A Change Is Gonna Come (I/II)
Rating: R (language and one graphic sex scene)
Pairings/Characters: Addison, Alex, Burke, Callie, Cristina, Derek, George, Izzie, Lexie, Mark, Meredith. Pairings include Burke/Cristina, Alex/Meredith, Addison/Derek with mentions of Alex/Izzie, Callie/George, George/Izzie, Addison/Mark, Meredith/Derek, Alex/Syphillis and whoever else slept around with whoever in the first three seasons of Grey's....
Summary/Author's Notes: With the exception of Burke leaving because I didn't want to rewrite almost the entire fic when I realized what I had done (not that you can blame me for blocking that part out), this fic is essentially my season four premiere. Heavily genfic, I'm not 100% certain that I'd even call it Burke/Cristina centric. It is my baby though and I had it with slybrunette. Thanks for the beta, babe.
Length: 15,001 words
Sun filters through the sheer curtains of their exquisite suite and Cristina groans slightly, raising her forearm to cover her eyes though she was comfortable just the way she was.
Fucking Hawaii.
Fucking sunshine.
The sensation of a fingertip tracing her exposed breast, teasing her nipple gently stirs her just enough to keep her from falling back asleep. Though her body is deliciously sore, she knows that she’ll never be able to resist him. Especially if that’s how he’s going to wake her up.
“Haven’t you had enough?” she mumbles, pretending to be annoyed.
His voice is a deep timbre, arousal mixed with the remnants of a deep and comfortable sleep, “I can never get enough of you.”
Cristina raises her arm from her eyes and looks over at him, sees the warmth (and maybe a little bit of lust) there and she can’t hide a slight smile, “How long is this honeymoon thing supposed to last? Because I kind of like it.”
Burke chuckles softly and pulls her body against his, shifting so she’s half underneath him, “I intend to make it last for a very,” he pauses to kiss her lips gently then moves to her jaw, “very,” his lips slide down to her neck and he kisses the flesh there, his erection already pressing into her thigh, “very long time.”
For two seconds she wonders how she could have ever thought that a honeymoon was a stupid idea but then his fingers slip inside her and she quits thinking all together and makes love to her husband for the tenth time in twenty-four hours.
---
“So are you going to tell me why you aren’t talking to me or am I just supposed to guess?”
Meredith glances up from her tequila to the man next to her and then looks back down at her drink. She doesn’t care to answer him because she doesn’t really have an answer. Well, she does but it would take all night and she doesn’t feel like wasting the breath. It starts somewhere between him insinuating that she’s a whore (and maybe she is sometimes but that’s not exactly something you point out to the woman you supposedly love) and saying that he can’t breathe for her (because hello her life is sunshine and roses and there’s no reason why she’d want to die).
Derek takes a seat next to her, unwelcome, and orders a single malt scotch. He flashes a smug grin at Joe whenever the man tries to silently relay to Derek that now is not the time to mess with her. Derek knows Meredith’s limits and he knows that he can get through to her. She’s simply being Meredith.
They’ve had issues before, this is an issue now and they’ll move past it.
They can move past her issues again.
Meredith shifts uncomfortably and takes another drink of her tequila. She’s been drinking it for so long that it doesn’t even burn anymore. Really, it’s one of the only things in her life that feels good. Everything is fucked up now and her people are fucked up even more.
“Richard made me Chief,” Derek announces ceremoniously, nearly to the entire bar “he made me Chief right before the wedding.”
The admission draws only a slight amount of interest from Meredith but she still doesn’t respond to him. Who cares if he’s Chief? That only makes their relationship, make that non-relationship, that much more of an inconvenience.
“I turned it down,” he finally adds, silently irritated by the fact that she won’t answer him.
This revelation is almost enough to make her speak but Alex shows up in the nick of time, making things more awkward and saving her at the same time.
“You ready to get out of here?” he asks, eyes shifting to Shepherd for only a minute before looking back at Meredith, “Or should I leave you two alone?”
There’s a hint of bitterness in his tone that’s undeniable. They’re not a thing but they’re both hurting and they have an arrangement, one that Shepherd doesn’t fit into.
“Leave who alone?” Meredith asks, tossing down some money for her drinks. She stands up without even casting a sideways glance at Derek and brushes her hand against Alex’s, “Take me home, Alex,” she says, trying to leak a little bit of suggestion into her voice to make painfully clear to Derek that they are done.
It works.
---
“You’re sure this is what you want?” Addison asks, a certain sadness settling into her heart as she watches Richard remove the last of his framed credentials from the wall.
“This is what I want,” Richard confirms, “Addison, I’m tired. I have a wife who has given me another chance that I don’t deserve, a life that I haven’t lived except in the four walls of this hospital. It used to be enough for me, this place. It used to be the only thing I looked forward to.”
“And now?” she asks, already knowing the answer.
“Now it’s not enough and I think you’re going to find that out soon enough,” he says, lifting his box from the desk that used to be his.
Addison looks at the office, a blank canvas to make her own and she starts by setting a small placard down in the center of the desk that reads ‘A. Montgomery MD FACS, Chief of Surgery’. The sadness that she feels when Richard walks out of the office is fleeting because for the first time in a long time, she feels something else.
She feels hope.
---
An array of colors explode on the bed in front of him and George looks up from his People magazine, first at the cards and then at his wife, “What’s this?”
“The cards. I got them back from Yang before she went off on her honeymoon,” Callie explains, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t need them.”
Callie cocks her head to the side and looks at George, half in doubt and half in disgust before plucking the magazine from his hands, “George O’Malley, you are going to quit sulking around this hotel room and start studying for your intern exam. It was a onetime thing. You’ve had a hard year and things have sucked and you-“
“Don’t want to talk about it right now,” he interrupts in a curt voice and snatches his magazine back.
There are a million other things on his mind besides the intern exam he couldn’t pass. There are things like his dead father and his infidelity and the fact that he thinks he has feelings for Izzie lingering all at the forefront of his mind. There’s no room for pH imbalances and anatomy right now.
His life is falling apart and the intern exam was just the icing on the cake.
---
Cristina’s fingertip traces lazily against the titanium band that adorns his ring finger now. It’s weird but it seems like it’s always been there now.
Burke’s hand turns beneath hers and their fingers lace. He kisses her temple and goes back to reading through the medical journal in his lap. Cristina rests her head against his shoulder, sufficiently worn out from his voracity from the past couple of days. Her eyes start to drift closed , the rhythm of his breathing lulling her until her cell phone rings, disrupting the perfection of the moment.
“It’s mine,” Cristina groans gently and pulls herself away from him to answer the phone. She sees Meredith’s name across the display before she flips it open and walks out onto the balcony of their room.
“This had better be important,” she says into the phone, eyeing the dark gray skies providing a brilliant contrast against the aquamarine waves crashing against the shore.
“It’s always important,” Meredith retorts, pulling a sheet over her chest after Alex leaves the room, “what are you doing?”
“Nothing. And it was nice until you called,” Cristina mutters, leaning against the railing.
“So,” Meredith starts and there’s an awkward pause, “how’s Hawaii?”
“Good.”
“Things are good?”
Cristina rolls her eyes. She knows exactly what Meredith is after, “Yes, things are good. Things are fine. Why does it matter to you?”
“Well, I’m not sure if you remember but he tried to leave you. Like, right before you got married. Good and fine aren’t exactly words I would associate with that kind of a situation,” Meredith says in a low voice, as if somehow Burke can hear her on the phone.
“It’s not a thing. It’s fine,” Cristina repeats. She’s actively trying to avoid that conversation with Burke, “he said things and it was nerves and he didn’t mean them. Whatever.”
“Cristina,” Meredith chides but she can’t finish before Cristina cuts her off.
“Look, right now, I’m happy. We’re in Hawaii, I’m having more sex than you and we’re good. Just because you dumped Shepherd doesn’t mean you have to try to make me miserable too,” Cristina mutters into the phone. She doesn’t bother with the formality of saying goodbye before snapping the phone shut.
Cristina drops the phone on the lounge before walking back into the suite. It’s starting to rain outside and the thought that her phone is going to be destroyed doesn’t stop her from what she’s about to do.
Leaning over seductively, she pulls the medical journal from Burke’s hands and kisses him, straddles his lap. “I think you’ve had enough of a break,” she murmurs into his mouth, her fingers searching for the band on his finger again.
Though he’s kissing her as if there’s no tomorrow, it’s the thought of what happened before her wedding, the thought that she almost lost him that leaves her breathless.
---
The batter is too lumpy.
At first lemon and raspberry muffins sounded good to her, bitter and tart but with some sort of underlying sweetness that people can’t deny, but now looking at the batter she wonders if it will turn out the way she wants it to.
These days it seems like nothing ever turns out the way she wants it to.
Alex enters the kitchen and she glances up, her gaze turns to stone and she looks back down, “Sounds like you and Meredith had a pretty good time last night.”
“Shut up,” Alex sneers, reaching for some still-cooling blueberry muffins from the cooling rack, “what’s with all the baking? Did you kill another patient?”
“At least mine died. Yours ran away,” Izzie shoots back at him, “quit acting like you’re any better than me Alex. It’s painfully clear that you were all over Rebecca. This makes us equal.”
“It doesn’t make us equal,” he speaks with a full mouth, bits of muffin flying out when he replies, “because I didn’t kill her.”
“So what? You decide to sleep with Meredith because-“
“Is it any of your business?” Alex asks her, grabbing another muffin, “It’s not like she’s married or anything.”
Izzie almost defends herself and then she realizes that nobody knows about what happened with George and she’s not about to tell Alex. She presses her lips firmly together and looks back down into the batter in her bowl. It’s still too lumpy, “Why are you even up this early?” she finally asks, trying to take her mind off of everything that’s not perfect about her life right now.
“I’m going to the hospital, this vacation thing is lame.”
Alex walks away, muffin in hand and he doesn’t try to figure out why she’s baking because he simply doesn’t care anymore. To Alex, Izzie is just another one of the bitches that fucked everything up. Whatever she’s dealing with, she deserves it and more.
---
“Something is up with George.”
Addison peers over red rimmed reading glasses at the woman before her and then back down at her laptop, “I imagine that not passing the intern exam would be fairly distressing,” Addison remarks idly, “but he’ll do better the second time around.”
“No,” Callie says, sitting down in the chair before Addison’s new desk, “it’s something else. I don’t know what but it’s something else.”
With a heavy sigh, Addison closes the laptop and pulls off her glasses, devoting a small amount of free time that she doesn’t have to her friend, “Go on.”
“I don’t know,” the other woman says, “he usually…things have been different since his dad died, I know that. But there’s something else going on. He’s always with Stevens and now they’re acting strange around each other and I just…”
“You think there’s something going on between the two of them?” Addison asks, getting straight to the point. She knows from experience the best way to get around these situations is to just rip the band-aid off.
“What?” Callie scoffs, “No. No, George wouldn’t ever do,” she stops herself and then shakes her head, “no, George wouldn’t do that to me. I think that maybe Stevens is-“
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“That’s where I would start,” Addison concludes, opening her laptop again and reaching for her glasses.
“And what if I’m wrong? What if there’s nothing going on and I make things worse with George than they already are?” Callie wonders aloud.
“Then I guess things are worse than they are. But if you don’t ask and there is something going on, isn’t that about as bad as it can get?”
Callie remains still in the chair, taking in Addison’s words.
That’s a question that she doesn’t want to answer.
---
Mark sits at the bar, perusing the crowd of people. He’s going through a dry spell right now and he doesn’t necessarily know how he feels about it. He knows that he hates Alex Karev and that he’ll never let him on plastics again. He knows that Addison will never understand exactly how much he gave up to come and be with her.
There’s a lot that Mark Sloan understands.
A swig of beer makes him realize that he’d rather go back to being blissfully ignorant.
The nickname manwhore didn’t come easily and those days were a hell of a lot easier than the mess he’s found himself in now. He hates Seattle; it always rains and the people are too granola for him. He spends more time flying in patients who care about their appearance than he does getting consults for breast jobs and rhinoplasties.
People here are too goddamn accepting of their differences.
Addison isn’t going to come around and he finds himself wondering what the hell his keeping him here.
“Quit moping. It makes you look older than you already are,” a familiar voice says from beside him.
Mark turns to see Derek settling on the bar stool next to him and he sneers, “I’m brooding. Brooding is attractive to women.”
“You’re not brooding, you’re pouting. Why are you pouting?” Derek asks, “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Alex Karev slept with my wife when you were actively pursuing her does it?”
There’s a hint of amusement to Derek’s tone that makes Mark want to punch him but he’s too busy brooding to waste the effort, “Mock all you want but from what I’ve seen, Alex Karev is busy sleeping with your dirty mistress.” Mark says, a smug grin breaking the pitiful expression on his face for only a moment.
“It’s a phase,” Derek says matter-of-factly, “she’s having some issues and once she works through them things will be fine again. You’ll see.”
Mark looks at Derek with a cocked eyebrow, “Have you ever thought that maybe the issue isn’t the women that you’re with but you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying, if you haven’t noticed Addison didn’t exactly decide to sleep with me because she’s promiscuous. You were never around. And Meredith- well, she may be a little promiscuous but pointing those things out aren’t exactly smooth moves. Maybe the problem isn’t her, maybe the problem is you,” Mark explains, a slight slur becoming evident in his voice.
“You’re drunk and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I always know what I’m talking about.”
Derek looks in the direction of Alex and Meredith and then down into his empty glass.
The issues are most definitely not his.
---
The sheet gives beneath her fingers and she thinks if she hadn’t have spent so much fucking money on them that her nails would shred right through them. She bites into the pillow as Alex hammers into her from behind, trying to be silent because God forbid Izzie realizes what they’re doing.
She’s already tired of the lectures.
“You gonna come or what?” Alex asks through gritted teeth, slamming harder into her, actively trying not to come.
Meredith hasn’t ever had to fake it before but she does for his benefit just because she’s not there right now. She can’t get her mind off of everything that’s going on. Alex’s hips snap against her ass several times harshly and she thinks she may orgasm anyway but then he erupts inside her and the feeling fades just as quickly.
It doesn’t matter to her.
The weight on the bed shifts as Alex climbs off of it, rolling the condom off his now flaccid length.
“Cristina won’t talk to me,” Meredith announces into the dark, as if somehow Alex cares.
Alex drops the condom into the miniature trashcan next to her bed and searches through the dimly lit room for his boxers, “What?”
“Cristina. She won’t talk to me,” she repeats, “at all.”
“Isn’t she on some stupid honeymoon?”
“Didn’t he try to leave her right before they said ‘I do’?” Meredith questions, “It’s not exactly the best start to happily ever after. And it’s Cristina. Cristina wouldn’t just let that kind of stuff happen and then ignore it. And now she won’t talk to me about it.”
Alex starts to wonder if he’s gotten in too deep with this relationship. It was supposed to be only sex and now she’s distracted and discussing her problems and it’s only going to be a matter of time before she starts talking about relationships and crap.
It’s the exact opposite of what Alex wants.
“So?”
Meredith sits up, her palm slamming into the bed, “Because that’s not Cristina. Because she’s supposed to talk to me about these things and she just ignores my phone calls and says that everything is fine and I know it isn’t.”
“Look,” Alex says, pulling on his shirt, “I get that you have girl problems and stuff but-“ telling her that he doesn’t want to deal with them seems to harsh right now, “I have to go.”
The message is loud and clear to Meredith and she grabs her shirt from the floor and slips it on, “Fine. Go. Whatever.”
Alex takes the opportunity a little too quickly, leaving her alone in a dark room to wonder what the hell has happened to her life and if anything is ever going to be normal again.
---
Cristina buries her toes in the wet sand, the sun fading into the horizon. The salty sea air whips her hair around her face and she’s given up trying to fight it. Meredith’s words keep echoing through her head and it’s not as if she hasn’t thought about it but this is their honeymoon. It’s endless sex and him saying things that normally makes her cringe but somehow, when they’re in a world that exists outside of Seattle, it’s not that bad.
She didn’t want the wedding, she wanted the marriage.
It isn’t like things are any different, being married. It’s just a piece of paper. They’re still Cristina and Burke, they’re still surgeons and nothing is going to change.
Except she wonders if he wants everything to change.
Rational thinking tells her that it was nerves, just jitters. She wasn’t coming down the aisle and he was trying to make it easier for her to walk away because he figured she felt the same. Rational thinking tells her that he married her and he knew exactly who he was marrying when he said I do, when he got to stomp on the stupid glass and please his inner four year old.
At the very least he knows that she loves him.
The sound of sand muffles his footsteps behind her and she’s not alerted to his presence until he’s sitting in the sand behind her and his arms are wrapped around her. An eerie feeling of emptiness washes over her for only a moment and then subsides, just like the waves.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, dropping a kiss against her shoulder.
“Who says I’m thinking?” she counters, turning to glance at him with solemn eyes.
“Nobody has to say it. I know you,” his voice is soothing and it quiets the doubts lingering in her mind. Or it’s maybe that she lets him soothe her. Maybe it’s that she doesn’t want to think about it anymore.
She can think about it when they get home.
“Do you?”
Burke kisses her tenderly and pulls her a little closer, “I do, and I love you.”
He emphasizes the last word, hoping that she gets it. This is his way of apologizing for what happened before. He’s wanted to bring it up but he can’t. Not here. Things for the most part seem good, they seem happy. She seems happy and he doesn’t want to ruin that. At some point it will blow up, there will be some sort of chain reaction that leads to the deconstruction of the perfect escape they’ve built.
Just not right now.
---
“Chief Montgomery,” Mark grins, his eyes scanning her perfect legs, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“First you can stop staring at my legs,” Addison answers without even looking up at him, “and second you can tell me about this craniofacial reconstruction that you’re flying in from Georgia on the hospital’s dollar.”
“The hospital’s dollar won’t matter with the publicity that it pulls in, so why does it matter?”
“Because, Mark,” Addison sighs, already overwhelmed with how much the powers that be pushes the budget, “there’s a line and I have to draw it somewhere. You want to bring this patient in and do a groundbreaking pro bono surgery and you want the hospital to pay for transportation as well? I can’t justify that. Especially when your department, while thriving by Seattle standards, is not enough to justify that kind of demand amongst cardio and neuro.”
“So you’re telling me that I have to call this woman who was raped and beaten, this woman who lives in the projects and on welfare that I can’t fly her out her and fix her face? That I can’t give her new opportunity to work and move on with her life from what happened to her because Burke and Derek generate more money than I do?” Mark questions, his voice turning from playful to anger.
“I have no control over this, Mark. It’s not my call. I have to control the budget or it’s my ass. I don’t want to tell you no but I have to tell you no,” she says, softening her voice as if it’s somehow going to lighten the blow. She doesn’t want to tell him no but overstepping boundaries in the first weeks of her tenure is something that Addison isn’t willing to risk yet, “can’t you obtain privileges there? Fly down there and do the reconstruction?”
“And give another hospital the publicity?” he scoffs, “Gladly.”
“Mark, don’t be like this.”
“Like what, Addison? Pissed off because you’ve already turned into just another paper pushing, bureaucratic bitch that thinks my craft is a joke?”
Addison’s mouth falls open and while she’s searching for a response to his statement, he disappears from her office and down the hallway.
The hope that she felt when she took residence in her office is quickly fading.
---
Meredith unceremoniously drops onto the end of the couch and reaches over into Izzie’s bowl of popcorn, “What are we watching?”
“I don’t know. I’m not watching it. I’m just…staring,” Izzie mumbles, tossing the remote control in Meredith’s direction.
“Why are you staring?”
Izzie shakes her head, “It’s a thing, one of those things that I want to talk about and want to discuss but I can’t. Not because I don’t trust you but because saying it out loud makes me a really, really bad person and I know that I’m not that kind of a person. Things just happened and people do the wrong things in spite of the right things and-“
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Meredith interrupts, “slow down. What on earth are you talking about Izzie?”
“I already told you that I can’t tell you!”
“Except that you’re trying to tell me in different words, which means that you’re going to end up telling me and the only thing I’ll have to do is sit here.”
Izzie laughs, just a chuckle before it turns into full blown laughter, “I can’t believe how stupid it is. How stupid I am. Because I’m not this kind of person, Mer, I’m not, but he was there and we were drunk and now he’s-“
Meredith knows that reasoning all too well, “Who did you sleep with?”
The answer she expects to hear is Alex, which shouldn’t be a thing with her because they’re clearly not anything- she can’t even talk to him about Cristina, who is still ignoring her phone calls even though she’s supposed to be home tomorrow- but there’s a hint of jealous anyway, which she doesn’t expect.
She also doesn’t expect the feeling of relief when Izzie’s laughter suddenly falls quiet and she mumbles George’s name.
---
Callie walks into the hotel room that has become their home, trying to keep calm. She loves George, she does and she has for a long time but she feels like the man sprawled out across the bed isn’t the man she loves. He’s turned into somebody that she doesn’t recognize and she doesn’t know how to bring him out of it.
Sometimes she thinks that she may not want to.
Everything between them happened so quickly. She pushed and he ran and then she ran and he pushed and then all the sudden they were getting married at some stupid place in Vegas and it was all rushed. It was rushed and she knows that she wants so much more out of life and out of a marriage.
Callie just can’t be sure that she’s going to get it with George.
“I talked to Addison today,” she announces, trying to tear his attention away from the ceiling and whatever it is that he’s thinking about.
So much for a ‘how was your day?’ or any sign that he realizes that she still exists.
“You didn’t talk to her yesterday?” George asks, unmoving.
“She’s going to let you take your intern exam again. You don’t have to repeat your intern year,” Callie says, trying to be more enthusiastic about it than she feels.
This gets George’s attention and he sits up to look at her, “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Callie replies, smiling at the fact that he finally moved. Maybe he does care about something.
“When?”
“I don’t know. She said that you’d have to schedule it with her,” Callie pauses and leans over to kiss him, “things will be okay?”
George looks at Callie and he wants to be able to tell her yes but he doesn’t know anymore, “Where are the cards?” is his only response.
---
Cristina sits on the corner of their bed, watching as Burke meticulously puts away the last of the laundry left over from their honeymoon. If she wasn’t so preoccupied with her thoughts, she’d be thinking to herself that he was a good wife. Instead she’s obsessing over everything that she doesn’t want to.
“Where would you have gone?” she finally asks him.
Burke looks up at her and wants to pretend that he doesn’t understand what she’s talking about but he understands her; he always has. Pretending that he didn’t, especially now, is not in his or her best interests. His answer is honest, “I couldn’t have stayed.”
“But where would you have gone?” Cristina presses.
“I don’t know.”
Her finger traces idly against the burgundy bedspread as she tries to process what she’s feeling. Cristina has always hated acknowledging her feelings. It makes her weak, inefficient. It makes her doubt the decisions she’s made, “Would you have come back?”
His gaze leaves hers and he tries to focus on what he was doing before. The truth is an answer he cannot speak out loud so easily. The idea of it makes him sick; Burke knows that he could have done it. He was minutes away from doing it. The feeling associated with that though, the crushing that spreads through his chest thinking about moving on with his life and leaving her behind as if it were something so easily done, it kills him.
He cannot begin to imagine what it would have done to her.
“Answer me, Burke,” her voice trembles slightly. She already knows the answer but for some masochistic reason she wants to hear it out loud.
When she does, it breaks her.
“No,” the word is so hollow but so heavy at the same time. One syllable is all it takes to shatter the façade of the past two weeks they’ve spent together.
Cristina stands up and walks out of the bedroom. She pauses at the front door to grab her bag and slip on her boots. Without any indication as to where she’s going or what she’s doing, she’s gone.
Burke doesn’t try to stop her.
---
“I’m surprised you even bothered to come back from Hawaii,” Meredith announces from behind her, voice full of sarcasm, “I figured that you were oh so happy there that you’d decided just to ignore everybody who’s important and leave it all behind.”
Cristina bites her tongue to keep from saying anything and pulls on her scrub top. She’s not in the mood to deal with Meredith’s dramatics. She has enough on her mind as it is and if Meredith doesn’t get that, she’s not going to tell her.
“You know, I really could have used you. Derek is being all…Derek and there’s this thing going on with, well, who it is isn’t important, the important part is that I was trying to talk to you and you weren’t there,” Meredith continues, “I really could have used you.”
Disbelief painted across her expression, Cristina looks up at Meredith, “I’m sorry I was on my whatever,” the word honeymoon is too hard for her right now, it was just a two week vacation from reality, “next time I’ll try to schedule my life around your drama.”
Cristina slams the door shut to her locker and starts to walk away.
“Hey!” Meredith calls after her, “I don’t know why you’re mad at me. I’m not the one who ignored you. In case you don’t remember, it was the other way around.”
“Then by all means,” Cristina says, slipping her stethoscope around her neck, “get even. Ignore me. Please.”
Meredith glares at space formerly occupied by Cristina and wonders exactly what crawled up her ass.
It isn’t until five minutes after Cristina is gone that Meredith finally realizes what it is.
---
George taps his pencil nervously considering the treatments of hyperkalemia but he just can’t focus. He can’t forget the things he’s done, the mistakes he’s made and if (or when) he’s going to make another one. The test proctor clears her throat and he glances upwards before trying to draw his attention back to the test.
All of the answers are right in their own way but he finally settles on the least invasive method of treatment first.
It’s time that he stopped jumping straight to drastic measures to solve his problems.
---
Cristina pushes the salad on her plate around with her fork, irritated by nothing and everything all at once. Of course she’s on Burke’s service today and of course he’s giving her those looks but being completely civil.
Of course he knows that he screwed up.
Burke can’t make it easy on her and act like he did absolutely nothing wrong. Of course not.
She hasn’t made any decisions, she doesn’t know what she wants to do, except that she does. She just doesn’t want to compromise any part of herself for him. She told him. She explained to him that she was a surgeon and they could hire a wife and everything he said to her before the wedding seems to indicate that he didn’t hear a single word of it.
A tray drops in front of her and she looks up at Alex.
“I hate having interns. There’s no way I can spend the next 42 hours with them without killing at least one,” he mutters, dropping into his seat, “I think they gave me the most stupid ones on purpose.”
“That’s funny,” Cristina answers, “I would think that they’d give you the smartest ones since they’re not going to learn anything from you.”
Alex glares at her, “They were going to but after they gave them all to you, they had nothing left.”
“I’m pretty sure,” Izzie interrupts, sitting down, “that my interns are worse than all of yours. They never shut up. And they never stop asking questions.”
Cristina and Alex share a look before looking back at Izzie.
“I’m surprised that they gave you interns at all. What’s in your lesson plans? How to cut LVAD wires 101?” Cristina quips, pushing her food away untouched.
Izzie rolls her eyes and looks at Alex who is laughing, “Shut up.”
“No way, dude. She has a point. You are the last person that should have interns. Even O’Malley-“
“Is a second year resident who has his own interns,” George announces with an excited smile at the end of the table, “Which means that you each have to cough up one of your interns.”
“Oh. Oh, darn,” Cristina mutters, “take one. I don’t care. They’re all the same.”
“What she said,” Alex adds.
Meredith joins the group, hesitation evident in her body language. She takes a seat next to Cristina and leans over slightly, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Cristina says, not really wanting to make a thing out of it in front of everybody.
“Of course she’s fine. She’s all married and whatever,” Izzie says, “which makes absolutely no sense in the real world because we all know that Cristina doesn’t have a heart and how she can actually be somebody’s wife is-“
“Izzie!” Meredith glares at Izzie, doing a poor job of relaying the fact that Izzie saw what happened and that she knows that Cristina has to somehow be affected, except it’s Izzie and unless somebody spells it out for her, she’ll never understand it.
“It’s fine,” Cristina repeats, standing up and taking her tray with her, “I have a surgery. Take my intern, George. Take them all. I don’t care.”
Meredith waits until after Cristina leaves and then looks at Izzie incredulously, “You were there.”
“I was where?” Izzie asks, plucking her apple from her tray, “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Meredith sighs. She’s not going to bring it up in front of everybody else. If she did, Cristina would be really pissed off at her. She turns her attention to George instead, “So you passed the exam? That’s good. Congratulations, George.”
“Thanks,” George answers, a bit of tuna salad hanging from the corner of his lip, “I’m glad it’s over.”
The look he shares with Izzie is tell-tale only to the people at the table who know. Izzie looks back helplessly and her head shakes slightly but no words come out of her mouth. Meredith catches the exchange and then looks at George.
Meredith decides then that she knows way too much for her own good.
---
New York City is in his blood. He had a thriving practice in New York, a near fanatical following of patients who referred celebrities and society alike who wished to look their very best. It would be so easy to return to all of that if only Addison were there with him.
Addison won’t be with him, however, and to return to New York would be like going home to an empty house.
Once upon a time, Mark thought that he would be able to change her mind, that he would be able to convince her that he loved her and that they were meant to be.
Now he knows he was wrong.
Seattle isn’t home, New York can’t be and now he’s left with a dilemma.
The website for St. Ambrose Medical Center in Los Angeles populates on the screen of his laptop and he begins to research the next place he’ll call home.
---
Derek stands in the doorway of Addison’s office, angry and resentful, yet proud at the same time. This could have been his office and he gave it all up for Meredith.
A sacrifice that, thus far, has been fruitless.
“Dr. Shepherd is there something I can help you with or are you just going to gawk?” Addison asks, feeling as if she’s always buried under some sort of file. She never has time for the OR these days, let alone any semblance of human interaction.
It will calm down one day, or at least that’s what she keeps telling herself.
“I just hadn’t had the opportunity to see our new Chief in action,” Derek answers, casually walking into the office, “I wanted to see it for myself.”
“Well, you’re seeing it.”
“Is it everything you wanted it to be?”
“You would have known. Webber offered it to you first,” Addison answers, looking up at him, “regretting the choice of giving it up now?”
“Perhaps a little. When’s the last time you saw the inside of an OR?” Derek asks with a smug grin, still standing over her.
“Very funny, Derek,” Addison says dryly, “why are you really here?”
“Honestly?”
She takes off her glasses and tosses them on the desk, “I hear it’s the best policy. It also wastes less of my time.”
“I have no idea,” he finally exhales, “things feel off. Meredith won’t talk to me, Burke has been different since he came back from the honeymoon and the interns are underwhelming this round.”
“There are a few interns that I wouldn’t have selected myself but that’s Richard’s doing and I can’t exactly kick them out of the program because of a change in leadership,” she agrees, “I’m sure that Preston is just tired and I’m not going to give you advice on your relationship with Meredith Grey.”
“There is no relationship,” Derek admits, “not anymore.”
“That’s too bad,” Addison says with mock empathy, “what did she do wrong?” There’s sarcasm in her tone that would be unmistakable to anybody except for Derek.
Oblivious to the sarcasm, he shakes his head, “I don’t know. She won’t speak to me.”
“I guess it’s time just to move on then.”
“You say it like it’s easy to just drop your life and go. Like nothing ever mattered,” Derek points out, looking up at her.
Addison looks back, her gaze unwavering, “You’ve done it once, Derek. I’m sure that you’ll be able to do it again.”
---
Izzie paces back and forth in the on-call room, waiting for George. Her heart has skipped a beat at least four times in the past two minutes and she doesn’t know what to expect. She said that she would stay away from him but she knows that she has some sort of feelings for him too.
The door swings wide open and she doesn’t notice when he doesn’t lock it.
“George, I was starting to wonder if you-“ she’s cut off before she can even finish speaking.
“You’re going to listen to me. You’re not going to say anything, you’re not going to respond and you’re going to deal with what I have to tell you,” he doesn’t bother to ask if she understands before continuing because he knows that she won’t, “I married Callie. Maybe I married her at a bad time but I still married her. And then I slept with you. The difference between me marrying Callie and me sleeping with you is alcohol. I was drunk, Izzie. We were drunk. Whatever it is that you think you feel for me, I can’t feel it back and I won’t, because I’m married. I’m not going to divorce Callie because I made a mistake. I’m going to tell her the truth and I’m going to fight like hell to make it right and you? You’re going to stay out of my way while I do it.”
Izzie opens her mouth but George holds up his hand and she closes it again, an indignant expression painted across her face.
“If you’re my friend, if you’re really my friend, you’ll support me on this. You’ll stay out of the way until she can trust me again and you’ll let me put my marriage back together.”
It takes a few moments for Izzie to show any sign of reaction and George nearly walks out but she finally speaks , “I’m your friend,” she says, voice wavering, “and I will support you.”
“Thank you,” George says quietly and leaves Izzie standing alone in the call room wondering what the future really holds for their friendship.
---
part two
Pairings/Characters: Addison, Alex, Burke, Callie, Cristina, Derek, George, Izzie, Lexie, Mark, Meredith. Pairings include Burke/Cristina, Alex/Meredith, Addison/Derek with mentions of Alex/Izzie, Callie/George, George/Izzie, Addison/Mark, Meredith/Derek, Alex/Syphillis and whoever else slept around with whoever in the first three seasons of Grey's....
Summary/Author's Notes: With the exception of Burke leaving because I didn't want to rewrite almost the entire fic when I realized what I had done (not that you can blame me for blocking that part out), this fic is essentially my season four premiere. Heavily genfic, I'm not 100% certain that I'd even call it Burke/Cristina centric. It is my baby though and I had it with slybrunette. Thanks for the beta, babe.
Length: 15,001 words
Sun filters through the sheer curtains of their exquisite suite and Cristina groans slightly, raising her forearm to cover her eyes though she was comfortable just the way she was.
Fucking Hawaii.
Fucking sunshine.
The sensation of a fingertip tracing her exposed breast, teasing her nipple gently stirs her just enough to keep her from falling back asleep. Though her body is deliciously sore, she knows that she’ll never be able to resist him. Especially if that’s how he’s going to wake her up.
“Haven’t you had enough?” she mumbles, pretending to be annoyed.
His voice is a deep timbre, arousal mixed with the remnants of a deep and comfortable sleep, “I can never get enough of you.”
Cristina raises her arm from her eyes and looks over at him, sees the warmth (and maybe a little bit of lust) there and she can’t hide a slight smile, “How long is this honeymoon thing supposed to last? Because I kind of like it.”
Burke chuckles softly and pulls her body against his, shifting so she’s half underneath him, “I intend to make it last for a very,” he pauses to kiss her lips gently then moves to her jaw, “very,” his lips slide down to her neck and he kisses the flesh there, his erection already pressing into her thigh, “very long time.”
For two seconds she wonders how she could have ever thought that a honeymoon was a stupid idea but then his fingers slip inside her and she quits thinking all together and makes love to her husband for the tenth time in twenty-four hours.
---
“So are you going to tell me why you aren’t talking to me or am I just supposed to guess?”
Meredith glances up from her tequila to the man next to her and then looks back down at her drink. She doesn’t care to answer him because she doesn’t really have an answer. Well, she does but it would take all night and she doesn’t feel like wasting the breath. It starts somewhere between him insinuating that she’s a whore (and maybe she is sometimes but that’s not exactly something you point out to the woman you supposedly love) and saying that he can’t breathe for her (because hello her life is sunshine and roses and there’s no reason why she’d want to die).
Derek takes a seat next to her, unwelcome, and orders a single malt scotch. He flashes a smug grin at Joe whenever the man tries to silently relay to Derek that now is not the time to mess with her. Derek knows Meredith’s limits and he knows that he can get through to her. She’s simply being Meredith.
They’ve had issues before, this is an issue now and they’ll move past it.
They can move past her issues again.
Meredith shifts uncomfortably and takes another drink of her tequila. She’s been drinking it for so long that it doesn’t even burn anymore. Really, it’s one of the only things in her life that feels good. Everything is fucked up now and her people are fucked up even more.
“Richard made me Chief,” Derek announces ceremoniously, nearly to the entire bar “he made me Chief right before the wedding.”
The admission draws only a slight amount of interest from Meredith but she still doesn’t respond to him. Who cares if he’s Chief? That only makes their relationship, make that non-relationship, that much more of an inconvenience.
“I turned it down,” he finally adds, silently irritated by the fact that she won’t answer him.
This revelation is almost enough to make her speak but Alex shows up in the nick of time, making things more awkward and saving her at the same time.
“You ready to get out of here?” he asks, eyes shifting to Shepherd for only a minute before looking back at Meredith, “Or should I leave you two alone?”
There’s a hint of bitterness in his tone that’s undeniable. They’re not a thing but they’re both hurting and they have an arrangement, one that Shepherd doesn’t fit into.
“Leave who alone?” Meredith asks, tossing down some money for her drinks. She stands up without even casting a sideways glance at Derek and brushes her hand against Alex’s, “Take me home, Alex,” she says, trying to leak a little bit of suggestion into her voice to make painfully clear to Derek that they are done.
It works.
---
“You’re sure this is what you want?” Addison asks, a certain sadness settling into her heart as she watches Richard remove the last of his framed credentials from the wall.
“This is what I want,” Richard confirms, “Addison, I’m tired. I have a wife who has given me another chance that I don’t deserve, a life that I haven’t lived except in the four walls of this hospital. It used to be enough for me, this place. It used to be the only thing I looked forward to.”
“And now?” she asks, already knowing the answer.
“Now it’s not enough and I think you’re going to find that out soon enough,” he says, lifting his box from the desk that used to be his.
Addison looks at the office, a blank canvas to make her own and she starts by setting a small placard down in the center of the desk that reads ‘A. Montgomery MD FACS, Chief of Surgery’. The sadness that she feels when Richard walks out of the office is fleeting because for the first time in a long time, she feels something else.
She feels hope.
---
An array of colors explode on the bed in front of him and George looks up from his People magazine, first at the cards and then at his wife, “What’s this?”
“The cards. I got them back from Yang before she went off on her honeymoon,” Callie explains, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t need them.”
Callie cocks her head to the side and looks at George, half in doubt and half in disgust before plucking the magazine from his hands, “George O’Malley, you are going to quit sulking around this hotel room and start studying for your intern exam. It was a onetime thing. You’ve had a hard year and things have sucked and you-“
“Don’t want to talk about it right now,” he interrupts in a curt voice and snatches his magazine back.
There are a million other things on his mind besides the intern exam he couldn’t pass. There are things like his dead father and his infidelity and the fact that he thinks he has feelings for Izzie lingering all at the forefront of his mind. There’s no room for pH imbalances and anatomy right now.
His life is falling apart and the intern exam was just the icing on the cake.
---
Cristina’s fingertip traces lazily against the titanium band that adorns his ring finger now. It’s weird but it seems like it’s always been there now.
Burke’s hand turns beneath hers and their fingers lace. He kisses her temple and goes back to reading through the medical journal in his lap. Cristina rests her head against his shoulder, sufficiently worn out from his voracity from the past couple of days. Her eyes start to drift closed , the rhythm of his breathing lulling her until her cell phone rings, disrupting the perfection of the moment.
“It’s mine,” Cristina groans gently and pulls herself away from him to answer the phone. She sees Meredith’s name across the display before she flips it open and walks out onto the balcony of their room.
“This had better be important,” she says into the phone, eyeing the dark gray skies providing a brilliant contrast against the aquamarine waves crashing against the shore.
“It’s always important,” Meredith retorts, pulling a sheet over her chest after Alex leaves the room, “what are you doing?”
“Nothing. And it was nice until you called,” Cristina mutters, leaning against the railing.
“So,” Meredith starts and there’s an awkward pause, “how’s Hawaii?”
“Good.”
“Things are good?”
Cristina rolls her eyes. She knows exactly what Meredith is after, “Yes, things are good. Things are fine. Why does it matter to you?”
“Well, I’m not sure if you remember but he tried to leave you. Like, right before you got married. Good and fine aren’t exactly words I would associate with that kind of a situation,” Meredith says in a low voice, as if somehow Burke can hear her on the phone.
“It’s not a thing. It’s fine,” Cristina repeats. She’s actively trying to avoid that conversation with Burke, “he said things and it was nerves and he didn’t mean them. Whatever.”
“Cristina,” Meredith chides but she can’t finish before Cristina cuts her off.
“Look, right now, I’m happy. We’re in Hawaii, I’m having more sex than you and we’re good. Just because you dumped Shepherd doesn’t mean you have to try to make me miserable too,” Cristina mutters into the phone. She doesn’t bother with the formality of saying goodbye before snapping the phone shut.
Cristina drops the phone on the lounge before walking back into the suite. It’s starting to rain outside and the thought that her phone is going to be destroyed doesn’t stop her from what she’s about to do.
Leaning over seductively, she pulls the medical journal from Burke’s hands and kisses him, straddles his lap. “I think you’ve had enough of a break,” she murmurs into his mouth, her fingers searching for the band on his finger again.
Though he’s kissing her as if there’s no tomorrow, it’s the thought of what happened before her wedding, the thought that she almost lost him that leaves her breathless.
---
The batter is too lumpy.
At first lemon and raspberry muffins sounded good to her, bitter and tart but with some sort of underlying sweetness that people can’t deny, but now looking at the batter she wonders if it will turn out the way she wants it to.
These days it seems like nothing ever turns out the way she wants it to.
Alex enters the kitchen and she glances up, her gaze turns to stone and she looks back down, “Sounds like you and Meredith had a pretty good time last night.”
“Shut up,” Alex sneers, reaching for some still-cooling blueberry muffins from the cooling rack, “what’s with all the baking? Did you kill another patient?”
“At least mine died. Yours ran away,” Izzie shoots back at him, “quit acting like you’re any better than me Alex. It’s painfully clear that you were all over Rebecca. This makes us equal.”
“It doesn’t make us equal,” he speaks with a full mouth, bits of muffin flying out when he replies, “because I didn’t kill her.”
“So what? You decide to sleep with Meredith because-“
“Is it any of your business?” Alex asks her, grabbing another muffin, “It’s not like she’s married or anything.”
Izzie almost defends herself and then she realizes that nobody knows about what happened with George and she’s not about to tell Alex. She presses her lips firmly together and looks back down into the batter in her bowl. It’s still too lumpy, “Why are you even up this early?” she finally asks, trying to take her mind off of everything that’s not perfect about her life right now.
“I’m going to the hospital, this vacation thing is lame.”
Alex walks away, muffin in hand and he doesn’t try to figure out why she’s baking because he simply doesn’t care anymore. To Alex, Izzie is just another one of the bitches that fucked everything up. Whatever she’s dealing with, she deserves it and more.
---
“Something is up with George.”
Addison peers over red rimmed reading glasses at the woman before her and then back down at her laptop, “I imagine that not passing the intern exam would be fairly distressing,” Addison remarks idly, “but he’ll do better the second time around.”
“No,” Callie says, sitting down in the chair before Addison’s new desk, “it’s something else. I don’t know what but it’s something else.”
With a heavy sigh, Addison closes the laptop and pulls off her glasses, devoting a small amount of free time that she doesn’t have to her friend, “Go on.”
“I don’t know,” the other woman says, “he usually…things have been different since his dad died, I know that. But there’s something else going on. He’s always with Stevens and now they’re acting strange around each other and I just…”
“You think there’s something going on between the two of them?” Addison asks, getting straight to the point. She knows from experience the best way to get around these situations is to just rip the band-aid off.
“What?” Callie scoffs, “No. No, George wouldn’t ever do,” she stops herself and then shakes her head, “no, George wouldn’t do that to me. I think that maybe Stevens is-“
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“That’s where I would start,” Addison concludes, opening her laptop again and reaching for her glasses.
“And what if I’m wrong? What if there’s nothing going on and I make things worse with George than they already are?” Callie wonders aloud.
“Then I guess things are worse than they are. But if you don’t ask and there is something going on, isn’t that about as bad as it can get?”
Callie remains still in the chair, taking in Addison’s words.
That’s a question that she doesn’t want to answer.
---
Mark sits at the bar, perusing the crowd of people. He’s going through a dry spell right now and he doesn’t necessarily know how he feels about it. He knows that he hates Alex Karev and that he’ll never let him on plastics again. He knows that Addison will never understand exactly how much he gave up to come and be with her.
There’s a lot that Mark Sloan understands.
A swig of beer makes him realize that he’d rather go back to being blissfully ignorant.
The nickname manwhore didn’t come easily and those days were a hell of a lot easier than the mess he’s found himself in now. He hates Seattle; it always rains and the people are too granola for him. He spends more time flying in patients who care about their appearance than he does getting consults for breast jobs and rhinoplasties.
People here are too goddamn accepting of their differences.
Addison isn’t going to come around and he finds himself wondering what the hell his keeping him here.
“Quit moping. It makes you look older than you already are,” a familiar voice says from beside him.
Mark turns to see Derek settling on the bar stool next to him and he sneers, “I’m brooding. Brooding is attractive to women.”
“You’re not brooding, you’re pouting. Why are you pouting?” Derek asks, “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Alex Karev slept with my wife when you were actively pursuing her does it?”
There’s a hint of amusement to Derek’s tone that makes Mark want to punch him but he’s too busy brooding to waste the effort, “Mock all you want but from what I’ve seen, Alex Karev is busy sleeping with your dirty mistress.” Mark says, a smug grin breaking the pitiful expression on his face for only a moment.
“It’s a phase,” Derek says matter-of-factly, “she’s having some issues and once she works through them things will be fine again. You’ll see.”
Mark looks at Derek with a cocked eyebrow, “Have you ever thought that maybe the issue isn’t the women that you’re with but you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying, if you haven’t noticed Addison didn’t exactly decide to sleep with me because she’s promiscuous. You were never around. And Meredith- well, she may be a little promiscuous but pointing those things out aren’t exactly smooth moves. Maybe the problem isn’t her, maybe the problem is you,” Mark explains, a slight slur becoming evident in his voice.
“You’re drunk and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I always know what I’m talking about.”
Derek looks in the direction of Alex and Meredith and then down into his empty glass.
The issues are most definitely not his.
---
The sheet gives beneath her fingers and she thinks if she hadn’t have spent so much fucking money on them that her nails would shred right through them. She bites into the pillow as Alex hammers into her from behind, trying to be silent because God forbid Izzie realizes what they’re doing.
She’s already tired of the lectures.
“You gonna come or what?” Alex asks through gritted teeth, slamming harder into her, actively trying not to come.
Meredith hasn’t ever had to fake it before but she does for his benefit just because she’s not there right now. She can’t get her mind off of everything that’s going on. Alex’s hips snap against her ass several times harshly and she thinks she may orgasm anyway but then he erupts inside her and the feeling fades just as quickly.
It doesn’t matter to her.
The weight on the bed shifts as Alex climbs off of it, rolling the condom off his now flaccid length.
“Cristina won’t talk to me,” Meredith announces into the dark, as if somehow Alex cares.
Alex drops the condom into the miniature trashcan next to her bed and searches through the dimly lit room for his boxers, “What?”
“Cristina. She won’t talk to me,” she repeats, “at all.”
“Isn’t she on some stupid honeymoon?”
“Didn’t he try to leave her right before they said ‘I do’?” Meredith questions, “It’s not exactly the best start to happily ever after. And it’s Cristina. Cristina wouldn’t just let that kind of stuff happen and then ignore it. And now she won’t talk to me about it.”
Alex starts to wonder if he’s gotten in too deep with this relationship. It was supposed to be only sex and now she’s distracted and discussing her problems and it’s only going to be a matter of time before she starts talking about relationships and crap.
It’s the exact opposite of what Alex wants.
“So?”
Meredith sits up, her palm slamming into the bed, “Because that’s not Cristina. Because she’s supposed to talk to me about these things and she just ignores my phone calls and says that everything is fine and I know it isn’t.”
“Look,” Alex says, pulling on his shirt, “I get that you have girl problems and stuff but-“ telling her that he doesn’t want to deal with them seems to harsh right now, “I have to go.”
The message is loud and clear to Meredith and she grabs her shirt from the floor and slips it on, “Fine. Go. Whatever.”
Alex takes the opportunity a little too quickly, leaving her alone in a dark room to wonder what the hell has happened to her life and if anything is ever going to be normal again.
---
Cristina buries her toes in the wet sand, the sun fading into the horizon. The salty sea air whips her hair around her face and she’s given up trying to fight it. Meredith’s words keep echoing through her head and it’s not as if she hasn’t thought about it but this is their honeymoon. It’s endless sex and him saying things that normally makes her cringe but somehow, when they’re in a world that exists outside of Seattle, it’s not that bad.
She didn’t want the wedding, she wanted the marriage.
It isn’t like things are any different, being married. It’s just a piece of paper. They’re still Cristina and Burke, they’re still surgeons and nothing is going to change.
Except she wonders if he wants everything to change.
Rational thinking tells her that it was nerves, just jitters. She wasn’t coming down the aisle and he was trying to make it easier for her to walk away because he figured she felt the same. Rational thinking tells her that he married her and he knew exactly who he was marrying when he said I do, when he got to stomp on the stupid glass and please his inner four year old.
At the very least he knows that she loves him.
The sound of sand muffles his footsteps behind her and she’s not alerted to his presence until he’s sitting in the sand behind her and his arms are wrapped around her. An eerie feeling of emptiness washes over her for only a moment and then subsides, just like the waves.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, dropping a kiss against her shoulder.
“Who says I’m thinking?” she counters, turning to glance at him with solemn eyes.
“Nobody has to say it. I know you,” his voice is soothing and it quiets the doubts lingering in her mind. Or it’s maybe that she lets him soothe her. Maybe it’s that she doesn’t want to think about it anymore.
She can think about it when they get home.
“Do you?”
Burke kisses her tenderly and pulls her a little closer, “I do, and I love you.”
He emphasizes the last word, hoping that she gets it. This is his way of apologizing for what happened before. He’s wanted to bring it up but he can’t. Not here. Things for the most part seem good, they seem happy. She seems happy and he doesn’t want to ruin that. At some point it will blow up, there will be some sort of chain reaction that leads to the deconstruction of the perfect escape they’ve built.
Just not right now.
---
“Chief Montgomery,” Mark grins, his eyes scanning her perfect legs, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“First you can stop staring at my legs,” Addison answers without even looking up at him, “and second you can tell me about this craniofacial reconstruction that you’re flying in from Georgia on the hospital’s dollar.”
“The hospital’s dollar won’t matter with the publicity that it pulls in, so why does it matter?”
“Because, Mark,” Addison sighs, already overwhelmed with how much the powers that be pushes the budget, “there’s a line and I have to draw it somewhere. You want to bring this patient in and do a groundbreaking pro bono surgery and you want the hospital to pay for transportation as well? I can’t justify that. Especially when your department, while thriving by Seattle standards, is not enough to justify that kind of demand amongst cardio and neuro.”
“So you’re telling me that I have to call this woman who was raped and beaten, this woman who lives in the projects and on welfare that I can’t fly her out her and fix her face? That I can’t give her new opportunity to work and move on with her life from what happened to her because Burke and Derek generate more money than I do?” Mark questions, his voice turning from playful to anger.
“I have no control over this, Mark. It’s not my call. I have to control the budget or it’s my ass. I don’t want to tell you no but I have to tell you no,” she says, softening her voice as if it’s somehow going to lighten the blow. She doesn’t want to tell him no but overstepping boundaries in the first weeks of her tenure is something that Addison isn’t willing to risk yet, “can’t you obtain privileges there? Fly down there and do the reconstruction?”
“And give another hospital the publicity?” he scoffs, “Gladly.”
“Mark, don’t be like this.”
“Like what, Addison? Pissed off because you’ve already turned into just another paper pushing, bureaucratic bitch that thinks my craft is a joke?”
Addison’s mouth falls open and while she’s searching for a response to his statement, he disappears from her office and down the hallway.
The hope that she felt when she took residence in her office is quickly fading.
---
Meredith unceremoniously drops onto the end of the couch and reaches over into Izzie’s bowl of popcorn, “What are we watching?”
“I don’t know. I’m not watching it. I’m just…staring,” Izzie mumbles, tossing the remote control in Meredith’s direction.
“Why are you staring?”
Izzie shakes her head, “It’s a thing, one of those things that I want to talk about and want to discuss but I can’t. Not because I don’t trust you but because saying it out loud makes me a really, really bad person and I know that I’m not that kind of a person. Things just happened and people do the wrong things in spite of the right things and-“
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Meredith interrupts, “slow down. What on earth are you talking about Izzie?”
“I already told you that I can’t tell you!”
“Except that you’re trying to tell me in different words, which means that you’re going to end up telling me and the only thing I’ll have to do is sit here.”
Izzie laughs, just a chuckle before it turns into full blown laughter, “I can’t believe how stupid it is. How stupid I am. Because I’m not this kind of person, Mer, I’m not, but he was there and we were drunk and now he’s-“
Meredith knows that reasoning all too well, “Who did you sleep with?”
The answer she expects to hear is Alex, which shouldn’t be a thing with her because they’re clearly not anything- she can’t even talk to him about Cristina, who is still ignoring her phone calls even though she’s supposed to be home tomorrow- but there’s a hint of jealous anyway, which she doesn’t expect.
She also doesn’t expect the feeling of relief when Izzie’s laughter suddenly falls quiet and she mumbles George’s name.
---
Callie walks into the hotel room that has become their home, trying to keep calm. She loves George, she does and she has for a long time but she feels like the man sprawled out across the bed isn’t the man she loves. He’s turned into somebody that she doesn’t recognize and she doesn’t know how to bring him out of it.
Sometimes she thinks that she may not want to.
Everything between them happened so quickly. She pushed and he ran and then she ran and he pushed and then all the sudden they were getting married at some stupid place in Vegas and it was all rushed. It was rushed and she knows that she wants so much more out of life and out of a marriage.
Callie just can’t be sure that she’s going to get it with George.
“I talked to Addison today,” she announces, trying to tear his attention away from the ceiling and whatever it is that he’s thinking about.
So much for a ‘how was your day?’ or any sign that he realizes that she still exists.
“You didn’t talk to her yesterday?” George asks, unmoving.
“She’s going to let you take your intern exam again. You don’t have to repeat your intern year,” Callie says, trying to be more enthusiastic about it than she feels.
This gets George’s attention and he sits up to look at her, “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Callie replies, smiling at the fact that he finally moved. Maybe he does care about something.
“When?”
“I don’t know. She said that you’d have to schedule it with her,” Callie pauses and leans over to kiss him, “things will be okay?”
George looks at Callie and he wants to be able to tell her yes but he doesn’t know anymore, “Where are the cards?” is his only response.
---
Cristina sits on the corner of their bed, watching as Burke meticulously puts away the last of the laundry left over from their honeymoon. If she wasn’t so preoccupied with her thoughts, she’d be thinking to herself that he was a good wife. Instead she’s obsessing over everything that she doesn’t want to.
“Where would you have gone?” she finally asks him.
Burke looks up at her and wants to pretend that he doesn’t understand what she’s talking about but he understands her; he always has. Pretending that he didn’t, especially now, is not in his or her best interests. His answer is honest, “I couldn’t have stayed.”
“But where would you have gone?” Cristina presses.
“I don’t know.”
Her finger traces idly against the burgundy bedspread as she tries to process what she’s feeling. Cristina has always hated acknowledging her feelings. It makes her weak, inefficient. It makes her doubt the decisions she’s made, “Would you have come back?”
His gaze leaves hers and he tries to focus on what he was doing before. The truth is an answer he cannot speak out loud so easily. The idea of it makes him sick; Burke knows that he could have done it. He was minutes away from doing it. The feeling associated with that though, the crushing that spreads through his chest thinking about moving on with his life and leaving her behind as if it were something so easily done, it kills him.
He cannot begin to imagine what it would have done to her.
“Answer me, Burke,” her voice trembles slightly. She already knows the answer but for some masochistic reason she wants to hear it out loud.
When she does, it breaks her.
“No,” the word is so hollow but so heavy at the same time. One syllable is all it takes to shatter the façade of the past two weeks they’ve spent together.
Cristina stands up and walks out of the bedroom. She pauses at the front door to grab her bag and slip on her boots. Without any indication as to where she’s going or what she’s doing, she’s gone.
Burke doesn’t try to stop her.
---
“I’m surprised you even bothered to come back from Hawaii,” Meredith announces from behind her, voice full of sarcasm, “I figured that you were oh so happy there that you’d decided just to ignore everybody who’s important and leave it all behind.”
Cristina bites her tongue to keep from saying anything and pulls on her scrub top. She’s not in the mood to deal with Meredith’s dramatics. She has enough on her mind as it is and if Meredith doesn’t get that, she’s not going to tell her.
“You know, I really could have used you. Derek is being all…Derek and there’s this thing going on with, well, who it is isn’t important, the important part is that I was trying to talk to you and you weren’t there,” Meredith continues, “I really could have used you.”
Disbelief painted across her expression, Cristina looks up at Meredith, “I’m sorry I was on my whatever,” the word honeymoon is too hard for her right now, it was just a two week vacation from reality, “next time I’ll try to schedule my life around your drama.”
Cristina slams the door shut to her locker and starts to walk away.
“Hey!” Meredith calls after her, “I don’t know why you’re mad at me. I’m not the one who ignored you. In case you don’t remember, it was the other way around.”
“Then by all means,” Cristina says, slipping her stethoscope around her neck, “get even. Ignore me. Please.”
Meredith glares at space formerly occupied by Cristina and wonders exactly what crawled up her ass.
It isn’t until five minutes after Cristina is gone that Meredith finally realizes what it is.
---
George taps his pencil nervously considering the treatments of hyperkalemia but he just can’t focus. He can’t forget the things he’s done, the mistakes he’s made and if (or when) he’s going to make another one. The test proctor clears her throat and he glances upwards before trying to draw his attention back to the test.
All of the answers are right in their own way but he finally settles on the least invasive method of treatment first.
It’s time that he stopped jumping straight to drastic measures to solve his problems.
---
Cristina pushes the salad on her plate around with her fork, irritated by nothing and everything all at once. Of course she’s on Burke’s service today and of course he’s giving her those looks but being completely civil.
Of course he knows that he screwed up.
Burke can’t make it easy on her and act like he did absolutely nothing wrong. Of course not.
She hasn’t made any decisions, she doesn’t know what she wants to do, except that she does. She just doesn’t want to compromise any part of herself for him. She told him. She explained to him that she was a surgeon and they could hire a wife and everything he said to her before the wedding seems to indicate that he didn’t hear a single word of it.
A tray drops in front of her and she looks up at Alex.
“I hate having interns. There’s no way I can spend the next 42 hours with them without killing at least one,” he mutters, dropping into his seat, “I think they gave me the most stupid ones on purpose.”
“That’s funny,” Cristina answers, “I would think that they’d give you the smartest ones since they’re not going to learn anything from you.”
Alex glares at her, “They were going to but after they gave them all to you, they had nothing left.”
“I’m pretty sure,” Izzie interrupts, sitting down, “that my interns are worse than all of yours. They never shut up. And they never stop asking questions.”
Cristina and Alex share a look before looking back at Izzie.
“I’m surprised that they gave you interns at all. What’s in your lesson plans? How to cut LVAD wires 101?” Cristina quips, pushing her food away untouched.
Izzie rolls her eyes and looks at Alex who is laughing, “Shut up.”
“No way, dude. She has a point. You are the last person that should have interns. Even O’Malley-“
“Is a second year resident who has his own interns,” George announces with an excited smile at the end of the table, “Which means that you each have to cough up one of your interns.”
“Oh. Oh, darn,” Cristina mutters, “take one. I don’t care. They’re all the same.”
“What she said,” Alex adds.
Meredith joins the group, hesitation evident in her body language. She takes a seat next to Cristina and leans over slightly, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Cristina says, not really wanting to make a thing out of it in front of everybody.
“Of course she’s fine. She’s all married and whatever,” Izzie says, “which makes absolutely no sense in the real world because we all know that Cristina doesn’t have a heart and how she can actually be somebody’s wife is-“
“Izzie!” Meredith glares at Izzie, doing a poor job of relaying the fact that Izzie saw what happened and that she knows that Cristina has to somehow be affected, except it’s Izzie and unless somebody spells it out for her, she’ll never understand it.
“It’s fine,” Cristina repeats, standing up and taking her tray with her, “I have a surgery. Take my intern, George. Take them all. I don’t care.”
Meredith waits until after Cristina leaves and then looks at Izzie incredulously, “You were there.”
“I was where?” Izzie asks, plucking her apple from her tray, “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Meredith sighs. She’s not going to bring it up in front of everybody else. If she did, Cristina would be really pissed off at her. She turns her attention to George instead, “So you passed the exam? That’s good. Congratulations, George.”
“Thanks,” George answers, a bit of tuna salad hanging from the corner of his lip, “I’m glad it’s over.”
The look he shares with Izzie is tell-tale only to the people at the table who know. Izzie looks back helplessly and her head shakes slightly but no words come out of her mouth. Meredith catches the exchange and then looks at George.
Meredith decides then that she knows way too much for her own good.
---
New York City is in his blood. He had a thriving practice in New York, a near fanatical following of patients who referred celebrities and society alike who wished to look their very best. It would be so easy to return to all of that if only Addison were there with him.
Addison won’t be with him, however, and to return to New York would be like going home to an empty house.
Once upon a time, Mark thought that he would be able to change her mind, that he would be able to convince her that he loved her and that they were meant to be.
Now he knows he was wrong.
Seattle isn’t home, New York can’t be and now he’s left with a dilemma.
The website for St. Ambrose Medical Center in Los Angeles populates on the screen of his laptop and he begins to research the next place he’ll call home.
---
Derek stands in the doorway of Addison’s office, angry and resentful, yet proud at the same time. This could have been his office and he gave it all up for Meredith.
A sacrifice that, thus far, has been fruitless.
“Dr. Shepherd is there something I can help you with or are you just going to gawk?” Addison asks, feeling as if she’s always buried under some sort of file. She never has time for the OR these days, let alone any semblance of human interaction.
It will calm down one day, or at least that’s what she keeps telling herself.
“I just hadn’t had the opportunity to see our new Chief in action,” Derek answers, casually walking into the office, “I wanted to see it for myself.”
“Well, you’re seeing it.”
“Is it everything you wanted it to be?”
“You would have known. Webber offered it to you first,” Addison answers, looking up at him, “regretting the choice of giving it up now?”
“Perhaps a little. When’s the last time you saw the inside of an OR?” Derek asks with a smug grin, still standing over her.
“Very funny, Derek,” Addison says dryly, “why are you really here?”
“Honestly?”
She takes off her glasses and tosses them on the desk, “I hear it’s the best policy. It also wastes less of my time.”
“I have no idea,” he finally exhales, “things feel off. Meredith won’t talk to me, Burke has been different since he came back from the honeymoon and the interns are underwhelming this round.”
“There are a few interns that I wouldn’t have selected myself but that’s Richard’s doing and I can’t exactly kick them out of the program because of a change in leadership,” she agrees, “I’m sure that Preston is just tired and I’m not going to give you advice on your relationship with Meredith Grey.”
“There is no relationship,” Derek admits, “not anymore.”
“That’s too bad,” Addison says with mock empathy, “what did she do wrong?” There’s sarcasm in her tone that would be unmistakable to anybody except for Derek.
Oblivious to the sarcasm, he shakes his head, “I don’t know. She won’t speak to me.”
“I guess it’s time just to move on then.”
“You say it like it’s easy to just drop your life and go. Like nothing ever mattered,” Derek points out, looking up at her.
Addison looks back, her gaze unwavering, “You’ve done it once, Derek. I’m sure that you’ll be able to do it again.”
---
Izzie paces back and forth in the on-call room, waiting for George. Her heart has skipped a beat at least four times in the past two minutes and she doesn’t know what to expect. She said that she would stay away from him but she knows that she has some sort of feelings for him too.
The door swings wide open and she doesn’t notice when he doesn’t lock it.
“George, I was starting to wonder if you-“ she’s cut off before she can even finish speaking.
“You’re going to listen to me. You’re not going to say anything, you’re not going to respond and you’re going to deal with what I have to tell you,” he doesn’t bother to ask if she understands before continuing because he knows that she won’t, “I married Callie. Maybe I married her at a bad time but I still married her. And then I slept with you. The difference between me marrying Callie and me sleeping with you is alcohol. I was drunk, Izzie. We were drunk. Whatever it is that you think you feel for me, I can’t feel it back and I won’t, because I’m married. I’m not going to divorce Callie because I made a mistake. I’m going to tell her the truth and I’m going to fight like hell to make it right and you? You’re going to stay out of my way while I do it.”
Izzie opens her mouth but George holds up his hand and she closes it again, an indignant expression painted across her face.
“If you’re my friend, if you’re really my friend, you’ll support me on this. You’ll stay out of the way until she can trust me again and you’ll let me put my marriage back together.”
It takes a few moments for Izzie to show any sign of reaction and George nearly walks out but she finally speaks , “I’m your friend,” she says, voice wavering, “and I will support you.”
“Thank you,” George says quietly and leaves Izzie standing alone in the call room wondering what the future really holds for their friendship.
---
part two