TWO - the gods

She was late for work. She had spent too much of her morning staring into the dregs of her coffee like they were going to reveal to her the answer to all her problems. Meredith Grey was many things but a seer she was not. Regardless of that, by the end of her morning black coffee she had decided her course of action. After yesterday she couldn't show anymore weakness around the likes of Addison or anyone else at the hospital. It would only undo the hard work she had put into herself over the last few months. Addison would be hard to avoid, she knew that much but it was essential not only for her to maintain her current lifestyle but also for her sanity. Something about the redhead was maddening and thoughts of Addison Montgomery-Shepherd plagued both her conscious and subconscious. Daybreak had awoken her from an endless parade of strange dreams all of which she had starred in. Sometimes as a loving friend but, embarrassingly, more often than not, as the romantic lead. Leave it up to her to develop feelings for her ex-boyfriend's ex-wife. She was a walking train wreck and life loved reminding her of that at every chance it got.

She hastily grabbed her bag from the counter along with her keys and at the last minute thought a homemade granola bar from a snack basket Izzie had set up on the kitchen counter in place of a fruit bowl. It wasn't her first choice, but she could keep it in her pocket in case of a similar kind of fainting disaster as the night before. Though Izzie's incessant baking usually annoyed the hell out of Meredith, this morning it was a blessing.

The house was empty, so she assumed the others had all already made their way to the hospital. Likely so they could scope out the patients before rounds for the best cases to sink their rabid intern teeth into. The journey to work would be made alone today.

It was a short and uneventful drive. She was in that autopilot mode that sometimes takes over your senses and arrived far quicker than she had hoped. She sat unmoving in her car for a few minutes, hands still locked onto the wheel while the engine rumbled on and steeled herself for another long shift and prayed to whatever god that might be out there that she wouldn't be put on either of the Shepherd's service.

"I have had a hard night and I am not in the mood to listen to interns yapping or fighting over attending's, so you will take who you are given, and you will be happy about it," Bailey dictated, barely looking up from her chart.

There was an audible sigh from the interns in front of her which did nothing to lighten Bailey's mood.

"Karev, you're with Robbins."

"Oh, come on -" Alex tried to protest but was quickly shot down. He shouldn't have even bothered; the Nazi was out in full force today and she wasn't taking prisoners.

"Steven's, you have Shepherd. Yang, you're with Torres, O'Malley, Sloan. And Grey you have been requested by Shepherd down in OB."

So, there isn't a God.

There was a pause, a lull in action that conveyed their displeasure to their superior more fluently than words ever could. Did Miranda Bailey care? No, not one bit.

"Well don't just stand there. Move."

So, they moved, begrudgingly and not with the pace a surgeon should move at but nevertheless they moved, because when Bailey tells you to do something you do it.

Meredith was less than thrilled to find herself working under the redhead's service and swiftly made her way to the pit morbidly hoping a big trauma case would roll through the doors and she would have an excuse to hide away in an OR. As if the trauma God's themselves had heard her pleas she was greeted by an RTA less than a minute later. Meredith practically sprinted to meet the EMT's with Hunt hot on her heels wondering where on earth the young blonde had appeared from.

"Kelly Abernathy, 26, involved in an MVC. She was in the passenger seat. Had her feet up on the dashboard. Compound fracture to the left leg, suspected fractured pelvis. GCS of 15, BP 149/95 systolic, he's 14 weeks pregnant," an EMT rattled off and Meredith felt her heart drop. There go her plans. The trauma God's sucked. Hunt nodded, taking in all the information before turning to Meredith.

"Grey, page Shepherd and Torres."

The pager was barely in her hand before a voice spoke up behind her.

"No need. I'm already here"

Uh oh. Meredith let out an internal groan as she turned to find Addison Montgomery standing behind her and she didn't look happy. She didn't look angry like Meredith had expected her too though. Instead, she looked disappointed and concerned and that was somehow so much worse. She knew she would have to steel herself for an uncomfortable conversation later.

The God's really did suck.

If Addison hadn't been so worried about the young blonde, the look on her face when she walked into the trauma room would have made her laugh. She was worried however and the sheepishly, guilty, and worried look on the intern's face instead only had her heart breaking just a little bit more for her. Something wasn't right with Meredith Grey and now that Addison had brought it up, she was avoiding the attending like the plague which concerned her even more. Grey stayed quiet, only speaking when Addison asked her a question and complying with her orders and directions. It wasn't long before they found a foetal heartbeat and the patient was stabilised enough for surgery. The foetus was doing surprisingly well for the amount of trauma sustained and Addison only expected to have to monitor the mother and baby for a little while longer while they underwent surgery to realign the bones in her leg. Luckily the pelvic fracture didn't need surgical intervention, but it was going to be a long road to recovery.

Meredith was more than competent as a surgical intern. Addison hadn't had the chance to work with her closely yet and she was enjoying the opportunity to analyse the woman's skills up close. She didn't quite rival Cristina but that was mostly because the brunette was ruthless when it came to snatching the best cases and jumping at every opportunity to scrub in on a surgery there was. She was glad that Yang hadn't been in her intern class. She admired the woman, but she would've made for fierce competition. While watching she noticed again how the blonde's tiny hands shook ever so slightly while she worked but when Meredith noticed her watching she hid her hands in her Lab coat pockets.

"Ok, I will see you in surgery, Miss Abernathy. Grey, you'll be scrubbing in with me and Doctor Torres. We just need to wait for an OR to open up and then you can prep her for surgery," Addison announced to the room before giving Meredith a pointed look and exiting. Meredith took that as a sign that she should follow and reassured their patient that she would be back as soon as an OR had been confirmed.

"Is everything alright?" Meredith enquired worriedly to which Addison shrugged nonchalantly.

"Everything's fine. I just wondered if you wanted to come get lunch with me?" Meredith blinked in comical confusion, and she felt the same flutter in her stomach she had felt the night before return but this time stronger.

"You wanted to ask me to lunch?" she asked the redhead sceptically.

"I wanted to ask you to lunch," she repeated in confirmation like some kind of mantra. Meredith paused while Addison looked at her expectantly. Part of her desperately wanted to accept the invitation but there was an equally eager part of her that wanted to run for the hills. Was this some kind of ploy? Did Addison know more than she was letting on or was this just an innocent invitation?

Addison must have noticed the intern's hesitancy because she then reassured her "This isn't a test, Meredith. I just want to get to know you better. We can't be the exes warring with each other if we're going to be working together so we might as well be friends, right?"

"Right." It seemed like a reasonable enough suggestion.

Addison beamed back at her like she had just made her day and strutted off in the direction of the cafeteria before calling back to her, "Well are you coming?"

Meredith rushed to follow, once again feeling inexplicably drawn to the redhead. It was a dangerous kind of pull. Like a blackhole, she had no idea what was waiting for her on the other side, but she knew that her world would be forever altered. It scared her how much Addison seemed to really see her, and it made her want to pull away. The older woman's magnetism had Meredith walking the line between the blackhole and isolation and it felt as though she was waiting for a strong breeze to sway her in either direction.

Addison raises an eyebrow when Meredith only buys a small salad and water, but she doesn't say anything. It doesn't escape her that the younger woman only picks at the food in front of her.

They attract a lot of stares. I guess it was an odd pairing, the slutty intern, and the adulterous wife. She hated thinking of Meredith as that now, it didn't seem right.

Meredith catches Addison eyeing her pitiful salad and feels the sudden urge to explain herself. She plucked an excuse out of thin air.

"I don't like to eat too much before surgery. Bathroom breaks just mean less time on the OR floor."

Addison nodded, seemingly appeased. It seemed like a fairly normal intern thing to say. Leaving surgery meant possibly passing up an opportunity to jump in and no intern wanted that, so she left it alone. By the end of lunch Addison had almost completely forgotten about yesterday's events, the intern seemed fine today, maybe she really had been overreacting. Most of all she was struck by how much she truly liked Meredith Grey. Their conversation came with a rare kind of ease. The jokes came easily, and the silences were never awkward; it was almost strange how well they got on when the world was telling them they should be mortal enemies.

It wasn't until they were scrubbing out of surgery later that day that Addison felt her concern for the young blonde settle back in. Meredith had been sneakily strategic when scrubbing in, waiting until she was the last person in the scrub room before getting to work but she didn't have the same luck on her way out of surgery. Addison and Callie were lingering, chatting just off to the side, seemingly waiting for her to finish and though she appreciated the sentiment it was incredibly inconvenient.

"Hey, you guys should go ahead without me," she half pleaded as she turned the faucet on, but the other two surgeons didn't seem to catch on as Addison stated that they didn't mind waiting.

Meredith internally cursed the woman as she realised she couldn't put off scrubbing out any longer without raising red flags. She bit the bullet and prayed the other two were too distracted by their conversation to notice the way the blonde winced as she scrubbed her forearms. She just had to get to the point where she could pull her long sleeves back over her arms and then she would be safe.

"Grey, are you bleeding?"

She had almost made it, but a few droplets of blood had landed in the sink betraying her. The two liquids swirl together in synchronicity before dancing their way down the drain of OR 2. If Callie had looked over only a few seconds later she would've been in the clear and on her way to the waiting room to give the good news to their patient's husband but instead she was caught red handed. Literally.

"Mer," Addison broke the pregnant pause that had formed between the three of them, approaching the frozen intern with the kind of caution you would a wounded animal.

"Can I see your arms?"