Loving family
Appetites and Other Emergencies
The transition from the violent, unyielding misery of the first trimester to the sheer biological anarchy of the fourteenth week caught Isobel Stevens entirely unprepared.
The books George stacked systematically on her nightstand had warned of "increased vitality" and "a notable shift in caloric requirements." They had not, however, warned her that she would wake up at two in the morning feeling as though she had been stranded in the Sahara for forty days, possessing both the ravenous appetite of a grizzly bear coming out of hibernation and the desperate, pulsing libido of a teenager in the back of an El Camino.
Izzie stood in the kitchen in an oversized gray t-shirt belonging to Alex and a pair of George’s flannel sleep pants, staring into the open refrigerator. The harsh bulb illuminated jars of condiments, a carton of milk, and two Tupperware containers of Louise O’Malley’s leftover shepherd's pie.
None of that would do.
With frantic, hyper-focused precision, Izzie retrieved a jar of garlic dill spears, a block of sharp yellow cheddar, and a jar of chunky peanut butter. She carved thick slabs of cheese, slathered each one with a generous spoonful of peanut butter, and wrapped them around the cold, briny pickles.
She took a massive bite, closing her eyes as the salty, creamy, vinegary crunch detonated across her tongue. It was the most magnificent culinary creation in the history of western civilization.
"If you're poisoning yourself, do it quietly," a gravelly voice rasped from the dark doorway.
Izzie didn't even flinch. Alex stood there, wearing only low-slung faded sweatpants, his dark hair crushed on one side from sleep. He leaned against the jamb, rubbing his eyes, his bare chest catching the faint silver moonlight filtering through the kitchen blinds.
"Don't mock it until you try it," Izzie mumbled around a mouthful of pickle and peanut butter. "It hits every single taste receptor at once. My body needs lipids, Alex. And sodium. The baby demanded sodium."
Alex stepped into the kitchen, his bare feet silent on the linoleum. He peered over her shoulder at the plate on the counter, his upper lip curling in utter revulsion. "That looks like something they feed prisoners in Siberia to get them to talk. You're disgusting, Stevens."
"I am a goddess providing sustenance to new life," she countered, swallowing hard and setting the half-eaten snack down on the counter.
She turned around to face him. Alex was close—dangerously close. The heat radiating off his broad, bare chest hit her bare arms like a furnace blast. The faint, dark stubble along his rugged jaw, the scent of warm skin, sleep, and cedarwood... it bypassed her rational brain entirely and shot a bolt of pure, unfiltered electricity straight into her pelvis.
Izzie’s pupils dilated. Her breath hitched in her throat.
Alex stopped rubbing his eyes, instantly noticing the shift. His posture stiffened into that watchful, overprotective guard he had worn like second skin ever since the pregnancy test. "What? Is your stomach turning? Did the pickle thing backfire?"
"No," Izzie whispered, her voice dropping half an octave, suddenly thick and ragged.
"Then what's the face for?"
Izzie didn't answer with words. She stepped forward, planting her palms flat against his bare pecs, feeling the immediate jump of his pulse beneath her fingers. Before he could process the move, she rose on her tiptoes, hooked an arm around his neck, and dragged his mouth down to hers.
The kiss was hard, messy, and urgent. Alex made a muffled sound of shock against her lips, his hands automatically coming up to brace her hips to keep her steady. For a second, he hesitated—paralyzed by the sudden shift from domestic snack run to five-alarm fire—before the unmistakable tang of dill and salt registered, coupled with the hot, demanding slide of Izzie’s tongue against his.
Alex let out a low groan in his throat, his fingers digging deep into the soft curve of her waist. He walked her backward until her lower spine hit the edge of the kitchen counter with a dull thud.
"Iz," Alex gasped against her mouth, trying and failing to pull back an inch. "Hold on. What happened to 'I'm tired, don't touch me, I feel like a beached whale'?"
"That was Tuesday," Izzie said breathlessly, her fingers tangling into his hair, tugging him right back down to her neck. She sucked a harsh, needy bruise into the hollow above his collarbone. "This is tonight. Alex, please. I feel like my skin is on fire."
"You're... wait." Alex’s dark eyes were wild, blown wide with confusion and rising arousal, but the protective panic won out. He gripped her shoulders, holding her a few inches away, his chest heaving. "Can we even do that? What about the kid? What if I poke something?"
Izzie let out a frustrated, hysterical laugh, reaching down to grab the waistband of his sweatpants. "Alex Karev, you are a surgical resident. You passed human anatomy with honors. You are not going to poke the fetus through my cervix! Now shut up and take these off."
"Is someone bleeding?"
A soft, bewildered voice broke the heat.
George stood in the doorway, blinking blindly without his glasses, his hair sticking up like a bird's nest. He was wearing an oversized grey t-shirt and boxer shorts, rubbing the bridge of his nose where his frames usually rested. He had his intern stethoscope still draped around his neck—an old nervous tic from falling asleep while studying for his retake.
"Nobody's bleeding, O'Malley," Alex said, his voice raw, though he didn't step away from Izzie. In fact, his arm remained possessively locked around her waist, keeping her flush against him.
Izzie looked over Alex’s broad shoulder, her cheeks flaming with a vibrant flush that had nothing to do with shame and everything to do with rampant, uninhibited lust. Her eyes swept over George’s pale, slender frame, the messy boyishness of him, the sweet curve of his lips.
"George," Izzie said, her voice dropping into an unmistakable, purring plea. "Come here."
George squinted, taking two cautious steps into the room. His gaze darted from Izzie’s flushed face to Alex’s bare, heaving chest, and then to the plate of peanut butter pickles on the counter. "Did you... were you eating that?"
"Forget the pickles, George," Alex muttered, his grip on Izzie tightening as he glanced sideways at him, a crooked, self-conscious smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "She’s possessed. I think the estrogen finally fried her brain."
George reached the counter, his brow furrowing with clinical interest. "Well, technically, human chorionic gonadotropin drops significantly at the end of the first trimester, causing a massive compensatory surge in maternal estrogen and progesterone. The increased pelvic vascularity and heightened nerve sensitivity often induce hyperactive—"
Izzie reached out, caught the collar of George’s gray t-shirt with both hands, and yanked him forward into the fray.
George’s breath caught in his throat as her mouth collided with his, fierce and impatient. He froze for a single, stunned heartbeat before his hands found her waist, his sensible clinical diagnostic evaporating into pure, shuddering heat.
"Izzie," George breathed against her cheek as she trailed desperate kisses across his jawline, working her way toward his ear. "Wait... Alex is right here..."
"I know he's here," Izzie whimpered, her hands moving down George’s chest, feeling the frantic, wild gallop of his heart. She reached out with her other hand, catching Alex’s wrist, pulling his heavy, calloused palm down to rest over her hip, anchoring them together. "I want both of you. Right now. If you two don't take me upstairs, I swear to God I will do something unspeakable on this kitchen table."
Alex looked across Izzie’s blonde head at George. In the silver darkness of the kitchen, the hesitation that usually haunted George’s eyes—the quiet Catholic guilt that whispered he was doing something dirty and forbidden—was completely absent, replaced by a dark, breathtaking hunger.
Alex’s throat clicked. His large hand slid around the curve of Izzie’s hip, his knuckles deliberately brushing against George’s fingers on the back of her waist.
"Upstairs," Alex ordered, his voice dropping into a commanding, gravelly rasp. "Now."
***
By three in the afternoon the following day, the high-octane sexual frenzy of the night had morphed into an equally terrifying, insatiable hunger that was currently menacing the Seattle Grace surgical floor.
Izzie stood at the cafeteria checkout counter, holding a plastic tray piled high with a towering, chaotic mountain of food.
There was a bowl of lukewarm beef chili, two orders of crispy french fries, a cup of vanilla soft serve melting rapidly down the side of its paper dish, a carton of chocolate milk, and a small side cup of yellow jalapeño nacho cheese.
"Stevens," Cristina Yang’s deadpan voice cut through the hum of the register. Cristina appeared beside her, eyeing the tray with the ruthless diagnostic disgust of a cardiothoracic surgeon examining a clogged artery. "What is that? Are you hosting a bar mitzvah, or did you just decide to give yourself acute pancreatitis?"
Izzie didn't even look up as she aggressively dipped three piping-hot french fries into the vanilla soft serve, topped them with a slice of jalapeño from the cheese cup, and shoved the entire monstrosity into her mouth.
A blissful, euphoric groan vibrated in Izzie’s chest.
"It's the balance of sweet, dairy, and capsaicin," Izzie said, chewing with fierce delight. "It settles the palate."
Cristina looked like she might call a psychiatric hold. "You are disgusting. Meredith! Come look at Stevens. She's eating soft serve with peppers. She’s finally lost her mind."
Meredith Grey walked over, holding a cup of black coffee, her eyes instantly dropping from Izzie’s face down to the waistband of her ceil blue scrubs.
Izzie had long abandoned the drawstring; her pants were currently held together by an industrial safety pin concealed beneath an extra-large scrub top she had stolen from the fourth-floor linen cart.
Meredith looked at the tray, then looked into Izzie’s wide, defiant blue eyes. A slow, knowing understanding flickered across Meredith’s features.
"Fries and ice cream?" Meredith asked softly, an eyebrow arched.
"And chili," Izzie added defensively, her cheeks flaming as she pulled her tray closer. "I'm performing five central line placements this afternoon, Meredith. I need the calories."
"Right," Meredith murmured, taking a sip of her coffee, the ghost of a fond, secret smile playing on her lips. "Calories."
Before Cristina could interrogate her further, Alex strode into the cafeteria like a freight train, his surgical coat fluttering, his jaw clamped shut around a wooden coffee stirrer. He took one look at Izzie surrounded by Cristina and Meredith, his protective radar flaring instantly.
Alex marched up, entirely ignoring the social hierarchy of the room, and stepped right into Izzie’s personal space. His dark eyes swept over her tray, then flicked up to her face.
"Did you take your iron supplement?" Alex asked gruffly, his hand automatically dropping to rest against the small of her back. The touch was completely domestic, entirely devoid of the cautious distance they usually maintained in public.
Cristina’s eyes narrowed like lasers, flicking from Alex’s hand on Izzie’s spine to the sudden, deep blush rising on Izzie’s neck. "Since when does Karev care about Stevens’ hematocrit?"
"Since she almost passed out during my thoracotomy last week," Alex lied effortlessly, not removing his hand. In fact, his fingers subtly slid an inch lower, his thumb hooking into the fabric of her scrub top, rubbing a small, firm circle against the curve of her hip.
Izzie felt the heat hit her like a sledgehammer. Her eyes darted up to Alex’s profile—the sharp line of his jaw, the faint purple bruise near his collarbone that she knew for a fact had been put there by her own mouth eight hours ago.
Her breath shuddered. The french fries suddenly lost all their appeal.
"Alex," Izzie whispered, her voice tight, a sudden, desperate tremor running through her.
Alex glanced down at her, caught the dilated pupils and the parted, flushed lips, and instantly recognized the look. A slow, wicked, arrogant smirk broke across his rough face.
"Oh, no," Alex muttered under his breath, his chest vibrating with a low laugh. "Not here, Stevens."
"Call room three," Izzie hissed through her teeth, abandoning her tray on the register belt. "Now."
"Iz, I have a post-op dressing change in Ortho—"
"I don't care if you have a heart transplant with the President!" she snapped in a furious, hushed whisper, grabbing him by the sleeve of his white coat and physically yanking him toward the exit. "Move your ass, Karev!"
Cristina stared after them, her mouth slightly open. "Did she just drag him off like a cavewoman?"
Meredith took another slow sip of her coffee, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "Yep. Definitely calories."
***
The lock on the door of Call Room 3 clicked shut with a sharp, metallic snap.
Izzie didn't even wait for the lights to be turned on. The moment the door was sealed, she threw her arms around Alex’s neck, dragging his mouth down to hers in the shadowy gloom of the tiny, windowless room.
Alex let out a rough, startled grunt, his hands catching her waist and lifting her effortlessly until her thighs wrapped around his hips, backing her up against the painted cinderblock wall.
"You're out of your mind," Alex groaned against her mouth, his lips moving against hers with a raw, bruising intensity that set every nerve ending in her body ablaze. His hands roved over her back, pulling her tightly against him until there was no space left between them. "We're on call. Bailey is on this floor. If she catches us—"
"Bailey can write me up," Izzie gasped, her fingers frantically working at the buttons of his scrub top, pushing the cotton off his shoulders to expose the broad, muscular expanse of his chest. "I don't care. Touch me, Alex. God, please, just touch me."
Alex shivered at the raw desperation in her voice. The ancient, agonizing fear that lived in the dark corners of his mind—that she would realize he was too rough, too scarred, too broken to be part of her bright, clean future—completely shattered under the furious weight of her need. She wasn't tolerating him; she wasn't settling. She was clawing at his skin like a starving woman, demanding every ounce of him.
"Iz," Alex rasped, his voice dropping into a thick, reverent register. His hands slid down from her waist, gently, deliberately cupping the slight, firm curve of her lower abdomen where her body was blooming with new life.
Izzie caught her breath, leaning her forehead against his, her eyes fluttering shut as the heat gave way to a sudden, breathtaking wave of tenderness.
"Look at you," Alex whispered, his thumb tracing the gentle swell beneath the ceil blue cotton. His voice cracked with a terrifying, wondrous reverence. "You're getting bigger."
"I look like a potato," she whimpered, half-laughing, half-crying against his lips.
"You look incredible," Alex said fiercely, his dark eyes burning into hers through the shadows. "You look like... you look like mine. Ours."
A quiet knock rattled the door handle.
Alex stiffened instantly, dropping Izzie to her feet and shoving her behind his broad frame, his fists clenching into battle stance in half a second. "Who is it?" he barked.
"It's me! Don't yell, Chief Webber is two doors down!"
George slipped through the door, quickly easing it shut and locking it behind him. He pushed his glasses up with a trembling hand, clutching a clipboard against his chest, looking completely terrified and wildly out of breath.
"I saw you drag him down the hall," George whispered, his eyes wide. "Izzie, Cristina is telling everyone at the nurses' station that you're having an acute manic episode."
Izzie didn't care about Cristina. She took two steps across the tiny linoleum floor, grabbed George by the lapels of his white coat, and dragged him into the darkness between the bunk beds.
"Izzie!" George squeaked, his back hitting the bottom mattress with a soft thud as she crowded over him, her hands instantly tangling in his messy hair.
"You're late," Izzie declared, capturing his mouth in a hot, breathless kiss that completely short-circuited George’s nervous system.
George’s hands hovered in the air for a fraction of a second, the instinct of a well-behaved boy screaming that they were in a hospital, on duty, in broad daylight. But then Izzie’s hand slid down his chest, pressing against the frantic thrum of his heart, and the last of his resistance broke. His arms locked around her waist, pulling her down onto his lap, his lips moving against hers with a sweet, fierce devotion that made her whimpering sigh echo off the low ceiling.
Alex leaned his back against the locked door, watching them in the dim amber light of the call room.
A month ago, the sight would have made the bitter, defensive venom surge in Alex’s throat—the toxic reflex that told him George was the good son, the real doctor, the one she would ultimately choose when the fantasy faded.
Instead, standing there with his scrub shirt half-unbuttoned, watching George’s pale fingers gently stroke the swell of Izzie’s belly while they kissed, Alex felt a sudden, profound ache in his chest that felt impossibly like home.
George broke the kiss, gasping for air, his cheeks flushed crimson, his blue eyes brilliant and dazed. "Iz... wait... my pager..."
"Turn it off," she commanded softly, resting her forehead against his, her hands gently framing his jaw.
George swallowed hard, his throat clicking. He looked past her shoulder, his gaze locking onto Alex by the door.
There was no shame in George’s eyes now. No guilt. No fear of what Father Kevin or his mother would say. He reached his left hand out into the open air between the bunks, his fingers curling in an unspoken, unmistakable invitation.
"Alex," George whispered, his voice rough and honest. "Get over here."
Alex didn't hesitate.
He crossed the small distance in two strides, sinking down onto the edge of the narrow mattress beside them. He reached out, his heavy, scarred hand cupping the back of George’s neck, pulling George’s face toward his.
Their lips met in a brief, hard, desperate kiss—raw and possessive, sealing the silent vow between them before Alex turned his attention to Izzie, sweeping her into the circle of their arms.
Izzie let out a ragged, trembling sigh of pure relief as the two men closed around her. Alex’s broad, solid heat braced her back, his heavy arm wrapping securely around her waist, his hand resting flat against her stomach. George cradled her face in his neat, gentle hands, his thumbs catching the tears of overwhelming emotion that leaked from her lashes.
"We have twenty minutes," George murmured against her temple, his lips brushing the damp curls of her hair.
"We only need ten," Alex muttered against the crook of her neck, his rough lips pressing open, burning kisses down the sensitive line of her throat.
Izzie closed her eyes, burying her fingers in George’s hair while her back arched into Alex’s heavy frame.
The chaos of the hospital raged on the other side of the thin wooden door—surgeries were scheduled, traumas were admitted, pagers chimed with the relentless demands of life and death. But inside the shadowed quiet of Call Room 3, suspended between exhaustion and desire, the three of them were completely, beautifully untethered.
Her cravings, Izzie realized as she pulled them both closer, were never really about pickles or sugar.
They were about this. The fierce, unyielding certainty that she was finally full, finally fed, and entirely loved.