fics: grey's gen + alex/izzie (archive edition)
Title: Angels With Their Great Handshakes
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble.
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: For the Grey's Anatomy comment ficathon. Original post here.
Summary: Five times they remember George.
i.
It’s late, a Tuesday, with the television casting everything in blue shadow.
Her knees are drawn to her chest, cuffs of her jeans turned up, and the air conditioner broke yesterday morning with the August sun overhead. Alex keeps his body as far away from hers as possible while remaining on the same couch, remote control in hand as he flips through channels.
There’s a James Bond marathon and a three second delay between the recognition of that fact and his finger on the ‘channel up’ button. He looks sideways at her, to check and see if she saw it, if she saw him falter. If she got it. 007.
Meredith keeps her head down, keeps her eyes on the well-worn novel cradled in her lap. Swallows and tries not to taste bile.
-
ii.
There’s a school project, third grade, and construction paper cutouts on her kitchen table for three straight days. Family trees and name origins and Tuck is so innocent when he asks where his middle name came from.
William after her father. His nickname after his own. George hangs there, in the air between them, and it makes sense that he’d expect there to be a connection to someone. Her boy is smart.
Miranda can’t quite get the words out.
-
iii.
On her fourth move, when she tears apart her small apartment in Tacoma and decides that moving across the country might finally force her to give up the ghost, she finds one of his old sweaters. Brown and soft, and she remembers him wearing it that last Thanksgiving they were all together.
Izzie wants it to smell like him but instead it smells of pumpkin pie and traces of her perfume, too much time spent packed away with her winter clothes.
Another thing lost.
-
iv.
Her baby has a birthmark on his knee, the one thing marring otherwise unblemished skin.
If Callie looks at it wrong, if she doesn’t stop and remember to focus, the irregular edges distort and it’s the state of Texas that she’s staring at, a hand instead of a knee.
They say these things fade, with time.
-
v.
Meredith’s dad kicks it and Cristina finds herself welcoming two more people to the Dead Dad’s Club.
Lexie cries in her funeral clothes and Meredith chokes down enough tequila for all three of them, and she can’t stop thinking about that night out in front of the hospital, when the breeze wouldn’t let up and the rain made her shoes squeak against the linoleum when she went back inside.
She can’t stop thinking of the sense of loss that radiated off of him in waves and how that might have been the one time she can truly say that she looked George in the eye and understood him.
--
Title: Timeless Like A Broken Watch
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Izzie.
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: For the Grey's Anatomy comment ficathon. Original post here.
Summary: They meet again in an airport in the middle of the country. All bets are off.
They meet again in an airport in the middle of the country.
All bets are off.
He told her to go be happy elsewhere, not so subtle code for i never want to see you again, only this is nothing but coincidence and Iowa is barely five hours in his wake. He’s tired and she’s bewildered and so they sit back to back in an airport terminal in Denver and don’t say a single word until they call his connecting flight back to Seattle as delayed to severe weather yet again and he bites out a string of curses.
“We’re on the same flight,” she tells him, the first words out of her mouth, and they’re not exactly hurting for personal space, rows of seats untouched, and yet here she chose to sit. Here he chose to let her. In silence.
“Of course we are,” he says, but it lacks the venom it so badly needs. He’s got two more hours here and if it weren’t for the relative discomfort of these chairs, if it weren’t for her, he’d seriously consider sleeping through them.
Four days in Iowa and, he figures, a grand total of maybe twelve hours of sleep. If that.
“You dyed your hair,” he adds, in lieu of any sort of response on her part. He doesn’t want to keep talking but he also doesn’t know how to stop now that he’s begun.
“And you appear to have cut sleep out of your life entirely.”
He might just be expecting it but he thinks he can hear among other things somewhere in that heavy sigh she gives after a beat. “Shit happens.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Alex just laughs. It sounds hollow and he can hear the scuff of her shoes on the floor beneath them.
“Right. Because where’s the fun in that?”
“You don’t have the monopoly on angry and bitter,” he says and there, there he’s finally able to snap right back at her. Feels something shift into place.
“Well neither do you, so I guess we’re even.”
“Yeah.”
There’s silence from behind him again and he settles back and tries not to obsessively glance at the clock, determined to make these two hours go by faster just through sheer power of will. And then the flight. Her on the flight.
They keep trying to get away from each other.
They keep failing at that too.
Her shoes start up against the floor again, only this time they’re traveling away and for a minute he thinks she’s finally got up and left before he sees her coming down his row. Stopping just short of the seat next to him with her purse slung over her shoulder and last month’s issue of Cosmo in her right hand, blunt nails and a front cover that’s had its edges bent so many times they’re a gentle tug away from falling off entirely. Nervous habits.
“What are you doing?” He asks, finally, when she’s offered no explanation for running in the opposite direction from the expected, closer instead of further.
“Going to get coffee. You coming or would you rather sit and sulk?”
“I’m not sulking,” he says and, to prove it, he heaves himself out of his chair and goes along with it.
They have two hours.
It can just be two hours.
He’s back to lying to himself.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble.
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: For the Grey's Anatomy comment ficathon. Original post here.
Summary: Five times they remember George.
i.
It’s late, a Tuesday, with the television casting everything in blue shadow.
Her knees are drawn to her chest, cuffs of her jeans turned up, and the air conditioner broke yesterday morning with the August sun overhead. Alex keeps his body as far away from hers as possible while remaining on the same couch, remote control in hand as he flips through channels.
There’s a James Bond marathon and a three second delay between the recognition of that fact and his finger on the ‘channel up’ button. He looks sideways at her, to check and see if she saw it, if she saw him falter. If she got it. 007.
Meredith keeps her head down, keeps her eyes on the well-worn novel cradled in her lap. Swallows and tries not to taste bile.
-
ii.
There’s a school project, third grade, and construction paper cutouts on her kitchen table for three straight days. Family trees and name origins and Tuck is so innocent when he asks where his middle name came from.
William after her father. His nickname after his own. George hangs there, in the air between them, and it makes sense that he’d expect there to be a connection to someone. Her boy is smart.
Miranda can’t quite get the words out.
-
iii.
On her fourth move, when she tears apart her small apartment in Tacoma and decides that moving across the country might finally force her to give up the ghost, she finds one of his old sweaters. Brown and soft, and she remembers him wearing it that last Thanksgiving they were all together.
Izzie wants it to smell like him but instead it smells of pumpkin pie and traces of her perfume, too much time spent packed away with her winter clothes.
Another thing lost.
-
iv.
Her baby has a birthmark on his knee, the one thing marring otherwise unblemished skin.
If Callie looks at it wrong, if she doesn’t stop and remember to focus, the irregular edges distort and it’s the state of Texas that she’s staring at, a hand instead of a knee.
They say these things fade, with time.
-
v.
Meredith’s dad kicks it and Cristina finds herself welcoming two more people to the Dead Dad’s Club.
Lexie cries in her funeral clothes and Meredith chokes down enough tequila for all three of them, and she can’t stop thinking about that night out in front of the hospital, when the breeze wouldn’t let up and the rain made her shoes squeak against the linoleum when she went back inside.
She can’t stop thinking of the sense of loss that radiated off of him in waves and how that might have been the one time she can truly say that she looked George in the eye and understood him.
--
Title: Timeless Like A Broken Watch
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Izzie.
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: For the Grey's Anatomy comment ficathon. Original post here.
Summary: They meet again in an airport in the middle of the country. All bets are off.
They meet again in an airport in the middle of the country.
All bets are off.
He told her to go be happy elsewhere, not so subtle code for i never want to see you again, only this is nothing but coincidence and Iowa is barely five hours in his wake. He’s tired and she’s bewildered and so they sit back to back in an airport terminal in Denver and don’t say a single word until they call his connecting flight back to Seattle as delayed to severe weather yet again and he bites out a string of curses.
“We’re on the same flight,” she tells him, the first words out of her mouth, and they’re not exactly hurting for personal space, rows of seats untouched, and yet here she chose to sit. Here he chose to let her. In silence.
“Of course we are,” he says, but it lacks the venom it so badly needs. He’s got two more hours here and if it weren’t for the relative discomfort of these chairs, if it weren’t for her, he’d seriously consider sleeping through them.
Four days in Iowa and, he figures, a grand total of maybe twelve hours of sleep. If that.
“You dyed your hair,” he adds, in lieu of any sort of response on her part. He doesn’t want to keep talking but he also doesn’t know how to stop now that he’s begun.
“And you appear to have cut sleep out of your life entirely.”
He might just be expecting it but he thinks he can hear among other things somewhere in that heavy sigh she gives after a beat. “Shit happens.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Alex just laughs. It sounds hollow and he can hear the scuff of her shoes on the floor beneath them.
“Right. Because where’s the fun in that?”
“You don’t have the monopoly on angry and bitter,” he says and there, there he’s finally able to snap right back at her. Feels something shift into place.
“Well neither do you, so I guess we’re even.”
“Yeah.”
There’s silence from behind him again and he settles back and tries not to obsessively glance at the clock, determined to make these two hours go by faster just through sheer power of will. And then the flight. Her on the flight.
They keep trying to get away from each other.
They keep failing at that too.
Her shoes start up against the floor again, only this time they’re traveling away and for a minute he thinks she’s finally got up and left before he sees her coming down his row. Stopping just short of the seat next to him with her purse slung over her shoulder and last month’s issue of Cosmo in her right hand, blunt nails and a front cover that’s had its edges bent so many times they’re a gentle tug away from falling off entirely. Nervous habits.
“What are you doing?” He asks, finally, when she’s offered no explanation for running in the opposite direction from the expected, closer instead of further.
“Going to get coffee. You coming or would you rather sit and sulk?”
“I’m not sulking,” he says and, to prove it, he heaves himself out of his chair and goes along with it.
They have two hours.
It can just be two hours.
He’s back to lying to himself.