Title: Look At Us
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing/Characters: Alex/Izzie centric, with the whole ensemble mentioned throughout.
Rating: PG-13, mild language, minor reference to sex.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Losing My Religion. Knowledge of S2 finale is kinda important.
Summary: At Seattle Grace Hospital, someone is always watching.



Alex studies Izzie when he thinks no one’s watching. But at Seattle Grace Hospital, someone is always watching. She’s sitting outside with Meredith and Cristina at lunchtime and he watches her from inside. The sun has finally come out after days of rain, and everything looks greener and bluer than before. She’s laughing at something Cristina said, and she covers her mouth with her hand. Cristina just throws her head back and laughs with her mouth open, half-chewed food visible to everyone. Meredith just sips on her drink and shakes her head at the two women.

He smiles despite himself and takes another bite of his sandwich. He’s glad Izzie is finally laughing again. It’s been three months since she came back to the hospital and four months since Denny and each day she seems to get better. He still gives her space but gradually they’ve become friends again. He’s glad for that.

Behind him Nurse Olivia is watching him watch Izzie with sad eyes. She orders a muffin from the coffee cart and takes one final glance at him before returning to the nurses’ station.

---


Sometimes during rounds he’ll stand across from her so he can watch her as she answers a question posed to her, relief washing over her face when she answers correctly. She’ll look up at him and smile, and he’ll smile back at her. Sometimes he even gives her an encouraging wink.

In the hallway, Bailey pulls him aside and fixes him with one of her unamused stares. “Karev, if I catch you staring at Izzie one more time instead of paying attention during rounds I will transfer you to a different resident. Understood?”

He chuckles at her and nods. The next day his eyes are on her again and when everyone’s scattered, Bailey smacks him upside the head as a warning. He rubs the back of his head as he watches her walk off with George.

---

They’re rarely paired up on a case and when they are it’s always interesting. He stands too close to her in the patient’s room, but she never moves away. She just stands there slightly rigid and ignores the fact that his warm breath is on the back of her neck.

In surgery he loves the way her eyes light up when she’s allowed to assist on a difficult procedure. A mask covers her face, but he can tell by her eyes that she’s smiling underneath. Occasionally, she’ll look up at him and whisper, “isn’t this cool?” and he always nods back.

After surgery he comes out of the scrub room and pulls off his cap, wiping the sweat away with the back of his arm. Dr. Shepherd is signing something at the nurses’ station and hands it back to Patricia. He turns and sees Alex making his way past the desk.

“Good work tonight, Karev,” he says with a smile that probably makes Meredith melt every time. Alex just gives him a nod and thanks him for the opportunity. “Although, next time I’d try and focus more on the AVM than the pretty blonde across from you.”

Alex lowers his head and laughs to himself. “I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

As he watches the other man head towards the locker room, Derek smiles and thinks of a different pretty blonde he wishes he could see today.

---

When her patient dies he can tell by the way her shoulders sag and her eyes have lost that excited glimmer. She always takes it personally and blames herself. Even if she doesn’t say it out loud he can tell.

One night, he’s on-call and he wanders the almost empty halls wishing he had something to do. He goes down into the basement because the vending machines down there always have the good snacks. He’s about to pop in the first quarter when he hears whimpering. He turns the corner and looks down the darkened hallways filled with gurneys and old furniture the hospital no longer needs. Further down he can make out a figure lying on one of the gurneys. He walks over to investigate – it wouldn’t be the first time a patient wandered down here and got lost.

It’s Izzie, though. She’s crying into her balled up sweater under her head and he rests a hand on her cheek, trying to dry her tears. He doesn’t need to ask. He knows she’s lost Elizabeth, her 28-year-old patient. He warned her about getting too close but she didn’t listen. In the week she was here, Izzie had grown to consider this young woman as her new best friend, and now she was gone.

“She was just like me!” she sobs. “She’s my age, Alex. She died and no one came for her. She died alone.”

“You’re not alone, Izzie,” he tries to tell her but she continues to cry.

“Yes. Yes, I am. What if I end up like her? She had no one.”

“You have me,” he says in a low voice as he slides onto the gurney with her. He props his head up on one elbow and looks down at her. “And you have Meredith, Cristina, O’Malley…”

Her crying slows to a stop and she wipes away her tears, sniffling at him. She looks up at him and in one motion she grabs his face between her hands and pulls him down onto her, kissing him with desperation. He knows she just wants comfort right now, and it’s not really him that she’s kissing. It’s an idea of someone else she wishes he could be. But he kisses her back anyway. Their relationship – friendship – whatever, couldn’t get anymore weird, so he puts his full weight on her and deepens the kiss as he traces the inside of her mouth with his tongue. His pager goes off and he reluctantly moves to get up, but she locks one leg around him and he’s trapped.

“Izzie,” he says between kisses. “Iz. I gotta go.” He breaks free and sits up. “I’m sorry. I gotta check on this.”

And as he gets off her he notices that she has a different look in her eyes. He can’t quite figure it out but he knows it isn’t loneliness anymore. Part of him is pleased.

When he passes by one of the many doors along the hallway, he thinks he hears a sound coming from behind it. He shrugs it off and hopes it isn’t rats. Two minutes later Callie turns to George who’s still in her bed waiting for her to tell him what the noise outside was.

“Karev and Stevens are at it again,” she states as she flips him over and straddles his hips. He lets out a little chuckle when she bends down and takes a nip at his bottom lip.

---

“Why did you take me off the case?” Izzie is asking Burke who looks down at her slightly distastefully.

“It has come to my attention that perhaps you need to take a break from this case. I have discussed it with Dr. Bailey and she agrees that you should stay in the pit for a few days. Work on your suturing and other basic skills for a while.”

She stares at him like he’s slapped her across the face. “You’re sticking me in the pit? For how long?”

“Just until the end of the week. It will be good practice. Then Dr. Bailey will assign you to a new case.” He sees her angered expression and gives her a wide-eyed stare as he cleans his glasses. “Do you have a problem with our decision, Dr. Stevens?”

He’s challenging her to say ‘yes’. She almost does, but she bites her tongue and shakes her head, turning away from him and heading towards the stairwell.

Alex is running up the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time when he sees her coming down with a frown on her face. She passes by him without saying anything and he grabs her by the wrist, pulling her back up to the landing with him.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks in a concerned voice.

“Leave me alone, Alex.” Her tone is final but he doesn’t give up just yet.

“No, c’mon. You can tell me.”

She turns to him and gives him a bitter smile. “You want to know what’s wrong?! Burke just kicked me off the case because he caught us together yesterday and now I’m stuck in the pit for the rest of the week!” she yells at him angrily. “Like we’re 16 years old or something and need to be taught a lesson!”

“What?” he asks slightly confused. They had been making out the day before in a patient’s bathroom when Burke came in to ask the patient something and caught them. Alex doesn’t understand why Burke would pull her off the case and not him.

Izzie continues to fume at him, “I’m not 16, Alex. I’m 28-years-old. I can make my own decisions! I can’t believe he’d pull that kind of ‘holier-than-thou’ crap while he’s screwing Cristina.”

“Shhh, Iz. Calm down. I’ll tell Burke it was my fault, that I forced myself on you and that I should be the one kicked off, not you.”

“You’d do that?” she questions him with a softer tone that before.

“Of course,” he answers without a pause.

She looks up at him for a moment and tilts her head up to kiss him. “Thanks, but I wouldn’t want you to do that. I’ll be fine in the pit.”

He gives her another kiss to say he’s sorry and she understands. She hurries down the stairs towards the pit and disappears through the door. Two flights above them, Addison witnesses the whole thing and smiles to herself. Two interns in love isn’t anything new, she knows first hand. She waits till Alex leaves the stairwell through the door below her and continues down. She hopes that their fate is happier than hers.

---

He’s sick with a cold one weekend, and he’s stuck doing scutwork with Cristina who pissed Bailey off one time too many. She’s grumbling about how unfair it is and he tries to shut her out – she’s giving him a headache.

He finishes one stack of folders and moves onto another stack when he sees Izzie walking over to them, with a three cups in her hands.

“Hey guys!” she says in her usual sweet voice. She hands Cristina a coffee, which she takes gratefully and flashes her a brief smile. “And one tea for you,” she say as she holds out a cup for him.

He hates tea, and from the way it smells, it must be chamomile, also his least favourite kind. He takes a sip though, to appease her and wants to spit it out immediately, but Izzie is smiling down at him so happily, he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings.

She takes a sip of her own tea – Earl Grey, something he would have preferred – and rubs his back gently. “I hope you feel better soon, Alex.”

“Thanks, Iz,” he makes out between gagging on his second sip of his tea and swallowing. She smiles at him and blows him a kiss as she walks away.

When she’s finally out of sight, he chucks the cup into the trash and goes back to his paperwork. He can feel a pair of eyes on him and he looks up to see Cristina giving him an amused look, eyebrows raised.

“What?”

She clicks her pen on and shakes her head at him. “You are so pussy-whipped,” she says with a laugh.

“You wanna go, Yang?”

“Oh, what are you gonna do? Sneeze on me?”

“Fuck off.”

---

A few weeks later Alex walks into Joe’s bar with his gym bag tossed over one shoulder and takes a seat next to Meredith at the bar. He orders a beer and takes a swig before turning to her. She’s got a row of empty shot glasses in front of her, and she stares blankly into space.

“So what happened now, Grey?”

She grabs a peanut, cracks it open and stuffs it in her mouth angrily. “He’s never going to leave her,” she mumbles with her mouth full. “Even though he loves me more, he’ll stay with her because that’s the kind of guy he is.”

He nods and takes another sip. He’s heard this story before from her. She’s like a broken record, but part of him feels bad for her. She doesn’t deserve to be treated like this.

“Why are you here? Don’t you have a hot date with Izzie or something?”

He shakes his head and takes a long pull of the beer. “We had a fight.”

“About what?”

“I apparently don’t notice things enough.” He’s pissed off and he smashes his bottle down a little too hard and it almost breaks. “It’s just a ridiculous assumption. I mean, just because I don’t point everything out to her doesn’t mean I don’t notice it!”

“Yeah,” Meredith says encouragingly.

“I noticed when she got her hair cut last week and no one else did. I just didn’t say anything because I didn’t want anyone to think I was becoming like O’Malley or something. I notice when she has on different lipstick. I noticed when she tried a new cookie recipe the other night.”

“Those were some damn good cookies,” she interjects. He gives her a look and she stuffs another peanut in her mouth. “Sorry, continue.”

“And I notice every little thing about her. Sometimes I hate it because she can’t do anything without me noticing. She’s always in my head and it’s….” he pauses, trying to look for the right word.

“Exhausting?” Meredith fills in for him. She knows exactly how he feels.

“Yeah! It’s exhausting. And yet, I love it. It’s part of who she is. She needs to be noticed.”

“Then tell her.” She was pushing him off his stool. “No more moping around. Go home and tell her exactly what you told me. At least one of us will get laid tonight.”

He looks down at her and puts down enough money to cover his beer and her tequila. “You know what Grey?”

“What?”

“You need to snap out of it and stop feeling sorry for yourself. There’s a guy out there who’s way better than McDreamy and will actually deserve you.”

She watches him grab his bag and finally asks, “You really think so, Alex?”

He grins down at her. “Yeah, I do. And if I didn’t already have Izzie, you wouldn’t be a half-bad chick to have around, you know, minus the alcoholism and all.”

She laughs and shoves him playfully. “Shut up and go see her.”

---

Hours later he’s laying in Izzie’s bed with her asleep beside him. He turns toward her and wraps an arm around her waist pulling her closer to him. He leaves a kiss between her shoulder blades and strokes her abdomen with his thumb. The whole house is finally quiet. O’Malley is probably crashing at his girlfriend’s place – wherever that is and Meredith stumbled home an hour ago. He closes his eyes and is about to fall asleep when Izzie turns in his arms. He opens his eyes and sees her staring back at him, a soft smile gracing her face.

“Do you work tomorrow?” she asks sleepily.

“No, you?”

“No.”

“Good, I can sleep in.” he pulls her closer and slips a leg between hers.

She giggles and lets him kiss her. “We can both stay in bed all day if we wanted,” she suggests.

“And it can finally just be us. Alone.”

“No pages, no Nazi on our asses, no nurses giving us odd looks.”

“You noticed that too?” he asks and she nods. “I feel like the whole hospital has been watching us, don’t you?”

“I know. That’s crazy, right?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles as he starts to fall asleep.

“Goodnight, Alex,” she sighs and rests her head under his chin.

He kisses the top of her head and feels himself falling into a deep sleep. “Goodnight, Iz.”