DISCLAIMER: Amy-Sherman Palladino, Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions, Hofflund-Polone and Warner Bros. Television own Gilmore Girls. Shonda Rhimes/Shondaland, Mark Gordon and ABC Studios have Grey's and Private Practice. Both of the former women really need to have considered that Liza and Kate brought all the strength to their respective shows and should stop torturing them with such lame plots.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: So after five years, I'm peeking out the window and deciding that it might be time to move out of the comforting cocoon that has been the Gilmore fandom. Yes, I still ship Prory and Lorelai/Paris, don't doubt that. I just want to see Paris in another and more original situation, and Addison to be anywhere but with all the crap Shonda has subjected poor Kate Walsh to acting out this year in that series. They need to let Kate pull a Hogan Family on that thing and jump away from it so she can do one thing...
Callie and Erica in a healthy ménage of a relationship. Oh, sorry, I mean I...oh, heck, I can't hide my shipping prefs no matter what I do!
The prologue to this was inspired by a drabble suggested by Danielle, and this story is dedicated to her and Snoopy the Pooh for such an encouraging Sunday night where I decided to write this to chase away the boredom. Thanks so much girls!!
SPOILERS: Post-series for Gilmore Girls, where Paris is in Boston at Harvard Medical School and quickly rising...without Doyle, who moved back to Indiana. As for Addison, the way I don't enjoy Private Practice, she fled after the second season and decided to take a chief position at a hospital in New York to end the drama in her life.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Persuasion
By Nate
Prologue & Chapter One
Plan of Attack
Prologue, 10:30pm, Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers, Room 1467
Why she was considering neo-natal when she wanted another field of study was beyond her.
Why her stupid trust was stuck in tax hell was beyond her.
Why she ever considered Doyle McMaster a viable boyfriend was beyond her.
So why was she in a Back Bay hotel room about to pursue a guest speaker that had lectured her and 30 other interns only hours before at MassGen?
Was it the heels, her eyes, how hot Dr. Addison Montgomery was when she entered a room?
Don't be ridiculous. It was her voice. Calling from the bathtub. Deep. Throaty. Sensual and likely ravaged by a long-ended habit of a pack of Virginia Slims a day...
"Ready for me, Dr. Gellar?"
Paris smiled. Oh yeah, she was more than ready.
Earlier in the afternoon, 8th floor lecture hall, Massachusetts General Hospital
Paris felt unsteady on her feet coming out of the conference room. It wasn't supposed to be such a big deal, just a lecture on considering becoming a neo-natal surgeon. She figured it would be three hours to burn; she was going for surgical oncology after all. Still, it was a required lecture to attend. If anything it would be time for her to think of upcoming exams.
That was before her eyes landed on Dr. Addison Forbes Montgomery, M.D. She was stunned in place. Her dorm mate, Eunice Fulbright was ready with the cracks she usually made about these kinds of lectures. Paris had grown very used to them and usually considered them therapeutic to the stresses of Harvard Med.
This time, however...
"You know, she seems like a conceited bitch, Par," she joked. "My lord, you're a baby doctor, you don't have to look like a streetwalker."
Eunice felt hard brown eyes burn into her straight away. "What do you mean by that? She's professional!"
"But she looks like she's headed to a Broadway show, not the OR--"
"So what?" Paris sometimes found Eunice annoying. Rory at least always had consideration about her mocking. However, the Wilmington-bred girl who was now her friend in Boston had a habit of shooting from the mouth before her brain could stop her. In hushed silence, Paris set her straight. "Sorry to say, but sex appeal plays into the image of being a top doctor. You better believe if she looks hot, she will parade it around."
"You think she's hot?" Eunice frowned. "C'mon, she looks like a tra--"
That's when she felt a hand take her roughly by the thigh and press a hard bruise into it. If one thing had never changed, it was that Paris only insulted intellect and attitude in arguments. Race, body, sexuality and other physical factors never came into play with her, and everyone knew it.
"You ever say anything like that again to me, and you lose a roommate. Are we understood?"
"Par--"
"I said, are we understood?"
"Yes." Eunice was shaken and off her game from that point on. Any other insults to Dr. Montgomery would prove to be fatal. She shut up after that point and let Paris's mind wander further as she took in the eloquent words of the good doctor in front of her.
She was thankful that Addison hadn't noticed the outburst from her friend. For the first time in many lectures she didn't raise her hand, even as she could challenge the woman for hours. She enjoyed her sense of humor about the OR, how she had a 'from high' attitude that reminded her completely of herself.
But most of all, she found herself hot for the redheaded practitioner. She didn't know why she was reacting in this manner to the woman. She had met many beautiful women at MassGen and during her summer internship at Hartford Hospital. She always kept a distance from her fellow interns and any patient. She only stared at the doctors from afar, disapproving of the ER view of medical care completely. A doctor had no time for a social life, much less a hook-up.
She began to reconsider as Dr. Montgomery brought up the projector and rambled on about case studies, her smoky voice echoing through the lecture room. In the dark, only the small circle surrounding Addison and the projector brightened the room.
Paris wouldn't care if Addison was showing pictures of her seven year-old at that point. She stared unflinchingly at the way Addison fit into a Prada suit and Louboutin stilettos. She was never one for fashion, but she easily appreciated the way the finely tailored skirt flattered the surgeon's ass. She was sure quite a few of the other students were staring at her.
But still, Paris was a sponge. She mindlessly took notes on each slide, crisp in her left-handed script, almost a human teleprompter. She listened and ogled at the same time. It served her well towards the end of the lecture when before she thought she could duck out of a lecture without one question...
"Dr. Gellar." She looked up from her notes. Addison stood right at her chairside. "I know you're listening to me quite well. But I would appreciate some participation within this lecture by you." She stood straight ahead of Paris, and then bent down to Paris's eye level.
Then she did something the blonde never expected at all...
"I'm quite shocked that the finest candidate in all of Harvard Med to take a chief position in the next fifteen years would not get in one question at all. Not one." Her voice rasped as she smiled at the petite Jewish girl. "I was looking forward to a forty minute debate with you on the right method of retrieval of cord blood. I guess I was mistaken."
"Y...you...you know about...me?" Paris blushed in place, her eyes unable to draw away from the tanned redhead. She tried to keep her eyes trained upon Addison's embroidered nametag on her surgical jacket. She noticed it wasn't just any kind of monogram, but it was the woman's own signature, in blue, with the words Chief of Pediatrics and Neo-Natal Surgery, NEW YORK METHODIST HOSPITAL below them in block letter.
NY Meth was the best in the world for teaching her field. A hospital Paris wanted to get into, badly. She was in front of a woman who would surely read her academic and internist histories when she finally got the guts to submit her app to the Weill-Cornell supported hospital.
Oh shit. She had just passed up the best opportunity she had to get into Methodist. And all her mind could do is memorize that Dr. Montgomery had the hottest voice she ever heard, and had mouth-watering cleavage that was drawing her in at that moment. She brought her eyes up to the fine woman, who regarded her with a smile.
"Of course. You're the top student here right now. Would I have asked you to sit in the front row if I asked you to watch me drone on for all this time?" She shook her head. "Now please, try to summarize the points I have just made for the lesser beings within this class, who if they don't listen, are bound for medical ignominy at some chain-run godawful hospital in the middle of Nowhere, Missouri." She lifted herself away, and hoped for the best from the young blonde.
She was surprised to see Paris bounce right back in seconds. Despite her lack of attention to the lecture and more on Addison's physical attributes, she still brought the point of the lecture to a succinct two-minute summary that knocked the socks off the older woman, and many of her classmates. Her voice was crisp and clean, her refined Hartford accent echoing across the room.
Now it was time for Addison to look. She found herself in her band camp days, and sensed Paris was still stuck in that state of mind, working her ass off for little more than just a few accolades and nothing more. Taking in the girl in a blue surgical jacket and a blouse, blending right in with all of the other future doctors of America, Addison was incredibly impressed. She found herself back in Columbia, at the same point in her life, faceless among the crowd.
She could see Dr. Paris Gellar make something of herself. But the company she surrounded herself, along with her own doubts, kept her caged in.
But the finality of the situation? Paris was indeed, an attractive young woman. Someone who was firm, bitchy, and never took any crap.
Just like her. Paris was her younger analog, but was considering heading into another unsatisfying field being replaced by faceless machines and lots of personal internalized grief over those she could never save. She saw the girl quickly realizing that few wanted surgery. They wanted their tumors zapped away as if they were putting popcorn in a powerful microwave oven and move on with their lives.
If Paris found herself unhappy as an oncologist, that would be a personal tragedy to her. Hearing about the rising surgeon, she personally took a lecture she never had because of her interest in the girl. She wanted to see if there was any way to change her specialty to pediatrics. Even as she scanned the Harvard Med gossip mills that Paris would never consider it, period, she knew there was a chance she could convince the Class of '11's top student to flip her field and be at her side at Methodist.
As Paris finished up, Addison brought herself back on focus. After the depression that was Seattle Grace, and the hassle of the practice in Santa Monica, she was looking for a challenge she could handle. One without personal complications or needless drama. No one knew her at Methodist, no one cared about her life there at all. She was left alone, the only link to her past the continually fruitful and happy friendship she shared with Dr. Torres via phone and Skype in Seattle.
One she was quite happy to share with Dr. Hahn in addition.
But that wasn't the focus now. She was bound and determined to get Paris to flip her field. It would prove to be a challenge.
Mainly because impure thoughts of the rising doctor as she finished up flooded her mind, along with her La Perlas. Stop! She warned herself.
It was of no use. That satisfied smirk of challenging a top doctor playing across Paris's plump lips, the way her nose wrinkled, and how she stood in front of Dr. Montgomery? Paris had flared up that side of Addison that laid dormant since she left Seattle.
The side that dared her to take Callie in the on-call room, but was turned around by stupid morals and Webber's annoying lectures about employee fraternization. Thank God the girls ignored that, she thought to herself later on.
But Paris wasn't an employee. She was just an intern at this point. She could indulge her attraction and test the waters without having to face the Board of Directors. Paris sat down and crossed her legs, and Addison knew there was one thing she had to do.
"Thank you, Dr. Gellar. I think you summarized quite nicely," she curled out seductively, flipping her hair and letting her eyes take in Paris's. She summed up the lecture and dismissed the class, telling her assistant to pack up the projector and laptop while planning her next move.
She observed that Paris had sipped her entire bottle of water through the class. Crystal Geyser, a fine brand. But water was water, and water ran through the body like a sieve. Paris drank more water than anyone else.
That meant Addison had an excellent chance of catching Paris in a nearby restroom. Not that she would do anything in there beyond greet the girl. It would be suicide to bring on the hard sell after she relieved herself.
But she knew the layout of the floor of MassGen, having been there for many surgeries. There was a great chance to get her in a room alone.
Smiling to herself as she watched Paris chatter with a couple of other students, then dismiss herself to the bathroom, Addison knew she had her chance. She would also undoubtedly have an empty doctor's lounge to guide the tough as nails Jewish girl in order to convince her that she would be better caring for small children than some steel worker with lung cancer.
She would be an asset, she hypothesized to herself. Since Paris wasn't swayed by emotion, any appeals to try treatments by parents would be nullified. The health of a child would top the concern of the parents. Paris wanted a patient to get well, whatever it took. That would serve her well in pediatrics.
Clasping her hands together, Addison lowered her glasses to take in the hidden curves of the girl through the jacket. A blouse, a pencil skirt, bare legs, and a small, but very nice ass. She smirked in the direction of the student. Curling her blood red-shaded lips, she knew she was about to meet her match.
"Everyone else can offer her anything else to pursue their field," she whispered. "But they have no idea that all it takes is...persuasion to do so." She watched the girl depart from the lecture hall, unaware that a doctor whose opinions and surgeries she had read for years in all the med journals was about to come her way.
Paris never turned down opportunity. And Addison never turned down a chance to offer an opportunity to anyone she wanted to pursue. They would come together, and by the end of the day, both women would find their futures entwined with each other.
To Be Continued
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