7 Days to Change Your Life by zahra





The first time George slept with Izzie was on a Tuesday. In his defense, he'd just come off a thirty-two hour shift, and then he'd done tequila slammers with Cristina and Meredith and Izzie, because life was hard when both of your roommates had been dumped, and you were the only guy in the house. You tended to have your masculinity impugned a lot. You started answering to "bastard" because it was easier than dealing with having large objects thrown at your head.

So, yeah, George had been having a rough time of it, and then he'd been called a "chicken shit" when he'd said that maybe he didn't want to match the girls shot for shot. George had had to defend himself, because it was one thing to be Tampon Errand Boy and PMS Psychiatrist, but to have a bartender calling him names was just wrong. Joe totally should've been on his side with the male solidarity thing, but Joe was a traitor and so George had had to imbibe a few slammers.

And then he'd had a few more.

And then the bar top had rushed up to meet his face and that had been all he wrote for a little while. He had vague memories of Cristina throwing peanut shells at him, and Meredith making "whoo whoo" sounds. Then there'd been a long blackout period, and he'd woken up in a bed. It had to have been his bed because he recognized the glow-in-the-dark constellation stickers that were on his ceiling that he might've maybe put there. Thankfully, he didn't have to hear about his stickers when Meredith and Izzie sandwiched him in the bed, because they were always too busy bitching to pay attention.

Right.

So, George had woken up in his bed and Izzie had been next to him, kind of curled around him like a really warm electric blanket, and that would've been fine except, she was licking him and that had been new. He knew it was Izzie by her smelly lotion, because Meredith didn't wear lotion that smelled like strawberries, and George's luck wasn't that good anyway.

George didn't know that Izzie was a licker. Alex might've known, but he was persona non grata at their house, and if you mentioned his name, Izzie tended to shout at you a lot. So, it was better to pretend that Alex didn't exist, which was fine with George, because Alex had given him syphilis anyway, and he wasn't going to forget that. Ever.

Plus, George was drunk, and dreaming, so it didn't matter that Izzie's hands were going places that they hadn't gone before. Dream!George said something that maybe sounded like, "Oh my god, your hands are cold!"

And Izzie might've slurred, "Oh, shut up and stop whining. Do you know how many men would give their right nut to get a hand job from me?"

Right then George might've had a moment when he thought Izzie was Cristina. If he had been getting an erection -- because hey, Izzie was hot -- well, that had pretty much killed it. Izzie took that as some sort of challenge, and George had had to tell her, "Hey, it's not a piece of cookie dough!"

"You're right; it's too soft for that."

George defended himself, because even if he was living in a house with two crazily moody women this was still his room. "It's called drinking! I'll have you know that my alcoholic level right now is - is -"

George then lost his train of thought, because tequila slammers were no match for Izzie's technique. At least they wouldn't have been if George hadn't been dreaming, which he obviously was because he woke up the next morning in bed alone, and that was cool, because it was all a dream.

It was just the kind of dream that resulted in condoms in the wastebasket and sticky sheets in places that George didn't generally have sticky sheets.

Still, that was okay, because that was way better than syphilis.

So, when George ambled into the kitchen the morning after the night before, it was okay that Meredith had her nose in a mug of coffee, and Cristina was bitching about Burke being the girl in their relationship. The best part was when Izzie shoved a muffin at his chest like she had no idea what crazy things his imagination got up to after tequila slammers.

He hardly even noticed that Izzie was giving him the look of, "Oh my god, don't say a word in front of everyone or I will kill you where you stand."



*



The second time George and Izzie slept together was totally an accident, and George was going to call HBO and sue, because no straight man could resist a woman who'd just spent three hours on a sofa watching Titanic. Hell, George hadn't even seen the second time coming. Well, that wasn't strictly true, because George had been in the kitchen eating the last slice of chocolate cake, and Izzie had railroaded him with a bottle of Yellowtail Shiraz and the threat of being knocked out with said bottle for eating the last of the cake.

"If you don't watch TV with me, I'm totally going to hit you," she said wielding the bottle in the same way that George's dad wielded a gun.

"I was, um, going to go to bed," he said, except it was more of a question than a statement, because Izzie really knew how to hold a wine bottle, which was truly a weird compliment.

"You ate the last of the cake, you owe me," she hissed.

Well, she hadn't quite hissed, but it had been really close. George had figured at that point that he could sleep on the sofa just as well as he could sleep in his bed, but he was learning he had to hold his own.

"Assault with a wine bottle carries a hefty fine," George reminded her, licking the chocolate icing smeared on the tips of his fingers.

Izzie snorted and turned towards the living room. "Shut up, we're missing the start of Titanic."

"I hate Titanic," George whined, grabbing the bottle opener from beside the microwave.

"Don't worry," Izzie said plopping down on the sofa, and motioning for George to sit down next to her. "It gets better the further down the bottle you go."

And so they'd watched Titanic, and it had gotten good towards the end, especially when the boat sank, because then George knew it was almost over. By then Izzie's head had taken up residence on George's shoulder, and the empty bottle of Shiraz had taken up residence on the floor.

Izzie started babbling about Kate Winslet's fabulous wardrobe, and George shushed her, twice. She'd just kept talking though, and George really had to shut her up, because he was missing the movie. Except it was hard to shut up someone who was lying on top of you. So George pushed Izzie away, and then had to reel her back in before she fell off the sofa, and their mouths had mashed together in a drunken sort of way, and well, then they'd had sex. Again.

This time there were no stars and no passing out, and George knew he wasn't dreaming because he knew the thing Izzie did with her wrist. Plus, he remembered the tiny mole on the inside of her left thigh.



*



After the third time Izzie randomly found her way to his bed - yeah, they'd had sex three times in seven days, and George was still calling it random - George began to feel a bit worried. Not because he was sleeping with Izzie, and it was certain to end badly, but because no one else seemed to know, and if no one else seemed to know then it was pretty much a given that he was the hot topic on the hospital grapevine. And he shouldn't have been surprised when he found himself strong-armed into the supply closet on the third floor by Meredith and Cristina. Yeah, he really, really, shouldn't have been surprised.

"I can't believe you're sleeping with Izzie and didn't tell us," Cristina shouted loud enough for the entire east wing to hear, and George wondered what the point was of being in the closet if they were just going to shout at him anyway.

Cristina's eyes got really big when she was excited. They kind of bulged out of her skull, and it was scary, like the kind of scary she was when she had gone too long without coffee and started talking about reattaching severed limbs.

"There's nothing to tell!" George said in a stage whisper, because maybe Cristina would follow his lead and use a normal tone - and then maybe she would grow wings and fly away to frighten someone else.

Cristina crossed her arms derisively and Meredith - god, George couldn't even think around her without getting sweaty palms. He was doing whatever with Izzie, but if Meredith disapproved, he, um, well, he would have to cross that bridge later.

Meredith sighed dramatically. "I can't believe you two have been having sex in my house, and I didn't even know it."

"Please," Cristina snorted, "you're so preoccupied with McDreamy and being the new Wilt Chamberlain, it's a wonder you know what day it is."

"Hey!" Meredith protested. "It's Tuesday."

George raised his hand. "Actually, it's Wednesday."

"Oh, you shut up," they both rounded on him. "You have a dick; you're not allowed to be right."

"Hey!" It was George's turn to protest. "That's sexual harassment!"

Which was when Dr Bailey opened the door, looking very not surprised to see them. "Do I want to know what the three of you are doing in this closet, or do you just want to agree to baby-sit until my child is able to drive on its own?" she said, hands on her hips, daring them to give her any smart talk.

If George could've swooned, he probably would have. "They're sexually harassing me," he said, giving Dr Bailey the wounded puppy dog look.

Dr Bailey always made things better for George - she was even scarier than Cristina, but she definitely made things better. Bailey raised an eyebrow. "Are you two sexually harassing O'Malley?"

"No," Cristina and Meredith answered in unison.

Bailey narrowed her eyes. "Why don't I believe you?"

"Um, because you're naturally suspicious?" Cristina offered thoughtlessly. Meredith and George both stared at her as though she'd doused herself in blood and jumped in a piranha tank.

Bailey's smile made George's stomach flip around in ways that probably defied most of the laws of dynamics, and he took a step back, running into a stack of dressing gowns. "Cute, Yang, real cute. Just for that you can take the hemorrhoids case in 219A."

Cristina might've actually stomped her foot; George definitely heard something that sounded like that. "That's not fair, there's a liver transplant at three that Dr -"

"If you finish that sentence with the words Dr Burke, I will personally see to it that you spend the rest of your residency cleaning out bedpans and doing enemas."

Cristina opened her mouth, and both George and Meredith slapped their hands over it. "Don't mess with me, Yang," Dr Bailey warned, "I'm pregnant, I've got morning sickness, and if you piss me off you will see a whole new side of the Nazi. Are we clear?"

Cristina scowled at the warning looks Meredith and George gave her.

Bailey smirked. "I'll take that as a yes."



*



It occurred to George at some point during the work day that carrying on a clandestine affair with someone he worked with wasn't perhaps the greatest idea he'd ever had -- and it wasn't like he needed first-hand experience to figure that out.

Maybe it was one of the job requirements of interning that nobody had bothered to tell him about. Still, it wasn't as though he and Izzie had talked about the status of their relationship, because that would've implied that they were having a relationship at all, and that was, well, weird. Not quite as weird as Alex cornering him in the locker room and giving him the evil eye, but close.

Normally, it was George giving Alex the evil eye, but if George had learned anything since starting at Seattle Grace it was that the hospital's politics didn't work in any sort of logical way.

"I heard about you and Izzie," Alex said without any ceremony whatsoever.

"I don't know what you're talking about." George had learned the better part of valor was acting stupid, and he could play stupid with the best of them, so he focused on changing his scrubs.

"Shut up, O'Malley." There was something that sounded a lot like bitterness coming from Alex, but Alex didn't have any right to be bitter because he'd fucked up his thing with Izzie, not anybody else.

"Don't tell me to shut up," someone who sounded just like George said. "You fucked up; you don't get to have any say."

"And yet, here you are going after my sloppy seconds, again." Alex had that smirk on his face, the one that he'd had back when George had come to him with syphilis and wanted help.

"She was too good for you -- she is too good for you. You never deserved her in the first place!" And that was right about when George punched Alex in the neck. He'd been aiming for Alex's face, but Alex was a lot taller than George, so George's aim was kind of off.

"What the fuck?!" Alex yelped and George swung again, but Alex grabbed his forearm and twisted it so hard that George's arm almost popped out of the socket.

George could feel the blood thrumming in his veins. It was good old-fashioned Kentucky blood -- he knew how to be pissed off. "You suck!" George spat; Alex pursed his lips. "You broke her heart!"

Alex let go at that. He looked almost ashamed, and George would've felt sorry for him, but Alex didn't even deserve that. "Shut up, O'Malley," Alex repeated. "Just shut up."

It was about then that Izzie came in, and Alex left, because he did that now when Izzie showed up -- he turned tail and ran like the coward he was.

"What was that all about?" Izzie asked, and she looked a bit angry and a bit worried, and George shook his head.

"Nothing," he said, grabbing up his scrubs, throwing them in his locker, and slamming the door shut. "It's not important."

George was all set to leave, but Izzie grabbed his arm and stopped him. "He's not worth it you know," she said, plaintively.

George shrugged. "Yeah, I know."



*



The not-so-accidental-and-still-not-totally-kosher sex thing could've gone on forever, except George's luck wasn't that good.

That night, when Izzie invaded George's bedroom, he was lying on his bed, staring at his glow-in-the-dark stickers, and wondering how he'd wound up fighting at work and sleeping with his housemate.

"Are you hiding in here?" Izzie asked, not waiting to be invited before climbing up on George's bed and stretching out next to him.

"I'm not hiding," he said, because he wasn't. He didn't have to hide. He hadn't given anyone syphilis or been having sexual relations with Olivia when he should've been helping deliver the quintuplets.

Izzie made a hmming noise. "I never noticed the stickers before," she said.

George shrugged. "You guys never notice a lot of things."

At this Izzie propped herself up on one elbow and poked him in the ribs. "I notice you."

George snorted. "Is that what this thing is?"

Izzie rolled her eyes. "Way to be needy there, George."

"I'm just asking."

Izzie sighed. "You don't have to ask, you know," she said, rubbing George's stomach.

George frowned and Izzie stilled her motions. "Yeah, well, you don't have to get me drunk to sleep with me either."

"But it's so much more fun then."

"Maybe it is for you."

Izzie looked really hurt, and George felt the shame burning in his chest. It was a lot like heartburn. "I'm not Meredith, you know," Izzie said defensively. "I don't ignore what's in front of me."

"Yeah, well, I'm not Alex, either," George said pointedly.

"Thank God for that," Izzie huffed.

George could feel his fingers curling in the bedspread underneath him; they were cramping up with his nerves and anxiety. He genuinely liked Izzie, he just wasn't too good at showing it, and yes, she wasn't Meredith, but that was okay.

"I like you, you know," Izzie said after several quiet moments. "I just didn't know it before."

"And you know it now?" George's voice was so quiet, he could barely hear it himself.

George wasn't expecting it when Izzie kissed him, probably because they were both sober, with neither a bottle of booze nor the Titanic in sight. It was a nice kiss - a good kiss -- not too hard, or too soft, or too wet. It was just right -- but George wasn't going to start calling Izzie Goldilocks. At least not yet.

"It's amazing what you can learn about someone in a few days," she said afterwards.

The stupid smile that formed on George's face just sort of happened. "Imagine what you could learn in a whole month," he said.

"Just imagine," Izzie mocked.

George looked at her thoughtfully. "Does this mean we're going out?"

Izzie collapsed back on the bed next to him and threw her arm across his mid-section. "Duh."



-end-