(no subject)
Title: The Kind Of Sisterly Bonding That Comes With Vomiting And Breakfasts That Won't Kill You
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Meredith, Lexie, Cristina, briefly Alex.
Word Count: 1,575
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: One of the lovelies over at Sweet Charity wanted Meredith and Lexie fic...unfortunately it's more sisterly bonding than anything else. I hope you like!
Summary: She's just not good at this kind of thing, the caring, nurturing sister-type stuff that she's managed to avoid until now.
She knew having Lexie here for a while could only lead to bad things.
“She’s sick.”
“And?”
“What do I do?”
Cristina ever so slightly raises an eyebrow, “Why are you asking me?”
“You’re her resident.” Meredith blurts, like that makes a difference, like it means something.
Cristina’s point is a bit more valid. “You’re her sister.”
“Half sister.”
“Whatever. Blood is blood.”
“This isn’t surgery, Cristina.” She tells her, pettily, not yet ready to give in. “I don’t do this.”
“And I do?”
“Well then who else? Izzie won’t and Alex and her…it’s not a good idea.”
“Which leaves you.” Cristina pauses, then adds, “Or you could just let her take care of herself.”
“She has the flu. There’s fevers and vomiting - “
“See, one more reason I can’t do anything. I don’t do vomit. Vomit makes me vomit.”
“Fine, alright, I get it. Not you.” Meredith’s starting to get the picture that she’s the one who’s going to have to take care of Lexie. She says as much. “It’s my job. She’s just another patient.”
“Exactly. Just without the cool surgery.”
“Helpful. Thank you.” She’s all dressed up with nowhere to go now and she shoves her hands in her pockets, trying to figure out what to do other than stand here and wish it was anybody else. This is bound to be awkward. “I guess maybe I should get her off the couch.”
“It’s a thought.”
---
“You didn’t have to do this you know.”
Meredith wants to yell at her and tell her to stop sounding so damn innocent and nice and grateful because it only makes her feel worse for hesitating in the first place. But Lexie’s sick and the reasoning only makes sense in her head so she abstains. “I felt bad.”
“Great. Pity.” It’s not sarcastic persay, you can’t really achieve that when you look this pathetic, it’s more disappointed. Because it makes it seem like Meredith didn’t actually care she just saw her as another case. Which was not it.
“Besides you’d probably do it for me.” Meredith adds, though she isn’t one hundred percent sure of that. It’s just an educated guess.
“Yeah.” Her guess was right, apparently.
“Can I get you anything?” She kind of wants to get out of there now, so that she doesn’t catch it.
Lexie hesitates, like she has something she wants to say but can’t quite force it past her lips. Finally, after some internal battle Meredith isn’t privy to, she settles on, “No.”
“Alright, I’ll be back to check on you later.”
She swears she hears a heavy sigh as she closes the door behind her.
---
“I thought you hated her.”
“I never said I hated her.” She corrects him. “I said I hated what she stood for.”
“And yet you’re taking off work and making her breakfast.” Alex seems to have rolled out of bed with the sole intention of pushing her buttons.
She narrows her eyes. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“You and I both know neither of us has ever really been concerned with that.” Meredith just loves (yes, this is sarcasm) how he tries to negate his insult by phrasing it as “we” instead of “you”. It’s like something out of a Cosmopolitan article on how to confront someone who’s wronged you. And it’s annoying that he’s fucking with her head this early in the morning.
“Shut up and eat your breakfast.” Is all she replies. She had leftovers.
“Is it edible?” She glares; he shrugs. “The last one gave her an allergic reaction, I was just wondering what you did this time.”
“I didn’t know she was allergic to eggs.” She nearly shouts but catches herself at the last minute.
“Well it’s a good thing I’m not allergic to anything.”
She waits until he takes a bite before she tells him. “If you taste anything almond-y don’t worry. It’s just the cyanide.”
He’s not the only one who can do mind games.
---
“Was breakfast okay?” Meredith’s got dishes piled in her hands, feeling more and more like a waitress with each passing second.
“Yeah, it was good. It was great.” Lexie can’t muster much in the way of enthusiasm but still take it all the same. “Thanks.”
She barely acknowledges the sentiment. “How are you feeling?”
“Like if I throw up anymore I might turn completely inside out.” Not for the first time Meredith’s glad that Lexie’s staying in her room which happens to be the closest to the bathroom.
“Well if you need anything let me know.”
Lexie makes that same face, the ‘should I or shouldn’t I’ one, and Meredith waited for the last one but she has a feeling that this one also will not come to fruition so she just nods, walks out the door, and leaves it at that.
---
“Has she keeled over yet?” Cristina opens with that and, somehow, Meredith isn’t surprised.
“No.”
“Well then she would’ve been just fine by herself.” Cristina tells her. “Besides you’re missing out on a laminectomy on this guy. They fused his entire back; he’s got so many rods and screws in him it looks like railroad tracks.”
She readjusts the phone so it rests between her cheek and the crook of her neck, as she admonishes, in her special condescending, you’re a bad person, tone, “Cristina.”
“It is your job. Babysitting her is not.”
“I know.”
There’s a pause, then, “So how is it?”
“Awkward. Very awkward.” She keeps her voice low, so Lexie can’t hear her.
“Told you.”
Meredith can’t think of anything else to refute that with other than, “Shut up.”
---
“Well you don’t have a fever anymore.” Meredith presses and holds the ‘off’ button on the thermometer. “But you’ll probably have one again later.”
“I’ve never had the flu before.”
“Seriously?”
“Never.” She’s pretty sure that’s like a rite of passage. “I never had the chickenpox either.”
Meredith did. She still has a scar or two because no one was around to remind her not to scratch. “That’s not good.”
“I know. But my sister - my other sister - had it and mom kept me around her all the time, I guess she wanted me to catch it, and I just never did.” Lexie says it almost like she’s proud. She won’t be when she gets it worse because she caught it as an adult.
She hates hearing about Lexie’s family. It’s a gut reaction; perhaps a longing for her own. She missed so much and she doesn’t have any way of getting it back and so hearing about the other her - the replacement - makes her feel a couple of things she’s just not interested in. So she doesn’t say anything and lets them fall into the uncomfortable silence of which there’s no return. Or so she thinks.
Standing there for a moment she lets her eyes drift between the door and her half-sister. She motions to the door but doesn’t quite get the words out that she’s going to leave because Lexie finally, finally, finally lets it out in a rush of air.
“Could you stay in here? With me.” She almost looks like she regrets it immediately, but she’s got an interesting case of verbal diarrhea that won’t quite allow her to stop. “For a while. I mean it’s okay if you don’t want to because you don’t want to get sick and I know it’s kind of awkward because we just started talking and you just stopped hating me.”
Why does everyone think that? Had she really been that mean in the beginning. “I don’t hate you. I never hated you.”
Lexie doesn’t quite seem to know what to say to that.
“And yes, I will stay with you.” Meredith contemplates what exactly she means by that as she looks at Lexie who looks about seven in the big bed with her wide, tired, slightly nervous eyes and Meredith says screw it and gets up on the bed with her. Lexie kind of smiles and lays her head against her and it’s nice Meredith thinks, or nicer than she expected, as her hand drops to stroke Lexie’s hair. For the first time in...well ever, she feels like the big sister that she’s supposed to be, and it’s not a feeling she thought she’d ever want until now. “Better now?”
She can feel Lexie nod against her.
Not that she’d ask, but she kind of thinks this might have something to do with Lexie missing her mom. Susan would be the type of person who was good at the caring and nurturing stuff. She was with Meredith, for the short time she knew her, and it wasn’t even her own daughter. And now Lexie has no one but their drunk father and Meredith. So that kind of makes it Meredith’s job to take care of her, to fill that void.
Sometimes she just doesn’t think like that because she never had a father that she could really remember, or siblings, and her mother never was much of one. She raised herself and thus she learned not to need this kind of nurturing. This, to her, would feel like something.
But it doesn’t to Lexie, as she relaxes against Meredith, and she guesses that right now that’s all that matters.
Ten minutes after Lexie falls asleep she can feel herself drifting off, and she thinks there might have been a lesson learned here.