The Breath that Passed from You to Me (1/?)
Rating: M
Word Count: 2,066
Summary: This takes place after the last aired episode (6x12) after Mark and Lexie's very short, very unsatisfying, conversation/fight/whatever.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Author's Notes: Okay, so I didnt really plan on writing this fic right here. I'm not sure how long it's gonna be or where it's gonna end up. All I know is that for some reason the words keep bleeding out of me, taking up at least twenty pages of a word document right now and it's still growing. So yay for you guys lol ;) (I'm also simultaneously working on chapter 12 of 'Nothing Else Matters' so double yay!)
I'm really proud of how this story is coming out.
Enjoy =)
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Chapter 1
“I slept with Addison.”
He hadn't meant to blurt it out so bluntly but there it was. The truth was out there and the weight was instantly lifted off his shoulders. He tensed and waited for the yelling or the tears to start but what he did not expect was what appeared on her face. Relief.
“Oh, thank God because I slept with Alex" Lexie said with a rush of breath, "I was feeling so, well, you know how I was feeling, which is why this is, this is great. We know, we're even. We kind of cancelled each other out.” The relief in her voice was obvious. She was glad he slept with Addison if only to make herself feel less guilty about her own indiscretion.
“You slept with Karev.” His gut began to twist and turn in disgust. He expected this kind of behavior from himself but not from Lexie. Not his Lexie.
“Yeah.” Worry began to make it's appearance on her face when she realized he wasn't relieved as well and for the life of her, she couldn't understand why not. He had slept with Addison after all. This put the both of them on even footing. Her stomach sank to her feet when she saw the anger and irritation flash behind his eyes. She had seen that look many times before, just never directed at her.
“While I was dealing with my sick daughter, while I was hurting-“ he argued.
“Uh, you weren't hurting. You were sleeping with Addison.” Lexie shot back, her own irritation rising. He couldn't have been in that much pain if he was able to hop into bed with Addison. Still, his anger was not going away.
“You broke up with me...left me, ha just...wow." His eyes then suddenly swerved away from her face to a point over her right shoulder. "I can't even look at you right now” his words came out in a monotone voice before he just walked away.
Lexie watched him go with a maelstrom of emotions swirling inside of her chest.
--
Meredith Grey entered her beautiful childhood home at two in the morning, eager to get some sleep after a particularly long shift. Unwrapping the scarf from around her neck, she placed it on the coat hanger along with her coat. After removing her shoes by the door, she began making her way up the stairs when she heard voices coming from the kitchen. Her ascension up the stairs was put on hold when she recognized her younger sister’s voice.
At first, Meredith wondered who Lexie was talking to. Derek had still been at the hospital when she left, Izzie had decided to mysteriously disappear from their lives once again and Alex was, thankfully, making himself scarce since “the incident.” If she really thought about it, or cared, she would have guessed Alex was off celebrating his new single status, most likely with that Mercy West resident.
The only other person Meredith could think of was Mark Sloan, and Meredith knew for a fact that Mark wasn’t going to be anywhere near this house for a long time. Derek had told her not to wait up for him because apparently Mark needed him. She assumed that meant drinks at Joe’s, which could only mean one thing. Mark found out about Alex and Lexie sleeping together.
Meredith walked back down the stairs and listened closely when she realized that there was only one voice coming from the room. Lexie, it seemed, was talking to herself. Not a good sign Meredith told herself. Even though she really didn't want to get involved in Mark and Lexie's drama, she at least wanted to make sure Lexie wasn't suffering some sort of mental breakdown.
Meredith quietly approached the kitchen and slowly opened the door. After one glance she knew she no longer had to worry about Lexie getting fat from binge eating because Lexie was no longer using food as a form of stress relief. No, this time she had moved on to Meredith’s own unhealthy problem solver; the wonderful José Cuervo. Seeing that red and gold label, Meredith knew it was going to be a long night.
--
Two hours passed and Meredith sat at the table, continuing to watch her sister. The entire situation would have been extremely funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. Was this how she looked in the beginning of her relationship with Derek? When the pain was so unbearable that she had to drink herself into oblivion?
“Hindsight is definitely 20/20" she thought.
Meredith watched intently as her younger sister swayed around the empty kitchen. It was four in the morning and Lexie was currently making her way through the same bottle of tequila. For once, Meredith was glad that the grumpy inebriated person with relationship problems was not her. On a separate (and selfish) note, she was also glad that she didn’t have to go back to the hospital for another twenty four hours. Babysitting a drunk was exhausting.
Bringing her attention back to her sister, it sort of amused her that despite her childhood of dark and twisty, she was the happily married one of the two Grey girls. The other Grey girl was now alternating between talking to herself and yelling at an invisible occupant of the room. Meredith could only guess the identity of that invisible person.
“I don’t think Mark can hear you from here Lexie.” Meredith said sarcastically. It wasn’t very nice or supportive, but she just couldn’t help herself.
Lexie sharply glared at her older sister before realizing that Mark wasn't actually in the room.
She then sat down at the kitchen table and yelled into Meredith’s face like only a drunk could.
“He can’t look at me?! How can he not look at me?!”
If there was one thing Lexie was while drunk, it definitely wasn’t happy. Meredith winced as she felt tiny drops of spit hit her face.
"She's a really sloppy drunk" Meredith thought as she wiped the moisture from her face.
There was no point in answering Lexie’s question. She already tried having a serious conversation with Lexie when she first came into the kitchen but all Lexie wanted to do was drown herself in alcohol. At this point, Meredith was just watching to make sure Lexie didn’t do something stupid. Like a “sleep with Alex” kind of something stupid.
Lexie glared at her sister for no reason before downing another shot of tequila and Meredith noticed that more than half the bottle was gone. She admittedly didn’t know much about her younger sister but what she did know was that Lexie didn’t have a high tolerance for alcohol. Meredith also knew that Lexie had finished an entire bottle of wine before she had even entered the kitchen two hours ago. The red stains on the tablecloth was proof of that. So when Lexie swallowed another shot and showed no signs of stopping, Meredith snatched the bottle away from her.
“Hey!”
Meredith easily dodged Lexie’s drunken attempt to grab the bottle back and walked to the sink. She then reluctantly emptied the rest of the bottle down the drain. Even though she didn’t want Lexie drinking herself to the point of needing a trip to the hospital, Meredith could still mourn the loss of perfectly good tequila.
“You’ll thank me in the morning” Meredith said wryly.
She then tossed the empty bottle into the recycling and walked back over to Lexie, who was now banging her head against the kitchen table. Meredith sat down and lightly tapped her shoulder.
“Hey! That’s not gonna make you feel any better.”
“It hurts less than what I’m feeling right now” Lexie groaned as she momentarily stopped. Meredith rolled her eyes when Lexie resumed her banging.
Not for the first time, Meredith couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that Mark Sloan was the man currently tying her sister into tequila soaked knots. When she first found out Mark and Lexie were sleeping together, she thought it was just that. Just sex. But when Mark stood up for his relationship with Lexie, which resulted in a fist fight with Derek, Meredith had a strange suspicion that whatever was going on between them was something more. That same feeling grew when Mark had asked Lexie to move in with him. Meredith had more in common with Mark than she did with her own sister so she knew that he would only ask Lexie to move in with him if he was serious about her.
Sex...sex was easy. Living with someone wasn’t. In fact, it was one of the scariest things in the world. She never thought that would be a road Mark Sloan would ever take, let alone bring her little sister along for the ride. But even so, if there was one thing Meredith was sure of, it was that without a shadow of a doubt, Mark Sloan was actually in love with her sister.
Meredith’s internal musings were put on hold when Lexie suddenly doubled over and puked on the floor.
“Great. Just great” Meredith said before getting the roll of paper towels. She cleaned up the mess while Lexie placed her head on the table again. Meredith got up again and returned to the table with a damp piece of paper. She held it out to Lexie so she could wipe her mouth.
“It’s not fair,” Lexie moaned. “He slept with someone. I slept with someone. We’re supposed to be even. But for some reason I’m the dirty whore.”
“You're the dirty mistress” Meredith corrected.
Lexie gave her Meredith what she could only describe as the ‘stink eye.’
“I’m your sister. You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am. I’m just also on Mark’s.”
“Meredith!” Lexie protested.
“Now I’m not saying that Mark is completely innocent cause he’s not. He asked the pregnant teenager daughter he just met to move in without asking you. He expected you to help raise a teenager and a baby, which you couldn’t handle. So you asked him to choose between you and Sloan, and he chose Sloan. Believe me when I tell you that I completely understand getting drunk and sleeping with other men when the man you love chooses another woman.” Meredith briefly remembered how she felt when Derek had left her for Addison. The heartbreaking pain of being left behind would always haunt her.
Meredith shook her head as if to erase those painful memories. “But you’ve also got to see it from his side. You break up with him and then not even a day later, you hop into bed with another man.”
Meredith held her hand up when it looked like Lexie was going to object. “Being drunk doesn’t give you an excuse. You hurt him. Badly. I know a little bit how Mark’s mind works. We both believed that we were unlovable. That no matter what we did or said, the person we loved would leave and you proved him right. You left him.”
Lexie looked up at Meredith’s words. “You think he loved me?”
Meredith rolled her eyes “Do you really have to ask Lexie?”
Lexie’s eyes filled with tears as every decision and mistake she made in the past couple days flooded her mind. “I should never have made him choose. Sloan is his daughter. He was right to choose her.”
“That doesn’t make it hurt any less” Meredith said and placed her hand on Lexie’s; a comforting gesture she had not planned on.
Lexie looked up at her sister with tear filled eyes, looking like a child. Meredith couldn’t understand how anyone could look so young and innocent as Lexie could.
“I hurts like hell” Lexie moaned, placing a hand over her heart.
She then opened her mouth to say something else when her eyes widened and she held a hand to her mouth. This time, Meredith was prepared and shoved the trash can underneath Lexie. With another uncharacteristic move, Meredith rubbed her sister’s back as she heaved into the garbage.
“On that note, I think it’s time for bed.”
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Title comes from Between Two Lungs off the album Lungs by Florence and the Machine - the unofficial soundtrack to this fic, at least in my head lol.
Please review and let me know what you think. I'd really appreciate it!
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