walk me down your broken line {ga - alex/lexie}
Title: Walk Me Down Your Broken Line
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Lexie.
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,446.
Author's Note: Why yes, that is direct dialogue from 6.13. Watch the scene, you'll see where I got my idea from.
Summary: Outtakes/Post-Ep for 6.13. In the hallways, they walk close enough to touch.
“Just keeping my options open.”
Her ass hits the wall and a giggle escapes her lips before the moan can.
---
In the hallways, they walk close enough to touch.
“Either one of you know what this big meeting is all about?”
“I heard there was a coup.”
“Webber’s out, Shepherd’s in. Is that true?”
It’s background noise, their own personal entourage now that the Mercy West transfers are suddenly feeling insecure and in need of answers. They match stride, hands in pockets, arms brushing against each other with a certain regularity. The sort of contact that is generally unseen by others.
“We know what you know.”
“Bull. Alright, your sister is married to the guy. You expect me to believe you don’t know what’s going on?”
“Don’t you have your own loser friends to talk to?”
“I also heard Shepherd’s going to clean house; maybe he’ll start with you.”
“Dude, I’m safe, the guy’s my roommate. You’re the ones who should watch your backs.”
“Why, what do you know?”
“It’s simple math. Shepherd hates the merger, you’re from Mercy West. You’re toast.”
“Derek’s not going to fire them just because they’re from Mercy West. He’s not like that. He’s loyal and fair.”
When she presses closer, it’s meant to be a nudge, a wordless request to back her up. Alex just gives her a look, a raised eyebrow the others can’t see, and they keep walking.
---
“You’re on peds?”
“One word,” he warns.
“I wasn’t - “ she’s been shredding her way through a stack of papers headed for recycling, except this time she balls one up and throws it in his general direction. It hits him in the shoulder and she isn’t even looking. “God, what is with everyone? Mark’s giving me the silent treatment like he’s five and you're jumping down my throat because I asked you whose service you’re on. I mean seriously, what did I - why are you looking at me like that right now?“
Alex is indeed looking at her like she’s a special brand of crazy. “And here I thought I was getting away from the freaks.”
“Shut up,” she spits, with enough malice to be taken seriously. He grunts but remains otherwise silent and, really, the silence is one of the things driving her nuts right now. There’s nothing but silence or meaningless words that she allows to turn into pleasant white noise - for instance Derek’s speech, which was, frankly, of little consequence to her no matter how much she shushed Alex and clapped like they were apparently supposed to. She wasn’t going anywhere if Derek planned to keep his post-it wife. So she offers an olive branch in order to fill the empty spaces. “Annoying patient?”
“Annoying parents,” he huffs. It’s the usual, she figures. She doesn’t know why - and she’s fairly sure there’s a good chunk of back-story that she’s missing, something she should probably ask Meredith about sometime in the future - but Alex has assorted problems with alternately neglectful and controlling parents. And drug addicts. And sometimes people in general. “They’d rather assume their kid is full of shit than spend the money to find out if he’s not.”
Lexie has nothing to offer in the way of personal antecedents, so she just concedes, rather enthusiastically, “People suck.”
“What else is new?”
---
The calm thing she gets going afterwards lasts about twenty minutes.
Then it’s back to nervous and trying Callie because her and Mark are like best friends or something close to it so it’s worth a shot.
Except Callie tells her Mark slept with Addison not once, maybe not even just twice.
So, back to angry.
“He slept with her a bunch of times.”
Alex regards her nonchalantly over the edge of the chart he’s focused on. “Busy right now.”
“Right. Everyone’s busy.”
“Lunch?”
She pauses in the hallway, her hand on his arm forcing him to still as well. Several bad ideas crop up all at once. “Or we could skip lunch.”
He smirks. That’s a yes.
---
“Oh God…” she arches, he groans, and then she comes. His fingers are tangled in her hair and she can taste blood in her mouth from biting her tongue too hard.
There are people having a nice lunchtime conversation in the hallway directly outside of the door and have been doing so for the last five minutes. She totally understands the whole ‘no loitering’ thing. Don’t these people have jobs?
Her heel hits his back as someone laughs too loud outside, reflex and leftover frustration (she has never been an angry person; she’s always been the one who breaks first, before the yelling can start), and he thrusts and she can tell by the sound he makes in the back of his throat that he’s there, half a second before he comes too.
She’s been holding off on this, thinking that she could patch things up with Mark, thinking that it was all fine while they were even and if she could only make him see that -
Except they were never even and this is a shade of hypocritical she’s never seen and doesn’t like.
So there’s this. Quick and dirty in an empty exam room with a still-married-but-separated man who has already been down this road with her. There’s safety in the fact that they’ve already been here, that they already know this won’t work. There’s safety in lowered expectations and skin sliding against skin.
He’s pulling his clothes back on, minutes later, when he asks, “Feel better?”
She doesn’t bother lying. “No.”
---
Alex’s lunch that day consists of an apple.
When she flops down on an empty gurney and proclaims “today sucks. Mark sucks,” for all to hear, he looks at her exactly like he’s heard this refrain before but doesn’t say a word.
---
After the elevator, she drives around.
After the elevator, she cries in the parking lot of a drugstore down the street, where no one she knows is going to see her, and then spends the next hour and forty-five minutes driving anywhere she can think to go before all roads lead her back to Meredith’s house.
She still has a key and there’s a spare room upstairs.
She still has a key and there’s an occupied room upstairs with a warm body, and it’s road number two that she chooses, though it isn’t the least traveled.
Derek’s car isn’t in the driveway but Meredith’s is and so is Alex’s, and when she lets herself in no one is downstairs. She can hear Meredith on the phone all the way from the hallway upstairs and Alex’s door is closed, minus any signs of movement.
When she opens it, she finds him passed out in bed and doesn’t allow herself any time to second guess before she climbs in with him.
Her weight on the bed as she slides in under the covers must jostle him because her head hasn’t hit the pillow before he’s mumbling something about being up since three-thirty and “what do you want?”. She doesn’t think he knows, in that instant, who she is and she isn’t sure it really matters; she just curls up into a ball and tries not to cry into the clean linens beneath her.
It’s when she sniffles that he finally gains some awareness. Lexie has a suspicion that all men are programmed to freak out in the face of crying women and, although Alex doesn’t traditionally do that, he’s also got his guard down thanks to half-consciousness. He turns so that she is no longer faced with the expanse of his bare back and squints at her in the dark. “Lexie?”
“Sorry,” she mumbles, curling in on herself further. “I just…everything sucks,” she finishes, repeating, revising, today’s mantra of choice.
Alex does not curl his arms around her then. He doesn’t pull her to him and press kisses to her forehead and whisper things that romance novelists and Hallmark movies might consider sweet nothings. What he does do is push at the jacket she’s still wearing until he gets it off her shoulders, tossing it somewhere to the right of the bed, and pulls the covers up higher. It’s his nonverbal way of telling her she can stay and it’s all she’s going to get from him in the way of comfort. He neither gives nor takes and it feels strangely like what she needs.
He closes his eyes before she does and as she’s drifting off she curls her fingers into the edge of the pillow, mirroring his own, and their bodies rest next to each other like that, just close enough to touch.
---
fin.
---
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Lexie.
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,446.
Author's Note: Why yes, that is direct dialogue from 6.13. Watch the scene, you'll see where I got my idea from.
Summary: Outtakes/Post-Ep for 6.13. In the hallways, they walk close enough to touch.
“Just keeping my options open.”
Her ass hits the wall and a giggle escapes her lips before the moan can.
---
In the hallways, they walk close enough to touch.
“Either one of you know what this big meeting is all about?”
“I heard there was a coup.”
“Webber’s out, Shepherd’s in. Is that true?”
It’s background noise, their own personal entourage now that the Mercy West transfers are suddenly feeling insecure and in need of answers. They match stride, hands in pockets, arms brushing against each other with a certain regularity. The sort of contact that is generally unseen by others.
“We know what you know.”
“Bull. Alright, your sister is married to the guy. You expect me to believe you don’t know what’s going on?”
“Don’t you have your own loser friends to talk to?”
“I also heard Shepherd’s going to clean house; maybe he’ll start with you.”
“Dude, I’m safe, the guy’s my roommate. You’re the ones who should watch your backs.”
“Why, what do you know?”
“It’s simple math. Shepherd hates the merger, you’re from Mercy West. You’re toast.”
“Derek’s not going to fire them just because they’re from Mercy West. He’s not like that. He’s loyal and fair.”
When she presses closer, it’s meant to be a nudge, a wordless request to back her up. Alex just gives her a look, a raised eyebrow the others can’t see, and they keep walking.
---
“You’re on peds?”
“One word,” he warns.
“I wasn’t - “ she’s been shredding her way through a stack of papers headed for recycling, except this time she balls one up and throws it in his general direction. It hits him in the shoulder and she isn’t even looking. “God, what is with everyone? Mark’s giving me the silent treatment like he’s five and you're jumping down my throat because I asked you whose service you’re on. I mean seriously, what did I - why are you looking at me like that right now?“
Alex is indeed looking at her like she’s a special brand of crazy. “And here I thought I was getting away from the freaks.”
“Shut up,” she spits, with enough malice to be taken seriously. He grunts but remains otherwise silent and, really, the silence is one of the things driving her nuts right now. There’s nothing but silence or meaningless words that she allows to turn into pleasant white noise - for instance Derek’s speech, which was, frankly, of little consequence to her no matter how much she shushed Alex and clapped like they were apparently supposed to. She wasn’t going anywhere if Derek planned to keep his post-it wife. So she offers an olive branch in order to fill the empty spaces. “Annoying patient?”
“Annoying parents,” he huffs. It’s the usual, she figures. She doesn’t know why - and she’s fairly sure there’s a good chunk of back-story that she’s missing, something she should probably ask Meredith about sometime in the future - but Alex has assorted problems with alternately neglectful and controlling parents. And drug addicts. And sometimes people in general. “They’d rather assume their kid is full of shit than spend the money to find out if he’s not.”
Lexie has nothing to offer in the way of personal antecedents, so she just concedes, rather enthusiastically, “People suck.”
“What else is new?”
---
The calm thing she gets going afterwards lasts about twenty minutes.
Then it’s back to nervous and trying Callie because her and Mark are like best friends or something close to it so it’s worth a shot.
Except Callie tells her Mark slept with Addison not once, maybe not even just twice.
So, back to angry.
“He slept with her a bunch of times.”
Alex regards her nonchalantly over the edge of the chart he’s focused on. “Busy right now.”
“Right. Everyone’s busy.”
“Lunch?”
She pauses in the hallway, her hand on his arm forcing him to still as well. Several bad ideas crop up all at once. “Or we could skip lunch.”
He smirks. That’s a yes.
---
“Oh God…” she arches, he groans, and then she comes. His fingers are tangled in her hair and she can taste blood in her mouth from biting her tongue too hard.
There are people having a nice lunchtime conversation in the hallway directly outside of the door and have been doing so for the last five minutes. She totally understands the whole ‘no loitering’ thing. Don’t these people have jobs?
Her heel hits his back as someone laughs too loud outside, reflex and leftover frustration (she has never been an angry person; she’s always been the one who breaks first, before the yelling can start), and he thrusts and she can tell by the sound he makes in the back of his throat that he’s there, half a second before he comes too.
She’s been holding off on this, thinking that she could patch things up with Mark, thinking that it was all fine while they were even and if she could only make him see that -
Except they were never even and this is a shade of hypocritical she’s never seen and doesn’t like.
So there’s this. Quick and dirty in an empty exam room with a still-married-but-separated man who has already been down this road with her. There’s safety in the fact that they’ve already been here, that they already know this won’t work. There’s safety in lowered expectations and skin sliding against skin.
He’s pulling his clothes back on, minutes later, when he asks, “Feel better?”
She doesn’t bother lying. “No.”
---
Alex’s lunch that day consists of an apple.
When she flops down on an empty gurney and proclaims “today sucks. Mark sucks,” for all to hear, he looks at her exactly like he’s heard this refrain before but doesn’t say a word.
---
After the elevator, she drives around.
After the elevator, she cries in the parking lot of a drugstore down the street, where no one she knows is going to see her, and then spends the next hour and forty-five minutes driving anywhere she can think to go before all roads lead her back to Meredith’s house.
She still has a key and there’s a spare room upstairs.
She still has a key and there’s an occupied room upstairs with a warm body, and it’s road number two that she chooses, though it isn’t the least traveled.
Derek’s car isn’t in the driveway but Meredith’s is and so is Alex’s, and when she lets herself in no one is downstairs. She can hear Meredith on the phone all the way from the hallway upstairs and Alex’s door is closed, minus any signs of movement.
When she opens it, she finds him passed out in bed and doesn’t allow herself any time to second guess before she climbs in with him.
Her weight on the bed as she slides in under the covers must jostle him because her head hasn’t hit the pillow before he’s mumbling something about being up since three-thirty and “what do you want?”. She doesn’t think he knows, in that instant, who she is and she isn’t sure it really matters; she just curls up into a ball and tries not to cry into the clean linens beneath her.
It’s when she sniffles that he finally gains some awareness. Lexie has a suspicion that all men are programmed to freak out in the face of crying women and, although Alex doesn’t traditionally do that, he’s also got his guard down thanks to half-consciousness. He turns so that she is no longer faced with the expanse of his bare back and squints at her in the dark. “Lexie?”
“Sorry,” she mumbles, curling in on herself further. “I just…everything sucks,” she finishes, repeating, revising, today’s mantra of choice.
Alex does not curl his arms around her then. He doesn’t pull her to him and press kisses to her forehead and whisper things that romance novelists and Hallmark movies might consider sweet nothings. What he does do is push at the jacket she’s still wearing until he gets it off her shoulders, tossing it somewhere to the right of the bed, and pulls the covers up higher. It’s his nonverbal way of telling her she can stay and it’s all she’s going to get from him in the way of comfort. He neither gives nor takes and it feels strangely like what she needs.
He closes his eyes before she does and as she’s drifting off she curls her fingers into the edge of the pillow, mirroring his own, and their bodies rest next to each other like that, just close enough to touch.
---
fin.
---