disclaimer:

I do not own the rights to the characters used or to the song lyrics used. This fanfic is a non-profit, amateur effort not intended to infringe on the rights of anyone, either the people who own the songs or lyrics used or the owners of the characters depicted in this story.

Author's note: Sorry if this is a little fluffier than usual :-)

Please read and review, I do like the reviews. They keep me motivated.

"My new patient is the tiger lady."

Cristina stopped her charting and glanced up at Callie, half of her bottom lip tucked under her teeth. She eyed Callie for a minute, thinking of what to say before she settled on, "Excuse me?"

"My patient, the tiger lady. I was going to tell you when you came home tonight, except then that whole thing happened where you didn't come home last night. I thought maybe that might happen tonight, too."

"You didn't go home last night?" Meredith appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, just in time.

"Keep your voice down!" Cristina hissed, closing the chart she'd been working on and sliding it back into place at the nurse's station, walking away from the station and Callie and Meredith. They followed on her heels.

"Oh, come on Cristina, we're all done rounding. You can spare a minute to give us all the juicy details," Meredith said. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail that bounced when she walked. It fit her mood, which was shockingly perky for so early in the morning. "I mean, not that you haven't been doing it for awhile, but now that it's out in the open we want to hear all about everything. And this better not be a relationship without words, there better be words or I will be sorely disappointed."

Cristina stopped and spun on both of them. Meredith nearly toppled into Cristina, but was able to stop herself. Callie stopped short but still bumped into Meredith. She had turned to apologize to Meredith when Cristina said, "Not out in the open. This is not out in the open." Her eyes moved between them before settling on Meredith. The next words she spoke came out in staccato bursts. "If this does get out in the open, Meredith, I swear to you I will cut you. I will turn to you during surgery and I will slice you with a scalpel and then I will pretend it was an accident. I will ask if you're okay but I won't care if you're okay, and then I will announce loudly how sorry I am but I will not be sorry."

Meredith nodded, grinning. "But coffee. We'll still go get coffee. And talk about this."

Cristina pursed her lips. "Fine."

They walked together in a pack and Cristina did her best to give them enough information to shut them up. As they approached the coffee cart she said, "There are no juicy details. We talked. There were words."

Callie scoffed. "Oh, please. You didn't come home. You went home with Major Hottie McBadass and nothing happened? There 'were words' and nothing happened?"

Cristina scrunched up her face in consternation. "Fine. There was some cuddling. After we talked, there was some cuddling."

"What did you talk about?" Meredith pressed.

"We talked about the ex-fiancee," Cristina motioned with her hand in the general direction of the hospital where she had seen Owen with his arms around said ex-fiancee, as if she might still be standing in that same spot. "And Burke."

Meredith must not have been expecting this, because she looked like she'd been slapped. "You…told him about Burke? Oh my God, Cristina. Oh my God."

"What?" Cristina looked baffled.

"You said this wasn't a stupid nothing but I didn't think you meant it was this big. How could you not tell me about this? How can you be ready to tell him about something that you don't tell anybody, and I have no idea?"

"Meredith?"

"Seriously, Cristina? Seriously? You let it get to this point and you didn't come to me? You didn't tell me?"

"I'll get the coffees," Callie blurted, and promptly disappeared.

"We were fighting. Remember? Secret cutter interns? Solo surgeries? We weren't talking to each other."

"Cristina."

"You told me to tell him about Burke!"

"I give you my opinion all the time. I didn't think you'd actually tell him. I didn't really think you— wait. Just-- Do you love him?" Hurt, Meredith asked the question like it was an accusation.

"What?"

"Cristina Yang, are you in love with him?"

"In love with who?" George asked, appearing next to Meredith.

Meredith and Cristina exchanged a look, a silent agreement to put the conversation on hold. The tenseness left their bodies, and Meredith turned to George. "It's nothing. It's stupid. Hey George."

George looked at Meredith, and then he looked at Cristina. And then he looked at Meredith. Everyone was being weird. He couldn't handle anyone else being weird, not when they had to pull together for Izzie.

Cristina half-smiled, a forced gesture. "Hi, George."

Still reeling from the morning's events, it was all she could accomplish. Waking up next to Owen Hunt, finding him already awake. When she'd opened her eyes, at least an before either of them had to be up, she'd found him turned away from her, reading with the help of the bedside lamp. He had sensed she was awake, had looked over his shoulder and turned those blue eyes on her. His body blocked the light, and she couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw a haunted look in those blue depths, something dark swimming just below the surface.

He had smiled at her, said, "Good morning, Dr. Yang," and she had melted a little bit. In the moment before his tender greeting she had steeled herself to just ask the questions. How long have you been awake? Did you even go to sleep? How many hours did you work this week? Last week? The week before that? A jumbled list of questions that her suspicious subconscious had been compiling, they were all inside of her ready to spill out from a place she didn't know she'd been storing them. But when he spoke, the lid on the pandora's box of nagging, gut-wrenching concern she hadn't been aware of quietly closed. But now she was aware of it, hiding inside her.

"Cristina?" Callie's tone was sharp, she had obviously been trying to get her attention. Cristina looked up and saw that she was holding a cup of coffee out for her. Meredith and George were discussing Izzie. Something about how she wasn't herself. Was downright 'off'.

"Have you noticed anything?" George asked Callie and Cristina.

Cristina shook her head. Callie bristled. "I don't spend a lot of time contemplating Izzie Stevens."

George looked hurt. "You know, I'm asking because it's pretty clear that something is wrong. We are her friends, and her colleagues, and if we don't look out for each other, who will?"

Only mildly chastened, Callie took a sip of coffee and said, "What does Karev say?"

"Karev says, 'Don't ever talk to me about Izzie again'. But I've seen him watching her. He knows."

"Knows what?" Callie asked.

"I don't know."

"What does Izzie say?" Cristina asked. It wasn't her only question. She didn't know what anyone was talking about. She hadn't noticed anything different about Izzie. Hadn't had much interaction with her recently. Except for the day of the solo-surgery, when she sat down and told Cristina how great the sex was with Alex. That was weird, now that she thought about it.

"Izzie says Izzie's fine." Meredith announced. It was clear Izzie wasn't convincing anyone.

Meredith and George started walking, talking animatedly. Cristina and Callie exchanged a look, making no effort to move or follow them. "They won't notice if we aren't there," Callie said, taking another sip of coffee.

Cristina turned to her. "The tiger lady?"

Callie's eyes widened, she nodded as they turned to walk in another direction. "Got hit by a car, came into the ER this morning, Hunt put in for an ortho consult so I go. When I got the call and I could tell he was pissed because someone dropped the ball, they should have consulted her overnight. ER did x-rays overnight, she broke her knee, been in the ER for hours but a nice lady, in a great mood."

"That's all she broke? Lucky."

"I know, right?" Callie kept going. "Lexie was hanging around with nothing to do so I dragged her along on the consult. So we go talk to the patient, and they didn't have her in a gown yet, I don't know why. But I go in-- and she's a big lady—but I go in and she's wearing this really purple shirt, with these black tiger stripes across it." Callie makes hand motions to indicate where the stripes were, across the chest.

"So there's this big lady in this big tiger t-shirt, right? And she started telling me her story. She was in the cross-walk, saw the car coming, and knew it was going to hit her so she jumped. Onto the hood of the car. 'Leaped', she said. She said, 'So I leaped onto the car'. Which is pretty good, right? Kind of instinctual? So I said, 'You leaped onto the car? Like a tiger?', and her eyes light up and she's like, 'yes, exactly. I leaped like a tiger'. And there she was, in this obnoxious tiger shirt, and Lexie just walked out. Just straight up, turned and left the room, face bright red." Callie made a circle around her own face with her index finger. "Bright red."

Callie continued the story, her speech and body animated, obviously enjoying the re-telling. Cristina wasn't even sure if it's the story that's entertaining, or the way Callie is told it, but both ended up laughing. As usual, Callie's facial expressions were the perfect compliment to her words.

"So I left her room just as another woman raced in. And she looked like she just ran a marathon, but she came in like she won. And she was holding some clothes. She ran into the room and said, 'I brought you a change of clothes', and you know what she brought?"

Cristina shook her head and laughed. "It's was not a tiger shirt!"

Callie exclaimed, "It was a bright orange tiger shirt. And I had to tell someone, so I found Lexie. I said, 'she leaped onto that car like a friggin' tiger, Lexie, because I could tell she was going to burst. And Lexie turned to me and made a pawing motion with her hand—" Callie replicated the motion for Cristina's benefit, "and said, 'rowwwr'. I have to tell you, before then I didn't think Lexie had a sense of humor. I wasn't sure she had a personality, but she was dying trying not to laugh during the consult."

Callie stopped talking as Derek approached them. Both women turned to look at his approach. "Cristina, good. I was on my way to the ER. Is Dr. Hunt working down there today? I've been trying to get my patient's daughter to understand the surgery her dad needs but she keeps telling me she can't make a decision, she needs to talk to Dr. Hunt."

Cristina nodded, her face falling. Derek, knowing why, thanked her and gave her arm a reassuring tap with the chart he was holding before making his way toward the ER. He made it three steps, turned and said, "I'm sure she just needs to hear everything is okay."

Cristina nodded, looking up at him. "Okay. No, no, it's okay."

Derek nodded, and Cristina turned back to Callie, who was watching her expression for some sign of what she was feeling. The light-hearted mood had dissipated, but Callie sensed Cristina didn't want to talk about Hunt or the ex-fiancee or whether or not they were having hot sweaty sex. She didn't believe for a second they weren't, as the man's body was on hyper-alert whenever Cristina was around. And the way he looked at her. Callie would kill to have someone want her like that. To have someone find her so irresistible that they couldn't keep the evidence of it off their face.

"I better get going," Cristina said, starting off down the hall.

"Maybe lunch?" Callie called.

Cristina turned and nodded. She swallowed and said, "Thanks."

R.S.V.P....Review s'il vous plait