Disclaimer: If I owned Grey's, I'd be forced to update frequently. That'd probably be good, wouldn't it? Any chance anyone of you guys can get me Grey's?

A/N: Sorry, this took forever, I know. It's also neither as good nor as long as the last chapter (which is - I might add - my favorite one), but I think it does the trick. Hope, you can forgive me for not updating in ages, that I still have readers (who are - I hardly dare say it - willing to review) and that the ones who actually do still remember the story will enjoy this chaper of it...

If any of you read 'Karma', too, I have to apologize. The new chapter has proven to be a lot more difficult to write than originally assumed. Thus I will not have it until the muse finally decides I'm worth a kiss or two. Okay, that sounds rather ridiculous, doesn't it? Anyway, don't give up on me. Eventually, I'll have an update for you. And you're gonna like it... :P

Naturally, Addison had left as soon as possible. It'd been surprisingly difficult, willing herself to wiggle out of her husband's arms. It seemed wrong, not only, because she felt warm and save, but also because she knew it'd upset him if she ran once more, without giving him a chance to talk. Since he apparently wanted a divorce so desperately and all. Stupid enough, that was exactly the reason she wouldn't give him a chance to do it anytime soon.

Back at the hospital, she knew she was not going to be able to avoid him forever, but determined to at least try. A person not all that high on her 'have to avoid' list was Callie. In fact, she was the only one she did want to talk to. Both Meredith or Derek would be horrible, Mark-... she didn't even want to think about Mark, Stevens or O'Malley would be doubtly bad, too, Miranda would rip her head off (she had to grimace at the mere thought of all the stupid things she'd said to her last night), Richard-... also not an enticing thought. Yup, Callie was the only person Addison could talk to. Luckily, they ran into each other in an elevator.

"George slept with Izzie.", the Ortho-resident sighed.

"I'm falling in love with my husband.", Addison contered. Horrifyingly true. The words she'd said to him last night kept spinning in her head. Sure, he'd been asleep (definitely), but she had said it. And meant it. Which was clearly bad. Really, seriously bad.

"We decided to start over, give our marriage a new shot, but it sucks anyway.", Callie snorted. Addison hoped her friend would be a little more successful than she herself had been at reviving a dead marriage. Though she didn't know whether it was dead, just because there'd been cheating. As a matter of fact, her own marriage (to Derek) had ceased existing a long time before she'd slept with Mark and Derek had fallen in love with Meredith. Addie assumed Callie had a way better shot. At least she and O'Malley stil fought.

Whatever. Back to her own problems.

"I'm avoiding Alex, because I think the next time he sees me, he'll divorce me and that will suck."

Ugly truth.

"Why are we so messed up again?", Callie asked, sounding rather frustrated.

"I wish I knew.", the redhead sighed. The elevator reached her floor and opened. Walking out, she said:

"Good luck with your husband."

"Good luck with yours."

Oh yeah, she'd need that. If he ever managed to track her down, which she – up until now – had officially successfully avoided.

addexaddexaddexaddexaddex

Alex had been close to furious when once more he had woken up to find Addison was already gone. Worse than that, he'd been late for work, because she hadn't had the decency to at least wake him. She had known he was on today. He was on her service, after all.

But since he'd been late for work, Bailey had yelled at him for a few minutes (some rather weird things that made him think she might know about his marriage to the insanely hot neonatal attending thrown in every once in a while), then he'd been asigned to the pit for the rest of the week. Which didn't exactly enlighten his mood. In fact, he was quite unhappy and frustrated.

Also, Addison seemed to be very keen on not running into him. She'd managed to 'escape' for six hours. Which was a god-aweful long time.

But now, he was finally lucky. There she was, standing near the nurses station, reading some charts. He stepped close enough for her to notice he was there, which she visibly did (she shivered a little and hid her face further in the chart). Well, it was now or never, wasn't it?

"You're avoiding me again.", Alex stated. He was getting tired of this game. If she didn't want him, she was supposed to tell him, so he could get over it. Somehow, he had the feeling she did want him, though, the whole marriage thing had been her idea after all (even though she claimed not to remember).

"Yes.", she stated, not looking up from her charts.

"Do you not want to talk about this before it gets absolutely ridiculous?"

Because that was what he thought it was. Ridiculous. She wanted him (hell, she'd told him often enough how damn amazing he was – not even referring to sex - when she'd been drunk the night before) and he wanted her. So they'd gotten married. Big deal.

"Urgh... Leaving now."

That? Her leaving? Her rushing away from him towards the end of the hallway to avoid facing what had happened and what would have to happen eventually? The last straw.

"Dr Montgomery-Karev!", Alex yelled after her, not even caring that he was about two feet away from the nurses station, the hospital's hottest gossip pool, "If you have a moment, I'd like to talk about the fact that we got married!"

Well, that seemed to have worked. Not only did everyone around gasp in shock and then started whispering (with a loud scandalized 'WHAT?' every once in a while), but it also made his wife stop in her tracks, turn around, storm towards him, grab his arm and pull him into the closest on-call room.

"Are you out of your mind?", she hissed, "Why don't you yell about it in front of everybody?"

"I just did.", he stated dryly, "What is your problem?"

"My problem? My problem? I'm not the one who just gave the nurses the best gossip in ages!"

"No, you're the one who avoids me every time you're sober."

"Well, of course I-...", she started, but stopped, when she realized she was about to admit something that she didn't want to admit.

"We're talking about you.", Addison said defensively, her arms crossed in front of her chest. Protection? Protecting her heart, that was more like it. Not that it'd do any good now. He already had it. Cliché, cliché. Who cared whether that was a cliché? It was true, goddamnit!

But what he said next, that she honestly hadn't expected.

"You do get that I love you, right?"

"You-... What?", she stuttered, after seconds in which he simply stared at her with a questioning look on his face, accompanied with a small smile and him radiating a it's-the-most-obvious-and-natural-thing-in-the-world feeling.

"I love you.", Alex stated, shrugging, "There, I did it again. It's not that hard to say after all."

"Wha-... You-... love-... uh... I-... Seriously?", was all Addison managed to stutter. In fact, he'd so caught her off-guart with that absolutely unexpected statement, she didn't even have time to think about it.

Alex looked at her in a way that obviously meant something along the lines of 'Duh, of course! Didn't you notice? Wasn't it obvious?'.

"It's big and it scares the hell out of me, but yeah, I do.", he said, shrugging again, "I wouldn't have walked away if I didn't. And I walked away. Basically told you I don't want you, to get you as far away from me as possible. I have this weird tendency to hurt people, especially the ones I care about. And I didn't want to hurt you. Which I already told you, but apparently you were too drunk to remember it."

Slowly, Addison's mind started to work again and she realized all this made perfectly sense.

"Oh my god, I have to sit down for this...", she uttered, almost falling down on one of the beds.

"Am I scaring you?", Alex asked with an observant look. He also seemed a little nervous. Which she found adorable.

"No, you're not scaring me, you're just-... This is a surprise."

"Is it? I thought it was obvious. And just for the record: I'm scaring myself. I'm not used to this."

He sat down next to her, leaving just enough space between their bodies. Obviously he wasn't quite sure what to do. Well, he was 12 years old, after all.

"What, actually saying what you want instead of sending out mixed signals?", Addison smirked weakly.

He turned to look at her, a wry smile on his lips.

"Yeah."

"Why does it scare you?", Addison asked all of the sudden.

"I mean, of course it scares you, talking about feelings freaks almost everyone out, but why does it scare you that much?"

He took a deep breath, then hesitated, then let out the air while saying:

"You're my wife, and if you don't mind, I'd like to keep it that way, so telling you about myself probably isn't wrong and all, but I'd really rather let you find out stuff about me in the course of time so you don't get scared and run in the opposite direction."

What? Did he seriously think anything about him could make her want to 'run'? Okay, she had avoided him, but that had been before she'd known he loved her. They loved each other. Whatever.

"You really don't know how this works, do you?", she asked. An honest question. A little bit of awe. He was nervous and scared and all she wanted to do was hold him and never let him go until she died.

"No, I don't.", he shot her the same weird (intoxicating) smile he'd given her at Joe's when they'd first kissed, "Sorry. Never done this before. But if you want that divorce-..."

She cut him off with a almost shrieked:

"No! No, I don't want a divorce, Alex. I-... uh-... love you, too."

There it was. She'd told him when he'd actually been concious. Hah! Neither could help the weird cheesy grin that was stealing its way onto their faces.

"You're not just saying it, because you're feeling sorry for me, are you?", Alex checked.

"I already told you, but apparently you were lost too deeply in the sweet world of dreams to remember it.", she grinned, kind of quoting the thing he'd said. Just for the sake of symmetry.

And then he was leaning in and she was leaning in and their lips met in the most glorious way. Yes, glorious. They were happy. There was this tiny little thing there. This thing had a name. A four letter word. It started with an L, the second letter was an O, followed closely by a V, only to get the final touch of a most beautiful little E. Love. Yup, they were in love. Which meant, all of their problems had just mysteriously resolved themselves.

And suddenly, without much of a warning, they did have a problem. Because their little kiss they'd shared to put a final note on their insignificant, life-altering conversation, turned into a little bit more. Actually, a lot more. They were running out of air and their clothes were all of the sudden scattered all over the place.

And there was nothing wrong with that. They'd just found out they loved each other. And hot sex was hot sex, no matter where and under which circumstances. Never mind the fact that they were both busy doctors in a crowded hospital, who had a lot of patients to see and important things to do. Somehow, this was a little bit more significant.

They were enthusiastic. They were happy. Hell, they were married! They'd exchanged non-awkward 'I love you's. They were elated right now. And they did know that they were in a twenty feet radius of the nurses station and that said nurses were probably listening at the door, but so be it. At least this would give them something to gossip about. For a very long time. Which would make everyone happy.

There was no fault to be found in that.