Lessons Learned, part II
Part One Here
The lobby of the hospital is quiet and Cristina finds comfort in that. This hospital is her first true love and even moreso when it’s not muddled with curious family members and children screaming within its walls. She sinks into one of the chairs just at the bottom of the stairwell and closes her eyes.
She just needs to think and she can’t. The feeling is that of suffocating, thoughts have never been a problem, thinking has never been an issue- usually she can’t shut her mind off.
A set of hands slide gently over her shoulders and she knows that it’s Burke. Her eyes open slowly but she doesn’t look up, “If you’re doing what I think you’re going to do, keep going.”
A grin tugs at his lips and he massages gently at the tense muscles along her shoulders, “I was going to ask if you need a place to stay tonight.”
“The hospital-“
“It has beds. But you need to get out of here every once in a while. Eat something besides take out,” he interrupts.
“You mean live outside the four walls of the hospital?” She smiles faintly.
“I know that your career is everything but if you stay here long enough, you may hate the place,” he answers, his fingers sliding down her shoulders, “come home with me.”
Cristina’s hand slides over his and she stops the movement there, “And do what?”
“Live outside the four walls of the hospital.”
Silence lingers between them for a moment and she lets go of his hand to stand up. Cristina slides her bag over her shoulder and reaches out to take his hand when he offers it. They’re not a thing, except they could easily become one again. In these moments, the ones where he seems to know her more than she would prefer, she thinks it would be so easy to let go.
--
Owen watches from a distance as Cristina walks hand in hand with the man who destroyed their relationship and he scowls. He knows that it’s a waste of time to give a damn about what’s going through her head or even remotely caring about what she’s done to them but he can’t help himself. It was her stubbornness that brought them down, her selfishness that got in the way of their relationship and he knows that there was nothing he could have done differently, except avoid the relationship all together.
Cristina had never been the giving type, the type of woman who cares about something other than herself. He thought one day she may grow up, that she may grow out of her childish ways.
He simply found out the hard way that his hopes were not founded.
Owen knew better and he let it happen anyway.
The car disappears from his sight and he turns to look at the hospital, fingers laced behind his head as he tries to contemplate his next move. Though he’s almost always known Seattle to be home, there’s nothing left here for him. He could stay and fight for Cristina but he knows that she isn’t worth the fight.
She never has been.
--
“That’s clearly cheating,” Cristina smirks, sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter as Burke busies himself with their dinner.
“I wasn’t aware that we’re playing a game, Dr. Yang,” his voice is vaguely laced with suggestion and despite her best efforts, she can’t ignore it.
“We’re always playing a game,” she retorts and steals a pepper from the pile of neatly sliced vegetables he’s laid out.
“Maybe we should quit playing then.”
Cristina leans back on her palms, studying him closely, “Where’s the fun in that?” It’s her turn to let suggestion lace her voice, and her body language.
The effort is certainly not lost on him.
“There’s plenty of fun to be had outside of your little game.”
“Our game. We already established that it’s mutual.”
Burke grins, taking in the arch of her back as she leans back, “I could just be playing along.”
“You’d have to know the rules to play along.”
“I can improvise,” he answers, this time his voice is low and their dinner has been long abandoned, but carefully removed from the burner, and he’s standing between her knees, his body painfully close to hers.
“What if I don’t allow for improvisation?” Cristina asks, her voice just as low. She sits up so her chest is pressed to his and her fingertips are tracing up his defined arms.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing it’s our game,” Burke murmurs before he dips his head to kiss her gently.
Cristina edges towards the end of the counter until she’s firmly pressed against him, her legs wrapped around the back of his. Her lips part slightly and their tongues meet, the kiss growing more desperate and her hips begin to grind lightly against his. She’s aware of what she’s doing to him, what she’s doing to herself, and she has no intention of stopping.
Part of it’s because she simply wants this. She wants him, aches to have him inside her. There’s the lessor reasoning that if they sleep together and he hears people talking about it, then he’ll never figure out the truth.
Burke’s fingers curl around the bottom of her shirt and he lifts it up and over her head, discarding it carelessly in the direction of the refrigerator. His shirt follows suit, along with her bra and his belt but they remain fixed in the kitchen. He guides her back gently just enough to spread kisses down her neck as his hands glide up her sides, to her breasts, the rough pads of his thumbs finding her nipples and teasing them. He’s hard now, almost painfully so, and the way she’s rocking against him isn’t helping.
Cristina smiles against his neck when he utters her name in such a strained voice. She drops her hands between them and unzips his jeans, eases them away from his hips just enough to run her hand over him through his boxers. Her hand moves upward, fingertips dipping inside his boxers to brush against him and he curses under his breath and she wraps her hand around him them, stroking firmly.
“Keep doing that,” he manages through gritted teeth, “and we’ll be done before we’ve started.”
“I have faith in you,” she purrs against his ear before she pushes him forward enough to slip off the counter and then turns them so he’s the one against the counter. She drops to her knees in front of him, dragging his pants and boxers down his legs as she goes. She looks up at him with wide eyes and the slightest of grins at the expression painted across his face, one of profound arousal and pain, and then she drags her tongue over his length.
Another whispered curse escapes his lips and this time his hand tangles into her ebony curls, gripping just lightly.
It’s the simple things that she missed, the way she can make him use four letter words that would make him visibly cringe under normal circumstances, the way that he’s gripping the counter, the way he looks at her like she’s the only thing that’s ever mattered to him.
Cristina swirls her tongue around him, hand firmly stroking what she can’t reach with her mouth. He tugs ever so slightly on her hair and he tenses and she smiles to herself when she comes. She drags her tongue over him, proud of the way he jerks when she flicks her tongue against the sensitive skin of his head.
Burke guides her back to her feet before moving his hands to her waist and quickly ridding her of the last shreds of clothing on her body. He lifts her easily into his arms and wraps her legs around him. While the kitchen was a good arena for foreplay, he needs more space to do everything he wants to do to her. The bedroom seems so incredibly far from the kitchen at this point, especially when he can feel how hot she is against his lower abdomen, causing him to twitch with arousal once more.
When they finally make it to the bedroom, he lays her back on the bed, crawling over her body, hips grinding into hers as he kisses her lavishly. His lips trail over her neck and shoulders to her sternum. His fingers are teasing her inner thigh, so painfully far from where she wants him to be and she whimpers each time his fingers brush closer and closer to her center but then withdraw.
She tries to raise her hips to guide him in the right direction but he’s holding her down and it gets her even hotter. Again she whimpers, murmurs his name in a broken voice, she’s wet and aching for him to touch her, to push inside her and stretch her deliciously.
And he’s intent on taking his damn time.
It’s her fault for giving him a blow job, she should have saved it for later. If she would have just fucked him first then she wouldn’t have to deal with- she stops thinking when he plunges two fingers inside her, hard and deep, causing her hips to jerk and for her to cry out. His mouth abandons the delightful thing they were doing to her breasts and moves down the concave of her abdomen to her clit. He teases her with the tip of his tongue, circling the swollen bud before enclosing his lips around it completely. Her eyes widen and then squeeze tight as he teases her, sucks on the tender flesh and bites gently. He never lets up between the long and rough strokes of his fingers and his talented tongue and teeth teasing her clit and she falls apart beneath him quickly.
Cristina’s tight around his fingers and Burke knows he should wait for her to relax but she’s too much to resist. He removes his fingers while she’s still quaking around him, her body trembling ever so slightly beneath his, and he moves to slip inside her. Her walls are unforgiving around him and he groans as he tries to ease into her. Her whimpers turn into soft moans and she keeps her body steady beneath his despite her body’s overwhelming urge to shy away slightly.
There’s something to be said for size differences.
Burke continues to push into her until he’s all in, and he pauses there, both of them lost to the ecstasy of the moment. Her lips brush his and their fingers knot over her head and then slowly, he starts to move, withdrawing almost every bit of his rigid length before easing it back into her again. They move like this for a while, slow and gentle, experiencing and enjoying each other, before need takes over.
Their gentle movements turn frantic and his slow thrusts become harder, faster, unforgiving. Moans turn to cries and Cristina can feel herself starting to lose it. Her hand slips between them, moving to where they meet, and she flicks her fingertips across her clit until he pushes her hand away and takes over himself.
“Control issues?” she teases breathlessly but then her words dissolve as she does, body shaking and overwhelmed by orgasm.
Unable to hold back anymore, Burke’s hip snaps into hers with and he comes inside her, hissing her name as he does. The air is hot around them and their skin slick with sweat but neither have a desire to pull away from each other. There was more than one reason that Cristina had decided to do this but now she can’t remember. The only thing she can think of is how they should have never ended and how much she hates him for walking away.
--
The smell of coffee lifts her from a comfortable sleep and Cristina shifts slightly in the bed, expecting to find him gone but he’s still there, arm securely wrapped around her, “So you’ve mastered being in two places at once?” she mumbles tiredly, her body curling into his.
“Something like that,” he smirks, his voice still deep with sleep. His lips brush her forehead and his hand traces the small of her back, “we have an early surgery. I figured the coffee would at least help.”
“Sleep would have helped more,” she teases him gently, not that she would have traded an ounce of sleep for the night they had. Cristina lifts her head and looks at him with darkened eyes, “how early?”
“Not that early,” he murmurs before claiming her lips and simultaneously lifting her on top of him.
--
“Where were you all night?”
Cristina glances up from her chart, “What do you mean where was I?”
Meredith looks at her doubtfully, “You know what I mean. Where were you? I tried to call you three different times.”
Three different times usually translates to about sixteen for Meredith and Cristina is glad that her phone was legitimately dead, “I forgot to charge my phone.”
“That’s what phone chargers are for.”
“I left it here,” Cristina answers automatically and then inwardly flinches.
“Told you that you were somewhere,” Meredith says, her finger pointed at Cristina, “and I know exactly where you were. Cristina Yang.”
“What?”
“You’re married.”
“I’m separated and filing for an annulment,” Cristina corrects her, picking up the chart.
“I told you that you were falling for him again.”
“Did I say that I was?”
“No, but you slept with him,” she mutters, “it’s close enough. You’re going to get yourself into this crap again and I’m going to be the one that has to cut you out of the dress. I don’t want to cut you out of another dress, Cristina.”
“You’re not. I’m not wearing another dress. Quit being melodramatic,” Cristina waves dismissively, “I’m getting out of one marriage. I’m not interested in another one. And I’m not letting things get out of hand. It’s sex, Meredith. Did you marry every guy you ever slept with?”
“I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it if you slept around like I did. You don’t.”
“Who said I can’t start?”
“Interesting choice to start with.”
Cristina looks up at her, “Look. Everybody around her is saying we slept together. If Burke hears about it, now he won’t question it. We slept together. Whatever.”
Meredith looks at her doubtfully, “That is not why you slept with him.”
“It could be,” Cristina shrugs and snaps her chart closed, “we have surgery.”
“Are you going to sleep with him again?”
“Why? Do you need a schedule?”
“Cristina.”
“What? You’re being all whatever about this and you don’t need to be. I’m a big girl. I know what I’m doing,” Cristina mutters, “I know what I’m getting myself into. Or not getting myself into.”
“Fine,” Meredith answers to Cristina’s back as she disappears down the hallway. She can tell that Cristina has no idea what she’s getting herself into just by the way she gets defensive talking about it. Meredith just doesn’t know how to convince Cristina that it’s a bad idea.
--
Owen glares at Burke from the opposite end of the board, clenches his fist at his side. He’s been resisting the urge to punch the man for at least a month, but that urge has resolved. He doesn’t want to hurt Burke. He doesn’t have any desire to hurt the man.
The desire is to hurt Cristina.
“I can see how you couldn’t stay away,” Owen remarks dryly, “she’s a good screw, isn’t she?”
Burke’s eyebrow arches high on his forehead but he doesn’t respond.
“She’s the first thing I’d want to do in Seattle,” Owen continues, “regardless of whether or not she belonged to somebody else.”
“Cristina,” Burke finally answers, “is not a belonging.”
“She was my wife.”
“I believe that was is the operative word here.”
“It wasn’t until you screwed her.”
Burke shakes his head, “I believe that you’ve gotten your facts wrong. Regardless of the reasoning, however, Cristina made her decision. Unless you have a patient with cardiac trauma or an issue that needs to be addressed by cardiothoracics, I believe this discussion is over.”
“I saw the two of you with my own eyes. I know that my facts aren’t wrong,” Owen growls, “I saw you, coming back to the hospital that morning, both of you. We were happy.”
“What morning?” Burke knows better than to bait him but he can’t help himself.
“Don’t play stupid with me. I’m a surgeon here. I’m exactly aware of what being on call is in this hospital. It’s obvious what you were doing, what your intentions are. I’ve seen right through them since the moment you got here.”
Burke’s brow furrows as he thinks back and then he realizes, “O’Malley.”
“What?”
“George O’Malley. Cristina took me to the cemetery. I hadn’t heard about his passing. O’Malley and I, we were friends. She took me to his grave so I could say goodbye.”
Owen studies the man responsible for shattering his life and realizes that he may not be responsible at all, “And before that?”
“We were here. Working on a case,” Burke answers warily, “nothing happened.”
“That’s not what happened if you ask Cristina.”
Burke tries to ignore the words but can’t help but wonder if Hunt is telling the truth. It wouldn’t make sense for Cristina to lie to Hunt about the events that had occurred, especially if it was only going to make him angry.
Unless she was lying to get out of their marriage.
“I’m sure that she was simply tired of dealing with your questions.”
Owen sneers, “I’m sure that somebody is lying here and I don’t think it’s her.”
Burke wishes that she wasn’t the one lying but he knows that Hunt wouldn’t have backed off unless Cristina gave him good reason to, and infidelity would be more than good reason. He tries to tell himself that it doesn’t matter but he can’t help but wonder how much of what’s happened to them in the past weeks have been real and how much of it has been a rouse to get rid of Hunt.
“Dr. Hunt, as I said before, if you don’t have a patient that needs my attention, this conversation is done.”
“Fine,” Owen mutters, “she’s your problem now. Word to the wise, Dr. Burke, she’s not worth it. She never has been and she never will be.”
“If that’s how you feel, then you’ve never known Cristina,” Burke answers evenly, his fists clenched in his pocket.
“I know enough. You should ask her how she feels about you. How you took her apart and tried to change who she was,” he persists, “actually, I find it funny that she’s sleeping with you now. She’s never had much of anything good to say about your relationship.”
The words only pile onto Burke’s doubts and the logic that she was using him to get rid of Hunt suddenly seems to be a more accurate possibility. He wants to believe that the previous night, this morning, would prove differently but everything is a challenge with Cristina and it always has been.
Owen can see the doubt in Burke’s expression and he knows that his job is done. Wordlessly, he leaves the other man standing at the board and turns in the direction of Webber’s office, his resignation in hand. He’s done all the damage that he can do and he’s not going to stick around for Cristina to realize what she’s given up.
--
Cristina drops her tray on the table across from Meredith and it doesn’t even earn the slightest reaction. This little bout of silent treatment has been going on all day and it’s driving Cristina crazy. Now is not the best time for her person to crap out on her. She has things and Meredith is supposed to help her deal with those things.
“Fine. You’re rightish. Whatever.”
Meredith looks up expectantly but doesn’t say a word. If she’s going to speak, she’s going to require some elaboration on Cristina’s words.
“I-“ Cristina pauses, sighs softly, “I have…a thing. For him. Whatever. It’s a stupid permanent thing that won’t go away. I don’t want a lecture about it.”
“Told you,” Meredith mutters, “and like I said before, I don’t want to cut you out of another dress.”
“And I’m telling you that there isn’t going to be another dress.”
“You also said you didn’t have a thing.”
“A thing doesn’t equal a dress,” Cristina points out, pushing her tray away.
“You didn’t eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Meredith eyes her friend, “Look, fine. You have a thing. But there’s still the other thing. You have to talk to him Cristina. Tell him before somebody else does.”
“What am I supposed to say? Hey, Owen thought we slept together and I thought it was a good out? I can’t say that to him. He’ll be…” her voice trails off.
Cristina doesn’t have to finish her sentence for Meredith to understand, “If he runs off because of that, he doesn’t deserve to be here.”
She glances up at Meredith and nods slightly. Maybe Meredith is right but it doesn’t mean that she wants him to leave. She can admit that she has some terminal thing for him and it’s a step. Maybe it’s a step he doesn’t know about but it’s a step nonetheless.
--
The hallway light flickers off as Cristina emerges from the call room with a bag over her shoulder. It’s not going to be a permanent thing. She’s finding her own place because even though she has a thing, she wants to be careful.
She needs to be.
Tonight though, they need to talk. And probably have a replay of the night before because it’s been way too long since she’s been with him and one night was not enough for her at all.
The light is on in his office and she smiles to herself before pushing the door open. He doesn’t look up from the chart he’s working on and doesn’t say anything. She closes the door behind her and walks around to his side of the desk, leaning against it, “You’re not on call tonight.”
“I have work to do.”
Cristina’s well aware of the tone in his voice and what it means. She’s heard it too many times before, though it’s been years since she heard it last, “Work can wait,” she says slowly, “we should go. Eat. Really eat. Not that stuff…well, that stuff too. But we should at least eat dinner first.”
“I can’t tonight.”
“Burke.”
“Cristina,” he answers, putting his pen down, “I’m working. That’s why I came here. It’s why you asked me to come here. To work.”
“Okay, and you’ve obviously forgotten about last night and this morning.”
“Or maybe somebody clarified last night and this morning,” he answers in an icy tone, “or even a couple weeks ago. I forget, exactly how long have we been sleeping together?”
Her blood runs like ice through her veins at the realization that he knows before she can tell him, “I was-“
“What? Using me to erase one of your mistakes?” Burke asks, clearly hurt by her actions.
“I wasn’t trying to, no. It wasn’t- this wasn’t part of my plan, okay? You and me and all of this crap floating to the surface wasn’t my plan.”
“So it was simply convenience that you would use the man who took you apart to take apart your marriage?”
Cristina’s eyes narrow. His words suddenly become clear and she realizes exactly who Burke has been talking to, “Don’t take my words out of context. Don’t use a conversation that you know nothing about against me. That’s not fair.”
“Then maybe you should tell me about that conversation, Cristina. Since it seems that your husband seems to know a great deal about our relationship.”
“Ex-husband. And you know nothing about ours.”
“Enlighten me,” Burke answers, sitting back in his chair, “what about this man is so much better that you felt the need to engage him in a conversation in which you become the victim of our relationship?”
“It wasn’t like that!” Cristina snaps at him, “Look, it was said…it was said in anger. And being hurt or whatever. It wasn’t like you were just brought up randomly in a conversation. And Owen is not better. Owen- I tried to change myself for you. I tried to make you happy and I did things that I wouldn’t have done. Owen, he took advantage of stuff. He wanted things and the price was my career. That’s why I called you. That’s why I wanted you to come back. But it’s not why I want you to stay.”
“Then why not tell me, Cristina? Why run around it? Why tell him that we slept together when you were taking me to the cemetery instead?” Burke asks angrily, “You could have come to me. You could have told me. You didn’t have to lie about it.”
“Because I didn’t mean for any of it to happen! The opportunity presented itself and I took it, okay? You don’t get to be pissed off for that. You walked out on me. You left me in a church. Meredith had to cut me out of a dress that I wore only for you. Your mama came to clean out our apartment. You don’t get to be pissed off because I started a rumor that we slept together, I don’t care what reason it was for.” Cristina rattles off at him, her voice slowly growing more and more angry, “I don’t care if you apologized. You should have never left. Do you know how much would be different if you hadn’t left? My career. My life. Us. The hospital. You walked away, you gave up and I had to pay for it. You deserve a hell of a lot more than a rumor.”
“It doesn’t make it right, Cristina!”
Cristina glares at him and then shakes her head, “You know what? I’m not even going to apologize. It won’t matter. You’ll be gone tomorrow.”
Burke doesn’t even have an opportunity to answer the accusation because she walks out of his office before he can. He finds himself staring at the door, a mixture of anger and regret running through him.
There has to be a way to make it right, he simply doesn’t know if he wants to.
--
Cristina lies back on the couch and drapes her arm over her eyes, “I should have made him get out of my house. At least then I wouldn’t have to sit here and listen to Zola scream all night.”
Derek smirks slightly, “You could have slept at the hospital.”
“No,” she mutters, “I couldn’t have. Why does Meredith have to sleep? Why do you have to stay up?”
“Because Meredith,” he answers, shifting Zola to his opposite arm in a feeble attempt to bounce her more, “has an important surgery in the morning and so I volunteered since I do not.”
Cristina makes a sour face, “Can’t you…take her somewhere? Do something with her? Meredith will never sleep with the screaming baby.”
“You could just go back to your house and ask Dr. Hunt to leave if you want to sleep. Or get a hotel room. You don’t have to come here, you know.”
“Yes,” she throws back at him sarcastically, “I do.”
Derek watches Cristina carefully for a moment, “I probably won’t sleep tonight. Why don’t you just go up there with Meredith? I’ll try to keep her quiet.”
Cristina lifts her arm to look at Derek, “You’re not serious.”
“Does it look like she’s sleeping?”
The answer is an obvious no and Cristina doesn’t hesitate before getting up and heading up the stairs. She stops about halfway and then looks back down at Derek, “Thanks. I guess.”
Despite the low light, Cristina can see Meredith’s eyes wide open when she steps inside their room. She drops her hoodie on the end of the bed and slides into the bed next to Meredith, “Derek said you were sleeping.”
“How is anybody supposed to sleep when their kid screams all night?” Meredith asks tiredly, “I thought you were going to Burke’s tonight.”
“Yeah, well, things change. Whatever.”
Meredith senses the bitterness in her friend’s voice and she turns over, “I guess the talk didn’t go so well.”
“He found out before I could tell him. Owen.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
She stifles a yawn before she starts to speak again, “Maybe he’ll get over it. I mean, it’s not like he doesn’t owe you one anyway.”
“I know. But it’s Burke. I’ll probably go to work on Tuesday and he won’t even be there.”
“Tuesday? Why not tomorrow?” Meredith asks, furrowing her brow.
“I have an appointment to file papers. For the annulment and all that. And I have to try to get rid of the stupid house. Or at least get my name off the papers,” Cristina groans, “all the stupid stuff. And we know how fast Burke is. He’ll decide to go.”
“Just because of a rumor? I don’t think he will.”
“Oh no. It’s a lot more than a rumor. Owen told him…stuff.”
“Stuff?” Meredith asks, “That’s all I get?”
Cristina shakes her head, shifts in the bed to get comfortable, “I don’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it with him. It was a rumor and now it’s just a pile of crap. And it’s crap that he’s not going to stick around for because it’s Burke.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“At least you won’t have to cut me out of a dress.”
“I thought you said there wouldn’t be a dress,” Meredith mumbles, noting that Zola has actually quieted.
“There was a thing. Maybe there wouldn’t be a dress. But there was a thing,” Cristina says sadly.
Meredith scoots closer to Cristina and wraps an arm around her, “Come on. We should sleep. We have long days tomorrow.”
Cristina nods slightly and closes her eyes.
She knows that it will be a lot more than tomorrow that’s long.
--
Meredith covers her mouth with the back of her hand as she fights back another yawn. The surgery was enough to keep her awake but now she can barely keep her eyes open and she has another seven hours to go before she can even think about going home.
She examines the board for a procedure that’s at least half the length to help the day go by more quickly but she comes up with nothing and she groans to herself. There’s no way she’ll be able to get in more than thirty minutes in a call room and she knows that she probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep because she’d be too focused on what time she doesn’t have left.
After a long and tiring mental debate with herself, Meredith decides to head towards the coffee cart but finds her path disrupted.
“Where’s Cristina?” A voice asks behind her.
“Do I look like her babysitter?” Meredith asks in a cross tone, continuing on her path to caffeine.
“Grey, I don’t have time for this right now.”
“I don’t have time for this either, Dr. Burke. I need coffee. It’s been a long day,” she answers, keeping up the rouse.
“I need to talk to her.”
“Then you should have thought about that before you threw Owen’s crap in her face last night. You deserve way worse than what she gave you. Way worse.”
Burke sighs, knowing he’s probably not going to get anywhere with her, “Meredith.”
Meredith stops and turns to look at him, “I cut her out of a dress. I watched her operate with a gun held to her head. I laid on the floor of an OR with her. I watched her marry some guy when she was like a zombie and then I watched him fuck up her career. And it all started when I had to cut her out of the goddamn dress. You deserve so much worse than what she gave you.”
His brow furrows at Meredith’s words, “A gun- what are you talking about?”
“If you want to know, you ask her. Don’t go off of my words,” she answers coldly and turns around to walk away.
Burke follows her, “I could talk to her if you tell me where she’s at.”
Meredith stops one last time, “She’s trying to get rid of her house, okay? She’s there. She’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow isn’t good enough. I need to know where she’s at now. How do I get there?”
--
Cristina sits on the edge of the stairs, looking at the cleaned out place. At least he saved her the hassle of dealing with packing crap up because she wasn’t in the mood. There were a couple boxes, pictures and crap that he’d insisted on taking and now left behind. She dumped them in the trash without looking at them an hour ago and shuffled through the clothes she’d left behind.
A knock at the door drew her attention from her thoughts and she stood up, “It’s about damn time. I’ve been waiting for you to get here for like three hours.” She calls out to the door before she opens it. When she sees Burke, she drops her hands to her sides, “I’m busy.”
“Busy waiting?” He asks, stepping inside and glancing around. The place doesn’t look anything like her but it doesn’t surprise him in the least.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Cristina,” he says gently, alert to the hostility in her tone already. He closes the door behind him and follows her up the stairs, “we need to talk.”
“What? Trying to pass the time before your flight?”
“Cristina.”
“Couldn’t get one today?”
“Cristina.”
She turns to look at him, “What? What do you want? I’m trying to do things.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“And yet the only thing you’re saying is my name,” she mutters, sitting at the top of the stairs once more.
Burke sits next to her, rests his elbows on his knees, “Tell me what happened after I left. Everything that happened.”
Cristina looks over at him, “I thought you were the one talking. That’s not talking, that’s asking me things that I don’t want to talk about. At all.”
“We need to talk about it,” his voice is low, almost calming, “I intend to stay. Forever. And every time we get into a fight, you say that I’ll deserve it for leaving and I don’t know what happened when I left. So, tell me what happened so I can just accept the fact that I deserve it otherwise you’re going to have to find a better reason.”
“Why can’t you just accept that it’s your fault and get over it?” She asks and there’s a hint of a smile that only he would be able to see but he doesn’t recognize it aloud for fear of the smile fading.
“We could,” he answers, sliding an arm around her shoulders and pausing to kiss the top of her head, “but then you wouldn’t be able to make me feel like an ass whenever you wanted.”
“I don’t need a sob story to do that.”
“Cristina,” he murmurs gently.
“Fine,” she answers, “whatever. But not right now. Right now you can just assume you’re an ass until I tell you differently.”
Burke smiles and brushes his lips over her forehead once more, “Alright. I’m an ass.”
It’s not exactly what he’d pictured but it was a start and a start was the only thing he could ask for. And maybe much more than what he deserved.
--
It takes her almost eleven months, ten months and two and a half weeks to be exact, to tell him everything. She told him about Owen first, the PTSD and the marriage, but left her PTSD out of the story. After a few more weeks, she told him about Gary Clark and the day that changed her, how she quit being a surgeon but how she could never truly quit being a surgeon. She saved for their marriage, the one that never happened, for last.
Cristina remembers telling him that it wasn’t as traumatic as a gun being held to her head, she’s not saying that, but it’s the reason that she’ll always have trouble fully trusting him. It’s not that she doesn’t want to, it isn’t that she won’t, it’s that she physically cannot stop thinking that there’s a day and a time where he may change his mind and leave again.
There was bad before he left, but the worst was after he was gone.
--
Cristina has been quiet lately.
Burke watches her intently across the table as she works, moving the suction catheter when she asks him to. They’ve worked like this for a while, Cristina performing the surgeries and Burke there for assistance if he’s needed.
She needs him less every day and the day is quickly coming where she won’t need him at all and he’s worried about that, worried about what will happen to them.
Even if things had occurred, even if she had said that she’d never trust him, they’ve still been together. They don’t live together, though sometimes it may seem that way, but their lives were definitely intertwined in an intricate way. He loves her and he’s told her so. She loves him too.
She just doesn’t trust him.
He stands back when she closes, watches her meticulous work and knows it’s only a matter of time before his name is forgotten. Once upon a time, he suspects that it would have probably bothered him but Burke has a different perspective on things now and he’s proud of her.
Once she closes, they walk into the scrub room, his arm casually nudging hers with a slight grin hidden beneath his mask. She’s always in her best moods after surgery and now is not an exception. Cristina nudges him back in the side, much harder than he initiated and he winces slightly.
“I don’t think I deserved that,” he comments after he pulled his mask off.
“You always deserve it,” right now it’s a joke but sometimes she’s serious. Cristina knows that she can have a tendency to abuse it sometimes too, but he lets her.
“I deserve a lot of things,” he answers, his voice suggestive, “I gave up my surgery this morning.”
Cristina glances up at him as she dries her hands, “And what? I’m supposed to give you sex because you gave me your surgery? Does that make me a surgical prostitute?”
Burke merely grins and shrugs, slides his hand along her hip after he pulls her to him, “If the gloves fit.”
“I could tell you no,” Cristina says weakly, especially after her back is pressed to the corner of the scrub room, well out of sight of anybody who may walk into the OR.
“You could,” Burke answers, dipping his head to kiss her neck. His hand starts at her arm, moves down her side and pauses at her breast for only a moment to tease the sensitive flesh covered by her scrubs and a thin bra before traveling lower, “but you won’t,” he utters against her ear as his hand slides into her panties, fingers rubbing her clit teasingly.
Cristina grips his shoulders tightly as he teases her, her legs already trembling beneath her. His fingers slip inside her, one and then two, deep and hard. He teases her clit with his thumb, driven by the little noises that she’s trying so desperately to bite back. His lips trail up from her neck to find hers and he kisses her passionately, as if it’s been weeks since he had her rather than hours.
If anything, he’s learned to never take her, this, for granted.
She comes quickly, unraveling in his arms but he continues to work his fingers inside her until she’s nearly pushing him away, her body overwhelmed by his teasing. She smiles breathlessly against his lips, coming down from the high. Before she can return the favor though, her pager goes off at her waist. Cristina looks at Burke apologetically, “Later?”
“Most definitely,” he answers, kisses her briefly.
There’s no way he’d turn that offer down.
--
“I told you to page me at 10:00,” Cristina groans, “I had fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes is plenty of time to-“
“I don’t want to hear about it,” Meredith says, holding her hand up, “at all. You can just stop talking.”
Cristina smirks, “It’s not my fault you decided to get all domestic and have no sex.”
“I still can’t believe you have sex in the scrub room. That’s just…dangerous. What if somebody walks in?”
“It’s our OR,” Cristina shrugs, “our scrub room. Nobody uses it except for cardio, nobody has a reason to go in the scrub room. And it’s isolated.”
“Better than a vent, I guess,” Meredith quips, pulling to a stop in front of Cristina’s apartment complex, “You’re sure you want to do this? I mean, you’ve said it yourself that you don’t really trust him. You could just keep things the way they are now.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust him, I just-“ Cristina tries to find a way to explain it but words fail her, “I’m sure that I want to do this.”
“Fine. But you’re the one kicking Derek out of bed if it doesn’t work out. He gets pissed off when I do.”
--
Somewhere in the past few years, Burke decides, that Cristina formulated a different definition of later than the one he had learned. Later to him was an hour, two tops, especially in matters that involved little to no clothing. However, he hadn’t seen Cristina for the rest of the day, nor had he heard from her.
He opens the door to his apartment, calls out her name and then hears the shower running. He grimaces, knowing that she will have used up all the hot water and heads towards the bathroom, “Whatever happened to later?” He calls out, tugging his shirt over his head.
“I got tied up.”
“And you couldn’t shower at your own place when you were all tied up?” He prods, kicking his pants off of his legs before joining her.
Cristina smiles to herself but doesn’t tell him just yet. If she tells him now, he’ll ask questions and get all distracted from what he should be doing, “Hot water is overrated.”
“That’s not what you say when I beat you to the shower in the morning,” he answers, stepping into the shower and wrapping his arms around her from behind.
“Different principle. You’re the one who chooses to get all sweaty and disgusting. You should enjoy cold showers after that,” she murmurs, thrusting her hips back into his.
Burke grips her hips, already aroused; “Now you’re going to tell me what I should enjoy?”
Her hands slide over his, guide him downward over her abdomen, “No, I’m going to show you what you can enjoy if you quit complaining.”
Cristina’s message is heard loud and clear. Burke trails his lips over her shoulder from behind, teases her gently, her hands still urging on. He rubs against her eagerly, groans when she thrusts her hips back once more, teasing him. Unable to resist his need anymore, he pushes her towards the wall of the shower, eases her legs apart just enough to ease into her from behind.
Curling her fingertips into his arm, Cristina moans and whimpers as he moves, as he teases her clit. The day as taken its toll on him and she can tell, his thrusts are hard and unforgiving, derivatives of need after Meredith’s early interruption this morning. Despite the fact that she wants to hold on, that she wants more, Cristina lets go easily, clenches around him and feels him let go inside of her.
He kisses her shoulder, holds her against him, “I know that you say you cannot trust me,” he murmurs against her skin, “and I’m to blame for that. But I love you and I’m not going anywhere.”
She turns her head to look at him, turns in his arms to lock her eyes with him, “Yeah. I know.”
It’s a small victory, but one that Burke will take.
--
Cristina stretches out on the couch and glances around. She never really told Burke that she moved in but she thinks he’s figured it out now that her mail as transferred. Or that he’s in the process of figuring it out. He blinks at the pile of mail in his hands and then glances up at her, peering over thick black glasses, “Your mail is here.”
“Yeah.”
“And your stuff is here.”
“Yeah.”
The corner of his mouth turns up slightly, “I don’t recall asking you if you wanted to move in.”
Cristina bites back a grin, “Oh, I can go if you want me to.”
Burke pretends as if it’s a pained decision, “Well, it’s done now.”
“No, really, I can move back out if you want me to,” she says, sitting up, “I mean, it wouldn’t be that hard to pack up all my stuff. The mail might still come for a while. It took forever to get moved to the right address anyway.”
“Should I assume that there’s no other apartment involved in this deal?”
“It’s been gone for about two weeks,” she confirms.
He grins at the confirmation and sits on the couch next to her. Burke pulls his glasses from his face and drops them on the coffee table before stretching out next to her, “Good.”
Cristina runs her fingertips along his jaw, “Yeah.”
There are other things he wants to ask her but he bites back the questions. If anything he’s learned to let her take her time, let Cristina make the steps on her own. They’ll always have the past but he likes to think they’ve both learned from it and that they can only continue to grow.
No matter how long it takes.
The lobby of the hospital is quiet and Cristina finds comfort in that. This hospital is her first true love and even moreso when it’s not muddled with curious family members and children screaming within its walls. She sinks into one of the chairs just at the bottom of the stairwell and closes her eyes.
She just needs to think and she can’t. The feeling is that of suffocating, thoughts have never been a problem, thinking has never been an issue- usually she can’t shut her mind off.
A set of hands slide gently over her shoulders and she knows that it’s Burke. Her eyes open slowly but she doesn’t look up, “If you’re doing what I think you’re going to do, keep going.”
A grin tugs at his lips and he massages gently at the tense muscles along her shoulders, “I was going to ask if you need a place to stay tonight.”
“The hospital-“
“It has beds. But you need to get out of here every once in a while. Eat something besides take out,” he interrupts.
“You mean live outside the four walls of the hospital?” She smiles faintly.
“I know that your career is everything but if you stay here long enough, you may hate the place,” he answers, his fingers sliding down her shoulders, “come home with me.”
Cristina’s hand slides over his and she stops the movement there, “And do what?”
“Live outside the four walls of the hospital.”
Silence lingers between them for a moment and she lets go of his hand to stand up. Cristina slides her bag over her shoulder and reaches out to take his hand when he offers it. They’re not a thing, except they could easily become one again. In these moments, the ones where he seems to know her more than she would prefer, she thinks it would be so easy to let go.
--
Owen watches from a distance as Cristina walks hand in hand with the man who destroyed their relationship and he scowls. He knows that it’s a waste of time to give a damn about what’s going through her head or even remotely caring about what she’s done to them but he can’t help himself. It was her stubbornness that brought them down, her selfishness that got in the way of their relationship and he knows that there was nothing he could have done differently, except avoid the relationship all together.
Cristina had never been the giving type, the type of woman who cares about something other than herself. He thought one day she may grow up, that she may grow out of her childish ways.
He simply found out the hard way that his hopes were not founded.
Owen knew better and he let it happen anyway.
The car disappears from his sight and he turns to look at the hospital, fingers laced behind his head as he tries to contemplate his next move. Though he’s almost always known Seattle to be home, there’s nothing left here for him. He could stay and fight for Cristina but he knows that she isn’t worth the fight.
She never has been.
--
“That’s clearly cheating,” Cristina smirks, sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter as Burke busies himself with their dinner.
“I wasn’t aware that we’re playing a game, Dr. Yang,” his voice is vaguely laced with suggestion and despite her best efforts, she can’t ignore it.
“We’re always playing a game,” she retorts and steals a pepper from the pile of neatly sliced vegetables he’s laid out.
“Maybe we should quit playing then.”
Cristina leans back on her palms, studying him closely, “Where’s the fun in that?” It’s her turn to let suggestion lace her voice, and her body language.
The effort is certainly not lost on him.
“There’s plenty of fun to be had outside of your little game.”
“Our game. We already established that it’s mutual.”
Burke grins, taking in the arch of her back as she leans back, “I could just be playing along.”
“You’d have to know the rules to play along.”
“I can improvise,” he answers, this time his voice is low and their dinner has been long abandoned, but carefully removed from the burner, and he’s standing between her knees, his body painfully close to hers.
“What if I don’t allow for improvisation?” Cristina asks, her voice just as low. She sits up so her chest is pressed to his and her fingertips are tracing up his defined arms.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing it’s our game,” Burke murmurs before he dips his head to kiss her gently.
Cristina edges towards the end of the counter until she’s firmly pressed against him, her legs wrapped around the back of his. Her lips part slightly and their tongues meet, the kiss growing more desperate and her hips begin to grind lightly against his. She’s aware of what she’s doing to him, what she’s doing to herself, and she has no intention of stopping.
Part of it’s because she simply wants this. She wants him, aches to have him inside her. There’s the lessor reasoning that if they sleep together and he hears people talking about it, then he’ll never figure out the truth.
Burke’s fingers curl around the bottom of her shirt and he lifts it up and over her head, discarding it carelessly in the direction of the refrigerator. His shirt follows suit, along with her bra and his belt but they remain fixed in the kitchen. He guides her back gently just enough to spread kisses down her neck as his hands glide up her sides, to her breasts, the rough pads of his thumbs finding her nipples and teasing them. He’s hard now, almost painfully so, and the way she’s rocking against him isn’t helping.
Cristina smiles against his neck when he utters her name in such a strained voice. She drops her hands between them and unzips his jeans, eases them away from his hips just enough to run her hand over him through his boxers. Her hand moves upward, fingertips dipping inside his boxers to brush against him and he curses under his breath and she wraps her hand around him them, stroking firmly.
“Keep doing that,” he manages through gritted teeth, “and we’ll be done before we’ve started.”
“I have faith in you,” she purrs against his ear before she pushes him forward enough to slip off the counter and then turns them so he’s the one against the counter. She drops to her knees in front of him, dragging his pants and boxers down his legs as she goes. She looks up at him with wide eyes and the slightest of grins at the expression painted across his face, one of profound arousal and pain, and then she drags her tongue over his length.
Another whispered curse escapes his lips and this time his hand tangles into her ebony curls, gripping just lightly.
It’s the simple things that she missed, the way she can make him use four letter words that would make him visibly cringe under normal circumstances, the way that he’s gripping the counter, the way he looks at her like she’s the only thing that’s ever mattered to him.
Cristina swirls her tongue around him, hand firmly stroking what she can’t reach with her mouth. He tugs ever so slightly on her hair and he tenses and she smiles to herself when she comes. She drags her tongue over him, proud of the way he jerks when she flicks her tongue against the sensitive skin of his head.
Burke guides her back to her feet before moving his hands to her waist and quickly ridding her of the last shreds of clothing on her body. He lifts her easily into his arms and wraps her legs around him. While the kitchen was a good arena for foreplay, he needs more space to do everything he wants to do to her. The bedroom seems so incredibly far from the kitchen at this point, especially when he can feel how hot she is against his lower abdomen, causing him to twitch with arousal once more.
When they finally make it to the bedroom, he lays her back on the bed, crawling over her body, hips grinding into hers as he kisses her lavishly. His lips trail over her neck and shoulders to her sternum. His fingers are teasing her inner thigh, so painfully far from where she wants him to be and she whimpers each time his fingers brush closer and closer to her center but then withdraw.
She tries to raise her hips to guide him in the right direction but he’s holding her down and it gets her even hotter. Again she whimpers, murmurs his name in a broken voice, she’s wet and aching for him to touch her, to push inside her and stretch her deliciously.
And he’s intent on taking his damn time.
It’s her fault for giving him a blow job, she should have saved it for later. If she would have just fucked him first then she wouldn’t have to deal with- she stops thinking when he plunges two fingers inside her, hard and deep, causing her hips to jerk and for her to cry out. His mouth abandons the delightful thing they were doing to her breasts and moves down the concave of her abdomen to her clit. He teases her with the tip of his tongue, circling the swollen bud before enclosing his lips around it completely. Her eyes widen and then squeeze tight as he teases her, sucks on the tender flesh and bites gently. He never lets up between the long and rough strokes of his fingers and his talented tongue and teeth teasing her clit and she falls apart beneath him quickly.
Cristina’s tight around his fingers and Burke knows he should wait for her to relax but she’s too much to resist. He removes his fingers while she’s still quaking around him, her body trembling ever so slightly beneath his, and he moves to slip inside her. Her walls are unforgiving around him and he groans as he tries to ease into her. Her whimpers turn into soft moans and she keeps her body steady beneath his despite her body’s overwhelming urge to shy away slightly.
There’s something to be said for size differences.
Burke continues to push into her until he’s all in, and he pauses there, both of them lost to the ecstasy of the moment. Her lips brush his and their fingers knot over her head and then slowly, he starts to move, withdrawing almost every bit of his rigid length before easing it back into her again. They move like this for a while, slow and gentle, experiencing and enjoying each other, before need takes over.
Their gentle movements turn frantic and his slow thrusts become harder, faster, unforgiving. Moans turn to cries and Cristina can feel herself starting to lose it. Her hand slips between them, moving to where they meet, and she flicks her fingertips across her clit until he pushes her hand away and takes over himself.
“Control issues?” she teases breathlessly but then her words dissolve as she does, body shaking and overwhelmed by orgasm.
Unable to hold back anymore, Burke’s hip snaps into hers with and he comes inside her, hissing her name as he does. The air is hot around them and their skin slick with sweat but neither have a desire to pull away from each other. There was more than one reason that Cristina had decided to do this but now she can’t remember. The only thing she can think of is how they should have never ended and how much she hates him for walking away.
--
The smell of coffee lifts her from a comfortable sleep and Cristina shifts slightly in the bed, expecting to find him gone but he’s still there, arm securely wrapped around her, “So you’ve mastered being in two places at once?” she mumbles tiredly, her body curling into his.
“Something like that,” he smirks, his voice still deep with sleep. His lips brush her forehead and his hand traces the small of her back, “we have an early surgery. I figured the coffee would at least help.”
“Sleep would have helped more,” she teases him gently, not that she would have traded an ounce of sleep for the night they had. Cristina lifts her head and looks at him with darkened eyes, “how early?”
“Not that early,” he murmurs before claiming her lips and simultaneously lifting her on top of him.
--
“Where were you all night?”
Cristina glances up from her chart, “What do you mean where was I?”
Meredith looks at her doubtfully, “You know what I mean. Where were you? I tried to call you three different times.”
Three different times usually translates to about sixteen for Meredith and Cristina is glad that her phone was legitimately dead, “I forgot to charge my phone.”
“That’s what phone chargers are for.”
“I left it here,” Cristina answers automatically and then inwardly flinches.
“Told you that you were somewhere,” Meredith says, her finger pointed at Cristina, “and I know exactly where you were. Cristina Yang.”
“What?”
“You’re married.”
“I’m separated and filing for an annulment,” Cristina corrects her, picking up the chart.
“I told you that you were falling for him again.”
“Did I say that I was?”
“No, but you slept with him,” she mutters, “it’s close enough. You’re going to get yourself into this crap again and I’m going to be the one that has to cut you out of the dress. I don’t want to cut you out of another dress, Cristina.”
“You’re not. I’m not wearing another dress. Quit being melodramatic,” Cristina waves dismissively, “I’m getting out of one marriage. I’m not interested in another one. And I’m not letting things get out of hand. It’s sex, Meredith. Did you marry every guy you ever slept with?”
“I’d feel a lot more comfortable with it if you slept around like I did. You don’t.”
“Who said I can’t start?”
“Interesting choice to start with.”
Cristina looks up at her, “Look. Everybody around her is saying we slept together. If Burke hears about it, now he won’t question it. We slept together. Whatever.”
Meredith looks at her doubtfully, “That is not why you slept with him.”
“It could be,” Cristina shrugs and snaps her chart closed, “we have surgery.”
“Are you going to sleep with him again?”
“Why? Do you need a schedule?”
“Cristina.”
“What? You’re being all whatever about this and you don’t need to be. I’m a big girl. I know what I’m doing,” Cristina mutters, “I know what I’m getting myself into. Or not getting myself into.”
“Fine,” Meredith answers to Cristina’s back as she disappears down the hallway. She can tell that Cristina has no idea what she’s getting herself into just by the way she gets defensive talking about it. Meredith just doesn’t know how to convince Cristina that it’s a bad idea.
--
Owen glares at Burke from the opposite end of the board, clenches his fist at his side. He’s been resisting the urge to punch the man for at least a month, but that urge has resolved. He doesn’t want to hurt Burke. He doesn’t have any desire to hurt the man.
The desire is to hurt Cristina.
“I can see how you couldn’t stay away,” Owen remarks dryly, “she’s a good screw, isn’t she?”
Burke’s eyebrow arches high on his forehead but he doesn’t respond.
“She’s the first thing I’d want to do in Seattle,” Owen continues, “regardless of whether or not she belonged to somebody else.”
“Cristina,” Burke finally answers, “is not a belonging.”
“She was my wife.”
“I believe that was is the operative word here.”
“It wasn’t until you screwed her.”
Burke shakes his head, “I believe that you’ve gotten your facts wrong. Regardless of the reasoning, however, Cristina made her decision. Unless you have a patient with cardiac trauma or an issue that needs to be addressed by cardiothoracics, I believe this discussion is over.”
“I saw the two of you with my own eyes. I know that my facts aren’t wrong,” Owen growls, “I saw you, coming back to the hospital that morning, both of you. We were happy.”
“What morning?” Burke knows better than to bait him but he can’t help himself.
“Don’t play stupid with me. I’m a surgeon here. I’m exactly aware of what being on call is in this hospital. It’s obvious what you were doing, what your intentions are. I’ve seen right through them since the moment you got here.”
Burke’s brow furrows as he thinks back and then he realizes, “O’Malley.”
“What?”
“George O’Malley. Cristina took me to the cemetery. I hadn’t heard about his passing. O’Malley and I, we were friends. She took me to his grave so I could say goodbye.”
Owen studies the man responsible for shattering his life and realizes that he may not be responsible at all, “And before that?”
“We were here. Working on a case,” Burke answers warily, “nothing happened.”
“That’s not what happened if you ask Cristina.”
Burke tries to ignore the words but can’t help but wonder if Hunt is telling the truth. It wouldn’t make sense for Cristina to lie to Hunt about the events that had occurred, especially if it was only going to make him angry.
Unless she was lying to get out of their marriage.
“I’m sure that she was simply tired of dealing with your questions.”
Owen sneers, “I’m sure that somebody is lying here and I don’t think it’s her.”
Burke wishes that she wasn’t the one lying but he knows that Hunt wouldn’t have backed off unless Cristina gave him good reason to, and infidelity would be more than good reason. He tries to tell himself that it doesn’t matter but he can’t help but wonder how much of what’s happened to them in the past weeks have been real and how much of it has been a rouse to get rid of Hunt.
“Dr. Hunt, as I said before, if you don’t have a patient that needs my attention, this conversation is done.”
“Fine,” Owen mutters, “she’s your problem now. Word to the wise, Dr. Burke, she’s not worth it. She never has been and she never will be.”
“If that’s how you feel, then you’ve never known Cristina,” Burke answers evenly, his fists clenched in his pocket.
“I know enough. You should ask her how she feels about you. How you took her apart and tried to change who she was,” he persists, “actually, I find it funny that she’s sleeping with you now. She’s never had much of anything good to say about your relationship.”
The words only pile onto Burke’s doubts and the logic that she was using him to get rid of Hunt suddenly seems to be a more accurate possibility. He wants to believe that the previous night, this morning, would prove differently but everything is a challenge with Cristina and it always has been.
Owen can see the doubt in Burke’s expression and he knows that his job is done. Wordlessly, he leaves the other man standing at the board and turns in the direction of Webber’s office, his resignation in hand. He’s done all the damage that he can do and he’s not going to stick around for Cristina to realize what she’s given up.
--
Cristina drops her tray on the table across from Meredith and it doesn’t even earn the slightest reaction. This little bout of silent treatment has been going on all day and it’s driving Cristina crazy. Now is not the best time for her person to crap out on her. She has things and Meredith is supposed to help her deal with those things.
“Fine. You’re rightish. Whatever.”
Meredith looks up expectantly but doesn’t say a word. If she’s going to speak, she’s going to require some elaboration on Cristina’s words.
“I-“ Cristina pauses, sighs softly, “I have…a thing. For him. Whatever. It’s a stupid permanent thing that won’t go away. I don’t want a lecture about it.”
“Told you,” Meredith mutters, “and like I said before, I don’t want to cut you out of another dress.”
“And I’m telling you that there isn’t going to be another dress.”
“You also said you didn’t have a thing.”
“A thing doesn’t equal a dress,” Cristina points out, pushing her tray away.
“You didn’t eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Meredith eyes her friend, “Look, fine. You have a thing. But there’s still the other thing. You have to talk to him Cristina. Tell him before somebody else does.”
“What am I supposed to say? Hey, Owen thought we slept together and I thought it was a good out? I can’t say that to him. He’ll be…” her voice trails off.
Cristina doesn’t have to finish her sentence for Meredith to understand, “If he runs off because of that, he doesn’t deserve to be here.”
She glances up at Meredith and nods slightly. Maybe Meredith is right but it doesn’t mean that she wants him to leave. She can admit that she has some terminal thing for him and it’s a step. Maybe it’s a step he doesn’t know about but it’s a step nonetheless.
--
The hallway light flickers off as Cristina emerges from the call room with a bag over her shoulder. It’s not going to be a permanent thing. She’s finding her own place because even though she has a thing, she wants to be careful.
She needs to be.
Tonight though, they need to talk. And probably have a replay of the night before because it’s been way too long since she’s been with him and one night was not enough for her at all.
The light is on in his office and she smiles to herself before pushing the door open. He doesn’t look up from the chart he’s working on and doesn’t say anything. She closes the door behind her and walks around to his side of the desk, leaning against it, “You’re not on call tonight.”
“I have work to do.”
Cristina’s well aware of the tone in his voice and what it means. She’s heard it too many times before, though it’s been years since she heard it last, “Work can wait,” she says slowly, “we should go. Eat. Really eat. Not that stuff…well, that stuff too. But we should at least eat dinner first.”
“I can’t tonight.”
“Burke.”
“Cristina,” he answers, putting his pen down, “I’m working. That’s why I came here. It’s why you asked me to come here. To work.”
“Okay, and you’ve obviously forgotten about last night and this morning.”
“Or maybe somebody clarified last night and this morning,” he answers in an icy tone, “or even a couple weeks ago. I forget, exactly how long have we been sleeping together?”
Her blood runs like ice through her veins at the realization that he knows before she can tell him, “I was-“
“What? Using me to erase one of your mistakes?” Burke asks, clearly hurt by her actions.
“I wasn’t trying to, no. It wasn’t- this wasn’t part of my plan, okay? You and me and all of this crap floating to the surface wasn’t my plan.”
“So it was simply convenience that you would use the man who took you apart to take apart your marriage?”
Cristina’s eyes narrow. His words suddenly become clear and she realizes exactly who Burke has been talking to, “Don’t take my words out of context. Don’t use a conversation that you know nothing about against me. That’s not fair.”
“Then maybe you should tell me about that conversation, Cristina. Since it seems that your husband seems to know a great deal about our relationship.”
“Ex-husband. And you know nothing about ours.”
“Enlighten me,” Burke answers, sitting back in his chair, “what about this man is so much better that you felt the need to engage him in a conversation in which you become the victim of our relationship?”
“It wasn’t like that!” Cristina snaps at him, “Look, it was said…it was said in anger. And being hurt or whatever. It wasn’t like you were just brought up randomly in a conversation. And Owen is not better. Owen- I tried to change myself for you. I tried to make you happy and I did things that I wouldn’t have done. Owen, he took advantage of stuff. He wanted things and the price was my career. That’s why I called you. That’s why I wanted you to come back. But it’s not why I want you to stay.”
“Then why not tell me, Cristina? Why run around it? Why tell him that we slept together when you were taking me to the cemetery instead?” Burke asks angrily, “You could have come to me. You could have told me. You didn’t have to lie about it.”
“Because I didn’t mean for any of it to happen! The opportunity presented itself and I took it, okay? You don’t get to be pissed off for that. You walked out on me. You left me in a church. Meredith had to cut me out of a dress that I wore only for you. Your mama came to clean out our apartment. You don’t get to be pissed off because I started a rumor that we slept together, I don’t care what reason it was for.” Cristina rattles off at him, her voice slowly growing more and more angry, “I don’t care if you apologized. You should have never left. Do you know how much would be different if you hadn’t left? My career. My life. Us. The hospital. You walked away, you gave up and I had to pay for it. You deserve a hell of a lot more than a rumor.”
“It doesn’t make it right, Cristina!”
Cristina glares at him and then shakes her head, “You know what? I’m not even going to apologize. It won’t matter. You’ll be gone tomorrow.”
Burke doesn’t even have an opportunity to answer the accusation because she walks out of his office before he can. He finds himself staring at the door, a mixture of anger and regret running through him.
There has to be a way to make it right, he simply doesn’t know if he wants to.
--
Cristina lies back on the couch and drapes her arm over her eyes, “I should have made him get out of my house. At least then I wouldn’t have to sit here and listen to Zola scream all night.”
Derek smirks slightly, “You could have slept at the hospital.”
“No,” she mutters, “I couldn’t have. Why does Meredith have to sleep? Why do you have to stay up?”
“Because Meredith,” he answers, shifting Zola to his opposite arm in a feeble attempt to bounce her more, “has an important surgery in the morning and so I volunteered since I do not.”
Cristina makes a sour face, “Can’t you…take her somewhere? Do something with her? Meredith will never sleep with the screaming baby.”
“You could just go back to your house and ask Dr. Hunt to leave if you want to sleep. Or get a hotel room. You don’t have to come here, you know.”
“Yes,” she throws back at him sarcastically, “I do.”
Derek watches Cristina carefully for a moment, “I probably won’t sleep tonight. Why don’t you just go up there with Meredith? I’ll try to keep her quiet.”
Cristina lifts her arm to look at Derek, “You’re not serious.”
“Does it look like she’s sleeping?”
The answer is an obvious no and Cristina doesn’t hesitate before getting up and heading up the stairs. She stops about halfway and then looks back down at Derek, “Thanks. I guess.”
Despite the low light, Cristina can see Meredith’s eyes wide open when she steps inside their room. She drops her hoodie on the end of the bed and slides into the bed next to Meredith, “Derek said you were sleeping.”
“How is anybody supposed to sleep when their kid screams all night?” Meredith asks tiredly, “I thought you were going to Burke’s tonight.”
“Yeah, well, things change. Whatever.”
Meredith senses the bitterness in her friend’s voice and she turns over, “I guess the talk didn’t go so well.”
“He found out before I could tell him. Owen.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
She stifles a yawn before she starts to speak again, “Maybe he’ll get over it. I mean, it’s not like he doesn’t owe you one anyway.”
“I know. But it’s Burke. I’ll probably go to work on Tuesday and he won’t even be there.”
“Tuesday? Why not tomorrow?” Meredith asks, furrowing her brow.
“I have an appointment to file papers. For the annulment and all that. And I have to try to get rid of the stupid house. Or at least get my name off the papers,” Cristina groans, “all the stupid stuff. And we know how fast Burke is. He’ll decide to go.”
“Just because of a rumor? I don’t think he will.”
“Oh no. It’s a lot more than a rumor. Owen told him…stuff.”
“Stuff?” Meredith asks, “That’s all I get?”
Cristina shakes her head, shifts in the bed to get comfortable, “I don’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it with him. It was a rumor and now it’s just a pile of crap. And it’s crap that he’s not going to stick around for because it’s Burke.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“At least you won’t have to cut me out of a dress.”
“I thought you said there wouldn’t be a dress,” Meredith mumbles, noting that Zola has actually quieted.
“There was a thing. Maybe there wouldn’t be a dress. But there was a thing,” Cristina says sadly.
Meredith scoots closer to Cristina and wraps an arm around her, “Come on. We should sleep. We have long days tomorrow.”
Cristina nods slightly and closes her eyes.
She knows that it will be a lot more than tomorrow that’s long.
--
Meredith covers her mouth with the back of her hand as she fights back another yawn. The surgery was enough to keep her awake but now she can barely keep her eyes open and she has another seven hours to go before she can even think about going home.
She examines the board for a procedure that’s at least half the length to help the day go by more quickly but she comes up with nothing and she groans to herself. There’s no way she’ll be able to get in more than thirty minutes in a call room and she knows that she probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep because she’d be too focused on what time she doesn’t have left.
After a long and tiring mental debate with herself, Meredith decides to head towards the coffee cart but finds her path disrupted.
“Where’s Cristina?” A voice asks behind her.
“Do I look like her babysitter?” Meredith asks in a cross tone, continuing on her path to caffeine.
“Grey, I don’t have time for this right now.”
“I don’t have time for this either, Dr. Burke. I need coffee. It’s been a long day,” she answers, keeping up the rouse.
“I need to talk to her.”
“Then you should have thought about that before you threw Owen’s crap in her face last night. You deserve way worse than what she gave you. Way worse.”
Burke sighs, knowing he’s probably not going to get anywhere with her, “Meredith.”
Meredith stops and turns to look at him, “I cut her out of a dress. I watched her operate with a gun held to her head. I laid on the floor of an OR with her. I watched her marry some guy when she was like a zombie and then I watched him fuck up her career. And it all started when I had to cut her out of the goddamn dress. You deserve so much worse than what she gave you.”
His brow furrows at Meredith’s words, “A gun- what are you talking about?”
“If you want to know, you ask her. Don’t go off of my words,” she answers coldly and turns around to walk away.
Burke follows her, “I could talk to her if you tell me where she’s at.”
Meredith stops one last time, “She’s trying to get rid of her house, okay? She’s there. She’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow isn’t good enough. I need to know where she’s at now. How do I get there?”
--
Cristina sits on the edge of the stairs, looking at the cleaned out place. At least he saved her the hassle of dealing with packing crap up because she wasn’t in the mood. There were a couple boxes, pictures and crap that he’d insisted on taking and now left behind. She dumped them in the trash without looking at them an hour ago and shuffled through the clothes she’d left behind.
A knock at the door drew her attention from her thoughts and she stood up, “It’s about damn time. I’ve been waiting for you to get here for like three hours.” She calls out to the door before she opens it. When she sees Burke, she drops her hands to her sides, “I’m busy.”
“Busy waiting?” He asks, stepping inside and glancing around. The place doesn’t look anything like her but it doesn’t surprise him in the least.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Cristina,” he says gently, alert to the hostility in her tone already. He closes the door behind him and follows her up the stairs, “we need to talk.”
“What? Trying to pass the time before your flight?”
“Cristina.”
“Couldn’t get one today?”
“Cristina.”
She turns to look at him, “What? What do you want? I’m trying to do things.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“And yet the only thing you’re saying is my name,” she mutters, sitting at the top of the stairs once more.
Burke sits next to her, rests his elbows on his knees, “Tell me what happened after I left. Everything that happened.”
Cristina looks over at him, “I thought you were the one talking. That’s not talking, that’s asking me things that I don’t want to talk about. At all.”
“We need to talk about it,” his voice is low, almost calming, “I intend to stay. Forever. And every time we get into a fight, you say that I’ll deserve it for leaving and I don’t know what happened when I left. So, tell me what happened so I can just accept the fact that I deserve it otherwise you’re going to have to find a better reason.”
“Why can’t you just accept that it’s your fault and get over it?” She asks and there’s a hint of a smile that only he would be able to see but he doesn’t recognize it aloud for fear of the smile fading.
“We could,” he answers, sliding an arm around her shoulders and pausing to kiss the top of her head, “but then you wouldn’t be able to make me feel like an ass whenever you wanted.”
“I don’t need a sob story to do that.”
“Cristina,” he murmurs gently.
“Fine,” she answers, “whatever. But not right now. Right now you can just assume you’re an ass until I tell you differently.”
Burke smiles and brushes his lips over her forehead once more, “Alright. I’m an ass.”
It’s not exactly what he’d pictured but it was a start and a start was the only thing he could ask for. And maybe much more than what he deserved.
--
It takes her almost eleven months, ten months and two and a half weeks to be exact, to tell him everything. She told him about Owen first, the PTSD and the marriage, but left her PTSD out of the story. After a few more weeks, she told him about Gary Clark and the day that changed her, how she quit being a surgeon but how she could never truly quit being a surgeon. She saved for their marriage, the one that never happened, for last.
Cristina remembers telling him that it wasn’t as traumatic as a gun being held to her head, she’s not saying that, but it’s the reason that she’ll always have trouble fully trusting him. It’s not that she doesn’t want to, it isn’t that she won’t, it’s that she physically cannot stop thinking that there’s a day and a time where he may change his mind and leave again.
There was bad before he left, but the worst was after he was gone.
--
Cristina has been quiet lately.
Burke watches her intently across the table as she works, moving the suction catheter when she asks him to. They’ve worked like this for a while, Cristina performing the surgeries and Burke there for assistance if he’s needed.
She needs him less every day and the day is quickly coming where she won’t need him at all and he’s worried about that, worried about what will happen to them.
Even if things had occurred, even if she had said that she’d never trust him, they’ve still been together. They don’t live together, though sometimes it may seem that way, but their lives were definitely intertwined in an intricate way. He loves her and he’s told her so. She loves him too.
She just doesn’t trust him.
He stands back when she closes, watches her meticulous work and knows it’s only a matter of time before his name is forgotten. Once upon a time, he suspects that it would have probably bothered him but Burke has a different perspective on things now and he’s proud of her.
Once she closes, they walk into the scrub room, his arm casually nudging hers with a slight grin hidden beneath his mask. She’s always in her best moods after surgery and now is not an exception. Cristina nudges him back in the side, much harder than he initiated and he winces slightly.
“I don’t think I deserved that,” he comments after he pulled his mask off.
“You always deserve it,” right now it’s a joke but sometimes she’s serious. Cristina knows that she can have a tendency to abuse it sometimes too, but he lets her.
“I deserve a lot of things,” he answers, his voice suggestive, “I gave up my surgery this morning.”
Cristina glances up at him as she dries her hands, “And what? I’m supposed to give you sex because you gave me your surgery? Does that make me a surgical prostitute?”
Burke merely grins and shrugs, slides his hand along her hip after he pulls her to him, “If the gloves fit.”
“I could tell you no,” Cristina says weakly, especially after her back is pressed to the corner of the scrub room, well out of sight of anybody who may walk into the OR.
“You could,” Burke answers, dipping his head to kiss her neck. His hand starts at her arm, moves down her side and pauses at her breast for only a moment to tease the sensitive flesh covered by her scrubs and a thin bra before traveling lower, “but you won’t,” he utters against her ear as his hand slides into her panties, fingers rubbing her clit teasingly.
Cristina grips his shoulders tightly as he teases her, her legs already trembling beneath her. His fingers slip inside her, one and then two, deep and hard. He teases her clit with his thumb, driven by the little noises that she’s trying so desperately to bite back. His lips trail up from her neck to find hers and he kisses her passionately, as if it’s been weeks since he had her rather than hours.
If anything, he’s learned to never take her, this, for granted.
She comes quickly, unraveling in his arms but he continues to work his fingers inside her until she’s nearly pushing him away, her body overwhelmed by his teasing. She smiles breathlessly against his lips, coming down from the high. Before she can return the favor though, her pager goes off at her waist. Cristina looks at Burke apologetically, “Later?”
“Most definitely,” he answers, kisses her briefly.
There’s no way he’d turn that offer down.
--
“I told you to page me at 10:00,” Cristina groans, “I had fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes is plenty of time to-“
“I don’t want to hear about it,” Meredith says, holding her hand up, “at all. You can just stop talking.”
Cristina smirks, “It’s not my fault you decided to get all domestic and have no sex.”
“I still can’t believe you have sex in the scrub room. That’s just…dangerous. What if somebody walks in?”
“It’s our OR,” Cristina shrugs, “our scrub room. Nobody uses it except for cardio, nobody has a reason to go in the scrub room. And it’s isolated.”
“Better than a vent, I guess,” Meredith quips, pulling to a stop in front of Cristina’s apartment complex, “You’re sure you want to do this? I mean, you’ve said it yourself that you don’t really trust him. You could just keep things the way they are now.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust him, I just-“ Cristina tries to find a way to explain it but words fail her, “I’m sure that I want to do this.”
“Fine. But you’re the one kicking Derek out of bed if it doesn’t work out. He gets pissed off when I do.”
--
Somewhere in the past few years, Burke decides, that Cristina formulated a different definition of later than the one he had learned. Later to him was an hour, two tops, especially in matters that involved little to no clothing. However, he hadn’t seen Cristina for the rest of the day, nor had he heard from her.
He opens the door to his apartment, calls out her name and then hears the shower running. He grimaces, knowing that she will have used up all the hot water and heads towards the bathroom, “Whatever happened to later?” He calls out, tugging his shirt over his head.
“I got tied up.”
“And you couldn’t shower at your own place when you were all tied up?” He prods, kicking his pants off of his legs before joining her.
Cristina smiles to herself but doesn’t tell him just yet. If she tells him now, he’ll ask questions and get all distracted from what he should be doing, “Hot water is overrated.”
“That’s not what you say when I beat you to the shower in the morning,” he answers, stepping into the shower and wrapping his arms around her from behind.
“Different principle. You’re the one who chooses to get all sweaty and disgusting. You should enjoy cold showers after that,” she murmurs, thrusting her hips back into his.
Burke grips her hips, already aroused; “Now you’re going to tell me what I should enjoy?”
Her hands slide over his, guide him downward over her abdomen, “No, I’m going to show you what you can enjoy if you quit complaining.”
Cristina’s message is heard loud and clear. Burke trails his lips over her shoulder from behind, teases her gently, her hands still urging on. He rubs against her eagerly, groans when she thrusts her hips back once more, teasing him. Unable to resist his need anymore, he pushes her towards the wall of the shower, eases her legs apart just enough to ease into her from behind.
Curling her fingertips into his arm, Cristina moans and whimpers as he moves, as he teases her clit. The day as taken its toll on him and she can tell, his thrusts are hard and unforgiving, derivatives of need after Meredith’s early interruption this morning. Despite the fact that she wants to hold on, that she wants more, Cristina lets go easily, clenches around him and feels him let go inside of her.
He kisses her shoulder, holds her against him, “I know that you say you cannot trust me,” he murmurs against her skin, “and I’m to blame for that. But I love you and I’m not going anywhere.”
She turns her head to look at him, turns in his arms to lock her eyes with him, “Yeah. I know.”
It’s a small victory, but one that Burke will take.
--
Cristina stretches out on the couch and glances around. She never really told Burke that she moved in but she thinks he’s figured it out now that her mail as transferred. Or that he’s in the process of figuring it out. He blinks at the pile of mail in his hands and then glances up at her, peering over thick black glasses, “Your mail is here.”
“Yeah.”
“And your stuff is here.”
“Yeah.”
The corner of his mouth turns up slightly, “I don’t recall asking you if you wanted to move in.”
Cristina bites back a grin, “Oh, I can go if you want me to.”
Burke pretends as if it’s a pained decision, “Well, it’s done now.”
“No, really, I can move back out if you want me to,” she says, sitting up, “I mean, it wouldn’t be that hard to pack up all my stuff. The mail might still come for a while. It took forever to get moved to the right address anyway.”
“Should I assume that there’s no other apartment involved in this deal?”
“It’s been gone for about two weeks,” she confirms.
He grins at the confirmation and sits on the couch next to her. Burke pulls his glasses from his face and drops them on the coffee table before stretching out next to her, “Good.”
Cristina runs her fingertips along his jaw, “Yeah.”
There are other things he wants to ask her but he bites back the questions. If anything he’s learned to let her take her time, let Cristina make the steps on her own. They’ll always have the past but he likes to think they’ve both learned from it and that they can only continue to grow.
No matter how long it takes.