it's a green christmas in this town (3/?) {ensemble}
Title: It's A Green Christmas In This Town (3/?)
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble. Meredith/Derek, Alex/Izzie, Mark/Lexie, Cristina/Owen, Sadie. Other characters in other parts.
Word Count: 2,533
Author's Note: Yes, writing a story about Christmas after Christmas has ended isn't brillant. Hopefully you all are still enjoying the ride; this is for all of you who have stuck with me these past few years, through my various writing phases.And believe it or not, this does have an end point.
(part 1) (part 2)
It ends with them as the last ones left in the living room, as everyone breaks off to do their own thing. Meredith eyes her half-sister with some amount of concern, every bit the big sister that Lexie had wanted not all that long ago.
There’s a variety of things she could say. She could tell her that it’s not that big of a deal, except it is. She could tell her that sometimes men change their ways, except that this is Mark Sloan, and she doesn’t think people ever really change - there’s always some part of who they were left behind to rear up at the most inopportune time. She could just ignore, instead talk about the weather or Christmas or bond over some missed childhood memories, except Meredith has never been that person.
Mostly, she just wants to ask Lexie what the hell she’s thinking sleeping with an attending. She wants to take the hypocritical route. Because if Lexie should’ve learned any lesson from her so far, it’s that sleeping with attendings usually gets you nowhere but trouble. And it’s wrong. It’ll make the other interns mistreat her. It’ll make people assume that she got to where she is simply because of who she slept with.
She wants to tell her all of that, but she isn’t sure how to do it while still making Lexie believe her, while still making her not hating her. Because while they don’t have the best relationship, and yes, that’s mostly her own fault, she doesn’t want to ruin what little they do have.
Lexie doesn’t give her a chance to anyways. “You don’t have to say it, you know.”
Meredith looks at her, as non-judgmentally as possible. “Say what?”
“You don’t have to tell me about how this will ruin everything or how bad of an idea this was.” Lexie looks down, fingers brushing across the carpet below her. She’d stayed on the floor, even after everyone had gotten up and left. Briefly, Meredith entertains the idea that Lexie was saying all of this because she already knew that she’d done something wrong. She already knew to call it off. Then, “You don’t need to play the big sister. Because I’m not a child, and I don’t need to be told who I can and can’t sleep with. Not by you, and not by Derek, and certainly not by George. I don’t need to be babysat or watched over. I’m a big girl, okay.”
The words carry far more force than her voice does, and her eyes never lift off of the ground. Meredith knows she still means every single word of it. She wouldn’t have said if she hadn’t, because from what she does know of Lexie she isn’t one to talk back unless it’s her breaking point.
So Meredith, with no speech left to give, just sits back in her chair and nods, while Lexie gets up and walks out of the room.
---
There are times where Izzie wishes that she knew Derek a little better. She lives with him, yes, because of Meredith, but she doesn’t know him. She knows Dr. Shepherd, not the man behind the surgical mask, the white lab coat. It just strikes her as odd, living with someone without really knowing, understanding, them, and having them know very little of you.
And then there are times when she is insanely glad to be able to talk to someone who probably has no idea what’s going on behind the scenes of her own life. Who can, with a little work, a few lies, be taken for a fool.
It’s for a good cause, she thinks to herself, rationalizing the idea of taking advantage of their lack of a relationship a second before she actually does it.
“Can I ask you a question?” She prefaces, keeping her eyes on the pancake batter she’s stirring.
“Sure.” His voice is casual, calm, a change from before. Everyone had seen the way he was looking at Mark. Everyone knew what was going on there. He was probably too focused on that to really read into anything else.
“What could be causing a patient to see things?” It’s a vague question, nothing too specific, something she should be able to figure out herself, except she’s not exactly unbiased, and she needs a second opinion, preferably from someone who really knows what they’re talking about.
“Hallucinations?” He asks, and she nods. “Any number of things. Why?”
“Well, it’s…” she pauses, to come up with a plausible backstory, a reason to be asking. It doesn’t take her very long. “George has this patient that he’s been talking about. He’s seeing things, like…people who aren’t supposed to be there type of things. And he says he’s not sure what could be causing it, so I figured I’d ask you since it has to be neurological, right?”
“Not necessarily.” His gaze shifts to her, and she meets his eyes, like proving a point. Look him in the eye and he’ll never know how much she’s lying through her teeth. It works like a charm, because he continues when she does. “It could be a brain aneurysm, and every time it flares up it could cause the person to see something that isn’t there. It could be a brain tumor. It could be various smaller, more rare disorders. Or it could be psychological.”
“Psychological?” Izzie asks, clinging to that possibility since none of the others sounded particularly comforting.
“You’d need a psych consult for that,” he tells her, making it clear that it was an avenue he wasn’t willing to explore, but adding anyway, “Posttraumatic stress disorder, among others. Or the patient could just be losing their mind, quite literally.” She nods again. She was afraid of that last answer. “Why isn’t George asking me himself?”
“I don’t think he had a chance to. I mean, he just said something about it yesterday.” Silently, she prays Derek doesn’t take this further before she has the chance to correct the problem herself. Or find someone who can. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate the help though; I’ll probably call him about it later.”
Derek nods, and they fall back into a semi-comfortable silence. Out of the corner of her eye, Denny watches.
---
It’s fitting that just as soon as Lexie flees from what was almost Meredith’s awkward lecture on why she shouldn’t sleep with an attending, she runs into Sadie. Because at that point she’s in the mood to blame someone for this. Or at the very least argue.
“You got me in so much trouble,” she says, cornering Sadie in the empty hallway, far enough from the stairs that she won’t be running.
Sadie doesn’t seem at all fazed. That shouldn’t be a surprise; in her experience, nothing fazes Sadie. “But it was fun, wasn’t it?”
Lexie presses her lips together, forces herself not to smile at the thought of just how much fun it had been. There was something about the forbidden that made her feel so very, very alive. Instead, she does her best to put on an intimidating face, which Sadie only seems to laugh at. “This is not funny. Meredith’s trying to give speeches, and did you see Derek and Mark? Did you see the looks on their faces?”
“Everyone saw that.” Sadie replies, cocking her head to the side, her eyes following something that Lexie can’t see. She glances over her shoulder, watching Alex go downstairs with a look like he could possibly breathe fire on his face. Unhappy is an understatement. Sadie drops her voice, as he ventures downstairs and out of earshot, “What’s his problem?”
“Stop changing the subject,” Lexie orders.
Sadie’s eyebrows raise sky high, and that smile comes back again. “Yes, mother. And it’s not like you didn’t know it was supposed to snow.”
“It was almost midnight and I’d been asleep for an hour. I didn’t know my own name.” Which was stretching the truth a little. She’d known enough to tell him that sleeping over was a potentially bad idea. Not enough to remember why though.
“Look at it this way: at least the truth is out. No more hiding. I mean so what if people know. What are they going to do? There’s nothing saying you can’t do it. It’s just frowned upon.”
It’s all true. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just a fact of enduring Meredith, of watching Mark endure the disapproval of his best friend. Again, apparently, and she knew that was the one thing Mark had been trying desperately to avoid. The truth may be out, but that could be what ruins what is, right now, a good thing. At the very least, it’s a comfortable thing.
Lexie’s sigh comes out far too shaky, and something in Sadie’s face changes, softens, as she says, “Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”
---
After breakfast, Meredith makes a point of catching Derek’s eye, holding it as she turned to go upstairs. He follows her upstairs, into their bedroom, and she finds herself quite proud of just how well that was communicated.
If only she could accomplish the same things with her words, they’d be set.
“Maybe we should just leave well enough alone.” She starts, leaning back against the dresser, shifting her hips so that the bare inch of skin between her jeans and top reveals itself, not above using methods of subtle distraction to help her cause.
“What do you mean?” He asks, and his eyes only glance there for a second before they find her face again. Because he listens. That’s his thing now. She should be happier than she is.
“Mark and Lexie. She’s not a kid, she’s right about that. And maybe it’s just for the best that we don’t start anything if we’re going to be stuck here for the next few days. We don’t need to make this any worse than it already is.” As usual, she came armed with a variety of reasons. She just can’t pick from them.
Derek’s already shaking his head, so slightly that she’s not even sure he’s aware he’s doing it. “I told him not to do it. He did it anyway. Again.”
“We’re not their parents.” Meredith presses.
“It’s betrayal.” He cuts in, before she can truly start up again. “In the end this doesn’t have anything to do with them. This is about betrayal, between me and him, again.”
“I don’t think he meant it that way.”
“It doesn’t matter how he meant it.”
Sometimes, thankfully not all that often, Derek gets this cocky streak where everything he says just seems to infuriate her. This is rapidly becoming a very good example of that. “You’re being unreasonable.”
“Maybe.” He shrugs, nonchalantly.
“He’s your best friend Derek. This is nothing.” She tries, but Derek’s face, his eyes, don’t change at all, and it’s crystal clear that nothing she says is going to change his mind at all. “Fine. Just…deal with it in private.”
He’ll give her that much, apparently. “Yeah,” he says, voice free of that particular tone, and he leaves the bedroom, conversation over.
Out of habit, she checks her pager that lies silent on her dresser, then her cell phone. The phone blinks ‘1 missed call’, and when she flips it open she sees Cristina’s name. With a sigh, albeit a slightly relieved one because at least she had tried to call, that made her hopeful, she dialed her friend’s number.
The phone rings. And rings. And despite the fact that Meredith knows Cristina rarely goes anywhere without her phone if she’s not dealing with patients, in case the call is hospital related, no one picks up.
---
Cristina knows that her phone is ringing. A quick glance tells her who it is too. But she won’t pick it up, just lets the harsh ringing echo in her head, and keeps on walking.
Later. She’ll deal with this later.
“Your phone is ringing.” Owen appears next to her, as she pushes open the door to the stairwell.
“I know.”
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
She shakes her head, “No.”
“Those aren’t even supposed to be on. It’s a hospital, remember?”
It would figure that, on a day where she’s beginning to want nothing more than to be left alone, he’s one of the few to actually show up to work. Because they’re…something that involves random make-out sessions, generally taking place somewhere in the hospital, and she really doesn’t want to deal with him anymore than she wants to deal with her and Meredith’s drama and rapidly crumbling friendship. “Only when we could possibly interfere with any machines. I’ve been working here longer than you; I know the rules.”
He falls silent, but keeps walking alongside her, taking the stairs at a mirrored pace to hers, even when she alternately speeds up and slows down.
“Is there something you want?”
“You look worried about something.” He says, with a shrug. He’s looking at her, has been since they ran into each other more or less, probably more than what’s entirely healthy if he doesn’t want to fall down the stairs.
Finally, she meets his eyes, lowered brows knit together, a frown on her face. “Well, I’m not.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.” His face belies the fact that he doesn’t believe her. Of course not.
She has trouble finding her footing on the next stair; has to look away, down, in order to avoid falling.
---
Eventually they all end up back in the living room. Meredith’s house isn’t so big when there are seven people in it and an infinite amount of time to be spent. It isn’t long before you run out of places to hide.
Sadie brings it up when there’s a natural lull in any conversation, no sound left but the television telling tales of no hope for freedom. “You know, for being two days away from Christmas, there’s a sad lack of decorations here.”
Meredith shifts in her chair, like she’s worried about the possibilities of what Sadie may be starting by saying that. “I guess we were just busy and didn’t get that far.”
Obviously, Izzie’s the one to jump in next. From what Sadie had been told, she had been the one with all the holiday spirit, though not recently. “Don’t we have that fake tree up in the attic? Your mother’s old one.”
“Yeah, but it’s old and…”
“So? It’s Christmas. And it’s not like we have a lot of options.” Izzie continues, before Meredith can get much else out, seemingly already settled on the idea.
“I am not going up in that attic,” Alex says, with a shake of his head, looking at Derek like he’s passing a torch and he probably is, since the few times she’s seen anyone go up there it’s him that gets forced to. She isn’t sure what the problem is other than it’s a complete mess and last time he almost broke something. But that was just what she was able to discern from the arguing.
“You’ll live.” Meredith cuts in, apparently resigning herself to it.
And so began their latest attempt at distraction.
---
Part 4
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble. Meredith/Derek, Alex/Izzie, Mark/Lexie, Cristina/Owen, Sadie. Other characters in other parts.
Word Count: 2,533
Author's Note: Yes, writing a story about Christmas after Christmas has ended isn't brillant. Hopefully you all are still enjoying the ride; this is for all of you who have stuck with me these past few years, through my various writing phases.And believe it or not, this does have an end point.
(part 1) (part 2)
It ends with them as the last ones left in the living room, as everyone breaks off to do their own thing. Meredith eyes her half-sister with some amount of concern, every bit the big sister that Lexie had wanted not all that long ago.
There’s a variety of things she could say. She could tell her that it’s not that big of a deal, except it is. She could tell her that sometimes men change their ways, except that this is Mark Sloan, and she doesn’t think people ever really change - there’s always some part of who they were left behind to rear up at the most inopportune time. She could just ignore, instead talk about the weather or Christmas or bond over some missed childhood memories, except Meredith has never been that person.
Mostly, she just wants to ask Lexie what the hell she’s thinking sleeping with an attending. She wants to take the hypocritical route. Because if Lexie should’ve learned any lesson from her so far, it’s that sleeping with attendings usually gets you nowhere but trouble. And it’s wrong. It’ll make the other interns mistreat her. It’ll make people assume that she got to where she is simply because of who she slept with.
She wants to tell her all of that, but she isn’t sure how to do it while still making Lexie believe her, while still making her not hating her. Because while they don’t have the best relationship, and yes, that’s mostly her own fault, she doesn’t want to ruin what little they do have.
Lexie doesn’t give her a chance to anyways. “You don’t have to say it, you know.”
Meredith looks at her, as non-judgmentally as possible. “Say what?”
“You don’t have to tell me about how this will ruin everything or how bad of an idea this was.” Lexie looks down, fingers brushing across the carpet below her. She’d stayed on the floor, even after everyone had gotten up and left. Briefly, Meredith entertains the idea that Lexie was saying all of this because she already knew that she’d done something wrong. She already knew to call it off. Then, “You don’t need to play the big sister. Because I’m not a child, and I don’t need to be told who I can and can’t sleep with. Not by you, and not by Derek, and certainly not by George. I don’t need to be babysat or watched over. I’m a big girl, okay.”
The words carry far more force than her voice does, and her eyes never lift off of the ground. Meredith knows she still means every single word of it. She wouldn’t have said if she hadn’t, because from what she does know of Lexie she isn’t one to talk back unless it’s her breaking point.
So Meredith, with no speech left to give, just sits back in her chair and nods, while Lexie gets up and walks out of the room.
---
There are times where Izzie wishes that she knew Derek a little better. She lives with him, yes, because of Meredith, but she doesn’t know him. She knows Dr. Shepherd, not the man behind the surgical mask, the white lab coat. It just strikes her as odd, living with someone without really knowing, understanding, them, and having them know very little of you.
And then there are times when she is insanely glad to be able to talk to someone who probably has no idea what’s going on behind the scenes of her own life. Who can, with a little work, a few lies, be taken for a fool.
It’s for a good cause, she thinks to herself, rationalizing the idea of taking advantage of their lack of a relationship a second before she actually does it.
“Can I ask you a question?” She prefaces, keeping her eyes on the pancake batter she’s stirring.
“Sure.” His voice is casual, calm, a change from before. Everyone had seen the way he was looking at Mark. Everyone knew what was going on there. He was probably too focused on that to really read into anything else.
“What could be causing a patient to see things?” It’s a vague question, nothing too specific, something she should be able to figure out herself, except she’s not exactly unbiased, and she needs a second opinion, preferably from someone who really knows what they’re talking about.
“Hallucinations?” He asks, and she nods. “Any number of things. Why?”
“Well, it’s…” she pauses, to come up with a plausible backstory, a reason to be asking. It doesn’t take her very long. “George has this patient that he’s been talking about. He’s seeing things, like…people who aren’t supposed to be there type of things. And he says he’s not sure what could be causing it, so I figured I’d ask you since it has to be neurological, right?”
“Not necessarily.” His gaze shifts to her, and she meets his eyes, like proving a point. Look him in the eye and he’ll never know how much she’s lying through her teeth. It works like a charm, because he continues when she does. “It could be a brain aneurysm, and every time it flares up it could cause the person to see something that isn’t there. It could be a brain tumor. It could be various smaller, more rare disorders. Or it could be psychological.”
“Psychological?” Izzie asks, clinging to that possibility since none of the others sounded particularly comforting.
“You’d need a psych consult for that,” he tells her, making it clear that it was an avenue he wasn’t willing to explore, but adding anyway, “Posttraumatic stress disorder, among others. Or the patient could just be losing their mind, quite literally.” She nods again. She was afraid of that last answer. “Why isn’t George asking me himself?”
“I don’t think he had a chance to. I mean, he just said something about it yesterday.” Silently, she prays Derek doesn’t take this further before she has the chance to correct the problem herself. Or find someone who can. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate the help though; I’ll probably call him about it later.”
Derek nods, and they fall back into a semi-comfortable silence. Out of the corner of her eye, Denny watches.
---
It’s fitting that just as soon as Lexie flees from what was almost Meredith’s awkward lecture on why she shouldn’t sleep with an attending, she runs into Sadie. Because at that point she’s in the mood to blame someone for this. Or at the very least argue.
“You got me in so much trouble,” she says, cornering Sadie in the empty hallway, far enough from the stairs that she won’t be running.
Sadie doesn’t seem at all fazed. That shouldn’t be a surprise; in her experience, nothing fazes Sadie. “But it was fun, wasn’t it?”
Lexie presses her lips together, forces herself not to smile at the thought of just how much fun it had been. There was something about the forbidden that made her feel so very, very alive. Instead, she does her best to put on an intimidating face, which Sadie only seems to laugh at. “This is not funny. Meredith’s trying to give speeches, and did you see Derek and Mark? Did you see the looks on their faces?”
“Everyone saw that.” Sadie replies, cocking her head to the side, her eyes following something that Lexie can’t see. She glances over her shoulder, watching Alex go downstairs with a look like he could possibly breathe fire on his face. Unhappy is an understatement. Sadie drops her voice, as he ventures downstairs and out of earshot, “What’s his problem?”
“Stop changing the subject,” Lexie orders.
Sadie’s eyebrows raise sky high, and that smile comes back again. “Yes, mother. And it’s not like you didn’t know it was supposed to snow.”
“It was almost midnight and I’d been asleep for an hour. I didn’t know my own name.” Which was stretching the truth a little. She’d known enough to tell him that sleeping over was a potentially bad idea. Not enough to remember why though.
“Look at it this way: at least the truth is out. No more hiding. I mean so what if people know. What are they going to do? There’s nothing saying you can’t do it. It’s just frowned upon.”
It’s all true. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just a fact of enduring Meredith, of watching Mark endure the disapproval of his best friend. Again, apparently, and she knew that was the one thing Mark had been trying desperately to avoid. The truth may be out, but that could be what ruins what is, right now, a good thing. At the very least, it’s a comfortable thing.
Lexie’s sigh comes out far too shaky, and something in Sadie’s face changes, softens, as she says, “Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”
---
After breakfast, Meredith makes a point of catching Derek’s eye, holding it as she turned to go upstairs. He follows her upstairs, into their bedroom, and she finds herself quite proud of just how well that was communicated.
If only she could accomplish the same things with her words, they’d be set.
“Maybe we should just leave well enough alone.” She starts, leaning back against the dresser, shifting her hips so that the bare inch of skin between her jeans and top reveals itself, not above using methods of subtle distraction to help her cause.
“What do you mean?” He asks, and his eyes only glance there for a second before they find her face again. Because he listens. That’s his thing now. She should be happier than she is.
“Mark and Lexie. She’s not a kid, she’s right about that. And maybe it’s just for the best that we don’t start anything if we’re going to be stuck here for the next few days. We don’t need to make this any worse than it already is.” As usual, she came armed with a variety of reasons. She just can’t pick from them.
Derek’s already shaking his head, so slightly that she’s not even sure he’s aware he’s doing it. “I told him not to do it. He did it anyway. Again.”
“We’re not their parents.” Meredith presses.
“It’s betrayal.” He cuts in, before she can truly start up again. “In the end this doesn’t have anything to do with them. This is about betrayal, between me and him, again.”
“I don’t think he meant it that way.”
“It doesn’t matter how he meant it.”
Sometimes, thankfully not all that often, Derek gets this cocky streak where everything he says just seems to infuriate her. This is rapidly becoming a very good example of that. “You’re being unreasonable.”
“Maybe.” He shrugs, nonchalantly.
“He’s your best friend Derek. This is nothing.” She tries, but Derek’s face, his eyes, don’t change at all, and it’s crystal clear that nothing she says is going to change his mind at all. “Fine. Just…deal with it in private.”
He’ll give her that much, apparently. “Yeah,” he says, voice free of that particular tone, and he leaves the bedroom, conversation over.
Out of habit, she checks her pager that lies silent on her dresser, then her cell phone. The phone blinks ‘1 missed call’, and when she flips it open she sees Cristina’s name. With a sigh, albeit a slightly relieved one because at least she had tried to call, that made her hopeful, she dialed her friend’s number.
The phone rings. And rings. And despite the fact that Meredith knows Cristina rarely goes anywhere without her phone if she’s not dealing with patients, in case the call is hospital related, no one picks up.
---
Cristina knows that her phone is ringing. A quick glance tells her who it is too. But she won’t pick it up, just lets the harsh ringing echo in her head, and keeps on walking.
Later. She’ll deal with this later.
“Your phone is ringing.” Owen appears next to her, as she pushes open the door to the stairwell.
“I know.”
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
She shakes her head, “No.”
“Those aren’t even supposed to be on. It’s a hospital, remember?”
It would figure that, on a day where she’s beginning to want nothing more than to be left alone, he’s one of the few to actually show up to work. Because they’re…something that involves random make-out sessions, generally taking place somewhere in the hospital, and she really doesn’t want to deal with him anymore than she wants to deal with her and Meredith’s drama and rapidly crumbling friendship. “Only when we could possibly interfere with any machines. I’ve been working here longer than you; I know the rules.”
He falls silent, but keeps walking alongside her, taking the stairs at a mirrored pace to hers, even when she alternately speeds up and slows down.
“Is there something you want?”
“You look worried about something.” He says, with a shrug. He’s looking at her, has been since they ran into each other more or less, probably more than what’s entirely healthy if he doesn’t want to fall down the stairs.
Finally, she meets his eyes, lowered brows knit together, a frown on her face. “Well, I’m not.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.” His face belies the fact that he doesn’t believe her. Of course not.
She has trouble finding her footing on the next stair; has to look away, down, in order to avoid falling.
---
Eventually they all end up back in the living room. Meredith’s house isn’t so big when there are seven people in it and an infinite amount of time to be spent. It isn’t long before you run out of places to hide.
Sadie brings it up when there’s a natural lull in any conversation, no sound left but the television telling tales of no hope for freedom. “You know, for being two days away from Christmas, there’s a sad lack of decorations here.”
Meredith shifts in her chair, like she’s worried about the possibilities of what Sadie may be starting by saying that. “I guess we were just busy and didn’t get that far.”
Obviously, Izzie’s the one to jump in next. From what Sadie had been told, she had been the one with all the holiday spirit, though not recently. “Don’t we have that fake tree up in the attic? Your mother’s old one.”
“Yeah, but it’s old and…”
“So? It’s Christmas. And it’s not like we have a lot of options.” Izzie continues, before Meredith can get much else out, seemingly already settled on the idea.
“I am not going up in that attic,” Alex says, with a shake of his head, looking at Derek like he’s passing a torch and he probably is, since the few times she’s seen anyone go up there it’s him that gets forced to. She isn’t sure what the problem is other than it’s a complete mess and last time he almost broke something. But that was just what she was able to discern from the arguing.
“You’ll live.” Meredith cuts in, apparently resigning herself to it.
And so began their latest attempt at distraction.
---
Part 4