Title: A Lack of Colour
Author: luminescing
Summary: Addison/Alex
Prompt: Blizzard
Written as part of the Holiday Flashficathon on Livejournal
Seattle was motionless. The city was paralysed in the grip of a ferocious blizzard. An unusual silence pervaded its streets. The snow had seeped into every nook and every cranny of the city. Only the twinkling Christmas lights strung gaudily across the windows of every other house seemed to have escaped the sterile bleakness the snow had inflicted upon the city's streets. Christmas trees propped up majestically in the front rooms of the neighbourhood's houses were hardly visible from the street as the curtains were drawn to keep in the heat.
She walked to work along the untracked streets. The wind gnawed at her skin and gnarled in her ears, causing her to contemplate retreating back to the warmth of her hotel room on more than one occasion. The cold was unbearable but the prospect of walking back to the hotel seemed just as exhausting as continuing to walk towards the hospital. In any case, she reasoned, she was needed at the hospital. It took more than a few feet of snow to stop babies from being born. The hospital was severely understaffed. The blizzard had rendered the roads impassable and the snow, slush and ice made every journey treacherous. Cars were abandoned on hills too steep to climb in the heavy snow. Nearly half of the hospital's staff had called in to report that the weather had made their journeys impossible; the other half were either at the hospital already, fresh from an eighteen hour shift, or were unable to call in as the snow had severely affected telephone lines in some districts.
The hospital looked eerily quiet as she approached. The cars in the parking lot were indiscriminately covered by snow and the benches were obscured, undecipherable from their surroundings. The path leading to the hospital bore the signs of a failed attempt at shovelling the snow away. Many patients had cancelled their surgeries and incoming traumas had been diverted to Northwest, where the roads had been continually ploughed of snow since dawn, but yesterday's patients still crowded the hospital, away from the cold, glass entrance to the hospital that had acted like a greenhouse in the summer.
He was sitting in the hospital's sprawling reception area when she arrived, cheeks so flushed that the shade almost matched the colour of her hair. He was struck by how beautiful she looked, the red of her hair contrasting sharply against the colourlessness outside.
She smiled at him in acknowledgement, surprised to see someone sitting in the lobby. "Hi," he said, a little wearily. He was exhausted after his shift and his body protested at the thought of another.
He watched as she tugged the gloves from her fingers and rubbed her hands together in a vain attempt to warm them up. He put down the coffee cup he had been clutching in his hands on the table beside him and walked towards her.
He stopped several inches in front of her and waited for her to tilt her gaze upwards. She looked at him inquisitively, amazed at his closeness, and searched his face for an answer to a question she wasn't sure she was quite ready to pose. He faltered for a moment, suddenly unsure of himself in such close proximity to her. "I'm glad you didn't get stuck in the snow."
"Me too," she said, taking in the shift in his demeanour. "It's horrible outside. I don't think I'll ever feel warm again."
He smiled at her before tentatively reaching out and brushing a stray snowflake from her hair. He tucked the errant strand tenderly behind her ear, fingertips caressing her skin in the process. She instinctively turned towards his touch, eyelids fluttering closed at the sensation, of the feel of his skin against hers. The warmth of his fingertips against her cold skin was overwhelming. He watched her in awe, taking in her patrician features and her delicately parted lips as she revelled in his simple touch. She could feel his breath on her neck, a tantalising respite from the numbing cold of December. He brushed his thumb across the arch of her cheekbone, watching the minute reactions to his touch that played across her face. When he didn't move his hand, she opened her eyes and looked at him. "I stand corrected," she breathed.
She lifted her hand to touch his, which was still cupping her face tenderly. He inhaled sharply at the unexpected coldness of her touch, recoiling slightly before taking her hands in his. He rubbed his palms over them, just hard enough to ignite some warmth, before tracing lazy patterns torturously lightly on the backs of her hands and along her fingers.
Their eyes remained cast down, each a little bit afraid of looking the other in the eye for fear of breaking the spell under which they had fallen, but they edged almost imperceptibly closer to each other. He could smell the wet flakes on her coat and she could feel the dull heat emanating from his body. She lifted her head cautiously, looking at him. He made no attempt to lift his own head to meet her gaze but the gentle pressure of his fingertips on the inside of her palm told her that he knew that she was watching him. "Alex," she said, coaxing him further. He loved the way she said his name; it was such a change for her to call him something other than Karev or Dr Karev or "the slightly infuriating intern" (which he had once overheard her use to refer to him to Bailey).
She threaded her fingers through his, stepping closer so that her body was almost flush against his. She was still raw from her divorce and reeling from her relations with Mark but it had been abundantly clear to her that she had wanted Alex for a few weeks. She was tired of pretending that she wasn't interested in him, that she didn't look at him when she didn't think anyone else was watching, that she didn't think about him more often than not.
She was so close yet he could hardly feel her; he was just aware of the dampness of her coat and the exquisite redness of her hair and the feeling of her hands in his. It was too much and not enough all at once. He felt her thumb firmly stroking the back of his hand and the sweet innocence of the gesture caused him to look up at her. It was unexpected and it demanded nothing but a chance. He saw the trace of a smile on her lips and the edge of uncertainty in her eyes as he looked at her. He imagined that she saw the same expression mirrored on his face.
Unclasping their hands, he touched her cheek again, questioningly, and, finding the answer he sought, moved towards her. She opened her mouth to speak but the feel of his lips brushing so agonisingly softly against hers caused all of her thoughts to still. He kissed her so carefully, so thoroughly, that she could've screamed from the myriad of sensations coursing through her veins. She had lost the ability to think, let alone form coherent sentences, so she did all that she could, which - at that very moment when he was ever-so-gently suckling on her lower lip - was to breathe.
And then he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her roughly and insistently towards him. Her coat was dampening the front of his scrub top but he hardly noticed as she crushed her body against his, deepening the kiss. The surrender in her movements drove him crazy and he moaned audibly as she parted his lips with her tongue. He loved how responsive she was to his touch, how hypersensitive she was to his warmth, his hands, his tongue.
He slid his hands along her back, trying to map her body beneath the layers of winter clothes, before fisting his hands in her hair. She responded by kissing him harder, capturing his lips in a bruising kiss. When they finally parted, they remained close, unable to separate. Her forehead rested against his as they attempted to steady their breathing. Her lips were swollen and her cheeks flushed, mimicking her appearance when she stepped in from the cold. He didn't think that she could possibly look any more beautiful. Though his eyes were closed as he tried to concentrate on the nearness of her, he could feel the smile on her lips. It was the same way he knew when she was looking at him when she didn't think he was looking. He sensed it.
She rubbed her hands along his forearms, trying to remain contact whilst disentangling herself from his grasp. He laughed when she said, "I don't trust myself to be that close to you and not do something I may later gain notoriety for." The tension hung between them, over them, and she sighed in a strange mixture of exasperation and contentment.
However, all thoughts of rationalising what had just happened ground to a halt at the sound of footsteps pacing the corridor above. They hastily separated, putting a good five feet between them. Alex was about to make some quip about whether the distance was far enough for her but he was stopped in his tracks by the sound of Derek's voice as he haughtily descended the stairs.
"Addison," he drawled saccharinely, "how nice of you to join us. The Chief was about to send out a search party for you. He was worried you'd had some unfortunate accident in the snow." Addison could only roll her eyes at his remarks.
Derek continued to walk down the stairs, pausing at the landing a few feet from Alex and Addison's heads to look out at the snow falling in the dimming light of mid-afternoon. "It must be cold out there," he said, gesturing towards the glass windows, "I've not seen you look so flushed before."