(no subject)
Title: So Much Closer (but further away...)
Author: Waltzmatildah
Word Count: 381 (my first drabble... and my first tentative step back into fanfic for over a year)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Alex/Izzie
Warning: Character death
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 libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
When he is alone at the hopsital she sidles up beside him and peers at him through dark lashes. She looks child-like when she is trying to beg forgiveness and he can slowly feel his resolve breaking, tries valiantly not to grin back, instead allows himself to smirk in a manner that can still be interpreted as not entirely happy.
More for his own self-preservation than anything else, he still refuses to accept that she would find ghost sex with her ex more exhilerating than real sex with him. As for the rest, he understands all of that because he knows it was probably just a matter of time before he broke her heart anyway, spontaneous declarations of love and commitment and desire to be better aside.
- - -
When he is alone in the kitchen he sips coffee while she bustles about, slamming cupboards and measuring ingredients as a veritable plethora of baked goods piles high on the counter to his left. Apology food, she grins, wiping a soft streak of white flour high across her cheekbone. Because she is sorry, he knows this. Sorry for letting him fall in love with her, for choosing the idea of someone else over the reality of him.
She pulls bread from the oven and sets it beside the cookies that are already cooling. She stirs a bolognaise sauce on the stove top before opening the fridge to inspect the cheesecake that she made first. Despite all this (or maybe because of it, he can no longer tell), the scent that fills his nostrils is unmistakably chocolate muffin.
- - -
When he is alone in bed she melds the length of her body to his back and whispers, hot and heavy and full of regret, in his ear, that she is sorry and that she knew but that it felt so real and that the lines blurred and she couldn't bring herself to admit that it wasn't possible.
He rolls over onto where her body should have made the sheets warm and delicately scented (lavender lotion and fruity shampoo that smells good enough to eat) and instead runs his hand over the cool smooth fabric. He closes his eyes with a sad smile and whispers softly into the dark...
“It's okay.”
“I know.”
“I understand...”