Fic: Chew me up, eat me up, I'm yours
Tittle: Chew me up, eat me up, I'm yours
Author: raachel2008
Disclaimers: They aren't mine, no copryright infringement is intended, blah blah blah.
Spoilers: None.
Summary: This happens right after 6.17 (Push). Just a little something that Cristina needed to work on by herself.
Rating: T, just to be safe.
Feedback: Like it, don't like it, just let me know.
Archive: No.
Author's note: This fic was a gift fic written for princessxleah Not only she was kind enough to allow the rest of the world to see it, she betaed her own gift. Awesome, right? So are her fics. Go read her work. Like, now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It hadn’t bothered Cristina when a drunk Meredith had told her equally tipsy self about her little talk with Owen. In fact, she had laughed her ass off at the image of her petite friend trying to physically harm her Army trained badass boyfriend, who had probably carried backpacks heavier than both of them together. She shrugged off the idea that Owen was really jealous of Teddy because there was jealousy and then there was jealousy and if he didn’t want to be with her, he would have left her way before she had offered to trade him. And if Owen had truly wanted to be with Teddy, he could have done it years before Cristina had even been in the picture, fiancée or no fiancée. It hadn’t stopped him from kissing the hell out of her, had it?
But her smile - and her confidence - had dropped a little when Meredith had topped her little speech of the night by pointing out that she had seen Owen corner Cristina in a deserted alley of the hospital and that the way he chewed her face was disgusting. There had been a bad joke about a ginger caveman in fatigues or something to that effect, but by then Cristina’s mood had been ruined by a churning sensation in the pit of her stomach and the feeling that her relationship had just been labeled as unfit. The more she thought about it, the more it bothered her and it wasn’t long before she had left Joe’s, all the fun and certainty gone.
It was a short walk from the bar to her apartment, but her feet dragged on the ground, the only sound the scraping of her shoes against the pavement and the pounding echo of a train of thoughts that once unleashed couldn’t be restrained again. The things going through her mind had a weight that troubled her more than she would ever confess, even to herself.
Because she, Cristina Yang, had never needed anyone’s approval in her personal life, not when she had been a teenager doing stupid things with boys like so many other adolescents, not when she had unceremoniously cheated on her boyfriend du jour; and there had been, oh, so many of these, not when she had been an almost thirty years old adult with no eyebrows in a tight dress ready to commit for life to a fiancé whom she had loved; but who maybe loved more the woman she could be than the woman she was, not when she had opened her bathroom door under her friends' protests and had embraced the man she loved and who had choked her almost to death minutes before, more terrified and in shock and broken than she herself was.
No, she, Cristina Yang, only needed approval in her professional life, when she sucked up and down and begged and humiliated herself and had no qualms about abiding to full servitude if necessary for any chance to learn and cut and become the cardio legend that she had traced as her ultimate fate.
Yet, she, Cristina Yang, couldn’t avoid the unsettling and chilling feeling that was slowly creeping up from her insides. There was anger, there was fear and there was that dreadful sense of self-awareness and at that moment she hated her friend for making her feel uncomfortable in her own skin, in her relationship, about her choices, about Owen, about things that were none of Meredith Grey’s damn business at all.
There was anger because she felt offended that people would consider that she was anything but a happy receiver of Owen’s ministrations, and what kind of woman did they take her for? A poor, weak-willed thing that obliged to his desires without having a say? There was anger because they were making assumptions and what did it say about how little they actually knew her? And what did it say about Owen? They didn’t know him, and that made her blood boil, because, Derek aside, did any of them ever make the effort? Meredith certainly never had.
There was fear because what if what Meredith had implied, that they were not meant be, that Cristina was set to fail, again, that sooner or later Owen was going to leave her - or she was going to have to dump him - that after all that they have gone through she would end up alone, broken and hurt, what if she was right? There was fear because she was sure that this time no amount of surgeries and awards and praise and cutting and holding hearts would mend the hole in her own heart. She wouldn’t survive the ache of losing him, a caricature of herself without anyone to pry the scalpel out of her hands forty years from now.
And then there was the self-awareness, and perhaps the anger and the fear were better than that. Because she was Cristina Yang and she had sworn that she would never again accommodate herself to whatever people expected from her, and she knew who she was and she was not ashamed of being a surgery whore, of not having the desired bedside manners, of being rude and dismissive and treating people like they didn’t matter; most of the time and most people didn’t really matter anyway.
But there was another part of herself, a piece deeply buried in the confines of her being, born in the same night that her father’s heart had stopped beating and the kid she once had been had died with him, or maybe that was just what she had chosen to believe in because the other option was to accept that this hidden creature had always been there. It was a Cristina Yang who was acutely conscious about the power she held in her relationship with Owen, for being choked is a big deal, even if he didn’t mean it, even if it had not been his fault, even if, given the chance, he would have chopped his own arms off before hurting her, even if she had almost completely forgotten about it - for there was nothing to forgive there - the fact that he had nearly killed her was the proverbial bargain element in her lap.
It was not in her heart to throw it on his face someday - or was it? - but the simple knowledge that it was there, and it would always be there, was enough to make her doubt herself, her strength to not be that person that plays dirty just because things didn't happen the way she wants, the way she demands from life. She didn’t want to be the woman who was capable to hurt the man she loved just because she could, just because it was easier to pretend the anguish would be lesser if he was the one suffering and not her, even though she knew she couldn’t stand seeing him in distress and in the end the agony would be the same.
She could be that woman because she needed to survive, head and shoulders above the sorrow and the grief, but he had been right, he mattered, they mattered and she loved him and there was nothing she could do about it, which was her redemption and would probably be her fall, but she loved him. And that was what Meredith didn’t understand, or didn’t care enough to try or simply preferred to ignore, it was not a choice; loving or not loving Owen Hunt. She simply loved him. She didn’t ask for it, she wasn’t looking for it, it just happened - and wasn’t that how these things occur anyway? But it didn’t matter why, or how, love was love and people didn’t get to choose the settings. Love was not a precise cut in a sterile and controlled environment, carefully selected to not disturb its surroundings, love was messy and loud and larger than life, and it filled her heart with feelings from anxiety to devotion, from excitement to frustration, from annoyance to passion, and so many others and all of them she did her best to mask under a façade of unaffected indifference, but every time she saw him she reacted to his presence, one way or another, and she knew, she just knew, that it would never stop and it would always be him for her. It would always be them.
And if it came to a point where they would not be them together, if it reached that stage where pieces needed to be picked from the floor and plastered together in a failed attempt to rebuild what could not be ever again the same, then, she had a person, but Owen's people were blown to pieces in a desert in a whole different existence and if Teddy was what was left of that, how fucked was he? And if Cristina was honest with herself, and if she was sincere for Owen, the truth was that she herself had became his person, which probably meant that he was, indeed, fucked.
It was with the pang of that realization that she found herself unlocking the door of her apartment, only to stop in her tracks of the sight of her boyfriend sitting on the floor, three or four stacks of files and charts on the coffee table, a bunch of them scattered around him. His iPod was resting next to a half-eaten sandwich and an open can of Guinness, headphones on, and whatever was playing was channeling his inner Doug Clifford, because he was tapping the edge of the table with his pen, imaginary drumsticks while he muttered something she could only imagine was either the lyrics of some favorite song, or a detailed list of procedures and post-ops performed on some poor soul that had came through his ER. More than likely a mix of both.
Cristina watched, fascinated, as he just enjoyed himself, something she didn’t quite remember witnessing outside the realm of making her squirm with pleasure under his touch, in surgery; rocking some messy nevertheless highly efficient techniques, in those brief Los Tres Amigos moments at Joe’s, sometimes with the other attendings. But mostly with her, and because of her; she was sure about that, never on his own. It was an eye opening experience, though it shouldn’t be, to see Owen just being Owen; the man that encompassed so many layers, the soldier, the doctor, the carefree Harvard student he once had been, the idealistic young man, the broken veteran, the enthusiastic teacher, the boyfriend who made love with her like there was no tomorrow with that take no prisoners approach, all the while whispering sweet, sweet words in her ear about how beautiful she was, and turning her into that girl.
And the truth - ah, the truth - is that she didn’t mind being that girl with him, because he didn’t ask or demand that from her, and didn’t make her feel ridiculous or inadequate about herself. He made her feel loved, and cared, and cherished, and beautiful, and special, and all those things she intellectually despised until she had to face the fact that it was good.
It was fucking good to be that girl with him.
Owen’s left arm made a wide movement upwards, and Cristina was pretty sure he had hit a ride cymbal during his drums trip solo, but then he saw her and stilled his actions, his face and neck turning ten different shades of pink, red and purple, and he just smiled. Not just any smile, but that smile, that wolf-like smile that contrasted with the boy scout living inside the trauma surgeon, the one she got every time she spotted him in the gallery watching her surgeries, the one he flashed her every time she purred his name, begging for the things only he could do to her, the one that right now was saying “Yeah, you caught me, so?”.
And that, the smile and the openness behind it, filled her heart with so much happiness -he filled her heart with such joy - and there were bad moments, and choking, and trading, and non- communication, and fights, and hurt, and misunderstandings, and problems, but there was that joy, that utter love and passion - always in fashion - he had brought to her life and it made the sky bluer and made her burst with feelings that were so strong and so good. It overwhelmed her, but she wanted to be overwhelmed, to live that connection so intense that she may one day succumb and combust to its force, because she didn’t want to go through life without experiencing it in its entirety.
She dropped her bag on the floor and crossed the distance between them in five quick steps and settled herself on his lap, crushing her lips with his, scrumptiously gnawing his face in that way that had horrified her friend. Stupid Meredith thought Owen mauled her, but she wasn’t privy - and would never, never, ever, ever be allowed to know the details - to the way Cristina’s nails ripped the very pale skin of his back, leaving raw marks that she had to tend to later, or how there were hickies all over body, carefully placed on spots nobody else could see but her, because there were only so many birth marks one could have, and they both loved teeth anyway. Every time they were together she made sure she branded him as hers, in hopes that it would engrave in his soul, too, for reasons she knew too well, but didn’t dare to speak aloud.
He didn’t hesitate and kissed her back, his hands instantly searching for her hair and face and the hem of her shirt all at the same time, energy and tenderness mixed in a modus operandi and a tempo that were all very Owen and very them, and there was a small smile playing at Cristina’s mouth while their tongues entangled because there were thrills going all the way up her spine and his arms - oh, his arms - were around her and who she was kidding, Meredith wasn’t getting anything anywhere near as good as that with her boring, perfectly coiffed post-it husband, and sex between them must be that New England Protestant puritan thing that had brought the missionary sex as the only acceptable form of making love and the “boobs are evil” mentality to the world, and that gave her immense satisfaction.
“I..”
“Cristina…?”
“Nothing.”
He just cocked a brow at her, because with Cristina Yang ‘nothing’ was never ‘nothing’. But Owen Hunt hadn’t survived four tours in a blood soaked desert - not that he could brag about the shape he was in - by picking the wrong fights, so he didn’t ask again.
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Looking at me.”
He didn’t. She didn’t want him to.
“I think you're beautiful.”
“You’ve used that line before.”
“True.”
And it was, wasn’t it? In so many ways and each one of them had mattered. Just like they mattered. And whoever thought they didn’t… she didn’t give a fuck. Nobody had a say on her life, they didn’t get to decide how she should behave or not, and there wasn’t a single person allowed to claim she couldn’t do some things because she was Cristina Yang and she had to fulfill their ideas of Cristina Yang, and not her own desires and, why not, most secret dreams.
And as much as she loved things that could be carefully planned out to the point of perfection, she had a right as much as the next person to just say to the hell with everything and go try… with him. Because it was with Owen and only with him and if not with him, then there was no one else who would ever make her take all those risks and chances and give herself freely and almost unconditionally.
She had never loved anyone more in her life.
She would never love anyone more.
Meredith better get over it.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t say it much.”
He smiled, and she wanted to slap him for that ‘I-know-you-more-than-you-can-imagine’ grin, but there were better things she could be doing with him and more important things she wanted from him right now.
“You don’t need to.”
“But you do.”
“I love you, Cristina Yang.”
She would die denying that it had been necessary for her to hear that, for Owen said it all the time. But tonight, she did, and she felt relieved and somewhat grateful that he was aware of that, too. Because she was a strong woman, but she was just a woman and a woman who, looking into those blue eyes that belonged to a damaged and fucked up man, a kind and well-spirited man, could only think that she loved him and was afraid of losing him. God help her, but she loved him. And it was with reenergized passion and desire, but also a gentleness she saved only for him, that she attacked his lips… munching him with all her body and soul with gusto.
Just, well, because.
Finis.