Oh god. You guys remember this story? I was so occupied with writing "One Thousand Words" that I completely lost my Alex-Izzie muse. But it's back now! It's back! And it's the last chapter, because I really can't take it any further than this...seriously.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
George walked quickly down the hall, head swiveling from side to side in a pantomime of looking for someone. His face was drawn into a Seriously Curious George face, and upon seeing, Meredith, he ran to catch up.
"Meredith!"
Meredith turned. "Oh. George, hey." She paused at his expression. "What's wrong?" George motioned for her to keep walking, while he whispered furiously in her ear.
"I just...I have something to say, only I'm not sure if I should say it, but I know that if I don't tell someone, then I'll end up blurting it out like word vomit or something, so I thought, maybe, I should decide who I should word vomit on or else I might end up doing something really stupid—"
"George. Breathe."
"This is not yoga class!" He took a deep breath anyway. "Okay. The thing is...I think..." He looked around carefully before ducking in to whisper "AlexissleepingwithIzzie."
Meredith frowned. Since she wasn't privy to George's intentions, she had kept her head in a more natural position while he was speaking, and so she heard nothing. "Alex is feeling dizzy? Is he okay?"
Cristina caught up with them, and heard the tail end of the conversation. "Is who okay?" she asked.
"Alex. George just said he was feeling dizzy."
"Probably has a hangover. I hope he has a hangover," Cristina muttered as they passed the nurse's station.
"Alex does not hangover, that's not what I said!"
Cristina looked disappointed. "What, no drunken debauchery by the Prince of All Evil?"
Addison looked up from her chart, interested. "Did you just say something about drunken debauchery, Yang?" Cristina motioned for Addison to follow, and she joined in on the group.
It was well known that the maximum speed of a moving was the speed of the slowest person in the group divided by the total number of people. By this point, a snail would have shamed the procession going down the hall.
Meredith coughed at the awkwardness, and attempted to get on the other side of Cristina. "Anyway," she said, after making a less-than-graceful maneuver around the Asian which almost resulted in a domino effect of flying limbs, "George says that Alex is dizzy from a hangover from last night, which was probably filled with drunken debauchery."
"I did not say that Alex is feeling dizzy!" George felt compelled to interrupt. They stopped at an intersection of hallways, because to go anywhere else would be a major obstruction of traffic.
Addison raised an eyebrow. "This is how rumors get started. Let's see, do I want to get involved?" Cristina nodded at her from behind George's back. "Okay, so what did you mean to say, O'Malley?"
"Are you sure he's not hungover?" Cristina asked, before George could answer. Preston approached from the stairs.
"Someone's hungover?" he asked.
"No," said George.
"George said Alex was feeling dizzy," said Meredith.
"I think Alex has a hangover," said Cristina.
"From a night of drunken debauchery," said Addison. Preston rewarded her with a strange look. "Hey, your girlfriend said it, not me."
"Debauchery, Cristina?"
Meredith piped in, "If anyone is still capable of debauchery in 2005, Alex would be."
"I did not say that Alex was dizzy!" George yelled. Everyone turned to him in surprise.
"Right," Addison cleared her throat. "So. What did you say?"
They all focused on George, who seemed to melt in the laser-intensity of their stares. "Well...I...what I actually said was...God, I did not mean to tell four people this, I wanted to tell one person and then let the entire hospital know, so that—"
"George!"
"Right. Um. Alex. Alex Karev, who is not hungover. Is sleeping." He stopped.
Preston leaned forward, as though expecting more. "He's...sleeping."
"Good, maybe he's dead," Cristina said.
"Cristina!" Meredith berated.
"What, it's not like you weren't thinking it."
"Alex!" George rallied. "Alex is sleeping. With Izzie."
The humor of this situation has to be viewed that all four players of The Game were very, very well aware of the Alex-not-really-sleeping-but-something-more-R-rated-with-Izzie situation.
They didn't tell George of course.
Addison blinked noticeably, Preston blew out a sigh, Cristina retained a smirk, and Meredith had the tenacity to say "What?"
"Yes. Alex is sleeping with Izzie."
Meredith raised her eyebrows at Cristina, who mouthed back "haven't they learned?" Meredith just shrugged.
Addison carefully edged along the side of The Game, and asked, in a nonchalant-totally-interested way, "How do you know?"
George said, "Because there are sounds coming out of a supply closet that I never want to hear coming out of any closet! At all! Ever! Especially if extra scrubs are stored in there!"
Preston, following Addison with almost more precision, asked, "Which floor would this...supply closet be on, so I can avoid contaminated scrubs?"
George looked at him strangely, but Preston merely gave him the "I'm an attending" glare. The intern acquiesced. "Third floor."
Cristina coughed. Everyone turned to her. "Well. Good to know. Nice to be all...caught up on the latest gossip. Thanks, George! Meredith, we have to go..." She grabbed Meredith's arm and made headway for the elevators.
"Yeah, we have to go check on patient Gerber, making rounds, nice talking to you!" Right before passing out of earshot, Meredith tossed over her shoulder, "Thanks George!"
Addison eyed Preston. "Well," she said loudly, "it's been sufficiently awkward, talking to you, O'Malley, so I'm going to...Preston, why don't you join me, I need a consult..." She began walking away, her arms moving in the windmill motion that was supposed to indicate going somewhere.
"Oh yeah, of course. O'Malley, always a pleasure." They headed away from the elevators, Preston lowering his head to tell Addison, "if you can keep up, we can reach the third floor faster if we take the stairs."
George looked after them, bewildered. "No one tells me anything," he said to himself. "No one tells me anything, and when I tell anyone something, they don't share back. That is so not fair." Derek, walking by to the lab, caught the tail end of that conversation. Well, conversation wasn't really the right word...
"O'Malley? You okay?"
"Yeah, Dr. Shepherd, I'm fine. I'm just...I'm fine." George blinked.
"You sure?"
He burst. "No one tells me anything!"
Derek nodded in sympathy. "I know. I just found out at the nurse's station that Alex Karev is nursing a massive hangover from a night of drunken debauchery with that girl up in Peds. He is part of my intern squad, I should know this before it makes its rounds."
"Alex is not hungover!!"
The neurosurgeon looked confused. "He's not?"
"No!! He's having sex with Izzie Stevens in random supply closets!!!" George stopped himself, as he realized the number of exclamation points in his last statement was slightly irrational.
Derek laughed. "O'Malley, everyone knows that now."
"They do?"
"Yeah. Meredith, Cristina, Burke, Addison, they caught the two of them canoodling in supply closets last week."
"Did you just say—"
"I like the word canoodling, I will use it shamelessly. Anyway, they're your friends. You should have known before I did." Derek smiled. "I would talk to them about that."
He walked away, cheerfully minding his own business, when the serenity of his promenade was interrupted by George, having finally lost it, screaming "Son of a—"
Silence for a second. "Are you done having an aneurism, O'Malley?"
And then, "Good morning Dr. Bailey."
The "This is how rumors get started" line that Addison says is actually another dorky game of mine. Three of us wait for someone to say something out of context and carry it entirely too far. "I'm not going to have a baby any time soon so..." "What, you're having a baby?" "You're pregnant?" "I'm not having a baby!" "So you're getting an abortion?!" Yeah.