Around Addison Montgomery, Isobel Stevens had always been awkward. She never knew quite what to say or how to behave, which invariably led to her asking all the wrong questions, and commenting on stupid things such as how rich her name sounded or her inappropriate sex life.
Never before in her life had Izzie Stevens been flustered by a woman, not in this way. Honestly, she had never been stirred by and drawn to a person in quite this way before. Izzie was Catholic, this was forbidden and sinful, but not only that. Up until now, she had thought it to be completely unnatural.
Izzie tried her best to ignore her feelings, avoid labeling them and thus acknowledging them for what they truly were. However, in the back of her mind was the nagging knowledge of what was really going on.
It was hard for Izzie to keep her mask on, pretend that she felt nothing for the red-headed attending, especially in moments such as this where she found herself outside of the NICU, watching the older woman care for the young children who wouldn't have had a chance had it not been for Addison's extremely skilled and capable hands. Hands that Izzie wished would address her with the same soft, loving manner as the tiny preemie was receiving right at this very moment.
Though it was nearly one o'clock in the morning and Addison had been on call for an ungodly number of hours, to Izzie she looked now more beautiful than ever, renegade red locks framing her face, scrubs wrinkled and makeup all but rubbed off. Izzie watched as Addison nodded off to sleep in the rocking chair, still holding the tiny baby close to her chest and she couldn't help but smile. This was the softer side that the attending tried to hide from the world, the side that Isobel was sure would win over the hearts of everyone at Seattle Grace if she would just let it. It was almost as thought Addison Forbes Montgomery was afraid to let herself be loved. Izzie didn't understand how Alex, Sloan and Shepherd had allowed themselves to hurt such a beautiful creature so freely. Even if Alex had cheated on Izzie herself, she didn't understand how he could have just utterly shattered the woman before her, the woman who had cleary put so much hope and trust in him, only to receive exactly what she had feared-- more pain, loss and betrayal.
Izzie had tried to extract herself from the situation with George as delicately as possible, but that hadn't worked. She had thought that she truly loved him. But when she found out that he and Callie were trying to have a baby, and as he continued to try to push her away, she had realized that not only that he wasn't worth it, but also that her feelings had been defined incorrectly. She had sex with her best friend, good sex after a very long dry spell, and she had taken them to mean things that they hadn't. And now she had lost George, probably forever, to his wife, and the world was now the way that it should have been all along. Now if only Izzie could find someone to call her own-- someone who wasn't inappropriate, and preferably who wasn't involved with the hospital in any way, shape or form.
It didn't help that Izzie found herself thus fantasizing over something that she clearly couldn't have. Addison was her boss, and a woman. A very rich, probably very straight, almost forty-year-old woman.