fic: and you ruined me with the easiest touch...
Title: And you ruined me with the easiest touch...
Characters/Pairing: Alex, (with a very vague Alex/Lexie/Mark vibe that doesn't really last all that long...), also, briefly, Meredith, Teddy and Dr. Wyatt.
Word Count: 4700
Rating: R (implied violence)
Summary: A very unlikely series of events that undoubtedly didn't take place between the finale and episode one, followed by an even more unlikely series of events that undoubtedly won't take place in the episodes still to come...but, oh, how I wish they would.
Spoilers: S07E01
Author's Note: Title and cut text from the indescribably awesome “Train Wrecks”, by Birds of Tokyo. MASSIVE thank yous to leobrat for the beta and rorylie for the continual votes of confidence.
He thinks he probably swims through viscous glue to the wavering surface on a number of occasions but never quite manages to make it all the way to conscious.
Until he does.
He remembers cold. And a detached fear that twists from his toes until it's completely closed him in.
He remembers fingers wrapped around his wrist. Too big, too firm, too nothing, too everything to be Meredith or Lexie.
He thinks, just for a second, that it might be O'Malley, because it's definitely what George would do, sit by his bedside, sappy and 'chick'. But there's something about that scenario he knows isn't quite right and if only he could operate the muscles in his eyelids then he'd be able to double check. To see for himself.
To work it all out somehow...
But there's something solid shoved between his teeth that is making breathing impossible, and his chest has been set alight from the inside out, heart and lungs and everything in between crushed to charcoal and soot.
He claws at his face, fingers catching painfully in tubes and wires and the sweat slippery hand that had been wrapped around his wrist just seconds, minutes, hours earlier.
A voice is shouting. The ashy sound echoing off the rough surfaces inside his skull as a mechanical beeping keeps a piercing soundtrack spinning in the dark distance. It's familiar, the shouting voice. A low, insistent rumble that was seared into his most primitive depths on a cold conference room table swimming in blood.
Palms settle on his shoulders, pinning him to the mattress and restraining his thrashing limbs with a steady, grounding pressure that is also horrifyingly familiar.
And when his eyes finally do slide to open, all he can see is the dark red of someones dried blood etched deep under his own fingernails.
-
A silent vigil has been established it would seem. A constantly rotating changing of the guards meant to ensure there's not a moment where he's left on his own.
The drugs that flow down the thin tube originating from somewhere far above his head mean that he's oblivious to the comings and goings.
For the most part.
He comes to know who is occupying the plastic chair at his bedside by the sound of their breathing. By the temperature of their skin on his. By the way their fingers twitch and jump at the slightest sound.
Lexie's hands are perpetually cold. And they curl so completely into his that he can feel her ice numbing his veins.
Mark Sloan brings an air of invincibility with him as he steps through the doorway. The ambiance in the room shifts sideways to the left and he can't help but contemplate how many hours, days, weeks it will take for Lexie to fold herself into Mark and turn her back.
That outcome is inevitable really...
He doesn't need to identify Meredith because he's more than convinced that she doesn't come. Not once. Frightened off by the myriad ghosts that fill the empty corners of his white-bright room.
He says he understands even though he absolutely doesn't.
-
There's talk of a transfer to Seattle Grace. An ambulance ride across town to a living hell that he can't even begin to contemplate.
He refuses point blank and no one is brave enough to call him on the reasons why.
Lexie smiles nervously and runs trembling fingers through the hair that has flattened against his forehead, while Mark stands guard at the entrance to the room.
Sentry-like.
They've developed a pack mentality and somehow he's been determined the member most in need of protection. The feeling grinds at the base of his skull but the fog is still too thick for it to come to anything more than that.
-
He signs himself out against medical advice when no one is looking. When voices are muffled in neighbouring rooms and awareness is shifted to those more deserving of it than he.
And he almost gets away with it.
Almost.
The aging cab driver must have his foot poised above the gas pedal when the familiar shape steps up to the bumper, palms raised in a surrender that Alex knows too well is nothing more than a ruse.
The rear door opens and Mark slides to seated next to him, struggles with the worn seat-belt for seconds before leaning forward and over-riding any previous destination directions Alex had spelled out with an authoritative air that the driver doesn't bother to question.
He closes his eyes, presses the back of his head hard into the stained rest behind him, twists his torso just enough that the stitching effectively zipping up his chest pulls to painfully taught, allows the agony to ground him, and waits for the inevitable.
Is more than a little relieved when it fails to eventuate.
-
He's brusquely informed of the new living arrangements while strapped into the shadowy backseat of the cab. He doesn't bother to protest because he barely has the energy required to sit upright, let alone construct a counter argument that is even slightly convincing.
Besides, in a desperately hopeless kind of way that describes the three of them perfectly right now, it makes sense.
-
He spikes a low grade fever two days after his unceremonious arrival at Sloan's apartment. He's hot, and endlessly groggy from the meds they pour down his throat when his will to fight is at its most depleted.
A pot drops into the kitchen sink and he startles to upright from his position on the couch, all laboured breathing and aching fingers clawing at cushions that slip from his grasp.
They don't notice him, the chattering amateur chefs, and he takes a moment to press the heels of his palms deep into his eye sockets, to regain what little composure he's managed to scrape together in the heady days since he rose to waking with a fury that has yet to fully dissipate.
At first, they watch him sleep. One or the other or, sometimes, both. Like maybe he'll stop breathing if they don't, like his insides will start to leak out again, or a man with a gun will blow the back of his skull off in the nightmares that he knows they all have but never speak of.
The scrutiny is an almost tangible thing. Coating his skin in a layer of grime that won't wash off no matter how hard he scrubs away at it.
He can't help but wonder which of the three of them will be the first to crack and who else will be taken down in the inevitable fall.
Makes a pact with himself that it sure as hell won't be him.
Thinks he's in a better position that most to fend off the crazies. He's seen it come and go in every imaginable shape and size. A black silhouette that taps at his shoulder when he slows down too much to stay hidden.
A mocking reminder of times past.
-
When he's asked how much he remembers he lies through his teeth.
About what?
Typically follows it with glib comments detailing hot nurses and scar tissue and free time off work that are designed to deflect and defend more than anything else.
Waits for the rare moments of solitude when he's free to follow the blank stare with the bullet hole between the eyes around the room as it shifts from surface to surface to never ending surface...
Remember about what?
The other two talk constantly. At him. Around him. Over his head and to his face. A swiftly running stream of consonants and vowels that grate precariously at his edges.
He was just walking up the stairs...
And it was already too late...
Then Bailey said...
And Jackson did this thing...
Before the Chief...
As the black silhouette threatens to envelope him once and for all.
And then the elevator doors slid open...
-
He has no idea if Meredith has noticed he's missing. He assumes all his belongings are still haphazardly shoved into wardrobes and dressers in the bedroom he'd shared with Lexie because there is nothing about anything that is familiar to him here.
He feels trapped somewhat. Far from home in an unfamiliar apartment with people who are so foreign to him now that he's almost convinced he's dead and floating around in a parallel universe where Mark Sloan not only tolerates his existence, but seems oddly determined to celebrate it.
The only comforting thought is that he knows it can't last.
-
The fever hangs around doggedly. Turns him alternatively sweat soaked sweltering or to the bone chilled. There's a piece of metal still lodged in his chest and some days it's all he can do to pull air in and around it.
They threaten him with a return to the ward if things continue heading south. He shrugs them both off with a nonchalance that is almost as forced as the lopsided smirk that accompanies it and makes his way to the bathroom, the palm of one hand against the wall the only thing keeping him upright.
The blank stare with the bullet between the eyes has been etched into the shower's glass surround. He pokes a finger into the ethereal hole, leaves a smudged fingerprint in his wake and slides to the tile at his feet.
Waits for his legs to give in to the numbness so they'll finally match the way the rest of him feels.
-
By virtue of the jagged scar across his chest and the fact that more of his blood had been on the outside than the inside not so long ago, he's been designated the king sized bed in the master bedroom. Too dazed and high on the first night to protest and too completely comfortable in the pillow top and cotton sheets after that to care.
He doesn't know where the other two sleep. If they sleep. When they sleep. He's half convinced they just sit on the floor beside the bed and watch him.
Laying down, sitting up and moving between the two positions still poses significant difficulties, and the way Lexie's eyes follow him from around the room and the way Mark's hands are forever flinching out to catch his inevitable stumble initiates a hollow hum in the pit of his stomach that he never quite manages to quell.
No matter how many bottles of designer beer he 'borrows' while the others are darting between the hospital and the apartment, too wrapped up in their own falling apart routines to even begin to notice his.
There's blood.
He can smell it.
It's under his fingernails and streaked through his hair. Engrained into the soles of his shoes. It's her's this time, not his.
Which makes for a disturbing change.
And the nightmares are only feeding his fury now. Spinning him 'til his core is rattled and his sanity becomes a cloak that slips every so often from his shoulder blades.
-
Lexie changes the dressings. He'd do it alone if he could bring himself to look at the damage. He knows the mechanics of what went on, has had more than enough surgical training to figure it all out for himself. But he's never spoken about it or asked for precise details.
He's never said thank you either, and he hopes they don't expect him to because the words are frozen solid at the back of his throat and dislodging them will only dislodge a whole lot more than hollow gratitude.
Lexie changes the dressings until the one night that she doesn't. When she's at Meredith's or covering in the pit or at the market buying oranges or lying on a supply closet floor with her brain matter haloed in her hair.
He doesn't ask because the answer is irrelevant.
Mark changes them that night. A delicate touch, even lighter than Lexie's, that peels back paper-tape and inspects the still raw tissue with feather light fingertips and scotch soaked breath.
Something snaps.
Like halogen lights firing to bright white and burning.
They've touched him before. Those fingertips. The memories vivid. Flashing. One after the other.
Screaming and blood.
Blood and agony.
Agony and sheer, unbridled, unholy terror...
He flinches, jerks back from the touch, holds his breath desperately in a ferocious attempt not to give himself away anymore than he thinks he already has.
Mark's lips murmur an incongruous apology as his brow slowly creases into a confused frown.
He offers a shrug, begins a countdown, backwards from nine hundred and seventy thousand in seventeens, stills his ballooning torso long enough that Mark can push the tape back into place, before lurching to upright and almost colliding head first with the looming floor boards. Only makes it to nine hundred and sixty nine thousand eight hundred and ninety eight before the screeching world around him drains instantly to midnight black.
-
When the colours return he's hyperventilating. There are hands on his shoulders and his fingers are too weightless to push them off.
They're part of the problem but he can't seem to enunciate the words to explain it.
Isn't even sure if he wants to.
Lexie returns at some point. Her skull intact and her eyes bright with tears that he doesn't want but are all for him nonetheless.
He thinks it's probably at this moment that he figures it all out. Allows the puzzle pieces to drop together in a way that gives him only one option.
The decision brings with it a sense of calm. Stills his jagged breaths to a more natural rhythm and slows the flat out gallop that had been developing in his chest.
Mark has his car keys in his hand, a white knuckle grip on the simple metal logo. An immediate return to the hospital is threatened and he scoffs at them harshly before shrugging back into his shirt and picking an unsteady path to the door.
Steps through it with a finality that only he can understand.
-
He makes his getaway in the back of a cab.
The symmetry seems fitting.
-
Meredith doesn't question his return. Simply slides a shot of something cloudy across the kitchen counter to him as her eyes remain focused on the other side of the room.
That she can't even bring herself to look at him is a refreshing change.
His cell phone bleats a constant backing track to their otherwise silent drinking session. In the end he pulls it awkwardly from his pocket and dumps it, still ringing, into the murky cold remains of this mornings dish-washing water.
She relents then, asks him with a familiar sigh of resignation what he's gone and done this time.
He tracks the blank stare with the bullet hole between the eyes as it settles into position, a smudge stained reflection on the oven door, oddly comforted by her unwavering presence, and replies that he's only done what he should have realised was necessary weeks ago...
He leaves it at that. Either she gets it or she doesn't and, for now, that's more than enough.
When Meredith's cell phone bursts to life from her handbag in the hallway, he puts two and two together, comes up with the inevitable four and shrugs that he's going to bed.
He can already guess how the ensuing conversation will play out. The mere thought of the questions it'll raise brings with it an exhaustion that is utterly overwhelming.
-
He sleeps for twenty nine hours straight. Deep and dreamless.
Finds a note propped in toast crumbs detailing why Meredith's cell phone is swimming next to his in the sink and how much it will cost him to replace it. Watches the blank stare with the bullet hole between the eyes shake ever so slightly from side to side.
She barely knew anything about him, yet it feels like she knew damn near everything at the same time...
He is no longer surprised by this.
-
He's up early the next day. Showered and dressed and waiting for Meredith. She takes a deep breath when she figures it out but doesn't open her mouth to argue and he's so impossibly grateful for that that something sharp dislodges in his chest and air begins to flow a little more freely.
He avoids the elevators with a fervor even he can recognise as disturbing but manages to sell it as a fitness regime and spends the day clutching at the handrail to haul himself up endless flights of stairs, pausing to sink to his knees every so often as the walls close in and the floor rushes up to meet him.
The OR is off limits but he has no desire to go there anyway and the pit is a suffocating blanket of sights and sounds and heady recollections that are still too raw and wrenching and so he takes up residence in the clinic, tries not to think too much about the reason it exists or where she might be or why she hasn't called him.
Blames it on the suds soaked cell phone that he doesn't think he'll bother to replace and manages, only just, not to completely lose his shit at the sight of a quivering eight year old with a bloody nose.
-
He gets a page about a mandatory group therapy session just after lunch. Even he knows enough about psych. to know that this can not end well.
He contemplates skipping out but understands without needing to ask that his absence will only bring with it more questions that he doesn't have answers for.
At least, none that he's willing to admit to.
He spends five minutes in the bathroom, locked solidly in a stall, rehearsing comebacks that don't seem to flow as readily as they once did and practising a smirk that is becoming more and more forced.
Once seated, a brief glance at Lexie is almost his undoing, and he could almost kiss Cristina for the taco inspired diversion she creates.
No matter how fleeting it is...
But all his practised indifference is sent soaring when Lexie's foot begins to bounce, and he can't seem to tear his eyes off the rhythmic movements for long enough to listen to the words that tumble from her lips with an incoherence that silences his colleagues.
He itches to push his hands down on her knee. Force the movements to a standstill with a pleading stare for her to get it together... please.
But, as much as he's the solution for her, he's also the problem and so he sits, stays mute, barely manages to contain his own pent up unravelling.
Bile rises in his throat as his pager bursts to life at his hip, startling three quarters of the circle with a completeness that means his own panic is almost unrecognisable as he hurries from the room with a mumbled apology, ignores the page from admin., and walks straight out the hospital's glass front doors.
-
He has an unofficial arrangement with Teddy Altman. She checks his wounds every couple of days and organises x-rays to track the movement of the bullet still lodged in his rib cage.
She's still new enough to Seattle Grace to completely buy his bravado and he makes sure he turns it on thick for her, a not so misguided belief that she may have some sway with the trauma counsellor.
And despite the fact that he's never even left the house once night has fallen, let alone ventured to a bar or a club, he likes to embellish her with tales about how the bullet is a total chick magnet, because it seems like something a well adjusted guy with a chunk of metal in his chest would do.
At least, he thinks so. His objectivity is waning and the line between where he is now and where it's likely he's heading towards is getting closer and closer and closer to the tips of his toes, so he can't be all that sure...
When she suggests it's time for the planned removal he bounces from the exam bed with a comment he can't remember three seconds after it's passed his lips and doesn't bother to attend any of her requested follow ups.
-
When Lexie loses her shit in the clinic he feels his insides split into neat halves. Can't quite bring himself to dispute that fact that, somehow, somewhere along the line, this, everything that is happening to her, has just become all his fault...
-
It takes him nine days of working in the clinic to get cleared for surgery. Just when he thinks the inept counsellor dude has him all figured out, he signs the paperwork and sends him on his way.
Just like that.
The fact that the very thought of slicing a patient open on an operating table fades his vision to blue and orange and pale, pale pink doesn't even come up in the conversation.
Lexie does. Every now and then.
He talks about her because it means he doesn't have to talk about himself. Or Reed. Or the bullet that removed the back of her skull.
He can detach and talk about someone else's crazy 'til the cows come home...
Or at least until Mark lurches through the door spouting further proof of his ineptitude and giving him the perfect opportunity to flee.
Fast.
-
There's a wedding that everyone except the bride and groom seem to recognise is a farce. He goes for the free booze and hot chicks in dresses and that fact that it's all happening downstairs in his own freaking living room. Figures he can skip out when the crazy builds to its inevitable crescendo, make the climb to his room and lock the rest of the world out.
He stumbles across Lexie on a fridge run for beer that he really doesn't need. Manages to string together what he hopes is something about how he thinks she's hot and badass and no where near as crazy as he thinks he might be.
He doubts it comes out quite as he'd planned because things rarely do when the room is spinning at his feet and all he wants is to take back the last five minutes of his night.
The stinging verbal slap she delivers in retaliation could probably confirm his suspicions but he's too busy replaying her words over and over and over and over to provide any sort of apologetic explanation, and when the sound of her voice has finished echoing, thunder-like, inside his chest she's up and left and it's too late anyway...
Izzie, Izzie, Izzie...
-
He hears on the ever efficient grapevine that Meredith was pregnant.
And now she's not.
Just like Reed was alive and then a bullet exploded between her eyes, transforming her into a faded mirage that slinks around in the shadows of his peripheral vision, and he figures it all out then... what she's no doubt been trying to tell him all along...
He was there at the beginning, when the only victim was her. And he failed.
He failed them all.
It's a surprisingly simple explanation really.
-
The glass bottle in his fist slides soundlessly from his grasp and erupts at his feet. Shatters to shards that splinter and spin.
And he thinks it's only fitting really. He appears to have lost his grip on everything else after all.
-
He stands before the elevator doors, tries not to flinch as they yawn open and his feet shuffle forward by inches and millimeters.
He's still not convinced he'll manage to make it all the way to inside.
There's no sound here. Wherever it is he's retreated to. Just a void of white cloud and the rocking tumble of his own heart beating somewhere high and hard in the back of his throat.
He's been nervous before. Maybe even scared.
This is so much bigger than either of those things could ever be.
Blood flows over the silver strip.
His.
Trickles a trail down the gap and into the infinite void below.
He risks a glace behind him, seeks out Reed's reflection for confirmation but misses it on the first attempt and lurches wildly in circles 'til it's no longer possible to pretend he hasn't completely lost every marble he'd so far managed desperately to retain.
A crowd has gathered, a sense of anticipation has been building for days now. Lexie's visit to psych. was just the tip of a giant ice-berg that has also thrown up engagement rings and arrest warrants and bridal magazines and therapy sessions where the hardest part is remembering all the lies you told last week so that you don't get it indescribably mixed up this week...
He backs up a step or three, collides solidly with the metal doors that have slid resolutely into place behind him.
He was too slow.
It's the story of his life.
A bubble of hysteria bursts just under his surface. He begins to laugh and absolutely can not bring himself to a stop.
-
He doesn't remember going to sleep but he does remember waking up.
The pillow top has disappeared. The cotton sheets. Even the familiar smell of Izzie that never really went anywhere despite the fact that she disappeared long ago.
One hospital ward has been replaced by another and he notes with a detached sense of trepidation that they've called in the big guns. Meredith leans against the far wall, locked in hushed conversation with Dr. Wyatt who nods her agreement to words he can't bring himself to decipher.
He takes the moment of relative privacy to investigate his surroundings, the bag of clear liquid that empties into the back of his hand, the pitcher of water on the side table that is already three quarters to empty.
The solid proof he was looking for that he's not alone. Clings to the notion desperately even as he recognises the inherent danger it represents.
-
He sits in determined silence for thirty nine minutes while Dr. Wyatt scribbles continuously at a notepad. The sound of the pen dragging across the page is almost enough to bring him to his knees, but he knows Meredith held out for more than one measly session and so he pushes back into the mattress and settles in to wait to her out.
He watches the clock hand tick, tick, tick for the last seven minutes of his scheduled one hour and has to clamp down a flinch as she stands abruptly and moves towards the doorway.
The clack of her heels on the linoleum slows and she throws a same time tomorrow? back at him over her shoulder.
He drags his hands down his face in an attempt to scrub away the bone crushing exhaustion that threatens to shut him down and by the time he lifts them again Lexie has replaced Wyatt in the room and is sliding into a familiar position, limbs folded into the chair on his left.
His eyes are clenched to shut but he knows it's her anyway because cold fingers curl into his and begin the slow process of numbing his veins.
He hears the sharp intake of air that signals her intention to speak and gets in before her.
Just.
Don't, please...
More an exhale of air than an actual utterance.
She ignores him.
Alex.
So much said in the space of one word. His name.
He should make her leave. Dredge up something inappropriate and crass and have her slamming the door as she storms away, but he doubts he could string the required consonants together without screaming or sobbing or something equally train wreck horrifying and so he stares up at the ceiling to wait.
Characters/Pairing: Alex, (with a very vague Alex/Lexie/Mark vibe that doesn't really last all that long...), also, briefly, Meredith, Teddy and Dr. Wyatt.
Word Count: 4700
Rating: R (implied violence)
Summary: A very unlikely series of events that undoubtedly didn't take place between the finale and episode one, followed by an even more unlikely series of events that undoubtedly won't take place in the episodes still to come...but, oh, how I wish they would.
Spoilers: S07E01
Author's Note: Title and cut text from the indescribably awesome “Train Wrecks”, by Birds of Tokyo. MASSIVE thank yous to leobrat for the beta and rorylie for the continual votes of confidence.
He thinks he probably swims through viscous glue to the wavering surface on a number of occasions but never quite manages to make it all the way to conscious.
Until he does.
He remembers cold. And a detached fear that twists from his toes until it's completely closed him in.
He remembers fingers wrapped around his wrist. Too big, too firm, too nothing, too everything to be Meredith or Lexie.
He thinks, just for a second, that it might be O'Malley, because it's definitely what George would do, sit by his bedside, sappy and 'chick'. But there's something about that scenario he knows isn't quite right and if only he could operate the muscles in his eyelids then he'd be able to double check. To see for himself.
To work it all out somehow...
But there's something solid shoved between his teeth that is making breathing impossible, and his chest has been set alight from the inside out, heart and lungs and everything in between crushed to charcoal and soot.
He claws at his face, fingers catching painfully in tubes and wires and the sweat slippery hand that had been wrapped around his wrist just seconds, minutes, hours earlier.
A voice is shouting. The ashy sound echoing off the rough surfaces inside his skull as a mechanical beeping keeps a piercing soundtrack spinning in the dark distance. It's familiar, the shouting voice. A low, insistent rumble that was seared into his most primitive depths on a cold conference room table swimming in blood.
Palms settle on his shoulders, pinning him to the mattress and restraining his thrashing limbs with a steady, grounding pressure that is also horrifyingly familiar.
And when his eyes finally do slide to open, all he can see is the dark red of someones dried blood etched deep under his own fingernails.
-
A silent vigil has been established it would seem. A constantly rotating changing of the guards meant to ensure there's not a moment where he's left on his own.
The drugs that flow down the thin tube originating from somewhere far above his head mean that he's oblivious to the comings and goings.
For the most part.
He comes to know who is occupying the plastic chair at his bedside by the sound of their breathing. By the temperature of their skin on his. By the way their fingers twitch and jump at the slightest sound.
Lexie's hands are perpetually cold. And they curl so completely into his that he can feel her ice numbing his veins.
Mark Sloan brings an air of invincibility with him as he steps through the doorway. The ambiance in the room shifts sideways to the left and he can't help but contemplate how many hours, days, weeks it will take for Lexie to fold herself into Mark and turn her back.
That outcome is inevitable really...
He doesn't need to identify Meredith because he's more than convinced that she doesn't come. Not once. Frightened off by the myriad ghosts that fill the empty corners of his white-bright room.
He says he understands even though he absolutely doesn't.
-
There's talk of a transfer to Seattle Grace. An ambulance ride across town to a living hell that he can't even begin to contemplate.
He refuses point blank and no one is brave enough to call him on the reasons why.
Lexie smiles nervously and runs trembling fingers through the hair that has flattened against his forehead, while Mark stands guard at the entrance to the room.
Sentry-like.
They've developed a pack mentality and somehow he's been determined the member most in need of protection. The feeling grinds at the base of his skull but the fog is still too thick for it to come to anything more than that.
-
He signs himself out against medical advice when no one is looking. When voices are muffled in neighbouring rooms and awareness is shifted to those more deserving of it than he.
And he almost gets away with it.
Almost.
The aging cab driver must have his foot poised above the gas pedal when the familiar shape steps up to the bumper, palms raised in a surrender that Alex knows too well is nothing more than a ruse.
The rear door opens and Mark slides to seated next to him, struggles with the worn seat-belt for seconds before leaning forward and over-riding any previous destination directions Alex had spelled out with an authoritative air that the driver doesn't bother to question.
He closes his eyes, presses the back of his head hard into the stained rest behind him, twists his torso just enough that the stitching effectively zipping up his chest pulls to painfully taught, allows the agony to ground him, and waits for the inevitable.
Is more than a little relieved when it fails to eventuate.
-
He's brusquely informed of the new living arrangements while strapped into the shadowy backseat of the cab. He doesn't bother to protest because he barely has the energy required to sit upright, let alone construct a counter argument that is even slightly convincing.
Besides, in a desperately hopeless kind of way that describes the three of them perfectly right now, it makes sense.
-
He spikes a low grade fever two days after his unceremonious arrival at Sloan's apartment. He's hot, and endlessly groggy from the meds they pour down his throat when his will to fight is at its most depleted.
A pot drops into the kitchen sink and he startles to upright from his position on the couch, all laboured breathing and aching fingers clawing at cushions that slip from his grasp.
They don't notice him, the chattering amateur chefs, and he takes a moment to press the heels of his palms deep into his eye sockets, to regain what little composure he's managed to scrape together in the heady days since he rose to waking with a fury that has yet to fully dissipate.
At first, they watch him sleep. One or the other or, sometimes, both. Like maybe he'll stop breathing if they don't, like his insides will start to leak out again, or a man with a gun will blow the back of his skull off in the nightmares that he knows they all have but never speak of.
The scrutiny is an almost tangible thing. Coating his skin in a layer of grime that won't wash off no matter how hard he scrubs away at it.
He can't help but wonder which of the three of them will be the first to crack and who else will be taken down in the inevitable fall.
Makes a pact with himself that it sure as hell won't be him.
Thinks he's in a better position that most to fend off the crazies. He's seen it come and go in every imaginable shape and size. A black silhouette that taps at his shoulder when he slows down too much to stay hidden.
A mocking reminder of times past.
-
When he's asked how much he remembers he lies through his teeth.
About what?
Typically follows it with glib comments detailing hot nurses and scar tissue and free time off work that are designed to deflect and defend more than anything else.
Waits for the rare moments of solitude when he's free to follow the blank stare with the bullet hole between the eyes around the room as it shifts from surface to surface to never ending surface...
Remember about what?
The other two talk constantly. At him. Around him. Over his head and to his face. A swiftly running stream of consonants and vowels that grate precariously at his edges.
He was just walking up the stairs...
And it was already too late...
Then Bailey said...
And Jackson did this thing...
Before the Chief...
As the black silhouette threatens to envelope him once and for all.
And then the elevator doors slid open...
-
He has no idea if Meredith has noticed he's missing. He assumes all his belongings are still haphazardly shoved into wardrobes and dressers in the bedroom he'd shared with Lexie because there is nothing about anything that is familiar to him here.
He feels trapped somewhat. Far from home in an unfamiliar apartment with people who are so foreign to him now that he's almost convinced he's dead and floating around in a parallel universe where Mark Sloan not only tolerates his existence, but seems oddly determined to celebrate it.
The only comforting thought is that he knows it can't last.
-
The fever hangs around doggedly. Turns him alternatively sweat soaked sweltering or to the bone chilled. There's a piece of metal still lodged in his chest and some days it's all he can do to pull air in and around it.
They threaten him with a return to the ward if things continue heading south. He shrugs them both off with a nonchalance that is almost as forced as the lopsided smirk that accompanies it and makes his way to the bathroom, the palm of one hand against the wall the only thing keeping him upright.
The blank stare with the bullet between the eyes has been etched into the shower's glass surround. He pokes a finger into the ethereal hole, leaves a smudged fingerprint in his wake and slides to the tile at his feet.
Waits for his legs to give in to the numbness so they'll finally match the way the rest of him feels.
-
By virtue of the jagged scar across his chest and the fact that more of his blood had been on the outside than the inside not so long ago, he's been designated the king sized bed in the master bedroom. Too dazed and high on the first night to protest and too completely comfortable in the pillow top and cotton sheets after that to care.
He doesn't know where the other two sleep. If they sleep. When they sleep. He's half convinced they just sit on the floor beside the bed and watch him.
Laying down, sitting up and moving between the two positions still poses significant difficulties, and the way Lexie's eyes follow him from around the room and the way Mark's hands are forever flinching out to catch his inevitable stumble initiates a hollow hum in the pit of his stomach that he never quite manages to quell.
No matter how many bottles of designer beer he 'borrows' while the others are darting between the hospital and the apartment, too wrapped up in their own falling apart routines to even begin to notice his.
There's blood.
He can smell it.
It's under his fingernails and streaked through his hair. Engrained into the soles of his shoes. It's her's this time, not his.
Which makes for a disturbing change.
And the nightmares are only feeding his fury now. Spinning him 'til his core is rattled and his sanity becomes a cloak that slips every so often from his shoulder blades.
-
Lexie changes the dressings. He'd do it alone if he could bring himself to look at the damage. He knows the mechanics of what went on, has had more than enough surgical training to figure it all out for himself. But he's never spoken about it or asked for precise details.
He's never said thank you either, and he hopes they don't expect him to because the words are frozen solid at the back of his throat and dislodging them will only dislodge a whole lot more than hollow gratitude.
Lexie changes the dressings until the one night that she doesn't. When she's at Meredith's or covering in the pit or at the market buying oranges or lying on a supply closet floor with her brain matter haloed in her hair.
He doesn't ask because the answer is irrelevant.
Mark changes them that night. A delicate touch, even lighter than Lexie's, that peels back paper-tape and inspects the still raw tissue with feather light fingertips and scotch soaked breath.
Something snaps.
Like halogen lights firing to bright white and burning.
They've touched him before. Those fingertips. The memories vivid. Flashing. One after the other.
Screaming and blood.
Blood and agony.
Agony and sheer, unbridled, unholy terror...
He flinches, jerks back from the touch, holds his breath desperately in a ferocious attempt not to give himself away anymore than he thinks he already has.
Mark's lips murmur an incongruous apology as his brow slowly creases into a confused frown.
He offers a shrug, begins a countdown, backwards from nine hundred and seventy thousand in seventeens, stills his ballooning torso long enough that Mark can push the tape back into place, before lurching to upright and almost colliding head first with the looming floor boards. Only makes it to nine hundred and sixty nine thousand eight hundred and ninety eight before the screeching world around him drains instantly to midnight black.
-
When the colours return he's hyperventilating. There are hands on his shoulders and his fingers are too weightless to push them off.
They're part of the problem but he can't seem to enunciate the words to explain it.
Isn't even sure if he wants to.
Lexie returns at some point. Her skull intact and her eyes bright with tears that he doesn't want but are all for him nonetheless.
He thinks it's probably at this moment that he figures it all out. Allows the puzzle pieces to drop together in a way that gives him only one option.
The decision brings with it a sense of calm. Stills his jagged breaths to a more natural rhythm and slows the flat out gallop that had been developing in his chest.
Mark has his car keys in his hand, a white knuckle grip on the simple metal logo. An immediate return to the hospital is threatened and he scoffs at them harshly before shrugging back into his shirt and picking an unsteady path to the door.
Steps through it with a finality that only he can understand.
-
He makes his getaway in the back of a cab.
The symmetry seems fitting.
-
Meredith doesn't question his return. Simply slides a shot of something cloudy across the kitchen counter to him as her eyes remain focused on the other side of the room.
That she can't even bring herself to look at him is a refreshing change.
His cell phone bleats a constant backing track to their otherwise silent drinking session. In the end he pulls it awkwardly from his pocket and dumps it, still ringing, into the murky cold remains of this mornings dish-washing water.
She relents then, asks him with a familiar sigh of resignation what he's gone and done this time.
He tracks the blank stare with the bullet hole between the eyes as it settles into position, a smudge stained reflection on the oven door, oddly comforted by her unwavering presence, and replies that he's only done what he should have realised was necessary weeks ago...
He leaves it at that. Either she gets it or she doesn't and, for now, that's more than enough.
When Meredith's cell phone bursts to life from her handbag in the hallway, he puts two and two together, comes up with the inevitable four and shrugs that he's going to bed.
He can already guess how the ensuing conversation will play out. The mere thought of the questions it'll raise brings with it an exhaustion that is utterly overwhelming.
-
He sleeps for twenty nine hours straight. Deep and dreamless.
Finds a note propped in toast crumbs detailing why Meredith's cell phone is swimming next to his in the sink and how much it will cost him to replace it. Watches the blank stare with the bullet hole between the eyes shake ever so slightly from side to side.
She barely knew anything about him, yet it feels like she knew damn near everything at the same time...
He is no longer surprised by this.
-
He's up early the next day. Showered and dressed and waiting for Meredith. She takes a deep breath when she figures it out but doesn't open her mouth to argue and he's so impossibly grateful for that that something sharp dislodges in his chest and air begins to flow a little more freely.
He avoids the elevators with a fervor even he can recognise as disturbing but manages to sell it as a fitness regime and spends the day clutching at the handrail to haul himself up endless flights of stairs, pausing to sink to his knees every so often as the walls close in and the floor rushes up to meet him.
The OR is off limits but he has no desire to go there anyway and the pit is a suffocating blanket of sights and sounds and heady recollections that are still too raw and wrenching and so he takes up residence in the clinic, tries not to think too much about the reason it exists or where she might be or why she hasn't called him.
Blames it on the suds soaked cell phone that he doesn't think he'll bother to replace and manages, only just, not to completely lose his shit at the sight of a quivering eight year old with a bloody nose.
-
He gets a page about a mandatory group therapy session just after lunch. Even he knows enough about psych. to know that this can not end well.
He contemplates skipping out but understands without needing to ask that his absence will only bring with it more questions that he doesn't have answers for.
At least, none that he's willing to admit to.
He spends five minutes in the bathroom, locked solidly in a stall, rehearsing comebacks that don't seem to flow as readily as they once did and practising a smirk that is becoming more and more forced.
Once seated, a brief glance at Lexie is almost his undoing, and he could almost kiss Cristina for the taco inspired diversion she creates.
No matter how fleeting it is...
But all his practised indifference is sent soaring when Lexie's foot begins to bounce, and he can't seem to tear his eyes off the rhythmic movements for long enough to listen to the words that tumble from her lips with an incoherence that silences his colleagues.
He itches to push his hands down on her knee. Force the movements to a standstill with a pleading stare for her to get it together... please.
But, as much as he's the solution for her, he's also the problem and so he sits, stays mute, barely manages to contain his own pent up unravelling.
Bile rises in his throat as his pager bursts to life at his hip, startling three quarters of the circle with a completeness that means his own panic is almost unrecognisable as he hurries from the room with a mumbled apology, ignores the page from admin., and walks straight out the hospital's glass front doors.
-
He has an unofficial arrangement with Teddy Altman. She checks his wounds every couple of days and organises x-rays to track the movement of the bullet still lodged in his rib cage.
She's still new enough to Seattle Grace to completely buy his bravado and he makes sure he turns it on thick for her, a not so misguided belief that she may have some sway with the trauma counsellor.
And despite the fact that he's never even left the house once night has fallen, let alone ventured to a bar or a club, he likes to embellish her with tales about how the bullet is a total chick magnet, because it seems like something a well adjusted guy with a chunk of metal in his chest would do.
At least, he thinks so. His objectivity is waning and the line between where he is now and where it's likely he's heading towards is getting closer and closer and closer to the tips of his toes, so he can't be all that sure...
When she suggests it's time for the planned removal he bounces from the exam bed with a comment he can't remember three seconds after it's passed his lips and doesn't bother to attend any of her requested follow ups.
-
When Lexie loses her shit in the clinic he feels his insides split into neat halves. Can't quite bring himself to dispute that fact that, somehow, somewhere along the line, this, everything that is happening to her, has just become all his fault...
-
It takes him nine days of working in the clinic to get cleared for surgery. Just when he thinks the inept counsellor dude has him all figured out, he signs the paperwork and sends him on his way.
Just like that.
The fact that the very thought of slicing a patient open on an operating table fades his vision to blue and orange and pale, pale pink doesn't even come up in the conversation.
Lexie does. Every now and then.
He talks about her because it means he doesn't have to talk about himself. Or Reed. Or the bullet that removed the back of her skull.
He can detach and talk about someone else's crazy 'til the cows come home...
Or at least until Mark lurches through the door spouting further proof of his ineptitude and giving him the perfect opportunity to flee.
Fast.
-
There's a wedding that everyone except the bride and groom seem to recognise is a farce. He goes for the free booze and hot chicks in dresses and that fact that it's all happening downstairs in his own freaking living room. Figures he can skip out when the crazy builds to its inevitable crescendo, make the climb to his room and lock the rest of the world out.
He stumbles across Lexie on a fridge run for beer that he really doesn't need. Manages to string together what he hopes is something about how he thinks she's hot and badass and no where near as crazy as he thinks he might be.
He doubts it comes out quite as he'd planned because things rarely do when the room is spinning at his feet and all he wants is to take back the last five minutes of his night.
The stinging verbal slap she delivers in retaliation could probably confirm his suspicions but he's too busy replaying her words over and over and over and over to provide any sort of apologetic explanation, and when the sound of her voice has finished echoing, thunder-like, inside his chest she's up and left and it's too late anyway...
Izzie, Izzie, Izzie...
-
He hears on the ever efficient grapevine that Meredith was pregnant.
And now she's not.
Just like Reed was alive and then a bullet exploded between her eyes, transforming her into a faded mirage that slinks around in the shadows of his peripheral vision, and he figures it all out then... what she's no doubt been trying to tell him all along...
He was there at the beginning, when the only victim was her. And he failed.
He failed them all.
It's a surprisingly simple explanation really.
-
The glass bottle in his fist slides soundlessly from his grasp and erupts at his feet. Shatters to shards that splinter and spin.
And he thinks it's only fitting really. He appears to have lost his grip on everything else after all.
-
He stands before the elevator doors, tries not to flinch as they yawn open and his feet shuffle forward by inches and millimeters.
He's still not convinced he'll manage to make it all the way to inside.
There's no sound here. Wherever it is he's retreated to. Just a void of white cloud and the rocking tumble of his own heart beating somewhere high and hard in the back of his throat.
He's been nervous before. Maybe even scared.
This is so much bigger than either of those things could ever be.
Blood flows over the silver strip.
His.
Trickles a trail down the gap and into the infinite void below.
He risks a glace behind him, seeks out Reed's reflection for confirmation but misses it on the first attempt and lurches wildly in circles 'til it's no longer possible to pretend he hasn't completely lost every marble he'd so far managed desperately to retain.
A crowd has gathered, a sense of anticipation has been building for days now. Lexie's visit to psych. was just the tip of a giant ice-berg that has also thrown up engagement rings and arrest warrants and bridal magazines and therapy sessions where the hardest part is remembering all the lies you told last week so that you don't get it indescribably mixed up this week...
He backs up a step or three, collides solidly with the metal doors that have slid resolutely into place behind him.
He was too slow.
It's the story of his life.
A bubble of hysteria bursts just under his surface. He begins to laugh and absolutely can not bring himself to a stop.
-
He doesn't remember going to sleep but he does remember waking up.
The pillow top has disappeared. The cotton sheets. Even the familiar smell of Izzie that never really went anywhere despite the fact that she disappeared long ago.
One hospital ward has been replaced by another and he notes with a detached sense of trepidation that they've called in the big guns. Meredith leans against the far wall, locked in hushed conversation with Dr. Wyatt who nods her agreement to words he can't bring himself to decipher.
He takes the moment of relative privacy to investigate his surroundings, the bag of clear liquid that empties into the back of his hand, the pitcher of water on the side table that is already three quarters to empty.
The solid proof he was looking for that he's not alone. Clings to the notion desperately even as he recognises the inherent danger it represents.
-
He sits in determined silence for thirty nine minutes while Dr. Wyatt scribbles continuously at a notepad. The sound of the pen dragging across the page is almost enough to bring him to his knees, but he knows Meredith held out for more than one measly session and so he pushes back into the mattress and settles in to wait to her out.
He watches the clock hand tick, tick, tick for the last seven minutes of his scheduled one hour and has to clamp down a flinch as she stands abruptly and moves towards the doorway.
The clack of her heels on the linoleum slows and she throws a same time tomorrow? back at him over her shoulder.
He drags his hands down his face in an attempt to scrub away the bone crushing exhaustion that threatens to shut him down and by the time he lifts them again Lexie has replaced Wyatt in the room and is sliding into a familiar position, limbs folded into the chair on his left.
His eyes are clenched to shut but he knows it's her anyway because cold fingers curl into his and begin the slow process of numbing his veins.
He hears the sharp intake of air that signals her intention to speak and gets in before her.
Just.
Don't, please...
More an exhale of air than an actual utterance.
She ignores him.
Alex.
So much said in the space of one word. His name.
He should make her leave. Dredge up something inappropriate and crass and have her slamming the door as she storms away, but he doubts he could string the required consonants together without screaming or sobbing or something equally train wreck horrifying and so he stares up at the ceiling to wait.