A Cosmic Joke

A Grey's Anatomy fic by Gigi

Disclaimer: I own diddlysquat.

Chapter 3: Five Days Left

A/N: Sorry it's taken me so long to get this out! Over six months always seems to be my regular time-clock. I'll try to make it faster this time around. It's my own fault for writing so many multi-chapter fics, but you guys with your awesome reviews are nothing but enablers! Not that I mind at all. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you kept enabling my horrible updating habits by reviewing!

To say that Addison was getting restless would be an understatement. She still had five days before she could take a pregnancy test, and it was driving her nuts. She couldn't even decide whether or not she still wanted to be pregnant, because that would mean she was pregnant with Karev's baby. It would turn her humiliating one-night stand into, at the very least, 18 years and nine months of constantly being reminded of his painful rejection.

Not to mention the conversation she'll be bound to have with her kid when he or she asks why they're not married. Oh, God, Addison whimpered internally.

Oh, and the fact that the Seattle Grace gossip mill would have a field day once they found out she was pregnant—and by her intern, no less! It was bad enough that she got caught in the arms of said intern the previous morning. It had taken every ounce of her professionalism and dignity not to blush every time she saw him or any of the seven people who witnessed the event. If there was ever anyone who could walk away from an incident like that and not raise romantic questions, it was Addison Montgomery, and that was only by the skin of her teeth.

After a good twenty minutes of pacing in her office, she forced herself to sit in the swivel chair behind her desk, hoping the comfort of the cushions would calm her nerves. It didn't. With a frustrated groan, Addison let her head drop into her folded, waiting arms.

A knock sounded at her office door. "Go away," Addison moaned helplessly.

"That's really not how you should greet your best friend," came Callie's sardonic reply.

Addison didn't even raise her head, choosing instead to respond sullenly, "Hey."

"Well, a jolly good morning to you, too." The sound of a door closing was followed promptly by approaching footsteps and a whoosh of air as Callie took the seat in front of the distressed redhead. "So tell me what is up with you and Karev."

That certainly got her attention. Addison whipped up her head in panic and almost yelled, "What?"

Fighting a smirk—there was definitely something going on between the two, she was sure—Callie cocked her head to the side. "You and Karev. George told me he saw him holding you, and there was something about you being horizontal." The orthopedic surgeon scrutinized her companion, catching the guilty flush that tinged her cheeks. "Care to explain?"

"Not really," she muttered, dropping her gaze from the prying eyes of the resident.

"It's okay, you don't have to," Callie excused. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms nonchalantly.

Addison looked up with what seemed to be hope sparkling in her eyes. "Really?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know what went down."

The hope was gone, replaced by a flat stare. "Oh, really?" she asked in an equally flat tone.

"Do you remember the lines of deliciousness?"

Another groan ripped through the air as Addison threw her head back into her arms on the desk.

Four days left

Cursing, Addison stormed into the attending locker room holding her fitted shirt as far away from her skin as possible without walking through half the hospital stripped to the waist. "Damn you, Alex Karev!" As soon as she made sure the room was empty, she didn't hesitate to shrug out of her lab coat and leave it on the floor. The spilled coffee on her silk shirt was too hot for her to care about her usual orderliness.

When she had finally succeeded in ridding herself of the shirt, she stood in front of the full-length mirror in her stained crimson bra, black pencil skirt and red stilettos, dabbing with a cold, water-soaked paper towel at the puffy red blotches that decorated her left shoulder and skittered onto the top of her breast. "You're not even paying attention, and you still manage to get me out of my shirt," Addison muttered under her breath.

"What was that?"

Addison closed her eyes in her own quiet humiliation and opened them to see the object of her (des)ire smirking at her in the mirror's reflection. "You spilled your attempt to suck up to Mark on me, and you're seriously standing there looking all smug?" She didn't turned around as she posed the pointed question, choosing to quirk an eyebrow and prop her hand on her sideways-thrust hip at him in the mirror.

"I told you, I'm done with plastics," Alex corrected her.

"Doesn't change the fact that you sent Mark's scalding hot bone-dry cappuccino flying down my shirt because you were in such a hurry to suck up to him," Addison shot back, returning to her previous task of soothing the blistering burn on her chest. "Why were you sucking up to him if you insist you're done with him?"

Alex dropped his gaze at the question. He buried one hand in his white coat pocket and scratched the back of his head with the other. "I was hoping to get back into his good graces before it comes out that I got you pregnant and he wants to shoot me thirty-seven times," he eventually answered.

Addison's hand stopped over her heart, her burn momentarily forgotten. "You don't know you got me pregnant yet," she croaked.

Maybe some of the coffee splattered its way into her eyes, because Addison could have sworn she saw a tinge of red color Alex's cheeks. "I know that," he backtracked hurriedly. "But no amount of bone-dry cappuccinos are ever going to be enough to save my ass from Sloan if I did."

A small smile fought to sneak onto Addison's face, causing the corner of her mouth to twitch upwards before she controlled it. "Then why did you make it impossible for me to wear a shirt for the next 48 hours?"

"That could have been completely intentional," Alex chuckled, earning a heated glare from the redhead. "It wasn't, I promise, but believe me, I would have seriously considered it if it would make you go shirtless for two days."

"How sweet," she deadpanned. "I've never felt so flattered in my life that my intern wants to burn me."

Alex shrugged. "I figure that if I maybe make him think of me as his daily coffee fix, he'll stop just short of killing me."

Addison nodded her head thoughtfully as she began to dab at the burn again. "Interesting logic. You know Mark will kill you regardless. He's territorial that way."

"Well, you're not his territory anymore," Alex protested with a surprising amount of heat in his voice. Addison quirked an eyebrow at him in the reflection. "If you were, you would have lasted the 28 days left."

"Who the hell told you about that, anyway?" Addison demanded. "I remember you making some smartass comment about it…that day."

"Ava," he provided guiltily, seeing Addison's expression falter. "She told me because she wanted me to make a move."

"Excuse me?" She quirked an eyebrow at him, trying to ignore the fluttering in her chest—well, ignore it or blame it on the blistering burn.

"Ava may have been trying to fix us up pretty much since I pulled her out of the water," Alex admitted as he tried fighting the blush that seemed so determined to creep into his cheeks.

"She's been trying to set us up?" Addison asked, shocked.

"It turns out she was awake when I answered your question." Alex squirmed inside. Was she really going to make him repeat it?

"What question?"

"I'd notice," he answered, looking her directly in the eye through the reflection. "If you went missing, I'd notice."

Unable to take it anymore, Addison turned around and leaned on the wall beside the mirror. "I didn't realize that still applied," she confessed in a small voice.

"It still applies," he insisted. "Whether or not you're having my kid, it still applies. I noticed when you didn't show up for work the day after…that."

"Oh."

The silence that followed stretched on so long that it reminded Addison that her burn still killed her. And that she'd just had a very long conversation with her intern without wearing her shirt. Addison Montgomery—the epitome for professionalism.

A/N: Alright, so just three more days left to write before I get to the big reveal! Aren't you so excited that I'm dragging it out for so long? Anyway, hopefully you don't all hate me for taking so long to update. Please reassure me with a REVIEW!