where everyone knows your name {ga - reed, alex}
Title: Where Everyone Knows Your Name
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Reed Adamson, Alex (not shippy)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 420
Author's Note: I don't know where this came from. I'm not sure I even like her, but I was certainly inspired.
Summary: Post 6.07. She's learning things about how to survive here. She's learning things about how to fit in.
Reed’s not much of a drinker. It was just never her scene, to head to the bar at the end of a crappy day - and she’s had her fair share of crappy days, both in the past and lately. Especially lately.
These people work across from a bar. And at first she thought that was some sort of coincidence, before she learned that these people seem to have a common schedule: work, bar, home. Personally, she finds it mildly disconcerting.
Not that she’s ever gone.
There are too many people on the other side in there, too much tension and possible hostility, and Reed’s decided she wants to try and be nice, and not run headfirst into brick walls and hope for the best. She lost a friend when she lost April, possibly the only truly close one she had from Mercy West, and now she’s got to play nice because, apparently, like with the drinking, that’s how you survive in this place.
She learns these things slowly and painfully. Like today, for example.
Today, she learned that Alex Karev is the biggest asshole in the world but it’s the only way he can keep himself together and calm and fully-functional. It’s apparently a defense mechanism, in the way you always find yourself hoping it is, right before you realize the guy’s just a douche and you should ignore him.
Reed also learned that watching him full-on breakdown right in front of her, an almost stranger and one he definitely seemed to have it out for, simply because he just couldn’t hold it in anymore does things to her perception. Of him. Of these people. Of everyone. It makes her think and analyze and wonder what secrets these people are hiding that drive them to that bar every other night.
And when he’s calmed and she’s only halfway worked up the nerve to reach out and rest a hand on his shoulder, she tells him they should get a drink. She doesn’t ask; she tells. It makes it harder for him to shoot her down. It’s a no-strings attached kind of thing, born out of a mix of pity and intrigue.
He accepts, wordless for once, the difference noticeable.
(At the bar she counts shots and wonders how many it’ll take to make this man disappear.
At the bar she counts shots, gets to one, and realizes that’s all it takes to make herself disappear, to make the stares and the thinly veiled comments disappear, and she starts to understand.)
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Reed Adamson, Alex (not shippy)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 420
Author's Note: I don't know where this came from. I'm not sure I even like her, but I was certainly inspired.
Summary: Post 6.07. She's learning things about how to survive here. She's learning things about how to fit in.
Reed’s not much of a drinker. It was just never her scene, to head to the bar at the end of a crappy day - and she’s had her fair share of crappy days, both in the past and lately. Especially lately.
These people work across from a bar. And at first she thought that was some sort of coincidence, before she learned that these people seem to have a common schedule: work, bar, home. Personally, she finds it mildly disconcerting.
Not that she’s ever gone.
There are too many people on the other side in there, too much tension and possible hostility, and Reed’s decided she wants to try and be nice, and not run headfirst into brick walls and hope for the best. She lost a friend when she lost April, possibly the only truly close one she had from Mercy West, and now she’s got to play nice because, apparently, like with the drinking, that’s how you survive in this place.
She learns these things slowly and painfully. Like today, for example.
Today, she learned that Alex Karev is the biggest asshole in the world but it’s the only way he can keep himself together and calm and fully-functional. It’s apparently a defense mechanism, in the way you always find yourself hoping it is, right before you realize the guy’s just a douche and you should ignore him.
Reed also learned that watching him full-on breakdown right in front of her, an almost stranger and one he definitely seemed to have it out for, simply because he just couldn’t hold it in anymore does things to her perception. Of him. Of these people. Of everyone. It makes her think and analyze and wonder what secrets these people are hiding that drive them to that bar every other night.
And when he’s calmed and she’s only halfway worked up the nerve to reach out and rest a hand on his shoulder, she tells him they should get a drink. She doesn’t ask; she tells. It makes it harder for him to shoot her down. It’s a no-strings attached kind of thing, born out of a mix of pity and intrigue.
He accepts, wordless for once, the difference noticeable.
(At the bar she counts shots and wonders how many it’ll take to make this man disappear.
At the bar she counts shots, gets to one, and realizes that’s all it takes to make herself disappear, to make the stares and the thinly veiled comments disappear, and she starts to understand.)