waltzmatildah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waltzmatildah) wrote2010-01-13 10:46 pm
waltzmatildah) wrote2010-01-13 10:46 pm
Fic: Round Robin Part 17
Previous parts can be found HERE!
Part Seventeen...
The nearer Preston Burke gets to Seattle the more things start to stir inside of him, like he can almost feel himself getting closer to Cristina. He prides himself on his composure, on his calm exterior and measured, intense demeanor. It takes a great deal to unsettle him and this trait has served him well over the preceding decades.
There has only ever been one person with the ability to to shake his foundations. She'd done it constantly, and when he was least expecting it, during the time they'd spent as a couple. It was one of the things about Cristina that drew him to her in the first place. Now, as the bright lights of the airport fade into the retreating backdrop and the even brighter lights of Seattle illuminate the road ahead of him, he wonders whether that innate ability of hers will still exist; knows, almost instinctively, that it most definitely will.
His cab pulls to a smooth stop outside Seattle Grace, the aging exterior hidden somewhat by the darkness and a golden glow of yellowed street lights. He used to think that the hospital's graying facade was a misleading representation of the miracles that were worked within its walls. He's a little more cynical than that these days, but as he steps through the sliding glass doors at the entrance, Cristina's plea for assistance still echoing achingly in his ears, he takes a deep breath and can almost taste the memories.
Allowing himself a brief moment of reflection before blanking his features into something a little more comfortable, he marches purposefully to the bank of elevators, the familiarity of the movements almost cathartic as the dread he'd been expecting fails to arrive.
* * *
“We should go.”
The words are muffled, like they're coming at her through a bowl of lime jello, which... lime, yuck, like they're coming at her through a bowl of orange jello.
“Go?” She slurs the single syllable with a shrug that snakes its way slowly through her muscles; arrives just a little too late to seem congruent with her question.
There is a face in front of her, eyes squinted in her general direction, at least, she's pretty sure it's her general direction. Her spatial orientation seems to be a little... altered.
The eyes, there are four of them, and sometimes, if she moves too quickly, there are eight, are brown and broody and she has to hold herself back from lining her own up with them, lashes to lashes, and peering back. She has a feeling that she can't quite understand, a feeling that she could lose herself completely in them, almost wants to.
Definitely wants to.
She reaches out to touch them instead, feels her fingertips tingle in anticipation, then, suddenly she's seeing tacky, liquor sticky floorboards looming up to meet her forehead, knows, somewhere deep inside the part of her brain that isn't bathed in gin, or tequila, or vodka, that something is about to hurt... a lot.
“Fuck, Grey!”
But she never quite lands, not face first anyhow. She's suspended, limbo-like between a soup of melted snow and spilled beer and her stool, now towering somewhere above her. Suddenly, something about the whole situation seems absolutely and completely hilarious. Hysterical even.
* * *
He's got one arm wrapped around Lexie Grey's impossibly tiny bicep, his left foot is stuck, entwined in the rungs of his stool, his ankle screaming at him to fucking move, but he can't. He can't because she's laughing. Really laughing. Loud and real and more than well and truly over the line that hysteria drew, there are tears on her chin and she's shaking, eyes bright and wide and naked.
There is a familiarity to the sound that is icing his veins.
Has completely disintegrated his nerve endings.
Her breath on his face is mesmerising, she smells of antiseptic and booze and despair and more than a little craziness and, if he's frank with himself, which he generally is, the combination is like coming home for him. Everything he doesn't want but, at the same time, can't ever seem to avoid. Over and over and over again.
He lowers her to the ground, careful not to drop her despite the fact that the movement twists his trapped foot even further. The laughter she's enveloped herself in doesn't even hitch.
He wonders, morbidly, if it's possible to laugh yourself to death, has vague memories of an old movie where someone did just that...
“Father died laughing...”
Mary fucking Poppins... he remembers now...
He doesn't remember who kisses who first though. Decides, if Sloan comes looking for him, that it'll definitely be Lexie's fault.
Even though it's probably his. He is the resident fuck up after all. Maybe, if Sloan does come looking for him, he'll put him out of his fucking misery.
* * *
A vibrating buzz to his left distracts Joe from the mind numbing monotony of glass polishing. Squinting curiously at the device on the sodden bar runner, discarded amongst shot glasses and beer glasses and wine glasses and spirit glasses that have been filled and emptied over the course of the evening, he can recognise it as a pager. The pager that Lexie Grey flung in his direction when she'd first arrived, sober and angry and sad and with a, “take this off me, I have plans to get drunk...”
He's pretty sure she didn't mean it. Well, the taking it off her part. The getting drunk part she most certainly did.
“Dr. Grey?”
Her jacket is still balled up on the bar near where she was sitting so he's almost certain that she hasn't left yet. Joe gives the dwindling patrons a cursory glance, doesn't see her.
“Dr. Grey?”
He hears muffled scuffling emanating from the direction of the floor on the other side of the bar, inches forward over the glasses and peers down over the edge.
Well, at least they're still fully clothed. For now.
“LEXIE!”
He gets her attention with that and she startles, shoves Alex away with a slam that belies her size and has the back of his head bouncing off the metal of a stool leg.
“Fuck, Grey...”
Alex reaches an unsteady hand towards the back of his head, never quite manages to connect. Lexie doesn't appear to notice. Her fingers are in her mouth, Joe wonders how she's not choking on them, and her eyes are wide, shocked.
“Your pager is going off,” he states simply, sliding it towards the edge of the bar and closer to her reach, before beating a tactical retreat. He may have served them the alcohol but he's sure as hell not going to hang around to clean up the inevitable explosion that is about to occur.
* * *
Cristina taps her foot impatiently, nervous energy positively humming through her veins. He's here, she can feel it. And she's torn. Torn between the need to desperately seek out Meredith and to turn and stand up and fight and defend all on her own.
She steels herself with a deep breath, knows instinctively that she can do this, that in the scheme of events, both positive and negative, that have defined her life, this will not be the most challenging. That it may not even come close.
The elevator doors open, slowly, too slowly, she has energy to burn. She's almost through them before she notices.
Every cell in her body freezes and while her brain goes into immediate overdrive, she can't actually think of a single coherent thing.
“Um, you grew a beard?”
* * *
There is a pounding behind Alex's left eyeball that makes him wonder whether a marching band has set up stage in his brain, and if he thought things were a little fuzzy around the edges before, they're positively shattered now.
He's not entirely sure how he ended up on the floor, and he's even less sure why Lexie decided to slam his head back into a stool, but he has a feeling that a certain amount of shit may or may not be about to hit the fan.
At least she's stopped the freaking laughing.
Fuck.
There is an echoed pounding in his left ankle that completely confuses him and flashing memories of her lips on his ear, her fingernails raking down his back, his tongue on her teeth are making it kind of fucking hard to breathe.
Because... Izzie is back. And he fucked Reed Adamson in an elevator. And he was about to fuck Lexie Grey on the floor of Joe's bar and... Izzie is back. She's back and he was an ass to her and she still hates him and he still kind of hates her, maybe... but, she's back. And he absolutely does not hate her, not even a little bit.
She's back and he loves her more than he's ever loved anything and tonight he's probably, definitely, going to fuck Lexie Grey.
Part Seventeen...
The nearer Preston Burke gets to Seattle the more things start to stir inside of him, like he can almost feel himself getting closer to Cristina. He prides himself on his composure, on his calm exterior and measured, intense demeanor. It takes a great deal to unsettle him and this trait has served him well over the preceding decades.
There has only ever been one person with the ability to to shake his foundations. She'd done it constantly, and when he was least expecting it, during the time they'd spent as a couple. It was one of the things about Cristina that drew him to her in the first place. Now, as the bright lights of the airport fade into the retreating backdrop and the even brighter lights of Seattle illuminate the road ahead of him, he wonders whether that innate ability of hers will still exist; knows, almost instinctively, that it most definitely will.
His cab pulls to a smooth stop outside Seattle Grace, the aging exterior hidden somewhat by the darkness and a golden glow of yellowed street lights. He used to think that the hospital's graying facade was a misleading representation of the miracles that were worked within its walls. He's a little more cynical than that these days, but as he steps through the sliding glass doors at the entrance, Cristina's plea for assistance still echoing achingly in his ears, he takes a deep breath and can almost taste the memories.
Allowing himself a brief moment of reflection before blanking his features into something a little more comfortable, he marches purposefully to the bank of elevators, the familiarity of the movements almost cathartic as the dread he'd been expecting fails to arrive.
* * *
“We should go.”
The words are muffled, like they're coming at her through a bowl of lime jello, which... lime, yuck, like they're coming at her through a bowl of orange jello.
“Go?” She slurs the single syllable with a shrug that snakes its way slowly through her muscles; arrives just a little too late to seem congruent with her question.
There is a face in front of her, eyes squinted in her general direction, at least, she's pretty sure it's her general direction. Her spatial orientation seems to be a little... altered.
The eyes, there are four of them, and sometimes, if she moves too quickly, there are eight, are brown and broody and she has to hold herself back from lining her own up with them, lashes to lashes, and peering back. She has a feeling that she can't quite understand, a feeling that she could lose herself completely in them, almost wants to.
Definitely wants to.
She reaches out to touch them instead, feels her fingertips tingle in anticipation, then, suddenly she's seeing tacky, liquor sticky floorboards looming up to meet her forehead, knows, somewhere deep inside the part of her brain that isn't bathed in gin, or tequila, or vodka, that something is about to hurt... a lot.
“Fuck, Grey!”
But she never quite lands, not face first anyhow. She's suspended, limbo-like between a soup of melted snow and spilled beer and her stool, now towering somewhere above her. Suddenly, something about the whole situation seems absolutely and completely hilarious. Hysterical even.
* * *
He's got one arm wrapped around Lexie Grey's impossibly tiny bicep, his left foot is stuck, entwined in the rungs of his stool, his ankle screaming at him to fucking move, but he can't. He can't because she's laughing. Really laughing. Loud and real and more than well and truly over the line that hysteria drew, there are tears on her chin and she's shaking, eyes bright and wide and naked.
There is a familiarity to the sound that is icing his veins.
Has completely disintegrated his nerve endings.
Her breath on his face is mesmerising, she smells of antiseptic and booze and despair and more than a little craziness and, if he's frank with himself, which he generally is, the combination is like coming home for him. Everything he doesn't want but, at the same time, can't ever seem to avoid. Over and over and over again.
He lowers her to the ground, careful not to drop her despite the fact that the movement twists his trapped foot even further. The laughter she's enveloped herself in doesn't even hitch.
He wonders, morbidly, if it's possible to laugh yourself to death, has vague memories of an old movie where someone did just that...
“Father died laughing...”
Mary fucking Poppins... he remembers now...
He doesn't remember who kisses who first though. Decides, if Sloan comes looking for him, that it'll definitely be Lexie's fault.
Even though it's probably his. He is the resident fuck up after all. Maybe, if Sloan does come looking for him, he'll put him out of his fucking misery.
* * *
A vibrating buzz to his left distracts Joe from the mind numbing monotony of glass polishing. Squinting curiously at the device on the sodden bar runner, discarded amongst shot glasses and beer glasses and wine glasses and spirit glasses that have been filled and emptied over the course of the evening, he can recognise it as a pager. The pager that Lexie Grey flung in his direction when she'd first arrived, sober and angry and sad and with a, “take this off me, I have plans to get drunk...”
He's pretty sure she didn't mean it. Well, the taking it off her part. The getting drunk part she most certainly did.
“Dr. Grey?”
Her jacket is still balled up on the bar near where she was sitting so he's almost certain that she hasn't left yet. Joe gives the dwindling patrons a cursory glance, doesn't see her.
“Dr. Grey?”
He hears muffled scuffling emanating from the direction of the floor on the other side of the bar, inches forward over the glasses and peers down over the edge.
Well, at least they're still fully clothed. For now.
“LEXIE!”
He gets her attention with that and she startles, shoves Alex away with a slam that belies her size and has the back of his head bouncing off the metal of a stool leg.
“Fuck, Grey...”
Alex reaches an unsteady hand towards the back of his head, never quite manages to connect. Lexie doesn't appear to notice. Her fingers are in her mouth, Joe wonders how she's not choking on them, and her eyes are wide, shocked.
“Your pager is going off,” he states simply, sliding it towards the edge of the bar and closer to her reach, before beating a tactical retreat. He may have served them the alcohol but he's sure as hell not going to hang around to clean up the inevitable explosion that is about to occur.
* * *
Cristina taps her foot impatiently, nervous energy positively humming through her veins. He's here, she can feel it. And she's torn. Torn between the need to desperately seek out Meredith and to turn and stand up and fight and defend all on her own.
She steels herself with a deep breath, knows instinctively that she can do this, that in the scheme of events, both positive and negative, that have defined her life, this will not be the most challenging. That it may not even come close.
The elevator doors open, slowly, too slowly, she has energy to burn. She's almost through them before she notices.
Every cell in her body freezes and while her brain goes into immediate overdrive, she can't actually think of a single coherent thing.
“Um, you grew a beard?”
* * *
There is a pounding behind Alex's left eyeball that makes him wonder whether a marching band has set up stage in his brain, and if he thought things were a little fuzzy around the edges before, they're positively shattered now.
He's not entirely sure how he ended up on the floor, and he's even less sure why Lexie decided to slam his head back into a stool, but he has a feeling that a certain amount of shit may or may not be about to hit the fan.
At least she's stopped the freaking laughing.
Fuck.
There is an echoed pounding in his left ankle that completely confuses him and flashing memories of her lips on his ear, her fingernails raking down his back, his tongue on her teeth are making it kind of fucking hard to breathe.
Because... Izzie is back. And he fucked Reed Adamson in an elevator. And he was about to fuck Lexie Grey on the floor of Joe's bar and... Izzie is back. She's back and he was an ass to her and she still hates him and he still kind of hates her, maybe... but, she's back. And he absolutely does not hate her, not even a little bit.
She's back and he loves her more than he's ever loved anything and tonight he's probably, definitely, going to fuck Lexie Grey.