Predator Prey Chapter 1, a grey's anatomy fanfic

You believe in Karma. You're not religious, not formally, and you don't worry that an angry God might punish your infidelities. But Karma is more like gravity than divinity, a universal constant who always claims Her due. Karma also has a wicked sense of humor, and delights in Her work - which is why you nearly jump out of your pricey red Manolos, when Karma comes knocking on your door.

You'd returned to Seattle barely twelve hours before, for a consult, and you watch warily as Karma ushers him into your hotel room. You try to read him, but that, you remember, is like trying to read Braille with chop sticks. Even his face is an enigma: from one angle, chiseled, mature, rugged, from another, soft, young, almost innocent. Karma giggles at Her handiwork: Alex Karev is anything but innocent.

But he is standing in front of you, and your very name, Addison Forbes Montgomery Shepherd – no, Addison Forbes Montgomery - mocks you. He was not part of the plan. You married stable, predictable Derek, and spent a decade doing predictable, stable things; you'd planned on a lifetime. You'd never planned on Mark. Derek had been the proper man for your name and your aspirations, but his affection was stiff, and chilly, and indifferent, and offered only at his convenience. And you never admitted to anyone that Mark had been your first great love. Karma knew anyway.

You study Alex's brooding eyes, and wonder why he once reminded you so of Mark, Mark with his sunny exuberance - which intoxicated you like dry champagne. Mark freed you, when you were suffocating under the weight of your name, when you planned every thing, and obeyed all the rules. He mocked them at every turn, and you could breathe again, until his contempt for rules turned on you, and you vanished once more, not behind Derek's indifference but behind Mark's self-absorption. Karma saw it all.

You tried to speak, tried to will your legs to move. You'd only ever wanted, really wanted, one man before, and Alex wasn't Mark. He was arrogant and indifferent to your rules, like Mark. But he was unpredictably sweet and uncertain, and he always saw you, even when you were not being Addison Forbes Montgomery, when your sheer effort to sustain the appearance of effortless perfection went up in smoke. He saw everything. And he didn't flinch - not this time - even when you pressed your lips to his. Karma cackled wildly; a perverse conspiracy was set in motion.

You knew you should never have come back, the moment his lips met yours. You'd left to get away from Seattle, where it not only rains constantly, but rains men, where they pour off of ferry boats, and down hotel hallways, and even out of the plumbing, shrouded in steam. You knew you should never have answered the door, and you try to believe that last night was a dream, and you're relieved when you wake up alone. Then you see it, and admit that no matter how vivid your dreams of him had been lately, they'd never left behind hastily scribbled notes about early morning rounds.

Climbing out of your luxurious hotel bed, you steel yourself to return to Seattle Grace, scene of so many prior crimes. Two hours later, you march through familiar doors hoping you won't see him, or him, or him. But of course Derek's there with his intern, and Mark's there with his pickle, and you wonder if Karma's laughing as you round past the Psych ward in a near sprint, seeking cover.

You hunker down in Callie's office, and she knows you're hiding, and you're sure she'll think you're unhinged if you tell her that you feel him everywhere, and that he makes your hair stand on end, and that he prowls the halls like a jaguar stalking his prey. You nervously pop the cover off your salad, wondering if you weren't better off with Derek's indifference or with Mark's self-absorption, with being unseen – which was safer, at least, than being devoured by a jaguar's roving eyes.

You joke with Callie about LA over lunch; she asks you if chew toys are on the menu, and you ask her about Alex and Ava. You don't like how her eyes darken when she says it ended two months ago - and adds nothing more. She asks if he said anything to about it you the night before, and you admit sheepishly that there hadn't been talking, and you both roll you eyes, and you remember why you miss her so much, and she mentions Erica Hahn and you realize how much things have changed.

You head to the NICU for your consult, and he hunts you down later as you're leaving the building, and the chase is a blur, and you're in your hotel room again, and those aren't Derek's teeth sinking into your neck, or Mark's claws digging into your shoulder. You recall that Derek was too refined, and even Mark too civilized, to do what he's doing with his tongue. With Derek it was just boring and with Mark it was light and fun, but now it's a more dangerous game. You know that this one plays to win, and that now you're in the jungle being pursued by a jaguar, and you can barely see his eyes glint yellow in the pale moonlight, and you know the darkness is his natural habitat.

As a scientist, you understand survival of the fittest, and you know that the first law of the jungle is that there are no laws. You watch civilization crumple to the ground when your shirt buttons go flying. Among cultivated peoples, hierarchies stand where you're more accomplished and where he's just the help. But only one hierarchy lurks in this jungle, where the strong and the agile roam freely, where the pounding rain sweeps across the windows. You need to defend your territory, and you can almost hear his heartbeat roaring in his chest as he surrounds you, and you rake your nails across his skin, and you hear his kiss lower into a growl at the first hint of blood.

You want to ask about Ava while civilization still dangles around your ankles, clinging precariously to your skirt, when words are still an option. But his instinct is to pounce, and he has already scouted his territory, and your own feral moaning conjures a primitive, rhythmic madness as the heat and the rain and the darkness, as his scent and his heartbeat and his taste, devour you. You know that words are too fragile for the jungle anyway, that they melt in the heat and evaporate with the dew and blend into the chatter of insects at sundown, and that they offer no protection from the murmurings of a sated jaguar, coiled around you like a second skin, purring contentedly.

You knew it was another mistake the minute you woke, your head still throbbing, your legs still shaking, civilization still strewn in ruins amid the clothes and the bed linens carpeting the floor. It was a Karmic plot, you were sure - the sunlight streaming through the drapes – as one of Seattle's rare sunny days dawned. You shifted warily under the jaguar's weight, pausing at each muted whimper and sigh as you uncoiled him, his regal pelt rippling against you as you try to escape without rousing him.

Fumbling for cover, you dive for your suitcase in a bid to restore order. You don your expensive designer suit, reminding yourself that he's the help, and your name badge, to assert who you are, and you put up your hair, to recall that across the street vertical hierarchies reign, that power shifts decisively back to you, that your vision is sharper and your head clearer than his in more civilized venues.

Fortified by the night's retreat, you move hastily toward the door, glancing back briefly, shaking off the stray thought that jaguars are hunted for their skins. You knew that you'd regret it, and you could hear Karma cackling wildly at the sight of you - fleeing a luxury hotel room, on a bright fall day, in a thriving city, wondering if you should alert the Seattle Zoo, or animal control, or just hotel housekeeping, that you'd left a naked jaguar in your bed, curled up sleek and lithe, sleeping peacefully in the sun.

You spy her with Sloan later that afternoon and your blood curdles, because you're just Karev and he's Mark Sloan the famous plastic surgeon, and he's your Attending, and he owns your ass for as far into the future as you've ever cared to look. You hate how he crowds her like he owns her, and how she laughs when he leans into her hair, and you know that they have more history then you'll ever know, and that she thinks you're just an inferior version of him, which sucks because he's even worse scum then you.

You lurk in a shadowy corner and hope they don't see you, because you're no longer her intern but you're still his errand boy, and you hate how your face reddens when he reams you in front of her, and it's hard to play to win when you're sucking up just to end the dry cleaning and coffee runs.

She has lunch with Callie and your slink away from the cafeteria and your stomach churns because you know she'll ask about Ava, and Callie will tell all – that the only woman who ever thought you were worth anything turned out to be crazy, that you'd screwed it all up, that you spent the last two months bumbling through rounds like a loser first year, that you were your own freaking cluster on the hospital grapevine.

She meets Shepherd in the hallway and you skulk furtively after them and you see their comfortable familiarity. You know it means nothing since Shepherd's a worse ass then Sloan, except that he's always just one bottle of Tequila and an inappropriate man away from being a free agent again, and she never wanted the divorce in the first place, and he's a neurosurgeon with the money and the pedigree, and she'd wanted him enough to follow him to Seattle the first time and to forgive him for Grey, and he might be baggage but he's designer baggage, and actually in her league.

Your surgery goes well and you feel his eyes tracking you from across the table and your senses heighten and alarm bells blare but you take the job anyway. You move back to Seattle and he has a key to your place and it doesn't really make sense that you can be stalked by a jaguar ten flights up in a city condo that doesn't even allow goldfish. You ask him about Ava, and all he says is that the tests were wrong. You know there's more, but then he's kissing you and you feel the jungle roaring through his veins and you feel his teeth and his claws and you wonder just how many condo bylaws you're violating by keeping him there and if anyone enforces the laws of nature, anyway.

You suspect that he really is interested, and you know sequels never bode well - Jaws returns, the Empire strikes back, Jason rises from the dead – and you're not ready for Mark 2.0 – and the once bitten, twice shy equation comically understates your current predicament, and you should stop this madness before you're dragged even deeper into the wilderness.

Later that week, you ask about Ava again and he makes a bad joke and you try to read his face to identify which member of his maddening six-pack personality is talking. You know that the jaguar's eyes are yellow, the five year old's a warm brown, and the twelve year old's a speckled hazel; that Karev's are almost smoky, the wrestler's more hooded, and Alex's liquid amber flecked with gold. Your security depends on deciphering these signals and you consider keeping a chart, since that's how civilization advances, through research and graphs and charts and spread sheets arrayed against nature. You know that that's the human advantage in the hunt, and you need more information.

But you ask around and all you learn is that Ava was there and then she wasn't, that there was blood and screaming and a fight with Stevens. You ask him again but then he kisses you and civilization falls as he rises and the rain returns and you swear you hear thunder coursing right through his body. You recall your physics, and you know that if you're close enough to hear thunder, you're close enough for a lightening strike, and you review the chemistry of combustion, and you cling to that last shred of reason, to the symbolic equation that ends in carbon dioxide and water, in CO2 and H20, until you feel the sweat and you hear the panting and your body goes up in smoke.

Weeks later you wake up with a start, and she's sitting up beside you reading a medical journal with her morning coffee, and you curse yourself for going to her place after a thirty six hour shift. You try to apologize but she just asks for what, and you indicate the obvious, which she doesn't get at all. You spell it out more bluntly, that you were just too tired the night before to do anything but sleep, and she giggles like you're kidding until she sees you're serious, and then she asks incredulously if that's all this is.

You know there's no answer to a question with that tone, but you need to say something to prevent a long conversation about who knows what. You remind her that you'll back off when she finds who she really wants - because you know it's not you - and that you can do the temporary thing until she finds something better. You know that first part is not exactly honest but not exactly a lie, and you take one look at her and see chick logic coming and remember that Karma hates you.

You think she'll understand until she looks at you like you're retarded before she starts giggling again and you wonder what else is in her coffee. She asks you if that's why you ran her off the first time and your head is throbbing so you just sort of nod and you know she's trying to decide if you're a fool or a coward. You wonder briefly which one gives you a better shot, but you know it really doesn't matter because she's out of your league anyway.

She tells you to do what you want – in a tone that indicates that you'd better only want one thing and she won't tell you what that is and you'd better figure it out quick - and then she Karev's you which is never, ever good in bed. You wonder what she wants from you because she knows the score as well as you do, except maybe she doesn't because more chick logic hits the fan, and you silently thank all the pagan gods you don't believe in that she still seems too frustrated to cry. You figure you've lost her but she doesn't take your key and then she's apologizing too for who knows what and you know it'll go back to being your fault if you don't shut her up soon, so you kiss her immediately but you try not to smudge her lip gloss because its morning so that's bonus points.

You never thought he was that stupid until you see him sitting in Richard's office, black eye still swelling as the stitches settle in his lip, and you're listening about charges being dropped, and you wonder why it's always Bailey's pod people and what he was thinking, but you know that he wasn't, and that it probably wouldn't have stopped him anyway.

You're ready to yell right there but Richard's doing all the talking, and you're ready to yell that night, but he doesn't come to your place, and you're ready to yell the next day when Richard's out-lining disciplinary action, and you're ready to yell the whole week after except that you don't see him at all as he serves his suspension. You know he's back at Meredith's and you shouldn't ask her about him, and you're too mad to talk when he comes back and his eye's still black and the stitches come out, but the mountain of paper work keeps growing and you're still trying to fathom why he did it.

He damn well needs to respect hierarchies and you light into him, daring him to utter a word without explicit permission. You work together in silence and that infuriates you even more and you tell him he can go back to Plastics full time if he's determined to behave like an adolescent Neanderthal. He works another night shift as part of his punishment and you burst into the on call room and you remember the warnings about cornering wild animals but the stalemate hangs between you and the minutes tick by and you wonder who'll break first.

"It was usually like this when he'd come home at night," he says, motioning vaguely to the darkness, " and he was drunk, or high, and furious, and I'd try to hide, and sometimes I'd fall asleep in the closet, waiting, and usually I wasn't that lucky," and it takes you a minute to figure out what he's talking about. "He almost had that look, that guy's kid," he insists, "like he knew that it was always going to be just him, and it was never going to stop. I couldn't let that happen, not again."

You get it all at once - why he hit the patient's father - and his voice is Karev's but his eyes are too brown and you're not sure who you're dealing with but there are no words anyway. Part of you wants to turn and run but you know that he can't be on your service when he's like this, and you certainly can't tell him what you came to, not at just this moment. But then the words you couldn't find tumble out like an avalanche and you can't look at him because whatever's coming you doubt you're ready.

You stop hearing anything else the minute she tells you she's pregnant. Her words keep coming and then she's waiting and it's your turn to talk and a strangled whisper that might be yours asks her what she's planning to do. Muffled apologizing fills the room and you wonder if she thinks you're mad at her when really you're mad at you, because you've done this before, and it's always the same, and it never ends in anything but you failing someone, and you hear her tell you that she expects nothing from you and you wonder if that's a relief or disappointing, that she knows you can't do this just as well as you do.

Your ears recover some after her first sonic boom and you hear her panicked plea that the tests had said it wasn't possible, that she'd hoped for this but never expected it, that the tests must have been wrong, and you'd heard that all before. Your head starts to spin and you need to sit down, except that you already are, and you'd sworn you'd be more careful after the last tests had been wrong. But you'd figured that Addison freaking Montgomery of all people would have been too smart to let this happen and you stare at her blankly because smart seems beyond either of you at the moment.

You really want to run this time because this has Disaster 2.0 written all over it and you don't want any more explanations and you know that you'll never be ready for what you never wanted in the first place. You know you can't run because then the kid will be like Grey, and you know you can't stay because then the kid will be like you, and you know either option's a train wreck and the train's already left the station either way. And it's your freaking fault and you've screwed up again and she's looking at you as if she's just asked you a question and you're still hoping your alarm clock goes off any minute now except that your nightmares have always come when they've pleased.