune to him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, putting down her chart and twisting to look at him in the face. “I shouldn’t have kissed you in the bar if I wasn’t willing to commit to more.”
“No. You shouldn’t have. But I shouldn’t have kissed you back, because I knew what you were going to do. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just that you sometimes act first and think later.” Addison melted a little. He knew her so well.
“And you always think first?” She was baiting him and he knew it.
“Not always, but usually when it counts.” He shrugged and stood up, offering his hand to Addison. She took it with a smile, and he pulled her to a standing position.
“Well, will I see you at Joe’s tonight?” she asked. Alex wanted to say yes. He wanted to go back to what they were.
“I don’t think so.” Her face fell and Alex wasn’t sure if he could keep being the good guy and walking away. He wanted nothing more than to reach out to her, to let her know that he was doing what he was doing for her.
“Maybe some other time,” she said, and became Dr. Montgomery, the strictly professional surgeon who would never even consider drinking a beer with an intern, much less kissing one. She walked away, and Alex dutifully followed. He was her intern, after all.
[ Chapter Nine]