Crossover fic (SPN/GA): Interval (1/4) (Sam, George, Dean, Izzie)
Title: Interval (1/4)
Crossover: Supernatural/Grey's Anatomy
Characters: Sam, George, (Sam/George), Dean, Izzie
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count: 5000 for this part
Summary: Why are the brothers Winchester at Seattle Grace? Sam had to get that cast somewhere, and I need him to go cuddle up to George because they both need somebody, with the extreme daddy angst they're working through. This takes place right around the time George finds out about his father's heart problem and his cancer, and in the SPN 'verse, we're just a short time passed from John's death.
Really, this is a character story. It explores the relationships between the Winchesters and between George and Izzie (who are their own little family). Then it considers how these sad folk might interact, and how they might help each other out, specifically Sam & George and Dean & Izzie.
Spoilers:
1) For SPN, through 2.04 ("Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things"). (The writers put 2.03 in Montana, and 2.05 is in Oklahoma. However, I don’t think they were clear about where the zombie episode was, during which Sam hurts his arm, so I feel justified in pretending they're in Washington state without completely bending canon all to hell.)
2) For GA, through 3.09 ("From A Whisper to a Scream"), in some AU version of events between 3.09 (when he chooses Dr. Hahn to do the surgery) and 3.10 (when the surgery takes place).
Notes:
1) There is NO suggestion of a connection between John and Denny. Swear to God. That's not why I'm doing this. They're two separate characters.
2) While I love Callie to death and think she's perfect for George, I'm pretty well ignoring the crap that happens between them in 3.08 and 3.09, because it's more convenient to do so.
Warnings:
1) I love my two emo boys to bits and pieces, which is why I had to put them together here, but if you know anything about them as characters, you can imagine the sort of tone this will necessarily have in places, especially when they're together.
2) I am totally and completely bullshitting my way through this medical stuff. Just go along with it and don't think too much. Like about why George is doctoring on his own.
Interval
Part One
Dean's looking at him sideways the whole time the nervous but adorable doctor smiles his way through the exam when Sam can tell he doesn't want to be smiling. Sam doesn't either-his arm fucking hurts-but he can't help but be charmed by this man that has Dean's need to hide his pain but also has a gentleness and earnestness that makes Sam calm, makes him want to neither scream nor act obtrusively macho. He just breathes and lets his eyes sink into the doctor's until he can barely feel the throbbing in his arm anymore.
When the doctor leaves, promising to return with X-rays, he leaves a trail of dissatisfaction in his wake-his own, no longer concealed; Sam's, the pain returning to his arm.
But Dean's satisfied. He just smirks like he always does, like he used to when Sam would draw him pictures at school as a kid: amused but touched, if one could see past the defensive leer in that smirk. Dean always looks at him with brotherly concern and love, even if Sam's the only one that can discern such things in his face. Dean's also good at seeing things; he's probably recognized how the doctor's mind is both squarely on Sam's arm and on something else altogether. And then there's the other thing.
"So," Dean says with a grin. "You want me to break the other one?"
"Dean."
"All I'm saying-what is it with you and short guys?"
*
George is shooting laser beams through Bailey's head right now with his eyes. It's a game he plays, like he believes he can actually cause her physical harm if he thinks about it hard enough. He justifies it by believing he can also fix things with wanting them to be fixed. That and he wouldn't actually want to hurt Bailey. Only now, only when he's so frustrated.
The bad part is he knows exactly why he can't be anywhere near his father's medical care right now, but it doesn't stop him from being angry. This treatment makes him feel like a small child, as if he hasn't been through medical school and hasn't learned how to manage his nerves and his fear. But it's different when it's your own flesh and blood, he thinks. He'd do crazy things now, because this is his father. He's his son.
He knows deep down that it's stupid to be upset when he's chosen to be up here working, not down there with his family. He could just be George, without the charts and doctor talk, but he thinks he can't do that now. He can't be that helpless for yet another day in a row. If he's going to go down there, it's going to have to be as Doctor O'Malley, and he's not allowed to do that. So he's Doctor O'Malley up here, hoping to keep himself sane.
And so he's standing in the corridor shooting laser beams through Bailey's head, trying not to think about what he's always thinking about now, but his eyes keep fixing on the scene behind the blinds, in that room where the two brothers are giving each other hell. They're made of the same stuff, he thinks. Not like his brothers, so foreign, even if he shares their blood and can look back on a vast but receding stretch of years he lived with them and breathed the same air. Then he went away to be who he is now. Was he always him, or was the leaving the thing that made him? He doesn't know, but he doesn't let himself wish for brothers who might understand him better. They are who he has, and they're loving their father there in that room while he's out here, watching a guy with a pair of brown eyes that would stop anyone who bothered to look into them. He doesn't see physical pain so much as he sees someone lost-but maybe not completely, because of his brother.
George has brothers, and he has friends. He tells himself he's not alone. It takes a lot of telling.
*
Dean doesn't want to be here. That's generally true of wherever he is. He thinks he has wanderlust in his veins, like a virus that doesn't hurt him, just makes him itch all over to be where he's not. But he really hates hospitals. Having a gangly, accident-prone brother has meant he's had to be in them too much. And lately…
Sam's trying not to flirt with the doctor, and Dean's not even thinking about flirting. Too much static in his brain. It's a constant fight to not think about it, and he loses this battle every day. He was here in a place like this, life draining away, and then there was his father's life gone in the blink of an eye, no time to mourn or anything. He knows that's best, because he couldn't have handled it if it had been slower. Sam, maybe. He'd've watched Sam fall apart over-
No, he thinks. Sam didn't give up when Dean was almost dead, so why should he have given up on their father? That's why it's best that he was gone before they could protest it, because they'd've done a hell of a lot of protesting. Dean still is. Dean is still so fucking angry he can't speak sometimes.
So he kicks the hell out of the soda machine.
The blonde girl coming up the stairs is just his type, especially now since she looks like she's about this close to losing it herself or sinking into it so deep she can't get out. He hates seeing that, and it makes him angrier when she slams her fist a little too hard into what looks like the magic spot on the soda machine and smiles only obliquely to hear the can fall loose. Everything's out of joint. He should be giving her the eye, and she should be smiling so widely it could make him blush all over, if he let himself.
So he tries a smile, and it seems to work. "Thanks," he says.
He thinks she looks so damn soft and beautiful in those blue scrubs. She smiles back and says in a conspiratorial tone, "Fair warning: the snack machine eats dollar bills."
"Got any change?"
She just shakes her head, and her nose wrinkles. Cute nose. But, hell, everything about her is cute. Then she cocks that head to one side and says determinedly, "I look competent, don't I?"
"Huh?"
"Competent. I don't seem crazy to you, do I?"
"No."
"Good," she says with a nod, about to walk off. Then she whirls around and says, "Do you like Bugles?"
"What?"
'The chips?" She waves her hand: "Or whatever the hell they are…"
But she's already advancing to the snack machine beside him, and she squats down and he watches her stick her whole arm into the slot at the bottom and snake it up into the cavity of the machine.
When she triumphantly presents him with the bag of Bugles, her smile is for a moment powerful enough to make him feel a little flushed. Then it fades, and he can only say thank you to her back as she retreats.
So either she's a nurse or a mental patient. Either way, she's been around the hospital long enough to feel at home here. He wishes he could feel that way. He knows he could if he could just fucking make himself remember how to flirt. And if Sam's X-rays are okay.
*
Izzie is a little tired of this need to pretend that things are fine. Oh, she spent a long time wallowing, unable to pretend, but now that she can, and now that people expect her to, she finds herself pretending all the time.
And then there's George and his pretending, staring her in the face today like a mirror. He's not fine, and nothing, especially not his eyes, could convince her otherwise. But at least they're talking again. She decided that it's not worth being angry if it means she can't help him right now.
She runs the X-rays to him, because it's better being a lap-dog for her friend than chasing that nitwit shrink around the building, this strange too-nice woman telling her how and when to feel. She almost stops outside the door of the room George is in, and she does for a moment, just to watch a sweetly charming down-to-earth guy with hair hanging down over his eyes doing his best to be noticed by an oblivious doctor. She'd love to stand here and watch as this tall guy goes pink all over with George's hands on him, but she knows the teasing will be better later if she gets a closer view.
Distraction, she thinks. That's all their life if right now: helpful distraction, for both of them. What's not helpful is walking into the room and finding that strangely captivating, angry one from the vending machine standing in the corner, looking for all the world like he isn't scared out of his mind.
Figures, she thinks. All the good ones… But the way he watches her when she comes in… And George says brother.
He also says call me George, and she wonders if perhaps the heretofore Doctor O'Malley is the only one in the room that can't feel the waves of desperation. Maybe it's because he's the most desperate of all, and she suddenly wants to scoop up the entire lot of them, squeeze them all to her chest until they calm down or stop fighting themselves, but she simply calls George into the hallway. Too much.
"Tib-fib fracture," she says. "Actually, two, I think. Older, maybe. But nothing serious. And he's so checking you out."
"What?" He only partly snaps out of his own head, and to make a flat comment, offhand comment, probably just to mess with her. "I'm pretty sure a guy that looks like that could do better than me."
"What? Um, one: you're not a dog, George. And two: you're straight."
He studies the chart intently. "In practice. But I'm pretty sure I'd think long and hard for a guy that hot." This is what they do now, make fake conversation that means to divert them both. Sometimes she doesn’t resent it, because it means they both smile for a moment.
She raises her eyebrows. "Even if he's apparently the clumsy type?"
His mouth rounds into a soundless oh, and he turns back to the window.
She says, "Geez, George. Don't worry about it. Anyway, I was just giving you crap because I didn't think you were into guys."
He just narrows his eyes at her and studies the brothers intently.
"But, yeah, the blonde one was definitely checking me out earlier," she says as she saunters off.
His quiet voice follows her: "Iz, will you…?"
She just nods and heads off to the cardiac wing.
*
If Dean would just stop looking at him, he could do this, even if the guy's pretty much straight. It's nice just to flirt, even if the person doesn't consciously recognize it's flirtation. First it was Doctor O'Malley, then you can call me George, and even if he likes the thought of doing sloppy, kinky things in some out-of-the-way nook of the hospital with a doctor, it's really George that fascinates him, makes him want to just take him by the wrist and hold him there until he stops fidgeting starts talking lets him touch him until they're both quiet. And maybe until his arm doesn't feel like it's on fire, deep in the bone.
He knows wanting to shake George is at least in part about the need to shake Dean, but he doesn't dwell on that. He watches George's lips purse as he looks over the chart and he lets Dean watch him watching-because it amuses Dean just as much as it freaks him out to see his baby brother wanting needing planning to take, slowly and surely; Sam's always methodical, careful, but especially with this one.
"I don't need an operation?" Sam asks, knowing the look Dean's giving him.
"No," George replies maybe too curtly, as if the idea is preposterous. Then his face pinches, and he says, "Just a cast for a few weeks. But there's another, older stress showing there…"
"We were in an accident recently. They didn't say anything was broken." It still hurts to think about the accident, as if that's when it happened, not in some room like this and coffee spilled on that floor along with part of his gut he doesn't know if he'll ever get back.
"No," George agrees with a shake of his head, instantly reassuring. "I don't think so. Maybe a hairline fracture. I'll have…the other doctor take a look at the x-rays, but even if it is… Well, it'll all be immobile for a while. It'll heal just fine."
Dean jumps in now, as if Sam needs help wrangling this one, as if Dean would have any fucking clue how to woo a person much less coax out what Sam wants, which is just a flicker of recognition that he might ride a little connection in on. Dean steps up: "See. What I tell you, Sammy."
Sam shoots him a death look, and George almost smiles and says, "My father calls me Georgie. I understand how it is."
"Well, if you heard the names I call Dean…"
Dean says, "What a mouth on this boy," but the half-innuendo, half-banter doesn't seem to faze George, thankfully. Then Dean adds, apparently helping again, "You think this looks bad, you should have seen the son of a bitch Sam put out."
George looks at him quizzically then, not exactly recoiling from the thought of violence, but as if in disbelief, just like Sam's always in disbelief when he thinks about how he uses guns now and fists, and he wasn't ever supposed to become this person. How did he get here?
Sam has a choice to make: how does he play this thing? So he gives George a smile that holds the line between mischievous and wicked, maybe a little cocky but entirely buoyant in a way Dean can never manage, and says, "I had to. He called me Sammy."
George tries, unsuccessfully, to hide a smile. Sam does his level best to hold his gaze, and he get two seconds at least-long enough to really look.
*
George really, really doesn't need this.
It's not precisely some sex thing. It's just that he sometimes meets people who seem to slide into some deep pocket inside him, who make him feel vulnerable, almost like an ache. But not fear with this one. Of course, the lack of fear seems…scary.
He remembers how glowing and happy Izzie was when she went to the hospital to see Denny in that pink dress, and she didn't for one minute expect it to happen the way it did. It blindsided her, just like the cancer and the heart thing and Burke and Christina and all of the rest of the tangled mess of it. He never thought about not being able to trust them. And he never thought to be scared of something happening to his father, who's supposed to live forever. He thinks that if he worries enough now, he won't be tempting the Gods or fate or whatever. Being unafraid is dangerous, but in George's experience when he gets good and freaked out over something, it usually doesn't come to anything.
So he permits himself to freak out a little about this guy flirting with him.
"It was flirting, I think," he tells Izzie. "I don't know. Do guys flirt differently than girls?"
"Everyone flirts differently. Like you. I don't get you. I don't think I've ever seen you flirt. Not even with-" Her eyes and hands say Meredith. He find that it doesn't wound him like it once would have.
"It's because I don't. I either get completely tongue-tied or I don't know what's happening until it's too late for flirting. I mean… Well, with Callie she just sorta…claimed me."
"The question is, I guess, do you want to flirt back with this guy?"
"I don't know how." He hears the wail in his voice, and he wonders just how tightly wound he must be to get this upset at something innocuous. Or not-innocuous. His mind fixes on the sight of his father in that bed again, and he feels like an extraordinary coward for not being down there.
"Hands," she says, and he tries to keep himself right here, right now. "You've got great hands."
"Yeah?"
"Trust me."
"But I've already been touching him. You know, to look at his arm."
"Then you've already been flirting with him, haven't you? No wonder he's swooning over you."
He sighs. "He is not swooning. That's ridiculous. Guys like that don't swoon. They…bale hay or load shotguns or something." That's it He seems like his brothers, except he's not. He maybe seems like George would be if he'd never become this person he is. A doctor. A worried son. Both at the same time? Not possible, but yet it's happening anyway. He continues, "Besides, I just don't think I'm supposed to be doing this right now. I don't even want to. It's not a good time. Things are-"
"Yeah. I know." They've already had the conversation about why he's working instead of haunting the waiting room downstairs, so there's nothing left to say about it. He think it's funny how they're already stepping around this issue of Burke and Christina and the secret, like now that it's out there and Dr. Hahn's prepared to do the surgery, they can't afford to spend time making themselves miserable thinking about this enormous thing that's infecting the whole fucking hospital now, just festering quietly but too painfully to touch. Honestly, he's content to refuse to think about the betrayal for the time being because he has so much hurt and anger he doesn't know what he'd do if he actually let it out. And now isn't the time for anything but prayer.
She's still talking: "This guy, he's probably not looking to make an honest man out of you or anything. He's probably just flirting. I don't really think he's hoping to get in your pants." Then her eyes narrow: confused, searching. "Ohgod, you want him to get in your pants."
"What? No." He gives her the same face he does when she comes in to pee while he's in the shower. "I don't know if I'd be able to do anything like that with a guy, much less right now. But it's not even about that."
"How do you know?"
"I just do. There's something…easy about him."
"Easy?" she says with raised eyebrows.
"I mean…calm. I can't explain it, and I know you're gonna say I'm crazy, but it's like he doesn't want to take anything from me."
"Well, then, it's simple: figure out what you want him to give you." The arch of her eyebrows is getting ridiculous.
"I'm not gonna go there right now, Izzie," he snaps, but without venom, just hoping to shut down the conversation. "And he's my patient."
He knows the words sink in with them at about the same time, because he's watching her face go blank again as his stomach sinks. He thanks God she doesn't see it as an attack, like the horrible thing he said the day before that he still can't believe he said. This time it's just him talking before he thinks, so she doesn't cut into him with her eyes. But the words still have their effect anyway.
Blindsided. Denny's never really out of her head, but somehow she seems to constantly be blindsided by him. They've moved beyond the point that they discuss these things when they happen, the daily, hourly reminders of Denny and the undeposited check on the refrigerator. If they keep stopping for all those things, she'll never learn how to live with them.
He's starting to wonder how she lives at all, this nervous knot of feeling hanging over her, absorbing her energy, becoming her days until that's all there is. But he's not at all confused now about how she could do something as reckless as cut his LVAD. Something-anything-to stop the endless waiting.
*
Dean can tell Sam's in pain, and he hates that, always has (hates it when it's the emotional kind, too, whether or not Sam believes he feels it), but if the son of a bitch is too stubborn to take the pain meds they gave him…
Hell, he knows he would be too, but it's because for him pain is real. It almost feels purifying somehow because when you move past it, it leaves you feeling victorious. And when you live with it, well, you try to remember that's a victory, too, but it's hard when you're staring into your brother's eyes and he has no idea how fucked up you really are. He thinks you're avoiding your grief-college boy's right on that one-but he doesn't know what else you're carrying. So he has the luxury of giving you a smirky look that only has the power to annoy you because he's your younger brother.
"What?" Dean says.
"You been out here before? When I was still in school?"
"What? Why?"
"You and that doctor…" Dean frowns at him. Sam prompts: "The cute blonde…"
"She's not a nurse?"
"Dude, you've got to join the rest of us in the 21st century. Her badge said she was a doctor. Intern. And the way she was looking at you…"
"Dude, you're crazy."
"No, I'm not. She looked intrigued but confused. Maybe a little pissed."
"If she's pissed, it's not my fault. I've never seen her before today." Sam gives him the and? face, so he says, "I ran into her upstairs at the drink machine."
"Uh huh."
"You just worry about your doe-eyed doctor."
"But she's cute, right?"
"You tell me, Switch Hitter."
Dean waits for a retort that doesn't come. Instead, Sam's suddenly looking at something over his shoulder and giving him the look of death again, saying through gritted teeth, "If you so much as open your mouth…"
"You'll what? Poke me with your IV? Gimp me to death?" When Sam's eyes narrow even further than he thought they could, he just shakes his head and says, "See if I bring you any coffee then," and strolls out the door.
He's halfway down the hallway when he remembers the last time Sam walked out of a hospital room like that. Sam had been holding-then dropping-a cup of cafeteria coffee when he came back to find their father dead on the floor. Dean comes to a halt, right there in the middle of the hallway. He can't breathe for a second, almost dizzy. Too quickly, he makes himself move, but all he can do is press himself against the clean white space of the cool wall.
After an interminable moment, he takes a deep breath, and it holds, so he walks on.
*
Izzie wants to believe it's crazy. Every day, she tells herself she shouldn't feel this lost. She only knew him for a few weeks, but it was enough-or he was enough-to make her pin a lot of things to him. She misses the hell out of Denny, his smile and his laugh and his ability to make her weak in the knees even on his back, pale in a hospital bed, and she misses the things they never got to have. That hurts a lot. But the wracking sobs usually come when she knows she's lost without him.
She hadn't even known how lost she had been until she wasn't anymore, when she finally laid all her future everything in his large, warm hands. Now the loneliness she feels is just as permanent as that forever was supposed to be, and it scares her more than she thought anything could. Surrounded by friends who would lie on the bathroom floor for hours with her, not even speaking, she still sometimes feels as alone as she did counting the tiles in the linoleum pattern and wishing they'd just go away.
Part of her return to normal, she has decided, is to try to live outside her own mind for a while every day. It will be easier when she has patients again, but right now she has to make do. Today, it's been easy to find something to focus on, especially with George's father's surgery coming up. What's not so easy is deciding what to do about this brother of the guy with the broken arm. She's not sure if she wants to figure out if this Dean she's standing here staring at is fucked up in a way she understands. She's really pretty afraid he is, but she's not sure if it's because he reminds her of herself or of Alex Karev.
But she hadn't thought about the guy at all until she came upon him looking out a window in the less-traveled back hallway, hands in his pockets and frowning to himself. When she made her decision, quick, without thinking-and that lack of hesitation felt good-she glided up beside him. Now she has to remind herself to be certain as he looks at her out of only the corner of his eyes.
"I don’t like them, either," she says. He doesn't respond to that, so she adds, "Hospitals."
After a long silence, he turns enough the she can see one of his eyes, but not his expression. "You work in one. Apparently."
"I need them so I can do what I do for people. They're like a…necessary evil."
"I've never met an evil that was necessary." He gives a small shake of his head and says coldly, through a pinched throat, "You're a doctor?"
"Yeah."
"So why are you lurking, not doctoring?"
How could he know? He doesn't, surely. She just replies, "It's a long story."
"I've got the time."
"No offense, but I don't even know you."
His shoulders bounce with a silent snort. "See, this is funny. I'm usually the one who stonewalls people. I'm Dean."
"I know your name."
"Well, seems like if we're civilized people, this is where you tell me yours." She already knows he has hazel eyes that could make a person forget what they're saying. As it is, she can't stop looking at him. It's even harder now that he's looking back, giving her an amused face, those clear eyes twinkling just a little, enough. "You can make one up if you want. I do all the time."
She almost says Bethany, but the joke would be lost on him. Actually, she's more than a little afraid he's the type to have seen those pictures. "I'm Dr. Stevens. Izzie." He nods-strange, almost like he's acknowledging her like he would a guy, not a girl, and she knows with a face and body like that, he's no stranger to a game he's for some reason not playing today. Maybe he's decided he wants something else from her, not that she could make a guess about that. Or maybe he's worried about his brother. "Your brother's going to be fine."
"I know."
"Then how come you're so…?"
"It's a long story," he says, arching his eyebrows and smiling sardonically.
"Do you think we can have a whole conversation like this if we go for coffee?"
"Somehow, Dr. Stevens, I doubt you've ever met a person you couldn't bullshit…if the mood struck you."
"But it's always harder with a fellow bullshitter," she replies.
"I'm sure we've got whole areas of discussion that won't involve any bullshit. What I don't know is why you'd even bother." For a second, she thinks he means why would she bother, but he really means, why would she bother with him?
What could she say that would be the real truth? That she's a fixer, hell-bent on doing something today for somebody, and if she can't scrub in on surgeries and George is going to continue to act so closed-off that she feels for the first time since…since all the bad stuff like doing some baking to compensate for a bad thing that's not her own… She thinks this is all too hard, too much, and yet she wants nothing more than to get him out of the hospital, and maybe it's because she wants to get out of the hospital too. Maybe it is why would she bother?
However, more important, and infinitely better as a diversion, is a little gauging of the situation. She cocks her head to the side. "It's simple, Dean Winchester, brother of Sam: George gets anxious when he has an audience."
At that, he finally takes his hands out of his pockets. He doesn't have to chuckle for her to know he understands exactly what she's saying, and he approves, in his own brotherly way. His tone is mock-serious: "But we'll miss a lot of blushing and head-ducking and nervous rambling."
"I don't know about you," she says, and the smile is for the first time in an hour or so not forced, "but I'll hear all about it later, whether he wants to tell me or not." So Dean chuckles again and follows her down the hallway.
He walks down the back stairs so precisely, even if to anyone else it would seem careless, nearly a stomp. She knows that walk well, except her version involves less heavy footfall and more eyes focused straight ahead, even if she's not really seeing where she's going. Dean, she thinks, is always watching where he's going. He's always watching everything.
on to part two
Crossover: Supernatural/Grey's Anatomy
Characters: Sam, George, (Sam/George), Dean, Izzie
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count: 5000 for this part
Summary: Why are the brothers Winchester at Seattle Grace? Sam had to get that cast somewhere, and I need him to go cuddle up to George because they both need somebody, with the extreme daddy angst they're working through. This takes place right around the time George finds out about his father's heart problem and his cancer, and in the SPN 'verse, we're just a short time passed from John's death.
Really, this is a character story. It explores the relationships between the Winchesters and between George and Izzie (who are their own little family). Then it considers how these sad folk might interact, and how they might help each other out, specifically Sam & George and Dean & Izzie.
Spoilers:
1) For SPN, through 2.04 ("Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things"). (The writers put 2.03 in Montana, and 2.05 is in Oklahoma. However, I don’t think they were clear about where the zombie episode was, during which Sam hurts his arm, so I feel justified in pretending they're in Washington state without completely bending canon all to hell.)
2) For GA, through 3.09 ("From A Whisper to a Scream"), in some AU version of events between 3.09 (when he chooses Dr. Hahn to do the surgery) and 3.10 (when the surgery takes place).
Notes:
1) There is NO suggestion of a connection between John and Denny. Swear to God. That's not why I'm doing this. They're two separate characters.
2) While I love Callie to death and think she's perfect for George, I'm pretty well ignoring the crap that happens between them in 3.08 and 3.09, because it's more convenient to do so.
Warnings:
1) I love my two emo boys to bits and pieces, which is why I had to put them together here, but if you know anything about them as characters, you can imagine the sort of tone this will necessarily have in places, especially when they're together.
2) I am totally and completely bullshitting my way through this medical stuff. Just go along with it and don't think too much. Like about why George is doctoring on his own.
Interval
Part One
Dean's looking at him sideways the whole time the nervous but adorable doctor smiles his way through the exam when Sam can tell he doesn't want to be smiling. Sam doesn't either-his arm fucking hurts-but he can't help but be charmed by this man that has Dean's need to hide his pain but also has a gentleness and earnestness that makes Sam calm, makes him want to neither scream nor act obtrusively macho. He just breathes and lets his eyes sink into the doctor's until he can barely feel the throbbing in his arm anymore.
When the doctor leaves, promising to return with X-rays, he leaves a trail of dissatisfaction in his wake-his own, no longer concealed; Sam's, the pain returning to his arm.
But Dean's satisfied. He just smirks like he always does, like he used to when Sam would draw him pictures at school as a kid: amused but touched, if one could see past the defensive leer in that smirk. Dean always looks at him with brotherly concern and love, even if Sam's the only one that can discern such things in his face. Dean's also good at seeing things; he's probably recognized how the doctor's mind is both squarely on Sam's arm and on something else altogether. And then there's the other thing.
"So," Dean says with a grin. "You want me to break the other one?"
"Dean."
"All I'm saying-what is it with you and short guys?"
*
George is shooting laser beams through Bailey's head right now with his eyes. It's a game he plays, like he believes he can actually cause her physical harm if he thinks about it hard enough. He justifies it by believing he can also fix things with wanting them to be fixed. That and he wouldn't actually want to hurt Bailey. Only now, only when he's so frustrated.
The bad part is he knows exactly why he can't be anywhere near his father's medical care right now, but it doesn't stop him from being angry. This treatment makes him feel like a small child, as if he hasn't been through medical school and hasn't learned how to manage his nerves and his fear. But it's different when it's your own flesh and blood, he thinks. He'd do crazy things now, because this is his father. He's his son.
He knows deep down that it's stupid to be upset when he's chosen to be up here working, not down there with his family. He could just be George, without the charts and doctor talk, but he thinks he can't do that now. He can't be that helpless for yet another day in a row. If he's going to go down there, it's going to have to be as Doctor O'Malley, and he's not allowed to do that. So he's Doctor O'Malley up here, hoping to keep himself sane.
And so he's standing in the corridor shooting laser beams through Bailey's head, trying not to think about what he's always thinking about now, but his eyes keep fixing on the scene behind the blinds, in that room where the two brothers are giving each other hell. They're made of the same stuff, he thinks. Not like his brothers, so foreign, even if he shares their blood and can look back on a vast but receding stretch of years he lived with them and breathed the same air. Then he went away to be who he is now. Was he always him, or was the leaving the thing that made him? He doesn't know, but he doesn't let himself wish for brothers who might understand him better. They are who he has, and they're loving their father there in that room while he's out here, watching a guy with a pair of brown eyes that would stop anyone who bothered to look into them. He doesn't see physical pain so much as he sees someone lost-but maybe not completely, because of his brother.
George has brothers, and he has friends. He tells himself he's not alone. It takes a lot of telling.
*
Dean doesn't want to be here. That's generally true of wherever he is. He thinks he has wanderlust in his veins, like a virus that doesn't hurt him, just makes him itch all over to be where he's not. But he really hates hospitals. Having a gangly, accident-prone brother has meant he's had to be in them too much. And lately…
Sam's trying not to flirt with the doctor, and Dean's not even thinking about flirting. Too much static in his brain. It's a constant fight to not think about it, and he loses this battle every day. He was here in a place like this, life draining away, and then there was his father's life gone in the blink of an eye, no time to mourn or anything. He knows that's best, because he couldn't have handled it if it had been slower. Sam, maybe. He'd've watched Sam fall apart over-
No, he thinks. Sam didn't give up when Dean was almost dead, so why should he have given up on their father? That's why it's best that he was gone before they could protest it, because they'd've done a hell of a lot of protesting. Dean still is. Dean is still so fucking angry he can't speak sometimes.
So he kicks the hell out of the soda machine.
The blonde girl coming up the stairs is just his type, especially now since she looks like she's about this close to losing it herself or sinking into it so deep she can't get out. He hates seeing that, and it makes him angrier when she slams her fist a little too hard into what looks like the magic spot on the soda machine and smiles only obliquely to hear the can fall loose. Everything's out of joint. He should be giving her the eye, and she should be smiling so widely it could make him blush all over, if he let himself.
So he tries a smile, and it seems to work. "Thanks," he says.
He thinks she looks so damn soft and beautiful in those blue scrubs. She smiles back and says in a conspiratorial tone, "Fair warning: the snack machine eats dollar bills."
"Got any change?"
She just shakes her head, and her nose wrinkles. Cute nose. But, hell, everything about her is cute. Then she cocks that head to one side and says determinedly, "I look competent, don't I?"
"Huh?"
"Competent. I don't seem crazy to you, do I?"
"No."
"Good," she says with a nod, about to walk off. Then she whirls around and says, "Do you like Bugles?"
"What?"
'The chips?" She waves her hand: "Or whatever the hell they are…"
But she's already advancing to the snack machine beside him, and she squats down and he watches her stick her whole arm into the slot at the bottom and snake it up into the cavity of the machine.
When she triumphantly presents him with the bag of Bugles, her smile is for a moment powerful enough to make him feel a little flushed. Then it fades, and he can only say thank you to her back as she retreats.
So either she's a nurse or a mental patient. Either way, she's been around the hospital long enough to feel at home here. He wishes he could feel that way. He knows he could if he could just fucking make himself remember how to flirt. And if Sam's X-rays are okay.
*
Izzie is a little tired of this need to pretend that things are fine. Oh, she spent a long time wallowing, unable to pretend, but now that she can, and now that people expect her to, she finds herself pretending all the time.
And then there's George and his pretending, staring her in the face today like a mirror. He's not fine, and nothing, especially not his eyes, could convince her otherwise. But at least they're talking again. She decided that it's not worth being angry if it means she can't help him right now.
She runs the X-rays to him, because it's better being a lap-dog for her friend than chasing that nitwit shrink around the building, this strange too-nice woman telling her how and when to feel. She almost stops outside the door of the room George is in, and she does for a moment, just to watch a sweetly charming down-to-earth guy with hair hanging down over his eyes doing his best to be noticed by an oblivious doctor. She'd love to stand here and watch as this tall guy goes pink all over with George's hands on him, but she knows the teasing will be better later if she gets a closer view.
Distraction, she thinks. That's all their life if right now: helpful distraction, for both of them. What's not helpful is walking into the room and finding that strangely captivating, angry one from the vending machine standing in the corner, looking for all the world like he isn't scared out of his mind.
Figures, she thinks. All the good ones… But the way he watches her when she comes in… And George says brother.
He also says call me George, and she wonders if perhaps the heretofore Doctor O'Malley is the only one in the room that can't feel the waves of desperation. Maybe it's because he's the most desperate of all, and she suddenly wants to scoop up the entire lot of them, squeeze them all to her chest until they calm down or stop fighting themselves, but she simply calls George into the hallway. Too much.
"Tib-fib fracture," she says. "Actually, two, I think. Older, maybe. But nothing serious. And he's so checking you out."
"What?" He only partly snaps out of his own head, and to make a flat comment, offhand comment, probably just to mess with her. "I'm pretty sure a guy that looks like that could do better than me."
"What? Um, one: you're not a dog, George. And two: you're straight."
He studies the chart intently. "In practice. But I'm pretty sure I'd think long and hard for a guy that hot." This is what they do now, make fake conversation that means to divert them both. Sometimes she doesn’t resent it, because it means they both smile for a moment.
She raises her eyebrows. "Even if he's apparently the clumsy type?"
His mouth rounds into a soundless oh, and he turns back to the window.
She says, "Geez, George. Don't worry about it. Anyway, I was just giving you crap because I didn't think you were into guys."
He just narrows his eyes at her and studies the brothers intently.
"But, yeah, the blonde one was definitely checking me out earlier," she says as she saunters off.
His quiet voice follows her: "Iz, will you…?"
She just nods and heads off to the cardiac wing.
*
If Dean would just stop looking at him, he could do this, even if the guy's pretty much straight. It's nice just to flirt, even if the person doesn't consciously recognize it's flirtation. First it was Doctor O'Malley, then you can call me George, and even if he likes the thought of doing sloppy, kinky things in some out-of-the-way nook of the hospital with a doctor, it's really George that fascinates him, makes him want to just take him by the wrist and hold him there until he stops fidgeting starts talking lets him touch him until they're both quiet. And maybe until his arm doesn't feel like it's on fire, deep in the bone.
He knows wanting to shake George is at least in part about the need to shake Dean, but he doesn't dwell on that. He watches George's lips purse as he looks over the chart and he lets Dean watch him watching-because it amuses Dean just as much as it freaks him out to see his baby brother wanting needing planning to take, slowly and surely; Sam's always methodical, careful, but especially with this one.
"I don't need an operation?" Sam asks, knowing the look Dean's giving him.
"No," George replies maybe too curtly, as if the idea is preposterous. Then his face pinches, and he says, "Just a cast for a few weeks. But there's another, older stress showing there…"
"We were in an accident recently. They didn't say anything was broken." It still hurts to think about the accident, as if that's when it happened, not in some room like this and coffee spilled on that floor along with part of his gut he doesn't know if he'll ever get back.
"No," George agrees with a shake of his head, instantly reassuring. "I don't think so. Maybe a hairline fracture. I'll have…the other doctor take a look at the x-rays, but even if it is… Well, it'll all be immobile for a while. It'll heal just fine."
Dean jumps in now, as if Sam needs help wrangling this one, as if Dean would have any fucking clue how to woo a person much less coax out what Sam wants, which is just a flicker of recognition that he might ride a little connection in on. Dean steps up: "See. What I tell you, Sammy."
Sam shoots him a death look, and George almost smiles and says, "My father calls me Georgie. I understand how it is."
"Well, if you heard the names I call Dean…"
Dean says, "What a mouth on this boy," but the half-innuendo, half-banter doesn't seem to faze George, thankfully. Then Dean adds, apparently helping again, "You think this looks bad, you should have seen the son of a bitch Sam put out."
George looks at him quizzically then, not exactly recoiling from the thought of violence, but as if in disbelief, just like Sam's always in disbelief when he thinks about how he uses guns now and fists, and he wasn't ever supposed to become this person. How did he get here?
Sam has a choice to make: how does he play this thing? So he gives George a smile that holds the line between mischievous and wicked, maybe a little cocky but entirely buoyant in a way Dean can never manage, and says, "I had to. He called me Sammy."
George tries, unsuccessfully, to hide a smile. Sam does his level best to hold his gaze, and he get two seconds at least-long enough to really look.
*
George really, really doesn't need this.
It's not precisely some sex thing. It's just that he sometimes meets people who seem to slide into some deep pocket inside him, who make him feel vulnerable, almost like an ache. But not fear with this one. Of course, the lack of fear seems…scary.
He remembers how glowing and happy Izzie was when she went to the hospital to see Denny in that pink dress, and she didn't for one minute expect it to happen the way it did. It blindsided her, just like the cancer and the heart thing and Burke and Christina and all of the rest of the tangled mess of it. He never thought about not being able to trust them. And he never thought to be scared of something happening to his father, who's supposed to live forever. He thinks that if he worries enough now, he won't be tempting the Gods or fate or whatever. Being unafraid is dangerous, but in George's experience when he gets good and freaked out over something, it usually doesn't come to anything.
So he permits himself to freak out a little about this guy flirting with him.
"It was flirting, I think," he tells Izzie. "I don't know. Do guys flirt differently than girls?"
"Everyone flirts differently. Like you. I don't get you. I don't think I've ever seen you flirt. Not even with-" Her eyes and hands say Meredith. He find that it doesn't wound him like it once would have.
"It's because I don't. I either get completely tongue-tied or I don't know what's happening until it's too late for flirting. I mean… Well, with Callie she just sorta…claimed me."
"The question is, I guess, do you want to flirt back with this guy?"
"I don't know how." He hears the wail in his voice, and he wonders just how tightly wound he must be to get this upset at something innocuous. Or not-innocuous. His mind fixes on the sight of his father in that bed again, and he feels like an extraordinary coward for not being down there.
"Hands," she says, and he tries to keep himself right here, right now. "You've got great hands."
"Yeah?"
"Trust me."
"But I've already been touching him. You know, to look at his arm."
"Then you've already been flirting with him, haven't you? No wonder he's swooning over you."
He sighs. "He is not swooning. That's ridiculous. Guys like that don't swoon. They…bale hay or load shotguns or something." That's it He seems like his brothers, except he's not. He maybe seems like George would be if he'd never become this person he is. A doctor. A worried son. Both at the same time? Not possible, but yet it's happening anyway. He continues, "Besides, I just don't think I'm supposed to be doing this right now. I don't even want to. It's not a good time. Things are-"
"Yeah. I know." They've already had the conversation about why he's working instead of haunting the waiting room downstairs, so there's nothing left to say about it. He think it's funny how they're already stepping around this issue of Burke and Christina and the secret, like now that it's out there and Dr. Hahn's prepared to do the surgery, they can't afford to spend time making themselves miserable thinking about this enormous thing that's infecting the whole fucking hospital now, just festering quietly but too painfully to touch. Honestly, he's content to refuse to think about the betrayal for the time being because he has so much hurt and anger he doesn't know what he'd do if he actually let it out. And now isn't the time for anything but prayer.
She's still talking: "This guy, he's probably not looking to make an honest man out of you or anything. He's probably just flirting. I don't really think he's hoping to get in your pants." Then her eyes narrow: confused, searching. "Ohgod, you want him to get in your pants."
"What? No." He gives her the same face he does when she comes in to pee while he's in the shower. "I don't know if I'd be able to do anything like that with a guy, much less right now. But it's not even about that."
"How do you know?"
"I just do. There's something…easy about him."
"Easy?" she says with raised eyebrows.
"I mean…calm. I can't explain it, and I know you're gonna say I'm crazy, but it's like he doesn't want to take anything from me."
"Well, then, it's simple: figure out what you want him to give you." The arch of her eyebrows is getting ridiculous.
"I'm not gonna go there right now, Izzie," he snaps, but without venom, just hoping to shut down the conversation. "And he's my patient."
He knows the words sink in with them at about the same time, because he's watching her face go blank again as his stomach sinks. He thanks God she doesn't see it as an attack, like the horrible thing he said the day before that he still can't believe he said. This time it's just him talking before he thinks, so she doesn't cut into him with her eyes. But the words still have their effect anyway.
Blindsided. Denny's never really out of her head, but somehow she seems to constantly be blindsided by him. They've moved beyond the point that they discuss these things when they happen, the daily, hourly reminders of Denny and the undeposited check on the refrigerator. If they keep stopping for all those things, she'll never learn how to live with them.
He's starting to wonder how she lives at all, this nervous knot of feeling hanging over her, absorbing her energy, becoming her days until that's all there is. But he's not at all confused now about how she could do something as reckless as cut his LVAD. Something-anything-to stop the endless waiting.
*
Dean can tell Sam's in pain, and he hates that, always has (hates it when it's the emotional kind, too, whether or not Sam believes he feels it), but if the son of a bitch is too stubborn to take the pain meds they gave him…
Hell, he knows he would be too, but it's because for him pain is real. It almost feels purifying somehow because when you move past it, it leaves you feeling victorious. And when you live with it, well, you try to remember that's a victory, too, but it's hard when you're staring into your brother's eyes and he has no idea how fucked up you really are. He thinks you're avoiding your grief-college boy's right on that one-but he doesn't know what else you're carrying. So he has the luxury of giving you a smirky look that only has the power to annoy you because he's your younger brother.
"What?" Dean says.
"You been out here before? When I was still in school?"
"What? Why?"
"You and that doctor…" Dean frowns at him. Sam prompts: "The cute blonde…"
"She's not a nurse?"
"Dude, you've got to join the rest of us in the 21st century. Her badge said she was a doctor. Intern. And the way she was looking at you…"
"Dude, you're crazy."
"No, I'm not. She looked intrigued but confused. Maybe a little pissed."
"If she's pissed, it's not my fault. I've never seen her before today." Sam gives him the and? face, so he says, "I ran into her upstairs at the drink machine."
"Uh huh."
"You just worry about your doe-eyed doctor."
"But she's cute, right?"
"You tell me, Switch Hitter."
Dean waits for a retort that doesn't come. Instead, Sam's suddenly looking at something over his shoulder and giving him the look of death again, saying through gritted teeth, "If you so much as open your mouth…"
"You'll what? Poke me with your IV? Gimp me to death?" When Sam's eyes narrow even further than he thought they could, he just shakes his head and says, "See if I bring you any coffee then," and strolls out the door.
He's halfway down the hallway when he remembers the last time Sam walked out of a hospital room like that. Sam had been holding-then dropping-a cup of cafeteria coffee when he came back to find their father dead on the floor. Dean comes to a halt, right there in the middle of the hallway. He can't breathe for a second, almost dizzy. Too quickly, he makes himself move, but all he can do is press himself against the clean white space of the cool wall.
After an interminable moment, he takes a deep breath, and it holds, so he walks on.
*
Izzie wants to believe it's crazy. Every day, she tells herself she shouldn't feel this lost. She only knew him for a few weeks, but it was enough-or he was enough-to make her pin a lot of things to him. She misses the hell out of Denny, his smile and his laugh and his ability to make her weak in the knees even on his back, pale in a hospital bed, and she misses the things they never got to have. That hurts a lot. But the wracking sobs usually come when she knows she's lost without him.
She hadn't even known how lost she had been until she wasn't anymore, when she finally laid all her future everything in his large, warm hands. Now the loneliness she feels is just as permanent as that forever was supposed to be, and it scares her more than she thought anything could. Surrounded by friends who would lie on the bathroom floor for hours with her, not even speaking, she still sometimes feels as alone as she did counting the tiles in the linoleum pattern and wishing they'd just go away.
Part of her return to normal, she has decided, is to try to live outside her own mind for a while every day. It will be easier when she has patients again, but right now she has to make do. Today, it's been easy to find something to focus on, especially with George's father's surgery coming up. What's not so easy is deciding what to do about this brother of the guy with the broken arm. She's not sure if she wants to figure out if this Dean she's standing here staring at is fucked up in a way she understands. She's really pretty afraid he is, but she's not sure if it's because he reminds her of herself or of Alex Karev.
But she hadn't thought about the guy at all until she came upon him looking out a window in the less-traveled back hallway, hands in his pockets and frowning to himself. When she made her decision, quick, without thinking-and that lack of hesitation felt good-she glided up beside him. Now she has to remind herself to be certain as he looks at her out of only the corner of his eyes.
"I don’t like them, either," she says. He doesn't respond to that, so she adds, "Hospitals."
After a long silence, he turns enough the she can see one of his eyes, but not his expression. "You work in one. Apparently."
"I need them so I can do what I do for people. They're like a…necessary evil."
"I've never met an evil that was necessary." He gives a small shake of his head and says coldly, through a pinched throat, "You're a doctor?"
"Yeah."
"So why are you lurking, not doctoring?"
How could he know? He doesn't, surely. She just replies, "It's a long story."
"I've got the time."
"No offense, but I don't even know you."
His shoulders bounce with a silent snort. "See, this is funny. I'm usually the one who stonewalls people. I'm Dean."
"I know your name."
"Well, seems like if we're civilized people, this is where you tell me yours." She already knows he has hazel eyes that could make a person forget what they're saying. As it is, she can't stop looking at him. It's even harder now that he's looking back, giving her an amused face, those clear eyes twinkling just a little, enough. "You can make one up if you want. I do all the time."
She almost says Bethany, but the joke would be lost on him. Actually, she's more than a little afraid he's the type to have seen those pictures. "I'm Dr. Stevens. Izzie." He nods-strange, almost like he's acknowledging her like he would a guy, not a girl, and she knows with a face and body like that, he's no stranger to a game he's for some reason not playing today. Maybe he's decided he wants something else from her, not that she could make a guess about that. Or maybe he's worried about his brother. "Your brother's going to be fine."
"I know."
"Then how come you're so…?"
"It's a long story," he says, arching his eyebrows and smiling sardonically.
"Do you think we can have a whole conversation like this if we go for coffee?"
"Somehow, Dr. Stevens, I doubt you've ever met a person you couldn't bullshit…if the mood struck you."
"But it's always harder with a fellow bullshitter," she replies.
"I'm sure we've got whole areas of discussion that won't involve any bullshit. What I don't know is why you'd even bother." For a second, she thinks he means why would she bother, but he really means, why would she bother with him?
What could she say that would be the real truth? That she's a fixer, hell-bent on doing something today for somebody, and if she can't scrub in on surgeries and George is going to continue to act so closed-off that she feels for the first time since…since all the bad stuff like doing some baking to compensate for a bad thing that's not her own… She thinks this is all too hard, too much, and yet she wants nothing more than to get him out of the hospital, and maybe it's because she wants to get out of the hospital too. Maybe it is why would she bother?
However, more important, and infinitely better as a diversion, is a little gauging of the situation. She cocks her head to the side. "It's simple, Dean Winchester, brother of Sam: George gets anxious when he has an audience."
At that, he finally takes his hands out of his pockets. He doesn't have to chuckle for her to know he understands exactly what she's saying, and he approves, in his own brotherly way. His tone is mock-serious: "But we'll miss a lot of blushing and head-ducking and nervous rambling."
"I don't know about you," she says, and the smile is for the first time in an hour or so not forced, "but I'll hear all about it later, whether he wants to tell me or not." So Dean chuckles again and follows her down the hallway.
He walks down the back stairs so precisely, even if to anyone else it would seem careless, nearly a stomp. She knows that walk well, except her version involves less heavy footfall and more eyes focused straight ahead, even if she's not really seeing where she's going. Dean, she thinks, is always watching where he's going. He's always watching everything.
on to part two