Chapter 1

Bang's Apartment…Early Morning

Burke places the coffee cup on the nightstand and gently shakes Cristina in an attempt to wake her up. Not getting any response, he moves the hair that's covering the side of her face. She had the wildest curls in the morning. Sometimes when he woke up before her he would lay in bed and just put his fingers through them as she slept. Her hair always smelled so good but it was a tangled mess. He still hadn't figured out how she was able to tame it so quickly in the mornings. In a way it was similar to how he felt about their relationship. Not really sure about how it worked out but happy that it did. It always brought a smile to his lips remembering how neat and orderly life had been before Cristina.

Burke leaned closer to his girlfriend speaking to her in a soft voice "Time to wake up."

As he expected, she responds with a cranky mumble "I just went to sleep" then she rolls over with eyes still closed grabbing his pillow to cover her face "leave me here, you go."

Burke glances at the clock. 4:00am. It was Friday, Cristina had been sick most of the week and worked extra hours in an attempt to avoid any appearance that she was not able to keep up. Basically, this meant going to the hospital at 4:00am every day, picking up an extra on-call shift and scrubbing in on late surgeries. He made one attempt to talk to her about the unenforced 80 hour work limit that she was ignoring but she just avoided him the rest of the day. After four days, the exhaustion was clear in both her face and her attitude. By Wednesday, she'd started to be more short-tempered and yesterday Bailey made it clear that she'd run out of patience with Cristina's sour attitude so she definitely couldn't afford to be late today.

"I know it feels that way but you've been asleep four hours. Today that's all you get." He felt badly for her but this was the life of an intern and they both knew it. He remembered those days all too well when his body felt like it literally hit a concrete wall.

"Ok. One more hour" she's still facing away from him, pillow over head, comforter up to neck.

Cristina didn't normally have this much trouble getting up for work. She didn't like getting up early but she got up to go to the hospital. Of course she never got up any earlier than she absolutely had to so that she could get to work on time. He felt her head which wasn't warm and realized that she must be more tired than he thought.

"It's time to get up. You don't have one more hour today. You can sleep in tomorrow, Saturday."

Her head is buried in the pillow making her voice muffled "Really?"

She was skeptical. Shortly after moving in with Burke, she found out that he had been hiding the very annoying habit of waking up early on days off in an extremely upbeat mood. He was always happy, babbling about how they needed to get out of the apartment and embrace all that Seattle had to offer, blah, blah, blah. At first, he had tricked her by asking her to go with him to get coffee in the mornings but that coffee trip inevitably turned into a trip to the market, the museum, the park, wherever. After a few coffee trips she realized that this was what he actually did on his days off. This, of course, led to a string of fights until they'd finally settled on a compromise of embracing Seattle one day of the weekend, not both, and never ever before 9am.

"No early morning coffee run?"

"I promise"

She rolls back towards him opening one eye and then the other. She felt like crap. She hadn't been feeling well and insisted on pushing herself harder to prove a point. Who had she needed to prove this point to? Looking at the clock at 4am on a Friday morning she couldn't seem to think of anyone but she'd swear on her last breath that there was someone.

"Why are you up so early anyway?" She barely gets the words out before she starts to yawn. Burke usually wasn't up this early unless he had a surgery scheduled and she knew that he had none this morning.

"I thought that since I hadn't seen you the past three nights, I'd actually try to see you this morning before you ran off to the hospital. I missed you."

The small traces of a smile were on Cristina's face. Cranky or not she had missed seeing him too "Is that coffee mine or are you just teasing me?"

He waits for her to sit up, handing her the coffee then climbing into bed so he could snuggle up behind her. This was a rare moment for them to share before work. He loved how relaxed she was and how her body just melted into his when they were like this.

Usually she bolted out of bed to get ready and she'd spent time each morning running around the apartment looking for hair clips, socks, shoes, you name it she's looked for it before work. Sometimes he swore she was like a tornado but to her credit she was hardly ever late. He was just thankful that she no longer went around smelling her clothes looking for something clean to wear. That was one habit he definitely couldn't live with.

"I feel like a truck hit me."

"I'm surprised you'd admit it"

"Next time I won't."

Mornings were definitely not her thing "So I was thinking that I could make us a nice dinner tonight and we could…"

She interrupts him "You forgot! We're meeting Meredith and her new McDreamy at Joe's."

"I thought that was tomorrow night."

"Nope. Tonight." Cristina yawns. "7:00."

"Any chance we could reschedule? I mean you just said you were exhausted." He was disappointed and looking for an excuse not to go to dinner. He liked Meredith, he liked all of Cristina's friends but after the week they had he wanted to have her to himself. He just didn't want to have to share her one more night with anyone.

"Nah, Meredith is being weird."

"What do you mean weird?" He could feel Cristina's body tense a little bit because here they were again in one of those situations where he wanted more details and she was not willing to give them up. This was true with information about herself as well as her friends. He never quite understood why she so desperately tried to maintain that privacy. His was on a need to know basis, revealed only on her terms.

"You know, weird"

"Not really"

Cristina quickly sits up hanging her legs off the side of the bed and places her coffee on the nightstand irritated "Look, we just can't cancel okay?"

He'd learned along the way just to drop it and move on especially where her friends were concerned. It just wasn't worth the fight "Alright."

He moves over so he is leaning on his right elbow next to her lap looking up at her as she pulls her hair up in a bun "So does this new guy have a real name?"

She answers his question as she reaches over him to grab her coffee "Finn. You know like a fish."

Watching Cristina taking a sip "Seriously?"

"Yup like a fish"

"You're not going to say that to him tonight are you?"

She leans down giving him a kiss "I guess that depends how bored I get!"

Burke laughed grabbing her coffee with one hand and pushing her further off of the bed with the other.

"Hey!" trying to sound offended as she got up off of the bed

"Hurry up and get dressed. We'll drive in together." He got up and started making the bed as she got ready.