it's easier to lie and be safe {grey's - alex/meredith}
Title: It's Easier To Lie And Be Safe
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Meredith
Rating: R
Word Count: 879
Author's Note: For Porn Battle X. Original version is here. This version is for archive purposes.
Summary: A negative plus a negative equals a positive.
She’s knees to chest on the couch when the door opens and she bites down on her lip, hard enough for the sting to disappear and numbness to settle in until she releases it. It’s a continued effort not to say his name, to check.
Meredith can’t trust her voice right now. She can’t keep the worry out of it and worry has no place with them.
If they pretend it means less then maybe it will.
-
Three days before, Derek packs up and leaves, pain meds and all, and the popular theory is that he’ll regret this.
She lost the baby and now he knows and Alex has known since day two post-shooting, half conscious with a tube in his throat and Meredith fighting tears at his bedside with the only person in this world who was all ears and no comment.
It should’ve made him stay, whether out of sympathy or obligation or mourning, but it didn’t.
Now there is just her and Alex and all this empty space, space that she tries to close with her mouth and his hands.
-
Alex lingers in the doorway.
She musters seven seconds of eye contact, a breath, and then he shifts, leaning his weight on his good shoulder, the one not nearest to a bullet wound, a scar that only aches when it rains.
It always rains.
“I was going to leave,” he tells her, voice as hollow and empty as this room and this house feels.
They are only two, have become only two so fast her head is spinning, and she thinks if it’s just the one, if it’s just her in this two story house full of ghosts and memories that aren’t even hers, she might just lose all sense of balance completely.
“And go where?”
He shrugs. “I’ve slept in my car before.”
“It’s the middle of winter.” And he’s out without a jacket, she doesn’t add. The forecast is calling for snow the day after tomorrow, sixty percent chance. “Don’t be an idiot, Alex.”
“I’ve been told I really can’t help myself.”
“No, you can’t.”
-
Two days before, they fuck in the kitchen.
He slides up behind her, leg between hers as he reaches for the dish towel, almost like an accident, and she presses back against him just long enough for him to abandon the towel and the dish and the notion of cleaning anything.
They would rather make messes.
It isn’t the first time.
She’s slept with him twice in the span of the past three months and, while no one ever said that it would be the last time, nothing was supposed to come of it either.
She had Derek, before he left. Bitter, frustrated Derek whose recovery wasn’t as smooth as they thought it would be.
Alex had no one. Then again, Alex always seemed to do better that way.
His hand slips low across her stomach, unbuttons the jeans she just put on not twenty minutes ago, and lets them fall to the floor so that he can run a hand along the front of her underwear, slipping underneath it.
She bucks into his hand.
The toast pops from the toaster, done, as he bends her over the kitchen island. It goes ignored, even when the burnt smell fills her nostrils on a sharp inhale.
Her hair falls loose around her face and her elbows collide with the wood at an odd angle, his mouth on her neck half a second before he thrusts into her and her breath catches. She can feel his body against hers, his hands on her hips, and every sound that filters into her ears sounds like a key in the lock.
Afterwards, they pull their pants back on and she fixes her hair in the upstairs bathroom.
The toast lies forgotten in the toaster.
They go to work.
-
She doesn’t want to fight with him.
And it’s not that she lacks the ammunition, it’s that she lacks the energy for it.
The same could be said of him, judging by the way he falls into the couch next to her after a moment.
“You really don’t need to leave,” she tells him, the irony of the statement settling in with the shift of his weight beside her. “We’re adults. This was bound to happen sometime.”
“Because you sleep with inappropriate men?”
That line is getting old. It isn’t getting any less true. “And you sleep with anything that moves.”
“That’s not why - ”
“I know.” She looks down at her hands, slides her thumb over the nail of her index finger. “And that’s why you don’t need to leave.”
-
A negative plus a negative equals a positive. That’s the way it works in math.
The same rules must apply here.
They’re the two who weren’t supposed to care. No strings attached.
Except he didn’t fuck her because she was some piece of ass in a skirt and she didn’t fuck him because he was around and the tequila wasn’t cutting it anymore.
Except no strings attached doesn’t apply to them when they’ve got years of friendship and maybe something else built into the foundation.
It matters.
This matters.
-
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Meredith
Rating: R
Word Count: 879
Author's Note: For Porn Battle X. Original version is here. This version is for archive purposes.
Summary: A negative plus a negative equals a positive.
She’s knees to chest on the couch when the door opens and she bites down on her lip, hard enough for the sting to disappear and numbness to settle in until she releases it. It’s a continued effort not to say his name, to check.
Meredith can’t trust her voice right now. She can’t keep the worry out of it and worry has no place with them.
If they pretend it means less then maybe it will.
-
Three days before, Derek packs up and leaves, pain meds and all, and the popular theory is that he’ll regret this.
She lost the baby and now he knows and Alex has known since day two post-shooting, half conscious with a tube in his throat and Meredith fighting tears at his bedside with the only person in this world who was all ears and no comment.
It should’ve made him stay, whether out of sympathy or obligation or mourning, but it didn’t.
Now there is just her and Alex and all this empty space, space that she tries to close with her mouth and his hands.
-
Alex lingers in the doorway.
She musters seven seconds of eye contact, a breath, and then he shifts, leaning his weight on his good shoulder, the one not nearest to a bullet wound, a scar that only aches when it rains.
It always rains.
“I was going to leave,” he tells her, voice as hollow and empty as this room and this house feels.
They are only two, have become only two so fast her head is spinning, and she thinks if it’s just the one, if it’s just her in this two story house full of ghosts and memories that aren’t even hers, she might just lose all sense of balance completely.
“And go where?”
He shrugs. “I’ve slept in my car before.”
“It’s the middle of winter.” And he’s out without a jacket, she doesn’t add. The forecast is calling for snow the day after tomorrow, sixty percent chance. “Don’t be an idiot, Alex.”
“I’ve been told I really can’t help myself.”
“No, you can’t.”
-
Two days before, they fuck in the kitchen.
He slides up behind her, leg between hers as he reaches for the dish towel, almost like an accident, and she presses back against him just long enough for him to abandon the towel and the dish and the notion of cleaning anything.
They would rather make messes.
It isn’t the first time.
She’s slept with him twice in the span of the past three months and, while no one ever said that it would be the last time, nothing was supposed to come of it either.
She had Derek, before he left. Bitter, frustrated Derek whose recovery wasn’t as smooth as they thought it would be.
Alex had no one. Then again, Alex always seemed to do better that way.
His hand slips low across her stomach, unbuttons the jeans she just put on not twenty minutes ago, and lets them fall to the floor so that he can run a hand along the front of her underwear, slipping underneath it.
She bucks into his hand.
The toast pops from the toaster, done, as he bends her over the kitchen island. It goes ignored, even when the burnt smell fills her nostrils on a sharp inhale.
Her hair falls loose around her face and her elbows collide with the wood at an odd angle, his mouth on her neck half a second before he thrusts into her and her breath catches. She can feel his body against hers, his hands on her hips, and every sound that filters into her ears sounds like a key in the lock.
Afterwards, they pull their pants back on and she fixes her hair in the upstairs bathroom.
The toast lies forgotten in the toaster.
They go to work.
-
She doesn’t want to fight with him.
And it’s not that she lacks the ammunition, it’s that she lacks the energy for it.
The same could be said of him, judging by the way he falls into the couch next to her after a moment.
“You really don’t need to leave,” she tells him, the irony of the statement settling in with the shift of his weight beside her. “We’re adults. This was bound to happen sometime.”
“Because you sleep with inappropriate men?”
That line is getting old. It isn’t getting any less true. “And you sleep with anything that moves.”
“That’s not why - ”
“I know.” She looks down at her hands, slides her thumb over the nail of her index finger. “And that’s why you don’t need to leave.”
-
A negative plus a negative equals a positive. That’s the way it works in math.
The same rules must apply here.
They’re the two who weren’t supposed to care. No strings attached.
Except he didn’t fuck her because she was some piece of ass in a skirt and she didn’t fuck him because he was around and the tequila wasn’t cutting it anymore.
Except no strings attached doesn’t apply to them when they’ve got years of friendship and maybe something else built into the foundation.
It matters.
This matters.
-