five ways alex and izzie didn't meet {ga - alex/izzie}
Title: Five Ways Alex and Izzie Didn't Meet
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Izzie.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,168
Author's Note: Apologies if the end part seems rushed. I'm dealing with a power outage and wanted to get this up.
Summary: Spoilers for various parts of the series. These are the ways it could've happened.
I. (used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that or if they were younger)
Her mom moves them to Iowa.
Three days ago, she came home to her mother packing. “We’re moving,” she’d said, smiling brightly, and Izzie had slung her backpack over the back of her chair and sighed.
“Why?”
“Well, I talked to Nancy this morning and she said that if we moved there it would bring prosperity our way and I thought - “
Nancy is the newest psychic in a long list of them. This is a pattern.
---
The first day at the new school comes with paperwork, schedules and forms and signatures, and she gets shuffled off to a small waiting room situated between the principal’s office and guidance.
She isn’t alone.
“Are you new?”
The boy, sitting in the chair farthest from her, appears to be having major issues with the world at the moment. “No, but you are.”
She comes to understand that he’s there for the principal’s office and not a schedule change pretty quick.
“What did you do?”
He won’t look at her.
---
He punched someone, as it turns out. This is standard bad behavior.
Izzie finds out at lunch on her second day. This isn’t your usual tale of the poor girl who comes in during the middle of the school year and can’t seem to make friends and is instead relegated to years of being picked on. She likes to think that it’s because she’s always been the nice, generous one (really, though, this is high school and she’s pretty, blonde, and has a figure people are envious of; she fits right in).
It also had something to do with his sister.
People talk a lot here about things that aren’t their business.
---
“She’s hot.”
Her eyes slide to him, bypassing his friend.
This is the second time she’s seen him. This is her third week there.
He doesn’t remember her from the waiting room, she’s sure of this.
(“Alex?” Janine said, on a laugh, “I think Kelly tried to date him once. Lasted like an hour.” She pops her gum. “He’s hot but he’s trash. And an asshole. Dude’s got issues.”)
“You’re vile,” she says, because that’s what she’s learned, and he isn’t the kind of guy this is going to wound. He smirks the same way she thought he would, looks her up and down.
Izzie doesn’t know why she doesn’t slap him.
---
She hears he joined the wrestling team.
(She hears the cops were at his house over the weekend. She hears a lot of things she doesn’t like to think about.)
She tells Janine about the psychics, in a fit of bad judgment, and then she hears about that second-hand too.
---
They get jammed into the same empty classroom, along with twenty-one of their not-so-closest friends on a lockdown drill that she’s never even heard of before.
A minute ago, she was in the hallway on the way to history. This was passing time.
“Is crime a serious problem here or something?” She asks, on the floor and leaned against a desk because they’re not supposed to be in sight of the windows. He’s across from her. It’s coincidence.
“There’s a bank near here that had botched robberies twice in the same six months. They’re paranoid.” Alex’s voice is absent the usual malice. He doesn’t appear at all concerned by this either. “We’ll be out of here in ten minutes easy.”
They’re not.
Minute twenty-two and she’s regretting not wearing a sweater today when he drops his jacket over her shoulders as he passes by, on his way to people who are presumably his actual friends.
“Karev, sit down!” Mr. Chao barks.
“Yeah, yeah,” Alex replies, and she thinks she can hear him roll his eyes. “Whatever.”
---
“People don’t like you, you know.”
“I’m not a likeable guy.”
“Well maybe if you try - “
“Who says I want to?”
---
He slams a guy into the mat.
(“Why are we here again? The football game is in an hour.” Janine pulls her arm. “And what’s with you and this guy?”
“Nothing.”)
---
“If you want to talk - “
“Shut up.”
She hurls his jacket at him; she’s had it since lockdown. “Maybe you want to actually let someone get a sentence out sometime.”
He doesn’t tell her to wait, doesn’t try to stop her.
That would be too much for him.
---
He kisses her under the fucking bleachers, hard and angry. They’ve been sniping at each other for the past two weeks now.
“God, could you be more cliché right now?” She says, when she decides she wants air and isn’t going to let him control this. And then she lets her fingers graze his cheek and kisses him with just as much intensity.
Later:
“I’m not dating you.”
“And I’m not sleeping with you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, we’ll see.”
She laughs at him.
---
Much later:
He decks his dad, ruins his family, shuts her out. They go back to hating each other. She hears about his mom. He tells her to stay out of his life. She sleeps with him because it’s a Tuesday and because it’ll piss him off in the morning. He shows her a drive-in and the inside of his car, in-depth.
Then he cheats on her. She does slap him. He gets a wrestling scholarship. She decides that she can’t deal with her mother anymore. She decides on medicine. Tells him she’s leaving over the phone and he asks what the hell she wants him to do about it. He sounds hurt, just a little. She leaves anyways. They don’t see each other for seven years.
In 2005, she interns at Seattle Grace. So does he.
And it starts again.
***
II. (lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn as thirty dialogues bleed into one or if she was always a model)
They meet on the roof. There might be a garden.
(He’s had a beer in his hand since he got here and the night isn’t young; a red paper cup is clutched in her hand, half full. This is New Year’s Eve.)
A friend of a friend does the introductions, half a second before whispering ‘she’s legit’ in Alex’s ear and making up some excuse that his girlfriend’s looking for him and he better go find her.
“What did he tell you?” She asks, nodding towards the guy’s retreating back.
“Told me it was an hour and twenty ‘til midnight.” He lies, doing a real good job of keeping his tone suggestive, complete with a hint of a smirk. It’s not hard; she’s a knockout.
(For the first few minutes, he thinks she’s a hooker.)
---
“Wait, you’re going to be,” she has to stop laughing to wipe at her mouth with the back of her hand, five seconds from a spit take with her wine, “ - you’re going to be a doctor?”
His smile is unintentionally tight. It’s not as if he isn’t used to that.
“Some bedside manner,” she observes, calmly now. He watches her look sharply to her right, someone catching her attention in the din of voices that have joined them up there. The absence of her eyes give him a chance to not-so-subtly look her over, to take in the tight black dress that stops mid-thigh and the way her hair falls in bouncy waves past her shoulders.
When she looks back at him, he meets her gaze, replies easily, “That’s what they tell me.”
“You know I was going to be a doctor.”
It’s nearly his turn with the spit take but he somehow manages to come off like nothing at all is amiss. He swallows. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s just this whole thing sort of - “
“Pays better?”
“Right.” Izzie brushes a hand through her hair, lets it fall back against her side only after she’s grazed his shirt sleeve on the way down. “I mean a lot of people aren’t okay with it but, you know, it’s what works for me. Even if having your picture taken for six hours straight sucks. No one looks good for six hours under bright lights.”
His mouth works before his brain does. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“I’m pretty sure that guy back there either thinks you’re a hooker or wanted me to think you were.”
Her jaw drops. Her eyes narrow. “Okay, you’ve got two minutes to talk your way out of this before I spill my drink on you and walk away.”
---
“Lingerie?”
“It’s not Victoria’s Secret Angels or anything but, you know,” she sighs, dramatically. “It’s the boobs. And the hair.”
“I’ll say.”
“You’re going to want to tread carefully here, considering ten minutes ago you called me a prostitute.”
“Hooker.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Mostly a few letters.”
“Smartass.”
“Usually it’s just ass.”
“Baffling.”
---
There are vague stirrings about fireworks fifteen minutes before midnight. The moon disappears behind the clouds.
“It feels like rain.”
He looks at her exactly like it’s the weirdest thing she could’ve said.
“I spent way too much time in Seattle. It rains a lot there,” she clarifies, with a sheepish shrug.
Alex doesn’t tell her that he’s looking at Seattle Grace for internships. Instead he nods, and asks, “Are you sure that’s not the wine talking?”
“I switched to champagne.”
He eyes the red plastic still in her hand. “They didn’t have glasses?”
“Fewer people try to hit on me when it looks like I’m drinking club soda instead of wine. Keeps them from thinking I’m easy.”
“And this is just casual conversation?”
“I think the word casual goes out the window after the first hour.”
It’s been an hour and five.
---
Seven minutes ‘til and the skies open up.
She laughs like there’s something funny about the rain that makes her hair start to fall flat and dots her dress. There’s a groan that moves through the crowd of people and people start to head inside.
On the stairs, she grabs his hand, the first extended point of contact that they’ve had all night. Her fingers are stained faintly red from clutching her drink all night and they’re cold when they tangle with his. “Where’s your car?”
Alex hadn’t thought this was her scene any more than it was his. He’s here for the booze and for a lack of anywhere else to be; he hasn’t yet figured out her deal yet.
Her question isn’t one that needs an answer. He leads her out into the parking lot, finding his car easily. Inside, the radio comes to life and he turns the heat on to counteract the chill of the rain.
She kisses him the second her door is closed behind her, kneeling in her seat, her arms wrapping around his neck. He isn’t hesitant with his hands or anything else for that matter and his elbow hits the door at a funny angle and she manages to knock into the bottom edge of the rearview mirror. He hasn’t made out in his car since he got out of high school and if there was any art to it then - and he really doubts there was -- he’s totally lost all skill now.
“I don’t usually do this, and I’m probably just feeding stereotypes here but - “ she starts, breathing against his neck.
“Hotel?”
“God yes.”
Midnight passes, uneventful, as he blows through a yellow light.
He likes to think it’s more important what he’s doing at twenty after.
***
III. (i wonder what it is that i did to make you move in across the way from me or if they were next door neighbors)
He meets her because he doesn’t have a choice.
“Hi,” she chirps, bouncy ponytail and a mess behind her.
“Your boxes take up the entire hallway,” he says, without greeting or what anyone could refer to as charm.
“I’m…” the woman frowns, sticks her head out the door to peek into the hallway as if she doesn’t believe him, “oh, I guess they do. Sorry. I’m in the middle of moving.”
“Yeah,” he deadpans, like he couldn’t figure that out.
She remains fairly oblivious. “Oh, are you moving in too?”
Alex studies her for a moment, deciding that he’s still got things to unpack and boxes to move and he really doesn’t have time for meeting the neighbors. He just wants her stuff out of the damn hallway so that he can avoid breaking his neck in the maze she’s created. “Just move your stuff.”
He heads back downstairs to his car (again) and he’s sure whatever she mutters isn’t especially nice.
---
When he comes back, she’s moved every single box but one, and that just happens to be the one he doesn’t see.
“Fuck.”
The box flips. Something breaks, he’s sure of it.
She sticks her head out the door again. “Tell me you did not just kick that.”
He glowers.
“It says fragile on it. Can’t you see that?”
He shuts his door without a word.
His foot throbs for the rest of the day. He hates her for slightly longer than that.
This is June.
---
“You broke my mixing bowl.”
She’s standing in the hall waiting for him, arms crossed, wearing what appears to be her pajamas. Either that or she thinks this is California. “And that box could’ve broken my foot.”
“But it didn’t. And you did break my mixing bowl.”
“I told you - “ which is when he realizes he has his car keys in his hand and he did leave his apartment for a reason. He checks his watch. “Yeah, I really don’t have time for this.”
“Okay,” she replies, with a shrug, exactly like she’s going to make him regret it.
He double-checks the lock on his door and leaves anyway.
---
His mailbox is empty for three days straight. And yet mail seems to be getting delivered to everyone else if the alternately full and empty slots are any indication.
On the fourth day, when he hasn’t heard word one from Suzy Homemaker next door (she bakes, a lot, if the smell coming from her apartment when he’s in the hallway is any indication, not to mention her possessiveness over that damn mixing bowl), the lightbulb comes on.
When he knocks, it’s not especially pleasant.
“Yes.” Her false innocence is not fooling him.
“Where is my mail?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” A timer beeps from somewhere behind her. And then she parrots his words back to him. “Yeah, I really don’t have time for this.”
She tries to shut the door. He catches it before she can; she might be feisty but he’s still stronger than her. With a roll of her eyes, she abandons the door, searching the kitchen until she finds her oven mitts. It’s sickeningly domestic. “Seriously, where is my mail?”
“Hang on.” A tin full of muffins gets pulled out of the oven and primly placed on top of her oven. She discards the mitts next to it, traipsing over to the coffee table and snatching up what has to be his mail from under a pile. “You get a lot of mail. Credit card bill, credit card offer, letter from Anna in Iowa. What’s in Iowa?”
Something sparks and he makes a grab for the small stack. She sidesteps, deflecting the movement easily and, thankfully, doesn’t press. She flips to the next piece of mail. “Seattle Grace? As in the hospital?”
When he snatches at it this time, he succeeds. “No, as in the bank.” Off her unwavering gaze, he continues. “I start work there next month.”
She swallows but keeps silent, frowning at him.
“You know it’s illegal to go through someone’s mail.”
“It’s illegal to open it, not handle it. I didn’t open it.” He fingers the back of several of the envelopes, confirming that. “You know, I’ve lived next door to you for like a week and a half, and I didn’t know your name until right now.”
“Well now you do.”
“Well, I’m Izzie.”
A handshake is the standard right now, except he keeps his hands on his mail and her arms are crossed over her chest again. He doesn’t respond; he doesn’t know how.
“I have muffins to bake.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
---
There’s a knock on his door far earlier than he’d like.
“What?”
In this alternate universe he is in his pajamas and she’s fully dressed. His pajamas don’t constitute any more than hers did. “My phone’s in my apartment. With my key. I need to call someone to fix that and I was wondering if I could use your phone since you owe me.”
It’s seven in the morning and he doesn’t have to start early mornings for another few weeks, so he isn’t entirely prepared to argue with her. “Use the landline. Don’t touch my cell phone.”
Izzie walks in when he steps aside and, since he’s fairly sure he isn’t going back to sleep, he starts a pot of coffee. He doesn’t realize that this might make her stay longer until it’s already done.
“They said an hour and I need to be here when they get here,” she says, when she gets off the phone. The silent part of that statement is the important part: ‘can I hang out here’.
He gives her a grunt. She takes it as the unfortunate assent that it sort of is.
---
It takes an hour and forty minutes.
It’s more than enough time for them to get on each other’s nerves.
His “thank you” is more enthusiastic than hers is and she turns a glare on him. “It’s open. Go into it.”
“You know you’d better get used to having me around,” she warns.
“Just because you’re my neighbor doesn’t mean we’re going to be best friends. Or associate at all.”
“I’m not just you’re neighbor.” He frowns, looks at her, interest piqued in a bad way. “I’m also about to be your co-worker.”
She shuts the door in his face.
---
Two days later he’s at her door with a peace offering.
Her face is carefully emotionless. “You bought me a mixing bowl?”
“To replace the one that you broke.”
“You broke it.”
“You left it in the hallway.”
“In a box marked - “ she stops, takes a deep breath, then, “Never mind. It’s in the past. Thank you for the mixing bowl, Alex, it’s very nice.”
He doesn’t do this kind of thing, doesn’t know what to say to that either, and decides that leaving is as good an option as any.
Alex gets as far as his door before he hears: “Don’t think that gets you off the hook. You and I are going to have some fun come July.”
It doesn’t sound like she’s kidding. It’s going to be a long next couple of months.
***
IV. (i knew you were a truth that i’d rather lose than to have never lain beside at all or if she was the patient and he was the doctor)
“Stage four, metastatic melanoma that’s spread to her liver, skin, and brain.”
She’s heard the diagnosis a million times. She’s still fuzzy on the details, medical terms that still haven’t sunk in.
A million times in a few weeks.
“I’m Dr. Shepherd and this is Dr. Grey and Dr. Karev.”
She smiles but it’s weak and it’s only matched by two out of the three of them. The latter man remains stone-faced.
---
“I’m sorry.”
Dr. Karev, the one who’s been left behind to handle pre-op and check up on her what appears to be every hour or so, looks at her with something close to a scowl. He’s not a people person; she’s figured that out quick. “What?”
“I get the feeling that you don’t really want to be stuck here right now.”
He has the decency to look a little sheepish - not enough to deny it though.
---
Afterwards, he’s a little more attentive.
“Better?”
He’s back with an extra blanket because she said she was cold, offhanded. Izzie smiles at the gesture and nods her head. “Much. Thanks.”
“Good,” he replies, busying himself with checking her vitals. His presence should make her more uncomfortable than it does.
“Look, I know you pretty much have to say positive things but you seem more honest than everyone else, so I just wanted to ask - “ she takes a deep breath as he pauses what he’s doing to study her, “Is Dr. Shepherd any good? Because I know everyone’s saying he’s the best but he’s always in the room and I swear it’s like him and Dr. Grey have a thing, so she’s clearly biased.”
“He’s - “ he hesitates; she notes the doubt in his eyes. She’s got this feeling like something happened with him not so long ago that’s got everyone feeling a little unsure. People always seem a little too sure of his abilities. “You’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Izzie laughs. “It’s a little hard not to.”
She would like to think that it’s something like sympathy that she finds in his eyes, for the first time since she’s arrived.
She’d like to think that there’s a wall that’s cracking at the edges.
---
Abruptly, she stops calling him Dr. Karev and starts calling him Alex.
Dr. Grey starts shooting him warning looks. She doesn’t think she really wants to know why.
---
They take out the tumor. She survives the surgery.
Alex is in the room when she wakes up. Whether accidental or intentional, she appreciates it.
“Guess you were right.”
“You shouldn’t doubt me.” He says, smirk firmly in place. “I’m a doctor, you know.”
“Are you also clairvoyant?”
The smirk turns into a half-hearted glare.
“Point made.”
“Point taken.” His hand might brush hers on the bed, before he reaches up to do something to her IV. Izzie wants it to be something other than passing contact, somewhere in the part of her that’s lonely and stripped of connections in these four walls. She barely knows him, and he seems like he’s an insufferable ass a good fifty percent of the time, but she’s drawn to him all the same. “I was still right.”
“And I’m still a patient so you have to be nice to me,” she reminds him, playful raise of the eyebrows.
“That’s what you think.”
---
He doesn’t talk about chemo with her. He doesn’t talk about this medication and that, about vitals and things she can only loosely wrap her head around.
Instead, he’ll tell her hospital gossip. Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Grey are getting married. Another doctor is going into the army, to the bafflement of the rest of them. There also seems to be quite a lot of people having sex with quite a lot of people that they aren’t supposed to be. It’s amusing but, more than that, it’s distracting.
There’s still something wrong, something abnormal, and he’s just ignoring it while the others dance around it. She knows if she asks, he’ll tell her - that he’s far too honest for his, or her, own good - but there’s a part of her that isn’t sure she wants to know just yet.
“I used to see things. Like hallucinations.”
Alex regards her carefully. “Yeah?”
“It’s why I got myself checked out.” She looks away from him, a blush creeping into her cheeks. “It sounds stupid but that’s how I knew.”
“Do you still see them?”
She bites her lip. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t look all that surprised.
---
There’s a second tumor. They want to operate again. They don’t know if she’ll survive and if she’ll be one hundred percent again even if she does.
“What should I do?”
“I can’t - “
“You’re a doctor, remember?” She has no problem turning his words against him, at least not while she’s feeling varying degrees of desperation. “You’re supposed to be right; I’m not supposed to doubt you. Ring a bell?”
His silence is his acknowledgment.
“So what do I do?”
“You have the surgery.”
---
“I’m going to be fine?”
“You’re going to be fine.”
This time, when his hand brushes hers, she curls her fingers around it and he squeezes back.
---
She blinks, slow, as the drugs kick in.
Closes them on the image of that damn heart monitor.
Opens them on Alex, traces his arm to his hand, still held in hers. He has to let go soon. She has to let go soon.
Closes her eyes on Chehalis, the place she grew up in. Home.
She doesn’t open them again.
---
He was wrong.
***
V. (your back’s against the wall, there’s no one home to call or if she was part of the Mercy West merger)
She tries to play nice.
At first.
“Izzie Stevens.”
He looks at her proffered hand with more than a little disdain.
She gets his name from his badge instead from his mouth.
---
“So I was thinking that maybe you could show me around, since I’m new and all.”
She’s been on his heels for the better part of the day. That’s the way it seems to work here; they’re all latching on to the other side, trying alternately to suck up or outdo. Izzie is dancing some fine line between the two.
He stops mid-stride and they fall out of sync. She takes a few more steps before she realizes that he’s standing still several feet behind her and turns. “What?”
“Why are you following me?”
Slowly, she starts back towards him. “I don’t know if you heard but we’re sort of competing here.”
“No shit,” he bites out.
“You know the old saying,” she shrugs, “keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.”
Alex doesn’t look at all surprised by this; in fact he looks suspiciously like he not only had that figured out already but appreciates the honesty. He would. He’s been blunt to patients and family alike, to the point of coming off as an absolute jerk. And yet he appears to have friends. She finds that intriguing. “I have a hard time believing that’s going to work for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Works best if the other person doesn’t know the game you’re playing.”
He starts walking again and she matches his pace.
---
It’s only a few hours later that she screws him out of a case. She picked the right diagnosis on a guess - not that she’s about to admit that to anyone.
He grabs her by the arm and pulls her into an empty exam room without any sort of gentleness. Instead, his fingers bite into her skin; it hurts but not bad enough for her to admit that either.
“Hey, what is your problem?” He releases her once the doors closed and she leans back against a metal table, casual, not at all intimidated.
“We were all having a hard enough time here before you people decided to show up. Now how about you back off and go find someone else to harass.”
She crosses her arms. “Why? I knew what it was and you didn’t. How does that make me a bad person?”
“That was my case.”
Like she said, she tried to play nice. At first. It didn’t work. She closes the distance between them, gets right up in his face so that she’s close enough that he can feel her breath against his skin when she says, “Didn’t look like it.”
And then she walks out.
He mutters “bitch” under his breath and it’s clear as day to her ears.
Izzie tells herself that it’s just the game and she isn’t really like this. All’s fair in love and war.
---
She gets in on the surgery and he glares at her from the gallery.
Her smile stretches wide at the corners; the look she receives in reply tells her that he can’t tell it’s patently false as well.
---
Izzie always figured herself for the nice girl.
From day one, she pegged him as the asshole.
Somehow, that rationale was supposed to make it all okay.
---
She focuses her attentions on someone and somewhere else for a few days, and when she returns she finds him on a peds case.
Taking care of babies.
It strikes her as an odd turn of events and makes her chest tighten from the doorway when she sees him picking up a preemie with a heart defect that Dr. Robbins has him checking up on.
And then she leaves him alone.
---
“I thought I heard you wanted to go into plastics.”
“Guess you haven’t figured out the gossip mill here.”
“Guess not.”
---
She finds him at Joe’s after her first patient at Seattle Grace dies. She’s drinking to mourn the occasion; he appears to be drinking because he can.
“So you never showed me around.”
He empties his glass. Joe nods in his direction, a customary ‘be there in a minute’ that isn’t lost on Alex. “What’s your point?”
“Just not very hospitable.”
“Well this isn’t a little bed and breakfast in the country so that’s tough,” he answers, clearly in no mood for small talk. She isn’t really sure he ever is, at least not in the week and a half she’s known him.
“So you’re going into peds?”
“We’re not playing twenty questions right now.”
She leans in closer, invading his personal space to get him to look at her. “We’re not playing anything.”
He avoids her question anyways, voice turning annoyed instead of just hard and tired. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to know why you never showed me around.” She straightens, sipping her drink thoughtfully. “But I also wanted to call a truce.”
“Bullshit.”
“You really think I can’t be nice?”
“I think you have no loyalty and so a truce will last about as long as it works for you.” He glances at the rest of her group, at a table close to the door. There’s more fighting than talking going on over there. “They’re fragmented. It’s all about convenience.”
“And your side isn’t?”
“It’s not.” He says it just as confidently as he says everything else.
“Well maybe I’m not like them.”
He laughs, bitterly. “Come on. Truce?” She sticks out her hand the same as she did the first day she met him. He eyes it just as disdainfully. “It’ll make your life easier. Besides, what do you have to lose?”
“Some amount of dignity.”
“Are you sure that’s not already a lost cause?”
He glares. She decides that might not have been the best course of action.
And then she grabs his hand with her own, feeling his fingers spring to life against hers. It’s the basic equivalent of shaking on it. “Say it.”
“What?”
“Truce. Say it.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. Truce.”
She smiles. And starts again.
---
fin.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Izzie.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,168
Author's Note: Apologies if the end part seems rushed. I'm dealing with a power outage and wanted to get this up.
Summary: Spoilers for various parts of the series. These are the ways it could've happened.
I. (used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that or if they were younger)
Her mom moves them to Iowa.
Three days ago, she came home to her mother packing. “We’re moving,” she’d said, smiling brightly, and Izzie had slung her backpack over the back of her chair and sighed.
“Why?”
“Well, I talked to Nancy this morning and she said that if we moved there it would bring prosperity our way and I thought - “
Nancy is the newest psychic in a long list of them. This is a pattern.
---
The first day at the new school comes with paperwork, schedules and forms and signatures, and she gets shuffled off to a small waiting room situated between the principal’s office and guidance.
She isn’t alone.
“Are you new?”
The boy, sitting in the chair farthest from her, appears to be having major issues with the world at the moment. “No, but you are.”
She comes to understand that he’s there for the principal’s office and not a schedule change pretty quick.
“What did you do?”
He won’t look at her.
---
He punched someone, as it turns out. This is standard bad behavior.
Izzie finds out at lunch on her second day. This isn’t your usual tale of the poor girl who comes in during the middle of the school year and can’t seem to make friends and is instead relegated to years of being picked on. She likes to think that it’s because she’s always been the nice, generous one (really, though, this is high school and she’s pretty, blonde, and has a figure people are envious of; she fits right in).
It also had something to do with his sister.
People talk a lot here about things that aren’t their business.
---
“She’s hot.”
Her eyes slide to him, bypassing his friend.
This is the second time she’s seen him. This is her third week there.
He doesn’t remember her from the waiting room, she’s sure of this.
(“Alex?” Janine said, on a laugh, “I think Kelly tried to date him once. Lasted like an hour.” She pops her gum. “He’s hot but he’s trash. And an asshole. Dude’s got issues.”)
“You’re vile,” she says, because that’s what she’s learned, and he isn’t the kind of guy this is going to wound. He smirks the same way she thought he would, looks her up and down.
Izzie doesn’t know why she doesn’t slap him.
---
She hears he joined the wrestling team.
(She hears the cops were at his house over the weekend. She hears a lot of things she doesn’t like to think about.)
She tells Janine about the psychics, in a fit of bad judgment, and then she hears about that second-hand too.
---
They get jammed into the same empty classroom, along with twenty-one of their not-so-closest friends on a lockdown drill that she’s never even heard of before.
A minute ago, she was in the hallway on the way to history. This was passing time.
“Is crime a serious problem here or something?” She asks, on the floor and leaned against a desk because they’re not supposed to be in sight of the windows. He’s across from her. It’s coincidence.
“There’s a bank near here that had botched robberies twice in the same six months. They’re paranoid.” Alex’s voice is absent the usual malice. He doesn’t appear at all concerned by this either. “We’ll be out of here in ten minutes easy.”
They’re not.
Minute twenty-two and she’s regretting not wearing a sweater today when he drops his jacket over her shoulders as he passes by, on his way to people who are presumably his actual friends.
“Karev, sit down!” Mr. Chao barks.
“Yeah, yeah,” Alex replies, and she thinks she can hear him roll his eyes. “Whatever.”
---
“People don’t like you, you know.”
“I’m not a likeable guy.”
“Well maybe if you try - “
“Who says I want to?”
---
He slams a guy into the mat.
(“Why are we here again? The football game is in an hour.” Janine pulls her arm. “And what’s with you and this guy?”
“Nothing.”)
---
“If you want to talk - “
“Shut up.”
She hurls his jacket at him; she’s had it since lockdown. “Maybe you want to actually let someone get a sentence out sometime.”
He doesn’t tell her to wait, doesn’t try to stop her.
That would be too much for him.
---
He kisses her under the fucking bleachers, hard and angry. They’ve been sniping at each other for the past two weeks now.
“God, could you be more cliché right now?” She says, when she decides she wants air and isn’t going to let him control this. And then she lets her fingers graze his cheek and kisses him with just as much intensity.
Later:
“I’m not dating you.”
“And I’m not sleeping with you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, we’ll see.”
She laughs at him.
---
Much later:
He decks his dad, ruins his family, shuts her out. They go back to hating each other. She hears about his mom. He tells her to stay out of his life. She sleeps with him because it’s a Tuesday and because it’ll piss him off in the morning. He shows her a drive-in and the inside of his car, in-depth.
Then he cheats on her. She does slap him. He gets a wrestling scholarship. She decides that she can’t deal with her mother anymore. She decides on medicine. Tells him she’s leaving over the phone and he asks what the hell she wants him to do about it. He sounds hurt, just a little. She leaves anyways. They don’t see each other for seven years.
In 2005, she interns at Seattle Grace. So does he.
And it starts again.
***
II. (lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn as thirty dialogues bleed into one or if she was always a model)
They meet on the roof. There might be a garden.
(He’s had a beer in his hand since he got here and the night isn’t young; a red paper cup is clutched in her hand, half full. This is New Year’s Eve.)
A friend of a friend does the introductions, half a second before whispering ‘she’s legit’ in Alex’s ear and making up some excuse that his girlfriend’s looking for him and he better go find her.
“What did he tell you?” She asks, nodding towards the guy’s retreating back.
“Told me it was an hour and twenty ‘til midnight.” He lies, doing a real good job of keeping his tone suggestive, complete with a hint of a smirk. It’s not hard; she’s a knockout.
(For the first few minutes, he thinks she’s a hooker.)
---
“Wait, you’re going to be,” she has to stop laughing to wipe at her mouth with the back of her hand, five seconds from a spit take with her wine, “ - you’re going to be a doctor?”
His smile is unintentionally tight. It’s not as if he isn’t used to that.
“Some bedside manner,” she observes, calmly now. He watches her look sharply to her right, someone catching her attention in the din of voices that have joined them up there. The absence of her eyes give him a chance to not-so-subtly look her over, to take in the tight black dress that stops mid-thigh and the way her hair falls in bouncy waves past her shoulders.
When she looks back at him, he meets her gaze, replies easily, “That’s what they tell me.”
“You know I was going to be a doctor.”
It’s nearly his turn with the spit take but he somehow manages to come off like nothing at all is amiss. He swallows. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s just this whole thing sort of - “
“Pays better?”
“Right.” Izzie brushes a hand through her hair, lets it fall back against her side only after she’s grazed his shirt sleeve on the way down. “I mean a lot of people aren’t okay with it but, you know, it’s what works for me. Even if having your picture taken for six hours straight sucks. No one looks good for six hours under bright lights.”
His mouth works before his brain does. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“I’m pretty sure that guy back there either thinks you’re a hooker or wanted me to think you were.”
Her jaw drops. Her eyes narrow. “Okay, you’ve got two minutes to talk your way out of this before I spill my drink on you and walk away.”
---
“Lingerie?”
“It’s not Victoria’s Secret Angels or anything but, you know,” she sighs, dramatically. “It’s the boobs. And the hair.”
“I’ll say.”
“You’re going to want to tread carefully here, considering ten minutes ago you called me a prostitute.”
“Hooker.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Mostly a few letters.”
“Smartass.”
“Usually it’s just ass.”
“Baffling.”
---
There are vague stirrings about fireworks fifteen minutes before midnight. The moon disappears behind the clouds.
“It feels like rain.”
He looks at her exactly like it’s the weirdest thing she could’ve said.
“I spent way too much time in Seattle. It rains a lot there,” she clarifies, with a sheepish shrug.
Alex doesn’t tell her that he’s looking at Seattle Grace for internships. Instead he nods, and asks, “Are you sure that’s not the wine talking?”
“I switched to champagne.”
He eyes the red plastic still in her hand. “They didn’t have glasses?”
“Fewer people try to hit on me when it looks like I’m drinking club soda instead of wine. Keeps them from thinking I’m easy.”
“And this is just casual conversation?”
“I think the word casual goes out the window after the first hour.”
It’s been an hour and five.
---
Seven minutes ‘til and the skies open up.
She laughs like there’s something funny about the rain that makes her hair start to fall flat and dots her dress. There’s a groan that moves through the crowd of people and people start to head inside.
On the stairs, she grabs his hand, the first extended point of contact that they’ve had all night. Her fingers are stained faintly red from clutching her drink all night and they’re cold when they tangle with his. “Where’s your car?”
Alex hadn’t thought this was her scene any more than it was his. He’s here for the booze and for a lack of anywhere else to be; he hasn’t yet figured out her deal yet.
Her question isn’t one that needs an answer. He leads her out into the parking lot, finding his car easily. Inside, the radio comes to life and he turns the heat on to counteract the chill of the rain.
She kisses him the second her door is closed behind her, kneeling in her seat, her arms wrapping around his neck. He isn’t hesitant with his hands or anything else for that matter and his elbow hits the door at a funny angle and she manages to knock into the bottom edge of the rearview mirror. He hasn’t made out in his car since he got out of high school and if there was any art to it then - and he really doubts there was -- he’s totally lost all skill now.
“I don’t usually do this, and I’m probably just feeding stereotypes here but - “ she starts, breathing against his neck.
“Hotel?”
“God yes.”
Midnight passes, uneventful, as he blows through a yellow light.
He likes to think it’s more important what he’s doing at twenty after.
***
III. (i wonder what it is that i did to make you move in across the way from me or if they were next door neighbors)
He meets her because he doesn’t have a choice.
“Hi,” she chirps, bouncy ponytail and a mess behind her.
“Your boxes take up the entire hallway,” he says, without greeting or what anyone could refer to as charm.
“I’m…” the woman frowns, sticks her head out the door to peek into the hallway as if she doesn’t believe him, “oh, I guess they do. Sorry. I’m in the middle of moving.”
“Yeah,” he deadpans, like he couldn’t figure that out.
She remains fairly oblivious. “Oh, are you moving in too?”
Alex studies her for a moment, deciding that he’s still got things to unpack and boxes to move and he really doesn’t have time for meeting the neighbors. He just wants her stuff out of the damn hallway so that he can avoid breaking his neck in the maze she’s created. “Just move your stuff.”
He heads back downstairs to his car (again) and he’s sure whatever she mutters isn’t especially nice.
---
When he comes back, she’s moved every single box but one, and that just happens to be the one he doesn’t see.
“Fuck.”
The box flips. Something breaks, he’s sure of it.
She sticks her head out the door again. “Tell me you did not just kick that.”
He glowers.
“It says fragile on it. Can’t you see that?”
He shuts his door without a word.
His foot throbs for the rest of the day. He hates her for slightly longer than that.
This is June.
---
“You broke my mixing bowl.”
She’s standing in the hall waiting for him, arms crossed, wearing what appears to be her pajamas. Either that or she thinks this is California. “And that box could’ve broken my foot.”
“But it didn’t. And you did break my mixing bowl.”
“I told you - “ which is when he realizes he has his car keys in his hand and he did leave his apartment for a reason. He checks his watch. “Yeah, I really don’t have time for this.”
“Okay,” she replies, with a shrug, exactly like she’s going to make him regret it.
He double-checks the lock on his door and leaves anyway.
---
His mailbox is empty for three days straight. And yet mail seems to be getting delivered to everyone else if the alternately full and empty slots are any indication.
On the fourth day, when he hasn’t heard word one from Suzy Homemaker next door (she bakes, a lot, if the smell coming from her apartment when he’s in the hallway is any indication, not to mention her possessiveness over that damn mixing bowl), the lightbulb comes on.
When he knocks, it’s not especially pleasant.
“Yes.” Her false innocence is not fooling him.
“Where is my mail?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” A timer beeps from somewhere behind her. And then she parrots his words back to him. “Yeah, I really don’t have time for this.”
She tries to shut the door. He catches it before she can; she might be feisty but he’s still stronger than her. With a roll of her eyes, she abandons the door, searching the kitchen until she finds her oven mitts. It’s sickeningly domestic. “Seriously, where is my mail?”
“Hang on.” A tin full of muffins gets pulled out of the oven and primly placed on top of her oven. She discards the mitts next to it, traipsing over to the coffee table and snatching up what has to be his mail from under a pile. “You get a lot of mail. Credit card bill, credit card offer, letter from Anna in Iowa. What’s in Iowa?”
Something sparks and he makes a grab for the small stack. She sidesteps, deflecting the movement easily and, thankfully, doesn’t press. She flips to the next piece of mail. “Seattle Grace? As in the hospital?”
When he snatches at it this time, he succeeds. “No, as in the bank.” Off her unwavering gaze, he continues. “I start work there next month.”
She swallows but keeps silent, frowning at him.
“You know it’s illegal to go through someone’s mail.”
“It’s illegal to open it, not handle it. I didn’t open it.” He fingers the back of several of the envelopes, confirming that. “You know, I’ve lived next door to you for like a week and a half, and I didn’t know your name until right now.”
“Well now you do.”
“Well, I’m Izzie.”
A handshake is the standard right now, except he keeps his hands on his mail and her arms are crossed over her chest again. He doesn’t respond; he doesn’t know how.
“I have muffins to bake.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
---
There’s a knock on his door far earlier than he’d like.
“What?”
In this alternate universe he is in his pajamas and she’s fully dressed. His pajamas don’t constitute any more than hers did. “My phone’s in my apartment. With my key. I need to call someone to fix that and I was wondering if I could use your phone since you owe me.”
It’s seven in the morning and he doesn’t have to start early mornings for another few weeks, so he isn’t entirely prepared to argue with her. “Use the landline. Don’t touch my cell phone.”
Izzie walks in when he steps aside and, since he’s fairly sure he isn’t going back to sleep, he starts a pot of coffee. He doesn’t realize that this might make her stay longer until it’s already done.
“They said an hour and I need to be here when they get here,” she says, when she gets off the phone. The silent part of that statement is the important part: ‘can I hang out here’.
He gives her a grunt. She takes it as the unfortunate assent that it sort of is.
---
It takes an hour and forty minutes.
It’s more than enough time for them to get on each other’s nerves.
His “thank you” is more enthusiastic than hers is and she turns a glare on him. “It’s open. Go into it.”
“You know you’d better get used to having me around,” she warns.
“Just because you’re my neighbor doesn’t mean we’re going to be best friends. Or associate at all.”
“I’m not just you’re neighbor.” He frowns, looks at her, interest piqued in a bad way. “I’m also about to be your co-worker.”
She shuts the door in his face.
---
Two days later he’s at her door with a peace offering.
Her face is carefully emotionless. “You bought me a mixing bowl?”
“To replace the one that you broke.”
“You broke it.”
“You left it in the hallway.”
“In a box marked - “ she stops, takes a deep breath, then, “Never mind. It’s in the past. Thank you for the mixing bowl, Alex, it’s very nice.”
He doesn’t do this kind of thing, doesn’t know what to say to that either, and decides that leaving is as good an option as any.
Alex gets as far as his door before he hears: “Don’t think that gets you off the hook. You and I are going to have some fun come July.”
It doesn’t sound like she’s kidding. It’s going to be a long next couple of months.
***
IV. (i knew you were a truth that i’d rather lose than to have never lain beside at all or if she was the patient and he was the doctor)
“Stage four, metastatic melanoma that’s spread to her liver, skin, and brain.”
She’s heard the diagnosis a million times. She’s still fuzzy on the details, medical terms that still haven’t sunk in.
A million times in a few weeks.
“I’m Dr. Shepherd and this is Dr. Grey and Dr. Karev.”
She smiles but it’s weak and it’s only matched by two out of the three of them. The latter man remains stone-faced.
---
“I’m sorry.”
Dr. Karev, the one who’s been left behind to handle pre-op and check up on her what appears to be every hour or so, looks at her with something close to a scowl. He’s not a people person; she’s figured that out quick. “What?”
“I get the feeling that you don’t really want to be stuck here right now.”
He has the decency to look a little sheepish - not enough to deny it though.
---
Afterwards, he’s a little more attentive.
“Better?”
He’s back with an extra blanket because she said she was cold, offhanded. Izzie smiles at the gesture and nods her head. “Much. Thanks.”
“Good,” he replies, busying himself with checking her vitals. His presence should make her more uncomfortable than it does.
“Look, I know you pretty much have to say positive things but you seem more honest than everyone else, so I just wanted to ask - “ she takes a deep breath as he pauses what he’s doing to study her, “Is Dr. Shepherd any good? Because I know everyone’s saying he’s the best but he’s always in the room and I swear it’s like him and Dr. Grey have a thing, so she’s clearly biased.”
“He’s - “ he hesitates; she notes the doubt in his eyes. She’s got this feeling like something happened with him not so long ago that’s got everyone feeling a little unsure. People always seem a little too sure of his abilities. “You’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Izzie laughs. “It’s a little hard not to.”
She would like to think that it’s something like sympathy that she finds in his eyes, for the first time since she’s arrived.
She’d like to think that there’s a wall that’s cracking at the edges.
---
Abruptly, she stops calling him Dr. Karev and starts calling him Alex.
Dr. Grey starts shooting him warning looks. She doesn’t think she really wants to know why.
---
They take out the tumor. She survives the surgery.
Alex is in the room when she wakes up. Whether accidental or intentional, she appreciates it.
“Guess you were right.”
“You shouldn’t doubt me.” He says, smirk firmly in place. “I’m a doctor, you know.”
“Are you also clairvoyant?”
The smirk turns into a half-hearted glare.
“Point made.”
“Point taken.” His hand might brush hers on the bed, before he reaches up to do something to her IV. Izzie wants it to be something other than passing contact, somewhere in the part of her that’s lonely and stripped of connections in these four walls. She barely knows him, and he seems like he’s an insufferable ass a good fifty percent of the time, but she’s drawn to him all the same. “I was still right.”
“And I’m still a patient so you have to be nice to me,” she reminds him, playful raise of the eyebrows.
“That’s what you think.”
---
He doesn’t talk about chemo with her. He doesn’t talk about this medication and that, about vitals and things she can only loosely wrap her head around.
Instead, he’ll tell her hospital gossip. Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Grey are getting married. Another doctor is going into the army, to the bafflement of the rest of them. There also seems to be quite a lot of people having sex with quite a lot of people that they aren’t supposed to be. It’s amusing but, more than that, it’s distracting.
There’s still something wrong, something abnormal, and he’s just ignoring it while the others dance around it. She knows if she asks, he’ll tell her - that he’s far too honest for his, or her, own good - but there’s a part of her that isn’t sure she wants to know just yet.
“I used to see things. Like hallucinations.”
Alex regards her carefully. “Yeah?”
“It’s why I got myself checked out.” She looks away from him, a blush creeping into her cheeks. “It sounds stupid but that’s how I knew.”
“Do you still see them?”
She bites her lip. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t look all that surprised.
---
There’s a second tumor. They want to operate again. They don’t know if she’ll survive and if she’ll be one hundred percent again even if she does.
“What should I do?”
“I can’t - “
“You’re a doctor, remember?” She has no problem turning his words against him, at least not while she’s feeling varying degrees of desperation. “You’re supposed to be right; I’m not supposed to doubt you. Ring a bell?”
His silence is his acknowledgment.
“So what do I do?”
“You have the surgery.”
---
“I’m going to be fine?”
“You’re going to be fine.”
This time, when his hand brushes hers, she curls her fingers around it and he squeezes back.
---
She blinks, slow, as the drugs kick in.
Closes them on the image of that damn heart monitor.
Opens them on Alex, traces his arm to his hand, still held in hers. He has to let go soon. She has to let go soon.
Closes her eyes on Chehalis, the place she grew up in. Home.
She doesn’t open them again.
---
He was wrong.
***
V. (your back’s against the wall, there’s no one home to call or if she was part of the Mercy West merger)
She tries to play nice.
At first.
“Izzie Stevens.”
He looks at her proffered hand with more than a little disdain.
She gets his name from his badge instead from his mouth.
---
“So I was thinking that maybe you could show me around, since I’m new and all.”
She’s been on his heels for the better part of the day. That’s the way it seems to work here; they’re all latching on to the other side, trying alternately to suck up or outdo. Izzie is dancing some fine line between the two.
He stops mid-stride and they fall out of sync. She takes a few more steps before she realizes that he’s standing still several feet behind her and turns. “What?”
“Why are you following me?”
Slowly, she starts back towards him. “I don’t know if you heard but we’re sort of competing here.”
“No shit,” he bites out.
“You know the old saying,” she shrugs, “keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.”
Alex doesn’t look at all surprised by this; in fact he looks suspiciously like he not only had that figured out already but appreciates the honesty. He would. He’s been blunt to patients and family alike, to the point of coming off as an absolute jerk. And yet he appears to have friends. She finds that intriguing. “I have a hard time believing that’s going to work for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Works best if the other person doesn’t know the game you’re playing.”
He starts walking again and she matches his pace.
---
It’s only a few hours later that she screws him out of a case. She picked the right diagnosis on a guess - not that she’s about to admit that to anyone.
He grabs her by the arm and pulls her into an empty exam room without any sort of gentleness. Instead, his fingers bite into her skin; it hurts but not bad enough for her to admit that either.
“Hey, what is your problem?” He releases her once the doors closed and she leans back against a metal table, casual, not at all intimidated.
“We were all having a hard enough time here before you people decided to show up. Now how about you back off and go find someone else to harass.”
She crosses her arms. “Why? I knew what it was and you didn’t. How does that make me a bad person?”
“That was my case.”
Like she said, she tried to play nice. At first. It didn’t work. She closes the distance between them, gets right up in his face so that she’s close enough that he can feel her breath against his skin when she says, “Didn’t look like it.”
And then she walks out.
He mutters “bitch” under his breath and it’s clear as day to her ears.
Izzie tells herself that it’s just the game and she isn’t really like this. All’s fair in love and war.
---
She gets in on the surgery and he glares at her from the gallery.
Her smile stretches wide at the corners; the look she receives in reply tells her that he can’t tell it’s patently false as well.
---
Izzie always figured herself for the nice girl.
From day one, she pegged him as the asshole.
Somehow, that rationale was supposed to make it all okay.
---
She focuses her attentions on someone and somewhere else for a few days, and when she returns she finds him on a peds case.
Taking care of babies.
It strikes her as an odd turn of events and makes her chest tighten from the doorway when she sees him picking up a preemie with a heart defect that Dr. Robbins has him checking up on.
And then she leaves him alone.
---
“I thought I heard you wanted to go into plastics.”
“Guess you haven’t figured out the gossip mill here.”
“Guess not.”
---
She finds him at Joe’s after her first patient at Seattle Grace dies. She’s drinking to mourn the occasion; he appears to be drinking because he can.
“So you never showed me around.”
He empties his glass. Joe nods in his direction, a customary ‘be there in a minute’ that isn’t lost on Alex. “What’s your point?”
“Just not very hospitable.”
“Well this isn’t a little bed and breakfast in the country so that’s tough,” he answers, clearly in no mood for small talk. She isn’t really sure he ever is, at least not in the week and a half she’s known him.
“So you’re going into peds?”
“We’re not playing twenty questions right now.”
She leans in closer, invading his personal space to get him to look at her. “We’re not playing anything.”
He avoids her question anyways, voice turning annoyed instead of just hard and tired. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to know why you never showed me around.” She straightens, sipping her drink thoughtfully. “But I also wanted to call a truce.”
“Bullshit.”
“You really think I can’t be nice?”
“I think you have no loyalty and so a truce will last about as long as it works for you.” He glances at the rest of her group, at a table close to the door. There’s more fighting than talking going on over there. “They’re fragmented. It’s all about convenience.”
“And your side isn’t?”
“It’s not.” He says it just as confidently as he says everything else.
“Well maybe I’m not like them.”
He laughs, bitterly. “Come on. Truce?” She sticks out her hand the same as she did the first day she met him. He eyes it just as disdainfully. “It’ll make your life easier. Besides, what do you have to lose?”
“Some amount of dignity.”
“Are you sure that’s not already a lost cause?”
He glares. She decides that might not have been the best course of action.
And then she grabs his hand with her own, feeling his fingers spring to life against hers. It’s the basic equivalent of shaking on it. “Say it.”
“What?”
“Truce. Say it.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. Truce.”
She smiles. And starts again.
---
fin.