(no subject)
Title: Sex And Candy
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble cast. Alex/Izzie, hints of Meredith/Derek.
Prompt: #21 - Author's Choice (Candy Corn) for
25_foods
Word Count: 4,396
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Up to 4.04 - The Heart Of The Matter. Disregards 4.05 - Haunt You Everyday.
Summary: My own version of a GA Halloween. Izzie gets it in her head that a Halloween party is a good way to ease the tension.
She doesn’t have a freaking clue what made Izzie think this was a good idea. Come to think of it, that seems to be a running theme lately. She doesn’t have a clue why Izzie slept with George. She doesn’t have a clue why Izzie decided to tell Alex, of all people, that she slept with George. She doesn’t have a clue why Izzie decided to piss off the chief resident and then try to fight her.
But this, Meredith thinks, is probably her least bright idea. Because this is really just asking for it.
Regardless, Izzie has gotten it in her head that a Halloween party is a good way to ease the tension (if you ask Meredith, and no one did, it’s just a way to create it). And hey, why not invite most of Seattle Grace (barring Callie of course). Why not make it worse than it already is? Why not give them more to gossip about?
Which is why on a Wednesday, at five in the evening, Meredith is filling up small glass bowls with very possibly every type of candy that the local Rite-Aid carries while Izzie moves the two oversized pumpkins outside and sets them up to frame the door just so.
“Alright, what else?” Meredith asks, once Izzie’s come back inside, throwing away the last empty plastic bag triumphantly.
“I’m not sure. How are the cupcakes?” Even as she asks the question she’s already headed toward the kitchen to see for herself.
“They’re cooling.” Meredith informs her, on her tail. “Don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard?”
“No,” Izzie replies, even as she bats away a paper bat that happens to be attached to the ceiling. “I’ll frost these while you go get into costume and then come back down and help me find the rest of the candles.”
“Candles?” Meredith’s having trouble imagining a way in which this doesn’t end in a small house fire.
“Yes. For the mood,” Izzie makes it sound like the stupidest question in the world, before dismissing her with a motherly, “Now go get dressed.”
Meredith can’t help but make a face before she lugs herself up the stairs and towards her bedroom, noticing the only closed door in the entire house and knocking on it just before she cracks it open. “I know you’re new here and all but we hide from Izzie in the bathroom.”
“I’m not hiding,” Alex says, laid out on his bed, eyes closed, rough voice.
“Right. And it’s actually going to take me an hour to get into costume.” She steps inside without being invited and flops down on the bed next to him. “She’s insane.”
She can feel him nod beside her but he doesn’t actually say anything.
“Do you plan on coming down for the party?”
“I’m thinking about going back to the hospital, saying I had patients to take care of.” He pauses, then adds, “Which I do.”
“Yeah but everyone will be here.” She says.
“That’s the point.”
Meredith turns her head to look at him, asking ever so gently, “Are you okay?”
“Why?” His voice is laced with suspicion.
“Because Izzie kind of put you in a bad situation and I don’t even think she realizes it.” She knows Izzie’s admission has gotten under his skin. He won’t say anything but it’s in his behavior. Alex doesn’t hide.
“I don’t get where her head’s at.” He mutters finally, after a long pause in which she’s fairly sure he cycled through various ‘I’m fine’s’ and ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’s’.
“They broke up you know.” She says, eyes on him to gauge a reaction that never quite comes. “That’s what I don’t get about this whole thing. They destroyed his marriage, made her look like more of an adulterous whore than I do, and they lasted, what, a week after they told everyone?”
“That’s because it’s different when everyone knows. You see things from a different perspective because all of a sudden it’s public and you have to treat it seriously.”
“What, is deep the new shallow? I thought I was the one with the rambly thoughts and insight.”
“You also thought you were the only adulterous whore and look how that turned out.” He retorts.
She half-smiles as she says, “Actually I was the dirty mistress, if we’re being completely accurate. And I didn’t know he was married.”
“Not even when you fucked him on prom night?”
“I know you’re not seriously bringing that up.”
“What are you going to do about it Grey?” He asks, half-joking as he nudges her with his leg. “Don’t you have to be getting in costume?”
Meredith groans. “Don’t remind me.”
“What are you going as?” He rolls onto his side to glance at the clock then lays back down, without missing a beat. “Catholic school girl? Cheerleader?”
She actually sits up so that she has a clear view of his face when she tells him, “Naughty nurse.”
“Fitting.”
“I’m just not sure I’ve met all the qualifications yet.” She starts, and honestly she wasn’t going to make the comment before he egged her on. “Does lying in the same bed with you count as sleeping with you? Because that seems to be standard practice among the nurses.”
“I don’t know,” he smirks. “Might want to follow through, just to be on the safe side.”
“In your dreams,” she responds, getting up to leave, pausing in the doorway to add. “Though if you want the mental image I’ll be downstairs.”
Alex pauses, like he’s in deep thought before telling her. “Yeah, still not worth it.”
“Fine. Loser.”
“Slut.”
“Syph-boy.”
---
Twenty minutes later and she’s back downstairs because Izzie’s yelling for “someone, anyone” to come help her, and really Meredith is the only option here (she kind of thinks Izzie doesn’t even know Alex is here, otherwise she thinks he would’ve been taken to task for not helping). They’re out of matches (which Cristina shows up with not ten minutes later) and the guests are going to start arriving soon and Izzie’s flipping out over everything being perfect so much that she hasn’t even gotten into costume yet.
“Out.” Meredith tells her, when she’s finally had it. “I can handle a couple of candles and making punch.”
Izzie gives both her and Cristina a disapproving look (and she thinks Cristina’s is more about the fact that she isn’t wearing a costume) before disappearing up the stairs.
“Has she seriously been like this all afternoon?” Cristina asks, as soon as Izzie’s out of earshot.
“Oh yeah.” She hands Cristina candles and matches and heads to the refrigerator herself. “You know how she baked a lot after Denny?”
“Like a crazy person.”
“Well I think this is the same thing with George.” She pokes around, locates the punch bowl. “This is her grieving.”
“He’s not dead,” Cristina reminds her.
Meredith gives her a pointed look and a “you know what I mean.”
“Is George coming?” Cristina asks, setting the candles down in the living room and, instead of lighting them, goes for the liquor cabinet.
”In the spirit of friendship, yes.” Meredith replies. She’s surprised he’s making the effort since he certainly didn’t do it for her. Then again, Izzie and George were always the closest.
“That should be nice and awkward.” Cristina walks back into the kitchen with a bottle in each hand and a nod toward the bowl. “Might want to spike that.”
She pauses over the bowl, contemplates it, before deciding that Cristina’s idea most definitely has merit. “Don’t tell Izzie.”
---
There’s something nostalgic about twirling in her Cinderella-type gown in front of the mirror that stops her midspin. It’s an unconscious movement, but as her hands drop to skim the smooth taffeta of the skirt it occurs to her that she hasn’t done this since prom. Since Denny.
The fact that she thinks of him as a memory from years ago, that she had to pause and think at all comes as a surprise to her. She had promised herself that she would never forget him, not for a second. She felt him, that day in the hospital when Meredith died, she knew he was there. She hasn’t thought about him since then. She’s been so busy dealing with George, thinking about George, that she hasn’t thought about Denny in weeks.
You told me you weren’t ready yet, after Denny, to be with anyone. And then O’Malley? O’Malley! And then you tell me like I’m one of your chick friends. Come on.
“Isn’t that a look typically reserved for five year olds?”
She stares at his reflection behind her, in the mirror, trying and failing to muster a smile and a witty retort. It just doesn’t work with him at the moment and so she stands there and stares and tries not to cry as it all just hits her again. He makes her think about Denny, he makes her think about George, he makes her think about how badly she’s fucked it all up.
After what seems like forever, she swallows the lump in her throat and remembers how to speak again.
“Sometimes I wish I was five again.”
His face doesn’t change. It doesn’t soften, doesn’t harden; he doesn’t shake his head or make some smartass comment. He just looks straight ahead, straight at her and this reflection of a relationship they never figured out romantically or platonically. And now they’re here and she’s just now realizing that it hasn’t all been about her all these years. She’s just now realizing that he’s an asshole with feelings, one who can be hurt. And he’s just staring.
“I - “
The knocking on the front door silences her.
“I have to get that.” She tells him, tonelessly.
He nods.
She gathers the skirt of her ballgown in her hands and brushes past him, feeling his eyes on her as she leaves down the stairs.
---
“Slow party.”
Meredith throws a glance over at Mark who’s both early and following her as she attempts to do last minute touch ups before the rest of the guests arrive. “Who invited you anyway?”
“Your boyfriend actually.” He informs her.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Mark nods his head and says, “But you’re still screwing him?”
“I’m not comfortable having this conversation with you.” She tells him, smiling in spite of herself.
“I thought we had a bond.” Meredith can’t tell if he’s faking hurt or not. “We’re the dirty mistresses.”
“That’s in the past,” she reminds him, because Addison is gone and that alleviates that problem for the both of them. “Besides, you used to be Derek’s best friend and now that you two are speaking again I don’t know how much of what I say will get back to him.”
“Believe me, we’re not on that good of terms. He gets very defensive over you.” She tries not to show her satisfaction about that, not that he’s paying attention since he seems so intent on the two hundred (so she’s exaggerating) candy bowls littered around the room. “This looks like something out of a dentist’s worst nightmare.”
“Izzie may have overestimated people’s sweet-tooth.” She tells him, thinking that may just be the understatement of the year. They’re going to have leftover candy corn and little sugary pumpkins into Christmas time.
“And sadly underestimated people’s need for alcohol.” Cristina pipes up from the other side of the room where she’s deigned herself the liquor nazi.
“Where is Stevens anyway?” He asks, making conversation more than anything else.
“Kitchen.” Meredith doesn’t even have to think. That’s where she’s been most of the day anyways. The doorbell rings again, and she glances Cristina’s way. “Can you get that?”
Cristina doesn’t seem particularly eager but she gets up anyways. From the living room she can hear the other woman yank open the door and the familiar-yet-nameless voices come in from outside.
And so starts the barrage of guests.
---
When George shows up Izzie contemplates saying “hello”. She contemplates putting on a smile and pretending that nothing ever happened between them and they’re still best friends. Problem is contemplation doesn’t necessarily lead to action and she spends her time mingling and playing hostess and never coming within ten feet of George.
Not that George is all alone.
“Why is number three here?” Cristina asks, leaning on the kitchen counter, watching the new arrivals mingle in the crowd with narrowed eyes.
“Which one is three?” Izzie still hasn’t figured out Cristina’s numbering system or why she even bothers. Maybe it’s just easier than learning their names or maybe she means to undermine them, make them feel lesser than her and remind them that they are interns. Then again, Bailey accomplished that just fine and she managed to remember their names.
“Grey.”
Izzie looks up, peeks out the door, and after some searching (there’s a lot more people here than she had that there would be) she finds Meredith’s sister, who happens to be laughing at something George must have just said. Something flares in Izzie.
With slightly raised eyebrows, Cristina asks, “Is she seriously dressed as a girl scout?”
“Who’s dressed as a girl scout?” Meredith pipes up, apparently having emerged from downstairs again (Izzie hadn’t seen her in over twenty minutes and was only half-curious as to her whereabouts).
“Your sister.” Cristina replies.
Meredith doesn’t even hesitate to correct her. “Half. My half sister.”
When Izzie realizes that’s all she has to say on that matter, she cuts in. “I thought you hated her.”
“It’s not her she hates, it’s the idea of her.” Cristina replies, before Meredith can spout the exact same thing, and she gets a glare for her troubles. “What?”
“Why is she with George?” Izzie asks, which is really what she cares about more than what she’s doing here.
“They bonded over babies.” Meredith informs her.
Cristina frowns. “Isn’t that your thing?”
“Was our thing. But apparently, in addition to spending hours talking to my neurosurgeon of a non-boyfriend, she is now stealing my friends and pastimes.” And there’s the bitter Meredith she’s used to. “But I’m over it. It’s not her fault. It’s my father’s.”
“Isn’t it defeating the purpose of this thing if you’re all hiding in here?” Apparently now Alex has chosen to join them as well.
“Speaking of hiding…” Meredith says, not so subtly, glancing at him. “You decided to come out.”
“Well sleeping is out with the amount of noise you guys are making down here.” He replies, giving her the once-over in a way that’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer, and probably intentionally so. “So, who are we watching?”
“The other Grey,” Cristina replies, somewhat begrudgingly giving her a name.
“Alright, so different topic,” Izzie says, abruptly changing the subject. She doesn’t want to talk about Lexie because that will inevitably mean talking about George and she really just doesn’t want to do that right anymore. Definitely not with Alex. She scans the living room, looks for a conversation starter - and gets saved by Cristina of all people.
“Is that McDreamy flirting with one of the nurses?”
And for now all eyes are on Meredith.
---
“Flirt with me.”
It’s probably the wrong moment to ask him that, since he almost spits out his drink, but she’s all about bad timing lately. “What?”
Meredith gestures her head towards where Derek is giving his very dreamy smiles and chatting up the same nurse from earlier. Apparently his reconciliation with Mark has resulted in him following by example. “I’m trying to make him jealous.”
Alex frowns. “I thought you two were broken up?”
“We are. But we’re not.” Alex raises his eyebrows and she waves a hand. “The specifics aren’t important.”
“I’m not flirting with you.” He tells her.
“Why not?” She’s aware of how pathetic she sounds right now but she has a feeling he’ll let her off the hook for it. “I ask you to flirt with a pretty girl and you’re going to complain now?”
He seems to consider her, then, “What’s in it for me?”
“People always want what they can’t have. If people see me flirting with you then suddenly you’re that much more attractive.” She says, pulling it out of her ass and managing to sound pretty convincing. It’s not like he needs any help in that department though.
There’s a brief flicker of hope where she’s sure he’s going to agree and then her plan to catch Derek’s eye will work (she can’t have him therefore she wants him again, same principle). That brief flicker, however, is neatly extinguished by one Izzie Stevens.
“Alex, can I talk to you?”
He looks between the both of them, Izzie with her urgent ‘I need to do this now before I chicken out’ look and Meredith with her determined ‘I will win this battle but first I need your help’ one. It’s not rocket science who’s going to win out.
“Rain check?” Alex says finally and she nods and she understands because she knows as much as he hates Izzie right now she’s still wildly important to him.
And then they’re gone and she’s left to fend for herself.
Time for plan B.
---
Part 2
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble cast. Alex/Izzie, hints of Meredith/Derek.
Prompt: #21 - Author's Choice (Candy Corn) for
25_foods
Word Count: 4,396
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Up to 4.04 - The Heart Of The Matter. Disregards 4.05 - Haunt You Everyday.
Summary: My own version of a GA Halloween. Izzie gets it in her head that a Halloween party is a good way to ease the tension.
She doesn’t have a freaking clue what made Izzie think this was a good idea. Come to think of it, that seems to be a running theme lately. She doesn’t have a clue why Izzie slept with George. She doesn’t have a clue why Izzie decided to tell Alex, of all people, that she slept with George. She doesn’t have a clue why Izzie decided to piss off the chief resident and then try to fight her.
But this, Meredith thinks, is probably her least bright idea. Because this is really just asking for it.
Regardless, Izzie has gotten it in her head that a Halloween party is a good way to ease the tension (if you ask Meredith, and no one did, it’s just a way to create it). And hey, why not invite most of Seattle Grace (barring Callie of course). Why not make it worse than it already is? Why not give them more to gossip about?
Which is why on a Wednesday, at five in the evening, Meredith is filling up small glass bowls with very possibly every type of candy that the local Rite-Aid carries while Izzie moves the two oversized pumpkins outside and sets them up to frame the door just so.
“Alright, what else?” Meredith asks, once Izzie’s come back inside, throwing away the last empty plastic bag triumphantly.
“I’m not sure. How are the cupcakes?” Even as she asks the question she’s already headed toward the kitchen to see for herself.
“They’re cooling.” Meredith informs her, on her tail. “Don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard?”
“No,” Izzie replies, even as she bats away a paper bat that happens to be attached to the ceiling. “I’ll frost these while you go get into costume and then come back down and help me find the rest of the candles.”
“Candles?” Meredith’s having trouble imagining a way in which this doesn’t end in a small house fire.
“Yes. For the mood,” Izzie makes it sound like the stupidest question in the world, before dismissing her with a motherly, “Now go get dressed.”
Meredith can’t help but make a face before she lugs herself up the stairs and towards her bedroom, noticing the only closed door in the entire house and knocking on it just before she cracks it open. “I know you’re new here and all but we hide from Izzie in the bathroom.”
“I’m not hiding,” Alex says, laid out on his bed, eyes closed, rough voice.
“Right. And it’s actually going to take me an hour to get into costume.” She steps inside without being invited and flops down on the bed next to him. “She’s insane.”
She can feel him nod beside her but he doesn’t actually say anything.
“Do you plan on coming down for the party?”
“I’m thinking about going back to the hospital, saying I had patients to take care of.” He pauses, then adds, “Which I do.”
“Yeah but everyone will be here.” She says.
“That’s the point.”
Meredith turns her head to look at him, asking ever so gently, “Are you okay?”
“Why?” His voice is laced with suspicion.
“Because Izzie kind of put you in a bad situation and I don’t even think she realizes it.” She knows Izzie’s admission has gotten under his skin. He won’t say anything but it’s in his behavior. Alex doesn’t hide.
“I don’t get where her head’s at.” He mutters finally, after a long pause in which she’s fairly sure he cycled through various ‘I’m fine’s’ and ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’s’.
“They broke up you know.” She says, eyes on him to gauge a reaction that never quite comes. “That’s what I don’t get about this whole thing. They destroyed his marriage, made her look like more of an adulterous whore than I do, and they lasted, what, a week after they told everyone?”
“That’s because it’s different when everyone knows. You see things from a different perspective because all of a sudden it’s public and you have to treat it seriously.”
“What, is deep the new shallow? I thought I was the one with the rambly thoughts and insight.”
“You also thought you were the only adulterous whore and look how that turned out.” He retorts.
She half-smiles as she says, “Actually I was the dirty mistress, if we’re being completely accurate. And I didn’t know he was married.”
“Not even when you fucked him on prom night?”
“I know you’re not seriously bringing that up.”
“What are you going to do about it Grey?” He asks, half-joking as he nudges her with his leg. “Don’t you have to be getting in costume?”
Meredith groans. “Don’t remind me.”
“What are you going as?” He rolls onto his side to glance at the clock then lays back down, without missing a beat. “Catholic school girl? Cheerleader?”
She actually sits up so that she has a clear view of his face when she tells him, “Naughty nurse.”
“Fitting.”
“I’m just not sure I’ve met all the qualifications yet.” She starts, and honestly she wasn’t going to make the comment before he egged her on. “Does lying in the same bed with you count as sleeping with you? Because that seems to be standard practice among the nurses.”
“I don’t know,” he smirks. “Might want to follow through, just to be on the safe side.”
“In your dreams,” she responds, getting up to leave, pausing in the doorway to add. “Though if you want the mental image I’ll be downstairs.”
Alex pauses, like he’s in deep thought before telling her. “Yeah, still not worth it.”
“Fine. Loser.”
“Slut.”
“Syph-boy.”
---
Twenty minutes later and she’s back downstairs because Izzie’s yelling for “someone, anyone” to come help her, and really Meredith is the only option here (she kind of thinks Izzie doesn’t even know Alex is here, otherwise she thinks he would’ve been taken to task for not helping). They’re out of matches (which Cristina shows up with not ten minutes later) and the guests are going to start arriving soon and Izzie’s flipping out over everything being perfect so much that she hasn’t even gotten into costume yet.
“Out.” Meredith tells her, when she’s finally had it. “I can handle a couple of candles and making punch.”
Izzie gives both her and Cristina a disapproving look (and she thinks Cristina’s is more about the fact that she isn’t wearing a costume) before disappearing up the stairs.
“Has she seriously been like this all afternoon?” Cristina asks, as soon as Izzie’s out of earshot.
“Oh yeah.” She hands Cristina candles and matches and heads to the refrigerator herself. “You know how she baked a lot after Denny?”
“Like a crazy person.”
“Well I think this is the same thing with George.” She pokes around, locates the punch bowl. “This is her grieving.”
“He’s not dead,” Cristina reminds her.
Meredith gives her a pointed look and a “you know what I mean.”
“Is George coming?” Cristina asks, setting the candles down in the living room and, instead of lighting them, goes for the liquor cabinet.
”In the spirit of friendship, yes.” Meredith replies. She’s surprised he’s making the effort since he certainly didn’t do it for her. Then again, Izzie and George were always the closest.
“That should be nice and awkward.” Cristina walks back into the kitchen with a bottle in each hand and a nod toward the bowl. “Might want to spike that.”
She pauses over the bowl, contemplates it, before deciding that Cristina’s idea most definitely has merit. “Don’t tell Izzie.”
---
There’s something nostalgic about twirling in her Cinderella-type gown in front of the mirror that stops her midspin. It’s an unconscious movement, but as her hands drop to skim the smooth taffeta of the skirt it occurs to her that she hasn’t done this since prom. Since Denny.
The fact that she thinks of him as a memory from years ago, that she had to pause and think at all comes as a surprise to her. She had promised herself that she would never forget him, not for a second. She felt him, that day in the hospital when Meredith died, she knew he was there. She hasn’t thought about him since then. She’s been so busy dealing with George, thinking about George, that she hasn’t thought about Denny in weeks.
You told me you weren’t ready yet, after Denny, to be with anyone. And then O’Malley? O’Malley! And then you tell me like I’m one of your chick friends. Come on.
“Isn’t that a look typically reserved for five year olds?”
She stares at his reflection behind her, in the mirror, trying and failing to muster a smile and a witty retort. It just doesn’t work with him at the moment and so she stands there and stares and tries not to cry as it all just hits her again. He makes her think about Denny, he makes her think about George, he makes her think about how badly she’s fucked it all up.
After what seems like forever, she swallows the lump in her throat and remembers how to speak again.
“Sometimes I wish I was five again.”
His face doesn’t change. It doesn’t soften, doesn’t harden; he doesn’t shake his head or make some smartass comment. He just looks straight ahead, straight at her and this reflection of a relationship they never figured out romantically or platonically. And now they’re here and she’s just now realizing that it hasn’t all been about her all these years. She’s just now realizing that he’s an asshole with feelings, one who can be hurt. And he’s just staring.
“I - “
The knocking on the front door silences her.
“I have to get that.” She tells him, tonelessly.
He nods.
She gathers the skirt of her ballgown in her hands and brushes past him, feeling his eyes on her as she leaves down the stairs.
---
“Slow party.”
Meredith throws a glance over at Mark who’s both early and following her as she attempts to do last minute touch ups before the rest of the guests arrive. “Who invited you anyway?”
“Your boyfriend actually.” He informs her.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Mark nods his head and says, “But you’re still screwing him?”
“I’m not comfortable having this conversation with you.” She tells him, smiling in spite of herself.
“I thought we had a bond.” Meredith can’t tell if he’s faking hurt or not. “We’re the dirty mistresses.”
“That’s in the past,” she reminds him, because Addison is gone and that alleviates that problem for the both of them. “Besides, you used to be Derek’s best friend and now that you two are speaking again I don’t know how much of what I say will get back to him.”
“Believe me, we’re not on that good of terms. He gets very defensive over you.” She tries not to show her satisfaction about that, not that he’s paying attention since he seems so intent on the two hundred (so she’s exaggerating) candy bowls littered around the room. “This looks like something out of a dentist’s worst nightmare.”
“Izzie may have overestimated people’s sweet-tooth.” She tells him, thinking that may just be the understatement of the year. They’re going to have leftover candy corn and little sugary pumpkins into Christmas time.
“And sadly underestimated people’s need for alcohol.” Cristina pipes up from the other side of the room where she’s deigned herself the liquor nazi.
“Where is Stevens anyway?” He asks, making conversation more than anything else.
“Kitchen.” Meredith doesn’t even have to think. That’s where she’s been most of the day anyways. The doorbell rings again, and she glances Cristina’s way. “Can you get that?”
Cristina doesn’t seem particularly eager but she gets up anyways. From the living room she can hear the other woman yank open the door and the familiar-yet-nameless voices come in from outside.
And so starts the barrage of guests.
---
When George shows up Izzie contemplates saying “hello”. She contemplates putting on a smile and pretending that nothing ever happened between them and they’re still best friends. Problem is contemplation doesn’t necessarily lead to action and she spends her time mingling and playing hostess and never coming within ten feet of George.
Not that George is all alone.
“Why is number three here?” Cristina asks, leaning on the kitchen counter, watching the new arrivals mingle in the crowd with narrowed eyes.
“Which one is three?” Izzie still hasn’t figured out Cristina’s numbering system or why she even bothers. Maybe it’s just easier than learning their names or maybe she means to undermine them, make them feel lesser than her and remind them that they are interns. Then again, Bailey accomplished that just fine and she managed to remember their names.
“Grey.”
Izzie looks up, peeks out the door, and after some searching (there’s a lot more people here than she had that there would be) she finds Meredith’s sister, who happens to be laughing at something George must have just said. Something flares in Izzie.
With slightly raised eyebrows, Cristina asks, “Is she seriously dressed as a girl scout?”
“Who’s dressed as a girl scout?” Meredith pipes up, apparently having emerged from downstairs again (Izzie hadn’t seen her in over twenty minutes and was only half-curious as to her whereabouts).
“Your sister.” Cristina replies.
Meredith doesn’t even hesitate to correct her. “Half. My half sister.”
When Izzie realizes that’s all she has to say on that matter, she cuts in. “I thought you hated her.”
“It’s not her she hates, it’s the idea of her.” Cristina replies, before Meredith can spout the exact same thing, and she gets a glare for her troubles. “What?”
“Why is she with George?” Izzie asks, which is really what she cares about more than what she’s doing here.
“They bonded over babies.” Meredith informs her.
Cristina frowns. “Isn’t that your thing?”
“Was our thing. But apparently, in addition to spending hours talking to my neurosurgeon of a non-boyfriend, she is now stealing my friends and pastimes.” And there’s the bitter Meredith she’s used to. “But I’m over it. It’s not her fault. It’s my father’s.”
“Isn’t it defeating the purpose of this thing if you’re all hiding in here?” Apparently now Alex has chosen to join them as well.
“Speaking of hiding…” Meredith says, not so subtly, glancing at him. “You decided to come out.”
“Well sleeping is out with the amount of noise you guys are making down here.” He replies, giving her the once-over in a way that’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer, and probably intentionally so. “So, who are we watching?”
“The other Grey,” Cristina replies, somewhat begrudgingly giving her a name.
“Alright, so different topic,” Izzie says, abruptly changing the subject. She doesn’t want to talk about Lexie because that will inevitably mean talking about George and she really just doesn’t want to do that right anymore. Definitely not with Alex. She scans the living room, looks for a conversation starter - and gets saved by Cristina of all people.
“Is that McDreamy flirting with one of the nurses?”
And for now all eyes are on Meredith.
---
“Flirt with me.”
It’s probably the wrong moment to ask him that, since he almost spits out his drink, but she’s all about bad timing lately. “What?”
Meredith gestures her head towards where Derek is giving his very dreamy smiles and chatting up the same nurse from earlier. Apparently his reconciliation with Mark has resulted in him following by example. “I’m trying to make him jealous.”
Alex frowns. “I thought you two were broken up?”
“We are. But we’re not.” Alex raises his eyebrows and she waves a hand. “The specifics aren’t important.”
“I’m not flirting with you.” He tells her.
“Why not?” She’s aware of how pathetic she sounds right now but she has a feeling he’ll let her off the hook for it. “I ask you to flirt with a pretty girl and you’re going to complain now?”
He seems to consider her, then, “What’s in it for me?”
“People always want what they can’t have. If people see me flirting with you then suddenly you’re that much more attractive.” She says, pulling it out of her ass and managing to sound pretty convincing. It’s not like he needs any help in that department though.
There’s a brief flicker of hope where she’s sure he’s going to agree and then her plan to catch Derek’s eye will work (she can’t have him therefore she wants him again, same principle). That brief flicker, however, is neatly extinguished by one Izzie Stevens.
“Alex, can I talk to you?”
He looks between the both of them, Izzie with her urgent ‘I need to do this now before I chicken out’ look and Meredith with her determined ‘I will win this battle but first I need your help’ one. It’s not rocket science who’s going to win out.
“Rain check?” Alex says finally and she nods and she understands because she knows as much as he hates Izzie right now she’s still wildly important to him.
And then they’re gone and she’s left to fend for herself.
Time for plan B.
---
Part 2