fic: I'm empty, you're empty... (Alex/Meredith)
Title: I'm empty, you're empty...
Characters/Pairing: Alex/Meredith
Word Count: 800
Rating: R
Prompt: "I'm empty, you're empty" from softly_me at the Small Fandoms and Rare Pairings Drabble-a-thon
Summary: Alex and Meredith count off the years that pass in the only way they know how...
The first time they fuck it's in a bathroom stall at a pub that could be Joe's but isn't. The tequila and rage soaked aftermath of a memorial ceremony that neither of them wanted to attend.
Bronze plaques to replace post-it husbands and blood lost, leaked. A perpetual stain on the floor of a conference room that no one can bring themselves to enter.
He lifts her hips, presses her shoulder blades hard against graffiti stains and can't quite bring himself to look her in the eye.
They'll be closed anyway, so what does it even matter...
- - -
She doesn't speak to him in the eight days that follow and he spends most of those minutes convincing himself that he doesn't give a crap either way.
It's a lie.
They both know it.
He sits in the corner of a supply closet and watches blood and brain matter creep across the floor tiles to pool at his toes.
Loses track.
Waits desperately for eyes that only he can see to blink a rhythm only he can hear.
- - -
That they'll fuck again is strangely inevitable.
- - -
There's no memorial this time. People have moved on. Moved away.
Only those with no where else to go remain, fingers twisted viciously into the fading substance of what they once had. A house that is too big for the two of them but not nearly big enough for the ghosts of those that have been and gone.
She shoves him down against the couch. A cushioned arm cracks under their weight. Two years have passed.
She rakes fingernails across mottled scar tissue that still has the power to ice her veins. Slides her tongue over his and doesn't bother to close her eyes this time.
She's seen it all before and so has he.
Emptied and emptying.
- - -
He spends weeks applying for jobs he knows he'll never take up. Rips acceptance letters into impossibly tiny squares, burns the shredded remains in the kitchen sink with a zippo lighter and a shot of scotch.
- - -
She works her way up the ranks. Chooses orthopedic surgery as her specialty because it's nothing like brains and hearts and lungs and death.
Works around the clock to be better. To be best. No distractions. No real ones anyway.
Knows with a bitter clarity that her mother would be pleased.
Gets what she's wanted all along as everything comes full circle.
Three hundred and sixty slow turning degrees.
- - -
The mat in the middle of the bathroom floor leaves carpet burns on her knees. She gets up in the dead of the night, drags the patchy square of memories and dust outside and into the garbage can.
That it's back in place when she gets up the next morning does not surprise her in the least.
The rattle of the front door as it slams shut against the wooden frame does.
Three years and counting.
- - -
He tells himself he'll move out next month.
Next month.
Next month.
Never quite gets beyond an internal affirmation of intent.
Never quite moves anywhere.
- - -
His belongings fit easily inside three plastic crates that he's never really unpacked to completely. The idea that he couldn't up and run at a moment's notice means trophies remain wrapped in newsprint and settled side by side into a cushion of college t-shirts.
She unravels them one by one, smudges fingertips over engraved name plates, tries to understand their significance.
Fails.
Only just resists the urge to hurl them, one after the other, through the open window.
Into the oblivion that everything leaks into eventually.
- - -
At four years they forget to keep count.
Punish themselves desperately with a seventy two hour shift and an incomplete interlude in an on-call room that is silent and strained.
The lights stay on because there is no where to hide.
- - -
They get visitors. Every now and then. The ones that managed to escape coming back to pity the ones who never could.
Sisters. Best friends. Ex-wives.
Strangers.
- - -
He waits for her to kick him out. She waits for him to up and leave.
But it's been five years and they've all but forgotten how to run.
A default finally switched to off.
She drags him to her bed on tiptoes. Through moonlight slivers and a doorway that has previously remained steadfastly closed.
He parts his lips, inhales as though perhaps to ask why.
Why now?
A question she doesn't have the answer to. At least, not beyond why not and he'll never buy that.
She slides out of the sheet she's wrapped in before the words can fully form. Tastes them as they collect on the tip of his tongue.
Bitter and bleeding.
- - -
Scar tissue fades but never disappears. Memories burst and blur together, reality to dream with no definite edge.
Emptied and emptying as the years tick over.
One by one by one...
Characters/Pairing: Alex/Meredith
Word Count: 800
Rating: R
Prompt: "I'm empty, you're empty" from softly_me at the Small Fandoms and Rare Pairings Drabble-a-thon
Summary: Alex and Meredith count off the years that pass in the only way they know how...
The first time they fuck it's in a bathroom stall at a pub that could be Joe's but isn't. The tequila and rage soaked aftermath of a memorial ceremony that neither of them wanted to attend.
Bronze plaques to replace post-it husbands and blood lost, leaked. A perpetual stain on the floor of a conference room that no one can bring themselves to enter.
He lifts her hips, presses her shoulder blades hard against graffiti stains and can't quite bring himself to look her in the eye.
They'll be closed anyway, so what does it even matter...
- - -
She doesn't speak to him in the eight days that follow and he spends most of those minutes convincing himself that he doesn't give a crap either way.
It's a lie.
They both know it.
He sits in the corner of a supply closet and watches blood and brain matter creep across the floor tiles to pool at his toes.
Loses track.
Waits desperately for eyes that only he can see to blink a rhythm only he can hear.
- - -
That they'll fuck again is strangely inevitable.
- - -
There's no memorial this time. People have moved on. Moved away.
Only those with no where else to go remain, fingers twisted viciously into the fading substance of what they once had. A house that is too big for the two of them but not nearly big enough for the ghosts of those that have been and gone.
She shoves him down against the couch. A cushioned arm cracks under their weight. Two years have passed.
She rakes fingernails across mottled scar tissue that still has the power to ice her veins. Slides her tongue over his and doesn't bother to close her eyes this time.
She's seen it all before and so has he.
Emptied and emptying.
- - -
He spends weeks applying for jobs he knows he'll never take up. Rips acceptance letters into impossibly tiny squares, burns the shredded remains in the kitchen sink with a zippo lighter and a shot of scotch.
- - -
She works her way up the ranks. Chooses orthopedic surgery as her specialty because it's nothing like brains and hearts and lungs and death.
Works around the clock to be better. To be best. No distractions. No real ones anyway.
Knows with a bitter clarity that her mother would be pleased.
Gets what she's wanted all along as everything comes full circle.
Three hundred and sixty slow turning degrees.
- - -
The mat in the middle of the bathroom floor leaves carpet burns on her knees. She gets up in the dead of the night, drags the patchy square of memories and dust outside and into the garbage can.
That it's back in place when she gets up the next morning does not surprise her in the least.
The rattle of the front door as it slams shut against the wooden frame does.
Three years and counting.
- - -
He tells himself he'll move out next month.
Next month.
Next month.
Never quite gets beyond an internal affirmation of intent.
Never quite moves anywhere.
- - -
His belongings fit easily inside three plastic crates that he's never really unpacked to completely. The idea that he couldn't up and run at a moment's notice means trophies remain wrapped in newsprint and settled side by side into a cushion of college t-shirts.
She unravels them one by one, smudges fingertips over engraved name plates, tries to understand their significance.
Fails.
Only just resists the urge to hurl them, one after the other, through the open window.
Into the oblivion that everything leaks into eventually.
- - -
At four years they forget to keep count.
Punish themselves desperately with a seventy two hour shift and an incomplete interlude in an on-call room that is silent and strained.
The lights stay on because there is no where to hide.
- - -
They get visitors. Every now and then. The ones that managed to escape coming back to pity the ones who never could.
Sisters. Best friends. Ex-wives.
Strangers.
- - -
He waits for her to kick him out. She waits for him to up and leave.
But it's been five years and they've all but forgotten how to run.
A default finally switched to off.
She drags him to her bed on tiptoes. Through moonlight slivers and a doorway that has previously remained steadfastly closed.
He parts his lips, inhales as though perhaps to ask why.
Why now?
A question she doesn't have the answer to. At least, not beyond why not and he'll never buy that.
She slides out of the sheet she's wrapped in before the words can fully form. Tastes them as they collect on the tip of his tongue.
Bitter and bleeding.
- - -
Scar tissue fades but never disappears. Memories burst and blur together, reality to dream with no definite edge.
Emptied and emptying as the years tick over.
One by one by one...