Fic: Six Times (Alex/pretty much everyone else!)
Title: The six times Alex Karev hooks up with a chick who isn't his wife (and the one time he hooks up with two of them at once).
Characters: Alex, Addison, Cristina, Lexie, Reed, Meredith, Teddy, Arizona and Callie.
Rating: R for implied sexy times and some very potty mouthed words (though, nothing explicit because I'm too much of a prude for that...)
Word Count: 3700
Summary/Spoilers: In response to vague rumours re. Alex's fidelity or lack there of around the crossover eps. Who will be Alex's mistress? Maybe they ALL will be... A series of one-shots that examines a few potential eventualities.
Author's Note: Some of this is angsty, some is not so angsty, some is actually (if I do say so myself) kinda funny. If you don't wanna read it all, please at least read the Meredith bit, I'm oddly happy about how that part turned out...
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
001. Songs of desperation, I played them for you...
Addison has cut her hair short.
It's the first thing that Alex notices as he steps through the wooden doorway and into the familiar haven that Joe's has become for him lately. She's sitting at the bar with Sloan, which makes Alex's eyebrow quirk slightly in amusement, because...again? Still? Seriously?
He parks himself at the bar in his usual spot and nods ever so slightly at Walter. He doesn't even need to open his mouth, which is lucky because, these days he sometimes forgets how to speak. His throat burns in anticipation of the whiskey he's about to down and he wonders, fleetingly, if that's maybe a bad sign, the fact that something as inanimate as his tonsils already know exactly what it is that he's about to do.
It doesn't really matter though, because by drink number six, or maybe it's seven, his tonsils are too numb to care anymore.
And so is the rest of him.
Which was most definitely the point.
It's not until a weight settles on the stool to his left and a hand, feather light, brushes against his knee, that Alex remembers.
Addison.
She says his first name softly, Alex, and he almost doesn't recognise it, not from her. The sound is foreign and sends a shiver of inevitability through him. He waits with his breath held because he's had way too much practice at this lately and he's discovered that the breath-holding technique works...
“I heard what happened, I'm so sorry...”
...usually.
He closes his eyes and counts to three. He's practiced at that too, for the times when the breath-holding just doesn't quite cut it.
“W'for?” he slurs without actually looking at her, “...you didn't do anything...”
His voice is rough, from the alcohol or the complete lack of use, he's not sure. He does know that he's surly and morose and just wants to be left the hell alone. First it was Reed, then it was Meredith, he's really not sure if he can do this all over again.
“Alex...”
“Seriously, just... whatever, okay. So, you're sorry... everyone's freakin' sorry...”
Addison startles slightly at the force of his words, at the sentiment filled within them, and he at least has the decency to blank his face into something that he hopes resembles an apology.
“Fair enough...” she amends, idly twirling at the stem of her wineglass and Alex is more grateful for her acquiescence to silence than he remembers being for anything else, ever.
The ice has melted in a shot of whiskey that he is too tired to finish. His hand is still circling the glass but his fingers are lax and he's not entirely sure he could pick up the drink, even if he wanted to.
Addison hasn't spoken again. She's just sitting silently beside him, sipping at her wine periodically and watching his reflection intently in the mirrored glass behind the bar opposite them, distorted as it is by the rows and rows of coloured liqueur.
He catches her eyes briefly, feels his own utter despair radiate back at him. She sighs softly, like a whisper, and pushes her glass away, before turning her back on him and standing up. His gaze returns to his own glass and the diluted liquid still settled there, he blinks slowly and waits for the world to right itself again.
It never quite gets there.
“Karev,” he hears, and he turns slightly towards the voice. It's one he's more familiar with, authoritative and sure. Expectant.
“You coming or what?”
It takes him a moment to catch up, to decipher her meaning, his brow creases into a frown and he gives the bar an unsteady sweep.
“Whadda'bout Sloan?”
She laughs. It's as bitter and hollowed out as he feels. The sound makes his chest ache.
He gets to his feet, drunk enough but not too drunk, and follows her out.
002. You think you'll never sink...
Cristina fucks him.
It's in the middle of the day in a supply closet he's used plenty of times before and while he may be hard and inside her, she is the one in complete control. There is absolutely no doubt about that.
She calls him Karev and there's something different, foreign, about her. She doesn't even bother to ask. She tugs at the string of his scrub pants and uses the soles of her shoes to drag her own down at the same time.
He's kinda shell-shocked to be honest, and at first he thinks maybe it's all some kind of elaborate prank. But her stare, empty, devoid of almost everything, tells him quickly enough that it's not.
He manages to mumble out a stammered what the fuck and he hates himself for how insecure and confused it sounds, even if it is the honest to God truth.
“Just...” she starts to offer him something, an explanation maybe, but the words seem to die on her tongue and she never quite finishes.
When Alex thinks back later, he'll realise it's the only word she speaks throughout the whole thing. She moans occasionally, deep and raw in the back of her throat, but she never actually says another word.
At least, not until she's pulling her panties back into place and re-tying her hair and walking out the door with a sneer.
“This never happened.”
And Alex doesn't really get it. The whole thing was her idea, and sure, he was no innocent bystander but... again, what the fuck?
There's cum on the floor (his) and on the inside of his thigh (hers) and the copper tang on his tongue tastes unmistakably of failure. He's almost certain he was just used and he's not entirely sure whether to be kinda pleased or completely insulted.
He settles on generalised sadness because it's been his default emotion for what feels like years and he wears it comfortably these days, has learned to expect little else from himself.
He can't even manage to feel dirty, despite the fact that he knows he should. He uses his sock to wipe off the floor and down the inside of his leg and a voice in his head whispers, do you want to literally take off your pants...
His heart pounds, high and hard in the back of his throat, and it takes everything that he has not to vomit all over his own shoes.
He leans his head against the door, bounces his forehead off the timber several times, until the sound echoes in his ears and he can breathe again.
Later that afternoon he catches Cristina watching Hunt and the new cardio attending. They seem cozy and familiar with each other and Cristina is seething.
Alex thinks he may just have found his explanation.
003. As your lips unfold, shakin' purple from the cold...
Lexie cries.
Before and after and, if Alex is completely honest with himself, during as well. She comes looking for Meredith but only finds him. The front door is locked, he's sitting outside on the porch. He doesn't live there anymore and neither does she, but it doesn't stop them from turning up anyway, when there is no where else to go.
He has an ivory envelope clenched in one hand, it's scrunched and rain soaked and it's seems so incredibly impossible that something as insignificant as a piece of paper could spell the ruination of his entire life. Lexie's face is tear-stained, her eyes are hollow and Alex wonders, briefly, if he should ask her what's up, but, to be honest, he can't really bring himself to care.
He finds it somewhat amusing that they both seek Meredith out when the shit hits the fan.
It's raining sheets and he's not sure how long he's been waiting, but his teeth are chattering and he can no longer feel his fingers and when Lexie's fist twists in the neck of his shirt and she moves to haul him to his feet he doesn't bother to protest.
Lexie drives with her nose only inches from the windscreen. Any further back than that and the rain means she can't see a thing. Alex sits beside her, cold to his core, a bone numbing chill that he's almost certain he'll never lose; every now and then he forgets to breathe. She doesn't speak to him, which is lucky because there are parts of him that have been ripped out, his voice-box, his lungs, his heart, and he doesn't have the energy to respond to her anyway.
She parks haphazardly, a little too hard on the brakes, and he hears her breathing speed up. The radio is humming softly, a random tune that he can't quite decipher, and Lexie is still crying silently. Alex fumbles suddenly at the door handle, it takes him three goes to coordinate his hands into a motion that will undo the latch and by the time he's out his breath is coming in gasping gulps and the rain is not the only reason why he can't see a thing.
He staggers uneasily across the soft, sodden ground towards the trailer, the envelope that signals the beginning of the end still clenched between cramping fingers.
Rain pounds at the trailer's metallic roof, amplifying the sound, a rising crescendo that almost drowns out the plea that comes from behind him.
“Alex, stop...”
He does but he doesn't turn around. There is something in her voice, a desperation, a pleading, and he knows, despite not knowing much else, that this is going to end badly.
Her hand clamps around his upper arm and she tugs until he's facing her.
He laughs, bitter and disjointed, and she shoves him backwards, two hands against his chest. He stumbles, trips, ends up flat on his back.
The rain on his face is shocking.
She stands over him, hair wild, rain dripping off the end of her nose, and Alex wonders, fleetingly, what the hell has happened to turn her into this raging caricature of herself. She drops to her knees, straddles his chest, slides her fingers through his hair, grabs fist-fulls of it and holds on for dear life.
Afterward it's still raining and she's still crying and he's still ice cold, but there are grass stains on her knees and his skin is under her fingernails and the taste of her tears, salty and bitter, still burns at the tip of his tongue.
Somewhere, somehow, he's lost his grip on the envelope. It's torn and tearing, just like he is, and he imagines, if he squints hard enough, that he can see the title page through the thick ivory covering... Petition for Divorce.
004. My heart is heavy, does it show?
Reed looks at him like she knows him.
It's enough to make Alex want to put his fist through something solid but it's not enough to stop him from following her home.
Her apartment looks like a magazine shoot. It's white and silver and black and as intimidating as hell. She has a room mate she tells him in a whisper, and he takes it as code to keep his voice down.
When they're mostly naked in the kitchen not even fifteen minutes later he thinks that point is now pretty freakin' redundant.
She doesn't chat, she doesn't ply him with a barrage of questions, she doesn't even ask him if he's okay, which both surprises and pleases him no end. She does, however, prefer to be on top. She's quite adamant about it actually.
He puts it down to the fact that she's only slightly bigger than your average eight year old and it's her way of balancing out the power differential. He doesn't even notice after a while because whatever the fuck it is that she's doing with her hips is leaving him devoid of all coherent thought.
The evening, which he'd planned to devote to beer and self pity, is suddenly looking a little more promising.
They fuck until they're both out of breath, panting and sweaty on the icy kitchen tiles. Reed reaches over and pulls out the freezer drawer at the bottom of a fridge that is the size of Alex's (Derek's) entire trailer. She holds a bottle of vodka triumphantly over her head and smiles a slow, sly grin in his direction. While he's not entirely sure that straight alcohol is the best idea she's ever had, he's willing to go with it.
For now, anyway.
There's a noise, a muffled cough, off towards the entrance to the kitchen. Alex looks up, catches sight of a familiar body in the doorway and swears his heart literally stops beating. His shirt is out of reach and his jeans are around his ankles and Reed kind of buries herself in his arms, which, being the size of an elf, she's actually pretty capable of doing.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
Alex blinks dumbly and growls out a vicious and completely embarrassed, fuck off, perv. The figure in the doorway laughs, cold and calculating, before turning around and walking back out, bumping a fist off the door frame in a deliberate gotcha.
Reed untangles herself and at least has the decency to look a little sheepish because, while she may have mentioned the existence of a room mate way back when they first walked into the apartment, at no stage did she clarify that the room mate was Jackson.
005. Look me up in the yellow pages, I will be your rock of ages...
Meredith tastes like tequila.
They're not even drinking it, but she still tastes like it.
They are drinking everything else in the liquor cabinet though.
She laughs throughout the entire ordeal and Alex is extremely proud of the fact that he manages to get the deed done at all because... jesus.
He tries putting a hand over her mouth to shut her up but all that does is muffle her giggles into a weird honking snort and leaves the palm of his hand hot and breath sweaty so he removes it again and wipes the steam off into her hair.
Which only makes her giggle even more.
So he kisses her.
She bites his tongue. Hard. Accidentally.
He doesn't think he'll bother to ask her for a blow job.
006. It's only natural that you should feel the same way too...
Teddy... Doctor Altman, calls him Alan.
He corrects her twice, then, as she's kind of moaning it in his ear, low and drawn out, he decides not to bother doing it again.
It's kind of embarrassing, really.
But it does give the whole experience an ethereal kind of feel, like he's not even involved at all, which is weird because... oh, he so most definitely is.
They're in her hotel room, the minibar is empty and despite the fact that there is a king sized bed up against one wall, full of pillows and cotton sheets, they're getting carpet burn from the rug on the floor and bouncing elbows off Ikea-like pieces of furniture.
He remembers thinking that she's bendy, like, freakishly bendy, and he wonders why the hell he hasn't done this with an army chick before now because, holy mother-fucking jesus...
He panics somewhat afterward, hides it neatly behind beer and false bravado, but can't stop thinking... sex with co-workers never, ever ends well... He begins to list them in his head, ticks the unmitigated disasters off one by one; Addison, Olivia, Lexie, Izzie... Izzie...
See? It never ends well.
But she's still calling him Alan and when she laughs her teeth kinda remind him of his high school girlfriend's horse, and he's pretty fucking sure that this, what they're doing right now, is the ultimate one night stand, so he lets her put her tongue down his throat and tries to think about what she'll look like when her right leg is behind his head.
His imagination is actually pretty damn accurate.
He knows there are rules for this type of thing. Hell, he practically wrote the book on it, but to say it's been a while is an understatement of epic proportions so, when it's over (for the seventh time because hey, stamina never really was a problem for him), he awkwardly re-dresses while she lies on the floor and watches him, chugging champagne straight from the bottle and lazily running her fingers up and down her side.
It only takes a lick of her lips to have him hard again and it means that he struggles somewhat with the zipper on his jeans, can't quite co-ordinate his fingers into the required movement. She gets to her feet slowly and completes the job for him with a high pitched giggle that seems so incredibly out of place coming from an army chick cardio goddess. Then she's cracking the hotel room door open and giving him a slap on his butt as he steps through the gap and he's pretty sure he was only invited there to scratch her itch.
Nothing more, nothing less and he kinda likes the idea of that.
He takes a handful of steps towards the elevator before turning quicky and looking back. She still got the door open a few inches and while it's impossible to really tell, he likes to think that she's completely naked behind the wooden frame.
He raises a hand to kinda half wave in her direction. It's pathetic and embarrassing and to cover it all up he lifts his eyes and looks straight at her...
“Night Toni, see ya 'round...”
Her laugh echoes down the hallway as she pulls the door closed with a soft thud and he can't help but to think...
Maybe the joke's been on him the whole time.
007. Take a sad song and make it better...
Arizona feels sorry for him, Callie just thinks he's hot.
There's an x-ray on the light board to the left, the illuminated bones clearly misaligned. Alex sits on the edge of the hospital bed and kicks his heels lightly against the metal base, he has a white cast on his left arm and a dull throb in his wrist that echoes all the way to his back teeth.
He's still not entirely sure what happened, just remembers, vaguely, falling and knowing that landing was gonna hurt like a bitch.
Callie walks through the curtain and pulls it closed behind her, kind of leans back into it a little and grins this big, toothy smile that confuses him completely because he's pretty sure no surgeries for two months is nothing to laugh about. Arizona is seated in a chair next to the bed, she hasn't left him, not since it happened, and that confuses him even more than the ridiculous grin Torres is beaming at him.
“Happy birthday...”
“What?”
She waves his chart around impatiently, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world, and repeats her message, “... happy birthday...”
“Oh, yeah... whatever...”
“Is it your birthday?” Arizona pipes up, incredulous, and Alex glares as viciously as his morphine fogged brain will allow.
“No,” he grinds out at the same time Callie singsongs, “sure is!”
He's not sure how he ends up back at their place but he's on the couch next to Arizona, eating pizza out of the box, extinguished birthday candles tossed to the side, when Callie walks in and announces that it's time for his present. He frowns and offers Arizona a sideways glance, but she looks just as uncertain as he feels.
They sang him Happy Birthday when Arizona lit the candles on the pizza and he tried, valiantly, to insist that he doesn't do birthdays but, yeah, thanks anyway...
Callie walks towards them slowly, a sly smile on her face, and as she bends down to whisper something he can't quite overhear into Arizona's right ear, her left hand slides up the inside of his thigh, high enough and hard enough for him to realise that it's no accident.
His wrist throbs in time with his heartbeat, which, suddenly, is pretty freakin' fast and he holds his breath, absolutely and completely unsure what is meant to happen next.
Arizona laughs, it sounds distant and detached, but maybe that's just him.
Or the drugs.
Lips close over his suddenly, insistent and sure, while something hot and heavy works it's way up his chest.
When he opens his eyes they're kissing each other, blonde and black so completely entwined that it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Despite this, there are hands under his shirt and in his hair and he really fucking wishes that he could lose the cast because jesus, what he could do with two good hands...
In the end he settles for one at a time. They don't complain.
He didn't think they would.
They don't actually fuck, not really anyway, and their clothes remain mostly in place, but it's still the hottest thing that Alex has ever experienced.
Not to mention the best birthday present ever.
If he celebrated his birthday.
Which he totally doesn't.
Characters: Alex, Addison, Cristina, Lexie, Reed, Meredith, Teddy, Arizona and Callie.
Rating: R for implied sexy times and some very potty mouthed words (though, nothing explicit because I'm too much of a prude for that...)
Word Count: 3700
Summary/Spoilers: In response to vague rumours re. Alex's fidelity or lack there of around the crossover eps. Who will be Alex's mistress? Maybe they ALL will be... A series of one-shots that examines a few potential eventualities.
Author's Note: Some of this is angsty, some is not so angsty, some is actually (if I do say so myself) kinda funny. If you don't wanna read it all, please at least read the Meredith bit, I'm oddly happy about how that part turned out...
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
001. Songs of desperation, I played them for you...
Addison has cut her hair short.
It's the first thing that Alex notices as he steps through the wooden doorway and into the familiar haven that Joe's has become for him lately. She's sitting at the bar with Sloan, which makes Alex's eyebrow quirk slightly in amusement, because...again? Still? Seriously?
He parks himself at the bar in his usual spot and nods ever so slightly at Walter. He doesn't even need to open his mouth, which is lucky because, these days he sometimes forgets how to speak. His throat burns in anticipation of the whiskey he's about to down and he wonders, fleetingly, if that's maybe a bad sign, the fact that something as inanimate as his tonsils already know exactly what it is that he's about to do.
It doesn't really matter though, because by drink number six, or maybe it's seven, his tonsils are too numb to care anymore.
And so is the rest of him.
Which was most definitely the point.
It's not until a weight settles on the stool to his left and a hand, feather light, brushes against his knee, that Alex remembers.
Addison.
She says his first name softly, Alex, and he almost doesn't recognise it, not from her. The sound is foreign and sends a shiver of inevitability through him. He waits with his breath held because he's had way too much practice at this lately and he's discovered that the breath-holding technique works...
“I heard what happened, I'm so sorry...”
...usually.
He closes his eyes and counts to three. He's practiced at that too, for the times when the breath-holding just doesn't quite cut it.
“W'for?” he slurs without actually looking at her, “...you didn't do anything...”
His voice is rough, from the alcohol or the complete lack of use, he's not sure. He does know that he's surly and morose and just wants to be left the hell alone. First it was Reed, then it was Meredith, he's really not sure if he can do this all over again.
“Alex...”
“Seriously, just... whatever, okay. So, you're sorry... everyone's freakin' sorry...”
Addison startles slightly at the force of his words, at the sentiment filled within them, and he at least has the decency to blank his face into something that he hopes resembles an apology.
“Fair enough...” she amends, idly twirling at the stem of her wineglass and Alex is more grateful for her acquiescence to silence than he remembers being for anything else, ever.
The ice has melted in a shot of whiskey that he is too tired to finish. His hand is still circling the glass but his fingers are lax and he's not entirely sure he could pick up the drink, even if he wanted to.
Addison hasn't spoken again. She's just sitting silently beside him, sipping at her wine periodically and watching his reflection intently in the mirrored glass behind the bar opposite them, distorted as it is by the rows and rows of coloured liqueur.
He catches her eyes briefly, feels his own utter despair radiate back at him. She sighs softly, like a whisper, and pushes her glass away, before turning her back on him and standing up. His gaze returns to his own glass and the diluted liquid still settled there, he blinks slowly and waits for the world to right itself again.
It never quite gets there.
“Karev,” he hears, and he turns slightly towards the voice. It's one he's more familiar with, authoritative and sure. Expectant.
“You coming or what?”
It takes him a moment to catch up, to decipher her meaning, his brow creases into a frown and he gives the bar an unsteady sweep.
“Whadda'bout Sloan?”
She laughs. It's as bitter and hollowed out as he feels. The sound makes his chest ache.
He gets to his feet, drunk enough but not too drunk, and follows her out.
002. You think you'll never sink...
Cristina fucks him.
It's in the middle of the day in a supply closet he's used plenty of times before and while he may be hard and inside her, she is the one in complete control. There is absolutely no doubt about that.
She calls him Karev and there's something different, foreign, about her. She doesn't even bother to ask. She tugs at the string of his scrub pants and uses the soles of her shoes to drag her own down at the same time.
He's kinda shell-shocked to be honest, and at first he thinks maybe it's all some kind of elaborate prank. But her stare, empty, devoid of almost everything, tells him quickly enough that it's not.
He manages to mumble out a stammered what the fuck and he hates himself for how insecure and confused it sounds, even if it is the honest to God truth.
“Just...” she starts to offer him something, an explanation maybe, but the words seem to die on her tongue and she never quite finishes.
When Alex thinks back later, he'll realise it's the only word she speaks throughout the whole thing. She moans occasionally, deep and raw in the back of her throat, but she never actually says another word.
At least, not until she's pulling her panties back into place and re-tying her hair and walking out the door with a sneer.
“This never happened.”
And Alex doesn't really get it. The whole thing was her idea, and sure, he was no innocent bystander but... again, what the fuck?
There's cum on the floor (his) and on the inside of his thigh (hers) and the copper tang on his tongue tastes unmistakably of failure. He's almost certain he was just used and he's not entirely sure whether to be kinda pleased or completely insulted.
He settles on generalised sadness because it's been his default emotion for what feels like years and he wears it comfortably these days, has learned to expect little else from himself.
He can't even manage to feel dirty, despite the fact that he knows he should. He uses his sock to wipe off the floor and down the inside of his leg and a voice in his head whispers, do you want to literally take off your pants...
His heart pounds, high and hard in the back of his throat, and it takes everything that he has not to vomit all over his own shoes.
He leans his head against the door, bounces his forehead off the timber several times, until the sound echoes in his ears and he can breathe again.
Later that afternoon he catches Cristina watching Hunt and the new cardio attending. They seem cozy and familiar with each other and Cristina is seething.
Alex thinks he may just have found his explanation.
003. As your lips unfold, shakin' purple from the cold...
Lexie cries.
Before and after and, if Alex is completely honest with himself, during as well. She comes looking for Meredith but only finds him. The front door is locked, he's sitting outside on the porch. He doesn't live there anymore and neither does she, but it doesn't stop them from turning up anyway, when there is no where else to go.
He has an ivory envelope clenched in one hand, it's scrunched and rain soaked and it's seems so incredibly impossible that something as insignificant as a piece of paper could spell the ruination of his entire life. Lexie's face is tear-stained, her eyes are hollow and Alex wonders, briefly, if he should ask her what's up, but, to be honest, he can't really bring himself to care.
He finds it somewhat amusing that they both seek Meredith out when the shit hits the fan.
It's raining sheets and he's not sure how long he's been waiting, but his teeth are chattering and he can no longer feel his fingers and when Lexie's fist twists in the neck of his shirt and she moves to haul him to his feet he doesn't bother to protest.
Lexie drives with her nose only inches from the windscreen. Any further back than that and the rain means she can't see a thing. Alex sits beside her, cold to his core, a bone numbing chill that he's almost certain he'll never lose; every now and then he forgets to breathe. She doesn't speak to him, which is lucky because there are parts of him that have been ripped out, his voice-box, his lungs, his heart, and he doesn't have the energy to respond to her anyway.
She parks haphazardly, a little too hard on the brakes, and he hears her breathing speed up. The radio is humming softly, a random tune that he can't quite decipher, and Lexie is still crying silently. Alex fumbles suddenly at the door handle, it takes him three goes to coordinate his hands into a motion that will undo the latch and by the time he's out his breath is coming in gasping gulps and the rain is not the only reason why he can't see a thing.
He staggers uneasily across the soft, sodden ground towards the trailer, the envelope that signals the beginning of the end still clenched between cramping fingers.
Rain pounds at the trailer's metallic roof, amplifying the sound, a rising crescendo that almost drowns out the plea that comes from behind him.
“Alex, stop...”
He does but he doesn't turn around. There is something in her voice, a desperation, a pleading, and he knows, despite not knowing much else, that this is going to end badly.
Her hand clamps around his upper arm and she tugs until he's facing her.
He laughs, bitter and disjointed, and she shoves him backwards, two hands against his chest. He stumbles, trips, ends up flat on his back.
The rain on his face is shocking.
She stands over him, hair wild, rain dripping off the end of her nose, and Alex wonders, fleetingly, what the hell has happened to turn her into this raging caricature of herself. She drops to her knees, straddles his chest, slides her fingers through his hair, grabs fist-fulls of it and holds on for dear life.
Afterward it's still raining and she's still crying and he's still ice cold, but there are grass stains on her knees and his skin is under her fingernails and the taste of her tears, salty and bitter, still burns at the tip of his tongue.
Somewhere, somehow, he's lost his grip on the envelope. It's torn and tearing, just like he is, and he imagines, if he squints hard enough, that he can see the title page through the thick ivory covering... Petition for Divorce.
004. My heart is heavy, does it show?
Reed looks at him like she knows him.
It's enough to make Alex want to put his fist through something solid but it's not enough to stop him from following her home.
Her apartment looks like a magazine shoot. It's white and silver and black and as intimidating as hell. She has a room mate she tells him in a whisper, and he takes it as code to keep his voice down.
When they're mostly naked in the kitchen not even fifteen minutes later he thinks that point is now pretty freakin' redundant.
She doesn't chat, she doesn't ply him with a barrage of questions, she doesn't even ask him if he's okay, which both surprises and pleases him no end. She does, however, prefer to be on top. She's quite adamant about it actually.
He puts it down to the fact that she's only slightly bigger than your average eight year old and it's her way of balancing out the power differential. He doesn't even notice after a while because whatever the fuck it is that she's doing with her hips is leaving him devoid of all coherent thought.
The evening, which he'd planned to devote to beer and self pity, is suddenly looking a little more promising.
They fuck until they're both out of breath, panting and sweaty on the icy kitchen tiles. Reed reaches over and pulls out the freezer drawer at the bottom of a fridge that is the size of Alex's (Derek's) entire trailer. She holds a bottle of vodka triumphantly over her head and smiles a slow, sly grin in his direction. While he's not entirely sure that straight alcohol is the best idea she's ever had, he's willing to go with it.
For now, anyway.
There's a noise, a muffled cough, off towards the entrance to the kitchen. Alex looks up, catches sight of a familiar body in the doorway and swears his heart literally stops beating. His shirt is out of reach and his jeans are around his ankles and Reed kind of buries herself in his arms, which, being the size of an elf, she's actually pretty capable of doing.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
Alex blinks dumbly and growls out a vicious and completely embarrassed, fuck off, perv. The figure in the doorway laughs, cold and calculating, before turning around and walking back out, bumping a fist off the door frame in a deliberate gotcha.
Reed untangles herself and at least has the decency to look a little sheepish because, while she may have mentioned the existence of a room mate way back when they first walked into the apartment, at no stage did she clarify that the room mate was Jackson.
005. Look me up in the yellow pages, I will be your rock of ages...
Meredith tastes like tequila.
They're not even drinking it, but she still tastes like it.
They are drinking everything else in the liquor cabinet though.
She laughs throughout the entire ordeal and Alex is extremely proud of the fact that he manages to get the deed done at all because... jesus.
He tries putting a hand over her mouth to shut her up but all that does is muffle her giggles into a weird honking snort and leaves the palm of his hand hot and breath sweaty so he removes it again and wipes the steam off into her hair.
Which only makes her giggle even more.
So he kisses her.
She bites his tongue. Hard. Accidentally.
He doesn't think he'll bother to ask her for a blow job.
006. It's only natural that you should feel the same way too...
Teddy... Doctor Altman, calls him Alan.
He corrects her twice, then, as she's kind of moaning it in his ear, low and drawn out, he decides not to bother doing it again.
It's kind of embarrassing, really.
But it does give the whole experience an ethereal kind of feel, like he's not even involved at all, which is weird because... oh, he so most definitely is.
They're in her hotel room, the minibar is empty and despite the fact that there is a king sized bed up against one wall, full of pillows and cotton sheets, they're getting carpet burn from the rug on the floor and bouncing elbows off Ikea-like pieces of furniture.
He remembers thinking that she's bendy, like, freakishly bendy, and he wonders why the hell he hasn't done this with an army chick before now because, holy mother-fucking jesus...
He panics somewhat afterward, hides it neatly behind beer and false bravado, but can't stop thinking... sex with co-workers never, ever ends well... He begins to list them in his head, ticks the unmitigated disasters off one by one; Addison, Olivia, Lexie, Izzie... Izzie...
See? It never ends well.
But she's still calling him Alan and when she laughs her teeth kinda remind him of his high school girlfriend's horse, and he's pretty fucking sure that this, what they're doing right now, is the ultimate one night stand, so he lets her put her tongue down his throat and tries to think about what she'll look like when her right leg is behind his head.
His imagination is actually pretty damn accurate.
He knows there are rules for this type of thing. Hell, he practically wrote the book on it, but to say it's been a while is an understatement of epic proportions so, when it's over (for the seventh time because hey, stamina never really was a problem for him), he awkwardly re-dresses while she lies on the floor and watches him, chugging champagne straight from the bottle and lazily running her fingers up and down her side.
It only takes a lick of her lips to have him hard again and it means that he struggles somewhat with the zipper on his jeans, can't quite co-ordinate his fingers into the required movement. She gets to her feet slowly and completes the job for him with a high pitched giggle that seems so incredibly out of place coming from an army chick cardio goddess. Then she's cracking the hotel room door open and giving him a slap on his butt as he steps through the gap and he's pretty sure he was only invited there to scratch her itch.
Nothing more, nothing less and he kinda likes the idea of that.
He takes a handful of steps towards the elevator before turning quicky and looking back. She still got the door open a few inches and while it's impossible to really tell, he likes to think that she's completely naked behind the wooden frame.
He raises a hand to kinda half wave in her direction. It's pathetic and embarrassing and to cover it all up he lifts his eyes and looks straight at her...
“Night Toni, see ya 'round...”
Her laugh echoes down the hallway as she pulls the door closed with a soft thud and he can't help but to think...
Maybe the joke's been on him the whole time.
007. Take a sad song and make it better...
Arizona feels sorry for him, Callie just thinks he's hot.
There's an x-ray on the light board to the left, the illuminated bones clearly misaligned. Alex sits on the edge of the hospital bed and kicks his heels lightly against the metal base, he has a white cast on his left arm and a dull throb in his wrist that echoes all the way to his back teeth.
He's still not entirely sure what happened, just remembers, vaguely, falling and knowing that landing was gonna hurt like a bitch.
Callie walks through the curtain and pulls it closed behind her, kind of leans back into it a little and grins this big, toothy smile that confuses him completely because he's pretty sure no surgeries for two months is nothing to laugh about. Arizona is seated in a chair next to the bed, she hasn't left him, not since it happened, and that confuses him even more than the ridiculous grin Torres is beaming at him.
“Happy birthday...”
“What?”
She waves his chart around impatiently, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world, and repeats her message, “... happy birthday...”
“Oh, yeah... whatever...”
“Is it your birthday?” Arizona pipes up, incredulous, and Alex glares as viciously as his morphine fogged brain will allow.
“No,” he grinds out at the same time Callie singsongs, “sure is!”
He's not sure how he ends up back at their place but he's on the couch next to Arizona, eating pizza out of the box, extinguished birthday candles tossed to the side, when Callie walks in and announces that it's time for his present. He frowns and offers Arizona a sideways glance, but she looks just as uncertain as he feels.
They sang him Happy Birthday when Arizona lit the candles on the pizza and he tried, valiantly, to insist that he doesn't do birthdays but, yeah, thanks anyway...
Callie walks towards them slowly, a sly smile on her face, and as she bends down to whisper something he can't quite overhear into Arizona's right ear, her left hand slides up the inside of his thigh, high enough and hard enough for him to realise that it's no accident.
His wrist throbs in time with his heartbeat, which, suddenly, is pretty freakin' fast and he holds his breath, absolutely and completely unsure what is meant to happen next.
Arizona laughs, it sounds distant and detached, but maybe that's just him.
Or the drugs.
Lips close over his suddenly, insistent and sure, while something hot and heavy works it's way up his chest.
When he opens his eyes they're kissing each other, blonde and black so completely entwined that it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Despite this, there are hands under his shirt and in his hair and he really fucking wishes that he could lose the cast because jesus, what he could do with two good hands...
In the end he settles for one at a time. They don't complain.
He didn't think they would.
They don't actually fuck, not really anyway, and their clothes remain mostly in place, but it's still the hottest thing that Alex has ever experienced.
Not to mention the best birthday present ever.
If he celebrated his birthday.
Which he totally doesn't.