love's an excuse to get hurt {alex/meredith}
Title: Love's An Excuse To Get Hurt
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Meredith, implied Derek/Meredith and Alex/Izzie
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,616
Prompt: #44 - Circle for fanfic100
Author's Note: I don't know when this is set exactly -- probably before last episode. This is pretty bleak to be honest with you, but I've never been someone who truly believes in happy endings.
Summary: Spoilers up until 5.15 to be safe. They move in circles like this one: I want you, I have you, I want him now. Rinse. Repeat.
They move in circles like this one:
I want you, I have you, I want him now. Rinse. Repeat.
Neither of them will admit that it’s fear of getting hurt that drives them. Strike first, stay safe. It’s not a good way to live but it’s a way.
---
It starts as conversations and comparisons over too much tequila in an otherwise empty house. Those times were rare when you lived in a house that, including strays, six people normally called home. Not counting guests (lovers or otherwise).
They’ve always been honest with each other. Nice? Rarely. But honest and comfortable? Practically always. Whether it’s over crappy childhoods or crappy relationships, there’s always been that feeling like she could tell him anything in the morning and he’d still be talking to her in the morning, whether he understood or not. It was a rare commodity.
So the unfortunate truths that roll of their tongues, interspersed with the shots of tequila that burn down their throats, are anything but unfiltered. Unfortunately.
“I don’t think I can do this,” he says, the admittance made under dim lights; his eyes aren’t quite focused when he looks at her. “This. With her. I don’t think I can deal with this again.”
Meredith nods, then: “I don’t think I can marry him.” She says it like it’s a consolation prize.
This is nothing to be proud of.
---
I want to run away.
Meredith thinks it sometimes, when her hand slides against the porcelain tub, a memory she thought long-lost but one that keeps creeping back around the edges of her mind. When the sun catches the ring on her finger and it glares enough that she has to squint in order to drive (it shines like the smile on his face had). She presses her lips together and folds her hand into a fist at her side, and tells herself that this isn’t only about what she wants anymore.
Her dress is white satin, and it hangs in Cristina’s closet for safekeeping, so Derek doesn’t see it. She’s worn it on once, the day she tried it on, no standing in front of the mirror and twirling around like some happy schoolgirl playing dress-up in mommy’s closet. She’s scared that she’s making a mistake or that this is all going to shatter around her, and it only serves as a reminder of what’s to come.
“I told him our kids would be cute.” She says, watery smile, hand around the neck of a bottle that for once isn’t filled with tequila. This is a Tuesday, in a supply closet, when she’s not feeling particularly strong. But she holds onto the bottle all the same simply because it’s something to hold onto. “Because I thought it was something he’d want to hear. Like that stupid house of candles.” There’s venom on that last word but it’s directed at herself. “Kids, Alex.”
His back against the semi-sturdy shelf, he rests his arms on his knees, and looks at her expectantly. Meredith can only pace for so long in the confines of the small room and so she shakes her head as she not so gracefully allows her knees to give out and her body to sink to the floor. The door is locked her eyes tell her, and she’s thankful for that privacy at least. “If you’re still pretending…” he starts, working that bottle out of her hands and placing it behind them to stop her from fidgeting before finding a spot on the ceiling to fixate on for the moment, in the exact same manner as people who believe in higher powers, people who aren’t them, would employ while looking for answers. “I mean at this point…”
The second drop off mid-sentence is purely intentional. Fill in the blank, you know how this goes, and she silently hates him for it. “Like you don’t,” is nearly hissed through her teeth. The ensuing silence may be companionable but today it’s anything but comfortable.
We could run away together.
---
They’re so damn predictable, you know. The way they fall into this (each other).
She says, “this was probably always going to happen,” and licks her lips.
He rolls his eyes at even the implication of fate (even if it is right), moves is fingers a fraction of an inch down and to the left, slipping underneath the waistband of her underwear, remaining there as he tells her, “probably could’ve picked a better time.”
She arches and shifts into his fingers, breathing just a bit more erratically than normal, anticipation, and he pulls his hand back, not giving her an inch or anything else for that matter. She catches his bottom lip between her teeth, nips just enough to sting, her own brand of revenge, and it just makes him move slower. That was definitely not her intention.
They should feel worse about it than they do too, because they aren’t drunk, don’t even have that excuse to rely on. It’s not that they aren’t thinking about the consequences either. They’re aware. They’re aware that they could destroy everything they both have, everything good, and all it would take is the wrong person walking through the door.
Maybe that’s what they’re trying for. It was going to happen sooner or later, might as well have some sense of control over the when.
“Just,” her voice breaks through and they both stop, his arms braced on either side of her and he holds there, waiting for her to tell him to stop. Someone needs to say something.
Instead she seals their fate with a kiss.
---
Perhaps the biggest problem here is that there’s no problem at all.
Part of carrying on an affair is supposed to be the hiding, the lying, the forbidden aspect that has you stealing glances in elevators and quick fucks wherever you can get them. But they’ve gotten good at covering these things up, putting on masks before they go home; they’ve learned from too many past experiences and necessity, and now it’s all second nature.
It’s not like they’re hiding the great love of the century anyway. No, it’s not like that at all.
She’ll page him to the on-call room (never the other way around; she wonders whether that means she’s using him or he’s going to use this as a way to place the blame on her when this is all over - probably both) and listen to the chatter of interns outside of the door, always the same.
“Sloan and Lexie again.”
“God, don’t they ever get tired.”
Meredith wonders when she stopped being the Grey that everyone talked about, and whether that makes Lexie a copycat or just the newer, improved model.
She lets herself be that much louder.
---
Cristina finds out. Hiding things from Derek is easy, but Cristina knows her too well.
“This is a bad idea.”
Meredith doesn’t refute that. She’s right, and Meredith knows this, but it isn’t going to change a thing, so, really, what’s the point.
---
Sometimes, he’ll tell her, “It’s your thing,” in this tone that’s meant to reassure, to comfort, and all she can think is that he sounds like her. He’s making the same excuses that she does.
Sometimes, Meredith will turn onto her side in the bed, watching Alex pull his scrubs back on, hiding skin and marks and scars (the kind she doesn’t claim ownership to), and ask “why are we like this?”. It’s not the kind of question she expects an answer to and, wisely, he never gives her one.
It doesn’t have to be lingers in the air because, well, that’s still not something they understand completely.
---
There’s this one night where Cristina’s somehow wound up the third, semi-unwilling participant in this little game of theirs and as such they end up in her apartment, so drunk that they can’t exactly be trusted not to blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time.
“We can’t go home home is not an option,” spills out all at once, slurred, and she’s still got her keys in her hand, which seems to concern Cristina since she won’t stop looking at them like she’s five seconds from knocking them both unconscious and stowing them away in her closet. Meredith notes this and spends a few seconds getting her mouth to work around the words, “We didn’t drive here, we took a cab.”
“To my apartment.” Cristina pauses, to process, assess - maybe for effect. “So what, you decided to take your affair on the road?”
They don’t answer. Her pager goes off anyways.
Someone crashed or coded or maybe a surgery didn’t go as well and Cristina grabs her things and never quite kicks them out. She does manage to pull Meredith away for a moment, fingers digging into her arm in a way that is almost entirely meant to keep her steady. “If you do anything, make sure it’s on the couch.”
Fifteen minutes later they’d managed to completely ignore that rule.
“What are you doing?” Alex keeps calling from Cristina’s bedroom, laid out on her bed and Meredith’s banking on the thought that Cristina’s sleeping with Owen, or at least something close to it, to explain away the scent of aftershave he’ll leave behind.
Meredith runs her fingers through loose waves, lets them fall limp against her shoulders. She watches her chest rise as she inhales, tries to stand straighter, tries to put herself in the right state of mind. And walks out.
“So?” She bunches her fingers in white fabric, fairytale dress that all little girls dream of and Vogue readers fantasize about buying, spins in front of the bed with a half-hearted smile. “I need a guy’s opinion.”
“You look good.” He tells her, approving once-over, but there’s something else in his eyes that begs to be said.
Meredith worries her lip between her teeth. “I’m looking for honesty here.”
He stares at his hands on the bedspread, can’t quite look at her when he says, “It’s not you.”
She was afraid of that.
---
“We can leave whenever we want,” she says, mapping the trails she so badly wants to travel across the skin of his back with the pads of her fingers. “So why don’t we?” is less of a proposition, more of a question. She has already lost her delusions of cars and planes, running away from things that always catch up to you somehow. “Why don’t we just leave?”
“Because we grew up,” he doesn’t say.
It rings a bit too much like failure.
---
They spend one entire night in the on-call room with the door locked, off duty and yet their feet lead them anywhere but the door. It’s fascinating how final this feels, yet she can place why. It feels like something’s ending tonight. Like an ending and a beginning that maybe she’s not entirely ready for.
As if she’s ever been ready for any of this.
He kisses her at first, deep, intentions entirely too clear, and it works for a minute or so before they both just kind of drop the act. Let their mouths part and hands fall away, and Meredith rolls onto her back on the bed that isn’t built for two people (yet that’s pretty much all it’s used for - sex instead of sleep) and sighs.
They sort of stay like that for awhile, this one thin strip of bedspread between them, bodies not touching but never out of reach, like some kind of therapy, weaning off the touch, the contact. The listen to people try the doorknob at least a dozen times, seeking a place to rest and then moving on, and Meredith listens to him breathe and watches him feign sleep like she can’t see right through all his acts by now.
The clock on the wall across the room ticks to three in the morning and he clears his throat and she starts searching for the point that underlies all of this. They can only run and avoid for so long before it just becomes useless and too much, too hard, because things are still going to be the same when this is over.
Later: “You should marry him,” is the first sentence spoken in hours, and Meredith only turns her head to look at him. Alex has his hands behind his head and his elbow is just touching her head, the one point at which they’re connected. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
She nods, wets her lips, remembers herself and how this is not a solo. “You should stay with her. With Izzie,” she doesn’t know why she feels the need for clarification or repetition - blame it on the late (early) hour. “Whatever happens. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
The thought that comes after it is mutual, but Alex is the only one to voice it. “We’re probably going to regret it if we do.”
It’s always a Catch-22, and that’s life. They can’t expect to have their cake and eat it too - no, never that.
---
At the hospital 27 hours straight, on relatively little sleep, and he’s the first one to leave.
“I’ll see you at home,” he says to her form, slumped against the lockers as he grabs his wallet and his keys and slams his own locker shut. It’s the first time in awhile that the words don’t mean ‘see you at home on the couch or in whatever bedroom isn’t occupied’ because there was this kind of unspoken decision last night or this morning, whatever, that maybe they needed to stop holding still and start moving again.
They had their break and their little games, and they were nice, but now it’s time to face reality again, and they were really only trying to ignore the inevitable anyways.
They’re the lucky ones anyways - they get to go home to people who have no idea what’s been going on right under their noses. It’s kind of like a sign, if Meredith really believed in those anymore, that they never found out, that they’ll never know. That they’re still there.
(‘Mommy’s little girl,’ does this sort of echo-y thing in her mind, before she reminds herself that mommy got caught. Maybe this all comes down to genetics though, and she finds some comfort in that; it’s not my fault and this was decided before I even met you or him).
---
Years later, it’s somewhat of a private joke between them, not so much said as found in glances, and it’s not something they laugh about so much as something they can remember, get lost in.
(Old habits die hard, and they almost slip one September, five month anniversary of her wedding; Derek’s working late, Izzie’s in the hospital, more tests to run, and it would be so easy to forget for awhile.
Her wedding band is cold against his skin and heavy on her finger. “No,” she’d whispered, and he’d nodded, and they’d stayed there for awhile, breathing to the tune of disappointment and failure.)
Izzie survives -- even if sometimes she’ll see things that aren’t there, or miss them entirely -- and Derek stays and Meredith loves him almost all of the time.
Sometimes she’ll begin sentences with “what if” and then let them die, the rest of the words lost in the bottle of tequila that seems perpetually clutched between her hands during conversations like this one, and he’ll nod at that too and finish the rest of it in his head anyways.
“We’re probably going to regret it if we do,” he’d said, and figures that’s probably the one thing they got right.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Meredith, implied Derek/Meredith and Alex/Izzie
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,616
Prompt: #44 - Circle for fanfic100
Author's Note: I don't know when this is set exactly -- probably before last episode. This is pretty bleak to be honest with you, but I've never been someone who truly believes in happy endings.
Summary: Spoilers up until 5.15 to be safe. They move in circles like this one: I want you, I have you, I want him now. Rinse. Repeat.
They move in circles like this one:
I want you, I have you, I want him now. Rinse. Repeat.
Neither of them will admit that it’s fear of getting hurt that drives them. Strike first, stay safe. It’s not a good way to live but it’s a way.
---
It starts as conversations and comparisons over too much tequila in an otherwise empty house. Those times were rare when you lived in a house that, including strays, six people normally called home. Not counting guests (lovers or otherwise).
They’ve always been honest with each other. Nice? Rarely. But honest and comfortable? Practically always. Whether it’s over crappy childhoods or crappy relationships, there’s always been that feeling like she could tell him anything in the morning and he’d still be talking to her in the morning, whether he understood or not. It was a rare commodity.
So the unfortunate truths that roll of their tongues, interspersed with the shots of tequila that burn down their throats, are anything but unfiltered. Unfortunately.
“I don’t think I can do this,” he says, the admittance made under dim lights; his eyes aren’t quite focused when he looks at her. “This. With her. I don’t think I can deal with this again.”
Meredith nods, then: “I don’t think I can marry him.” She says it like it’s a consolation prize.
This is nothing to be proud of.
---
I want to run away.
Meredith thinks it sometimes, when her hand slides against the porcelain tub, a memory she thought long-lost but one that keeps creeping back around the edges of her mind. When the sun catches the ring on her finger and it glares enough that she has to squint in order to drive (it shines like the smile on his face had). She presses her lips together and folds her hand into a fist at her side, and tells herself that this isn’t only about what she wants anymore.
Her dress is white satin, and it hangs in Cristina’s closet for safekeeping, so Derek doesn’t see it. She’s worn it on once, the day she tried it on, no standing in front of the mirror and twirling around like some happy schoolgirl playing dress-up in mommy’s closet. She’s scared that she’s making a mistake or that this is all going to shatter around her, and it only serves as a reminder of what’s to come.
“I told him our kids would be cute.” She says, watery smile, hand around the neck of a bottle that for once isn’t filled with tequila. This is a Tuesday, in a supply closet, when she’s not feeling particularly strong. But she holds onto the bottle all the same simply because it’s something to hold onto. “Because I thought it was something he’d want to hear. Like that stupid house of candles.” There’s venom on that last word but it’s directed at herself. “Kids, Alex.”
His back against the semi-sturdy shelf, he rests his arms on his knees, and looks at her expectantly. Meredith can only pace for so long in the confines of the small room and so she shakes her head as she not so gracefully allows her knees to give out and her body to sink to the floor. The door is locked her eyes tell her, and she’s thankful for that privacy at least. “If you’re still pretending…” he starts, working that bottle out of her hands and placing it behind them to stop her from fidgeting before finding a spot on the ceiling to fixate on for the moment, in the exact same manner as people who believe in higher powers, people who aren’t them, would employ while looking for answers. “I mean at this point…”
The second drop off mid-sentence is purely intentional. Fill in the blank, you know how this goes, and she silently hates him for it. “Like you don’t,” is nearly hissed through her teeth. The ensuing silence may be companionable but today it’s anything but comfortable.
We could run away together.
---
They’re so damn predictable, you know. The way they fall into this (each other).
She says, “this was probably always going to happen,” and licks her lips.
He rolls his eyes at even the implication of fate (even if it is right), moves is fingers a fraction of an inch down and to the left, slipping underneath the waistband of her underwear, remaining there as he tells her, “probably could’ve picked a better time.”
She arches and shifts into his fingers, breathing just a bit more erratically than normal, anticipation, and he pulls his hand back, not giving her an inch or anything else for that matter. She catches his bottom lip between her teeth, nips just enough to sting, her own brand of revenge, and it just makes him move slower. That was definitely not her intention.
They should feel worse about it than they do too, because they aren’t drunk, don’t even have that excuse to rely on. It’s not that they aren’t thinking about the consequences either. They’re aware. They’re aware that they could destroy everything they both have, everything good, and all it would take is the wrong person walking through the door.
Maybe that’s what they’re trying for. It was going to happen sooner or later, might as well have some sense of control over the when.
“Just,” her voice breaks through and they both stop, his arms braced on either side of her and he holds there, waiting for her to tell him to stop. Someone needs to say something.
Instead she seals their fate with a kiss.
---
Perhaps the biggest problem here is that there’s no problem at all.
Part of carrying on an affair is supposed to be the hiding, the lying, the forbidden aspect that has you stealing glances in elevators and quick fucks wherever you can get them. But they’ve gotten good at covering these things up, putting on masks before they go home; they’ve learned from too many past experiences and necessity, and now it’s all second nature.
It’s not like they’re hiding the great love of the century anyway. No, it’s not like that at all.
She’ll page him to the on-call room (never the other way around; she wonders whether that means she’s using him or he’s going to use this as a way to place the blame on her when this is all over - probably both) and listen to the chatter of interns outside of the door, always the same.
“Sloan and Lexie again.”
“God, don’t they ever get tired.”
Meredith wonders when she stopped being the Grey that everyone talked about, and whether that makes Lexie a copycat or just the newer, improved model.
She lets herself be that much louder.
---
Cristina finds out. Hiding things from Derek is easy, but Cristina knows her too well.
“This is a bad idea.”
Meredith doesn’t refute that. She’s right, and Meredith knows this, but it isn’t going to change a thing, so, really, what’s the point.
---
Sometimes, he’ll tell her, “It’s your thing,” in this tone that’s meant to reassure, to comfort, and all she can think is that he sounds like her. He’s making the same excuses that she does.
Sometimes, Meredith will turn onto her side in the bed, watching Alex pull his scrubs back on, hiding skin and marks and scars (the kind she doesn’t claim ownership to), and ask “why are we like this?”. It’s not the kind of question she expects an answer to and, wisely, he never gives her one.
It doesn’t have to be lingers in the air because, well, that’s still not something they understand completely.
---
There’s this one night where Cristina’s somehow wound up the third, semi-unwilling participant in this little game of theirs and as such they end up in her apartment, so drunk that they can’t exactly be trusted not to blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time.
“We can’t go home home is not an option,” spills out all at once, slurred, and she’s still got her keys in her hand, which seems to concern Cristina since she won’t stop looking at them like she’s five seconds from knocking them both unconscious and stowing them away in her closet. Meredith notes this and spends a few seconds getting her mouth to work around the words, “We didn’t drive here, we took a cab.”
“To my apartment.” Cristina pauses, to process, assess - maybe for effect. “So what, you decided to take your affair on the road?”
They don’t answer. Her pager goes off anyways.
Someone crashed or coded or maybe a surgery didn’t go as well and Cristina grabs her things and never quite kicks them out. She does manage to pull Meredith away for a moment, fingers digging into her arm in a way that is almost entirely meant to keep her steady. “If you do anything, make sure it’s on the couch.”
Fifteen minutes later they’d managed to completely ignore that rule.
“What are you doing?” Alex keeps calling from Cristina’s bedroom, laid out on her bed and Meredith’s banking on the thought that Cristina’s sleeping with Owen, or at least something close to it, to explain away the scent of aftershave he’ll leave behind.
Meredith runs her fingers through loose waves, lets them fall limp against her shoulders. She watches her chest rise as she inhales, tries to stand straighter, tries to put herself in the right state of mind. And walks out.
“So?” She bunches her fingers in white fabric, fairytale dress that all little girls dream of and Vogue readers fantasize about buying, spins in front of the bed with a half-hearted smile. “I need a guy’s opinion.”
“You look good.” He tells her, approving once-over, but there’s something else in his eyes that begs to be said.
Meredith worries her lip between her teeth. “I’m looking for honesty here.”
He stares at his hands on the bedspread, can’t quite look at her when he says, “It’s not you.”
She was afraid of that.
---
“We can leave whenever we want,” she says, mapping the trails she so badly wants to travel across the skin of his back with the pads of her fingers. “So why don’t we?” is less of a proposition, more of a question. She has already lost her delusions of cars and planes, running away from things that always catch up to you somehow. “Why don’t we just leave?”
“Because we grew up,” he doesn’t say.
It rings a bit too much like failure.
---
They spend one entire night in the on-call room with the door locked, off duty and yet their feet lead them anywhere but the door. It’s fascinating how final this feels, yet she can place why. It feels like something’s ending tonight. Like an ending and a beginning that maybe she’s not entirely ready for.
As if she’s ever been ready for any of this.
He kisses her at first, deep, intentions entirely too clear, and it works for a minute or so before they both just kind of drop the act. Let their mouths part and hands fall away, and Meredith rolls onto her back on the bed that isn’t built for two people (yet that’s pretty much all it’s used for - sex instead of sleep) and sighs.
They sort of stay like that for awhile, this one thin strip of bedspread between them, bodies not touching but never out of reach, like some kind of therapy, weaning off the touch, the contact. The listen to people try the doorknob at least a dozen times, seeking a place to rest and then moving on, and Meredith listens to him breathe and watches him feign sleep like she can’t see right through all his acts by now.
The clock on the wall across the room ticks to three in the morning and he clears his throat and she starts searching for the point that underlies all of this. They can only run and avoid for so long before it just becomes useless and too much, too hard, because things are still going to be the same when this is over.
Later: “You should marry him,” is the first sentence spoken in hours, and Meredith only turns her head to look at him. Alex has his hands behind his head and his elbow is just touching her head, the one point at which they’re connected. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
She nods, wets her lips, remembers herself and how this is not a solo. “You should stay with her. With Izzie,” she doesn’t know why she feels the need for clarification or repetition - blame it on the late (early) hour. “Whatever happens. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
The thought that comes after it is mutual, but Alex is the only one to voice it. “We’re probably going to regret it if we do.”
It’s always a Catch-22, and that’s life. They can’t expect to have their cake and eat it too - no, never that.
---
At the hospital 27 hours straight, on relatively little sleep, and he’s the first one to leave.
“I’ll see you at home,” he says to her form, slumped against the lockers as he grabs his wallet and his keys and slams his own locker shut. It’s the first time in awhile that the words don’t mean ‘see you at home on the couch or in whatever bedroom isn’t occupied’ because there was this kind of unspoken decision last night or this morning, whatever, that maybe they needed to stop holding still and start moving again.
They had their break and their little games, and they were nice, but now it’s time to face reality again, and they were really only trying to ignore the inevitable anyways.
They’re the lucky ones anyways - they get to go home to people who have no idea what’s been going on right under their noses. It’s kind of like a sign, if Meredith really believed in those anymore, that they never found out, that they’ll never know. That they’re still there.
(‘Mommy’s little girl,’ does this sort of echo-y thing in her mind, before she reminds herself that mommy got caught. Maybe this all comes down to genetics though, and she finds some comfort in that; it’s not my fault and this was decided before I even met you or him).
---
Years later, it’s somewhat of a private joke between them, not so much said as found in glances, and it’s not something they laugh about so much as something they can remember, get lost in.
(Old habits die hard, and they almost slip one September, five month anniversary of her wedding; Derek’s working late, Izzie’s in the hospital, more tests to run, and it would be so easy to forget for awhile.
Her wedding band is cold against his skin and heavy on her finger. “No,” she’d whispered, and he’d nodded, and they’d stayed there for awhile, breathing to the tune of disappointment and failure.)
Izzie survives -- even if sometimes she’ll see things that aren’t there, or miss them entirely -- and Derek stays and Meredith loves him almost all of the time.
Sometimes she’ll begin sentences with “what if” and then let them die, the rest of the words lost in the bottle of tequila that seems perpetually clutched between her hands during conversations like this one, and he’ll nod at that too and finish the rest of it in his head anyways.
“We’re probably going to regret it if we do,” he’d said, and figures that’s probably the one thing they got right.