cause i don't know how long i can hold my heart in two {owen/cristina}
Title: Cause I Don't Know How Long I Can Hold My Heart In Two
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Cristina/Owen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,313
Author's Note: This was supposed to be a quickie late night writer's block breaking prompt from crickets. I don't know where this went after that point.
Summary: Post 5.11. One eighteen hour shift, one interesting case of the flu, and one woman who he's just not getting any closer to understanding.
One day he’s perfectly fine, so fine that he’s also acting as the only sane human being in the room ninety percent of the time while Meredith and Cristina do their not-talking-but-glaring thing, and Derek spends the bulk of his time alternating between ordering them around and glaring at the actual patient. It must take a lot out of him. Or something.
He works a ten hour shift, then a twelve, and Cristina ignores his existence for both of them. By shift four, he feels lightheaded when he moves too quickly, but he’s dealt with worse. Owen doesn’t get sick. He just doesn’t. So he passes it off as lack of sleep and smiles to himself the one time he catches her giving him what probably passes as a concerned glance right after he sways a little on his feet when he goes to pick up their friendly neighborhood PDR’s chart to check his stats.
“You okay?” Derek’s the one to ask. Owen almost wishes he hadn’t; wonders if she would’ve otherwise.
“Perfectly fine. Our patient on the other hand,” he passes Derek the chart, looks at Cristina out of the corner of his eye. She isn’t even sparing a glance in his general direction anymore.
Shift five is eighteen hours long and he isn’t above admitting he’s dragging. Such is life. He pushes harder, forward, sees more patients than he can count, plus a surgery, and still deals with the PDR case. With the fantastic, not so grown up surgeons on said case. The only thing he gets from her is accidental brush of the arm as she pushes past him on her way out of the room.
If he felt better, if he didn’t feel nauseous about once every other hour or so, he’d bother to track her down, try again, try to break down whatever barriers she’s hiding behind today. You try hard enough, often enough, and something will crack. It just takes time. But, presently, he can’t seem to do much past putting one foot in front of the other. Two hours and he’s home free, and he just keeps eyeing the clock.
It’s what he’s doing by the nurses’ station on the fourth floor, one hour twenty-three minutes left, when he gets another one of those waves of nausea, mixed with dizziness, and he closes his eyes, goes to shake it off like he’s been doing for the past sixteen hours and counting, except he must lose his balance, somehow, even if he thought he was stationary. His eyes never open and everything goes black with yellow and orange bursts interspersed and then he just doesn’t feel or think anything at all.
---
It’s nothing quite as dramatic, as life shattering and time stopping as passing out on the linoleum floor of the hospital makes it seem. That’s just what happens when you mix the flu with an eighteen hour shift and an especially stressful case.
The Chief kicks him out an hour early, tells him he needs all of his doctors but he also needs them all in good health and not scaring the patients. So Owen changes into his street clothes and lets himself finally look as tired as he feels.
Cristina’s waiting outside the doors of the lobby, a zip-up sweatshirt thrown over her scrubs to guard against the cold. He can’t hide the surprise, but doesn’t really let himself think that she’s waiting for him until he knows for sure.
She looks right at him, for the first time all day, but her face is blank, carefully, deliberately held that way.
“Don’t trust me to make it out the door on my own?” He asks, when he’s only a few feet away from her. His steps are slower than his normal pace but confident; he’s not swaying on his feet anymore, he’ll be fine, he just needs some sleep.
“Hardly,” Cristina replies, and frowns at him. Still frosty but at least she’s out here. That’s something.
Owen shoves his hands in his pockets, shifts, “Then why are you standing out here instead of finding a surgery to get on?”
She stops looking at him, gaze falling to the walkway under her feet. When she exhales he can see her breath against the navy blue night sky. “This has nothing to do with you. At all. This is about me and her.” Cristina’s eyes find his again. “There is no one else I have to talk to. I don’t trust people, as a rule, except for her. Because people leave. So this has nothing to do with you - I was just looking for something in the wrong place.”
There’s a long moment while that sets in, while he tries to decode what she means, while she tries to think of what to do next. When he doesn’t say anything, when he waits too long, she nods and turns to leave. He takes a chance, hopes his balance cooperates, and reaches out to grab her arm and pull her back around to face him. She doesn’t go willingly.
“What?” She asks, like he’s got two heads and they just don’t have anything to talk about anymore because she’s decided it.
“You aren’t.” Cristina narrows her eyes, doesn’t understand. “You weren’t looking in the wrong place.”
“Okay, you bring me coffee, and then I try to talk to you two hours later and you’re suddenly too busy to let me get a word out. You checked out. And I’m tired of back and forth. So, yes, I was, and now I’m done.”
He still hasn’t let go of her. But she hasn’t tried to leave yet either. They just stand there. Sadly, this is not something he’s going to be able to solve by kissing her. That’s how it usually works, but today that isn’t really an option. Instead he says, “You didn’t come out here just to tell me all that. You wouldn’t have bothered because you don’t care what other people think of you anymore than I do, as long as the words capable and skilled are in front of it all.”
She only seems to get angrier. “Don’t act like you know me.”
“You do care. You aren’t done. That’s why you came out here.”
“Shouldn’t you be leaving?” Her words are hard but there’s vulnerability there, seeping through.
He ignores her question, even if she’s right. He’s running on empty. “And I do check out. But so do you. We’re not that different - if we were we wouldn’t be doing this right now.”
Cristina sighs, swallows hard, and stares at him, studying him, sizing him up. Then, “Fine.”
There’s just no decoding that. “Fine what?”
“Fine. As in you win.” Owen still doesn’t get at what point this turned into a game. She sighs again, rolls her eyes, when she realizes that he doesn’t get it. “As in you’re right.”
“About which part.”
She pulls her arm out of his grasp, but doesn’t go anywhere, instead raises her hand to his jacket-clad arm, wrapping around it, the hard muscle there tensing underneath her fingertips. “Go home. You look like crap.” Officially confused, he just lowers his eyebrows, stands there. Either his head is really swimming or she’s stopped making sense. “I’m not making any speeches. I don’t make speeches.”
“But we’re…” he trails off, searches for the right word, finds something in, “alright?”
Cristina gives him a look like he’s supposed to have already figured that out already. She definitely doesn’t make things easy. “Do you need it spelled out for you?”
He goes with, “no.” Just because he’s really sure he shouldn’t be having this conversation right now. “Alright.”
“Alright.” She echoes, drops her hand from his arm, and turns to leave without another glance, though he can tell that’s hard fought.
If this flu doesn’t kill him, he thinks she will.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Cristina/Owen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,313
Author's Note: This was supposed to be a quickie late night writer's block breaking prompt from crickets. I don't know where this went after that point.
Summary: Post 5.11. One eighteen hour shift, one interesting case of the flu, and one woman who he's just not getting any closer to understanding.
One day he’s perfectly fine, so fine that he’s also acting as the only sane human being in the room ninety percent of the time while Meredith and Cristina do their not-talking-but-glaring thing, and Derek spends the bulk of his time alternating between ordering them around and glaring at the actual patient. It must take a lot out of him. Or something.
He works a ten hour shift, then a twelve, and Cristina ignores his existence for both of them. By shift four, he feels lightheaded when he moves too quickly, but he’s dealt with worse. Owen doesn’t get sick. He just doesn’t. So he passes it off as lack of sleep and smiles to himself the one time he catches her giving him what probably passes as a concerned glance right after he sways a little on his feet when he goes to pick up their friendly neighborhood PDR’s chart to check his stats.
“You okay?” Derek’s the one to ask. Owen almost wishes he hadn’t; wonders if she would’ve otherwise.
“Perfectly fine. Our patient on the other hand,” he passes Derek the chart, looks at Cristina out of the corner of his eye. She isn’t even sparing a glance in his general direction anymore.
Shift five is eighteen hours long and he isn’t above admitting he’s dragging. Such is life. He pushes harder, forward, sees more patients than he can count, plus a surgery, and still deals with the PDR case. With the fantastic, not so grown up surgeons on said case. The only thing he gets from her is accidental brush of the arm as she pushes past him on her way out of the room.
If he felt better, if he didn’t feel nauseous about once every other hour or so, he’d bother to track her down, try again, try to break down whatever barriers she’s hiding behind today. You try hard enough, often enough, and something will crack. It just takes time. But, presently, he can’t seem to do much past putting one foot in front of the other. Two hours and he’s home free, and he just keeps eyeing the clock.
It’s what he’s doing by the nurses’ station on the fourth floor, one hour twenty-three minutes left, when he gets another one of those waves of nausea, mixed with dizziness, and he closes his eyes, goes to shake it off like he’s been doing for the past sixteen hours and counting, except he must lose his balance, somehow, even if he thought he was stationary. His eyes never open and everything goes black with yellow and orange bursts interspersed and then he just doesn’t feel or think anything at all.
---
It’s nothing quite as dramatic, as life shattering and time stopping as passing out on the linoleum floor of the hospital makes it seem. That’s just what happens when you mix the flu with an eighteen hour shift and an especially stressful case.
The Chief kicks him out an hour early, tells him he needs all of his doctors but he also needs them all in good health and not scaring the patients. So Owen changes into his street clothes and lets himself finally look as tired as he feels.
Cristina’s waiting outside the doors of the lobby, a zip-up sweatshirt thrown over her scrubs to guard against the cold. He can’t hide the surprise, but doesn’t really let himself think that she’s waiting for him until he knows for sure.
She looks right at him, for the first time all day, but her face is blank, carefully, deliberately held that way.
“Don’t trust me to make it out the door on my own?” He asks, when he’s only a few feet away from her. His steps are slower than his normal pace but confident; he’s not swaying on his feet anymore, he’ll be fine, he just needs some sleep.
“Hardly,” Cristina replies, and frowns at him. Still frosty but at least she’s out here. That’s something.
Owen shoves his hands in his pockets, shifts, “Then why are you standing out here instead of finding a surgery to get on?”
She stops looking at him, gaze falling to the walkway under her feet. When she exhales he can see her breath against the navy blue night sky. “This has nothing to do with you. At all. This is about me and her.” Cristina’s eyes find his again. “There is no one else I have to talk to. I don’t trust people, as a rule, except for her. Because people leave. So this has nothing to do with you - I was just looking for something in the wrong place.”
There’s a long moment while that sets in, while he tries to decode what she means, while she tries to think of what to do next. When he doesn’t say anything, when he waits too long, she nods and turns to leave. He takes a chance, hopes his balance cooperates, and reaches out to grab her arm and pull her back around to face him. She doesn’t go willingly.
“What?” She asks, like he’s got two heads and they just don’t have anything to talk about anymore because she’s decided it.
“You aren’t.” Cristina narrows her eyes, doesn’t understand. “You weren’t looking in the wrong place.”
“Okay, you bring me coffee, and then I try to talk to you two hours later and you’re suddenly too busy to let me get a word out. You checked out. And I’m tired of back and forth. So, yes, I was, and now I’m done.”
He still hasn’t let go of her. But she hasn’t tried to leave yet either. They just stand there. Sadly, this is not something he’s going to be able to solve by kissing her. That’s how it usually works, but today that isn’t really an option. Instead he says, “You didn’t come out here just to tell me all that. You wouldn’t have bothered because you don’t care what other people think of you anymore than I do, as long as the words capable and skilled are in front of it all.”
She only seems to get angrier. “Don’t act like you know me.”
“You do care. You aren’t done. That’s why you came out here.”
“Shouldn’t you be leaving?” Her words are hard but there’s vulnerability there, seeping through.
He ignores her question, even if she’s right. He’s running on empty. “And I do check out. But so do you. We’re not that different - if we were we wouldn’t be doing this right now.”
Cristina sighs, swallows hard, and stares at him, studying him, sizing him up. Then, “Fine.”
There’s just no decoding that. “Fine what?”
“Fine. As in you win.” Owen still doesn’t get at what point this turned into a game. She sighs again, rolls her eyes, when she realizes that he doesn’t get it. “As in you’re right.”
“About which part.”
She pulls her arm out of his grasp, but doesn’t go anywhere, instead raises her hand to his jacket-clad arm, wrapping around it, the hard muscle there tensing underneath her fingertips. “Go home. You look like crap.” Officially confused, he just lowers his eyebrows, stands there. Either his head is really swimming or she’s stopped making sense. “I’m not making any speeches. I don’t make speeches.”
“But we’re…” he trails off, searches for the right word, finds something in, “alright?”
Cristina gives him a look like he’s supposed to have already figured that out already. She definitely doesn’t make things easy. “Do you need it spelled out for you?”
He goes with, “no.” Just because he’s really sure he shouldn’t be having this conversation right now. “Alright.”
“Alright.” She echoes, drops her hand from his arm, and turns to leave without another glance, though he can tell that’s hard fought.
If this flu doesn’t kill him, he thinks she will.