waltzmatildah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waltzmatildah) wrote2010-02-02 04:23 pm
waltzmatildah) wrote2010-02-02 04:23 pm
Fic: Round Robin Part 31
Previous parts to this epic masterpiece of fannish fanaticism can be found HERE!
There is half a bowl of cold fries on the table in front of him. The other half, already consumed, sit, concrete heavy, in the pit of his stomach, cramped around the doubt and anger and fear that have long since taken up residence there.
He can hear Meredith in the line at the counter, she's on the phone Alex guesses, her solitary laughter floating across the empty space, filling the echoing room, filling him. He wants to call out to her, to tell her not to buy anything because he has a tray almost full of food that there is no way he's going to touch, but he hardly has the energy required to lift his head in her direction, let alone to open his mouth and carve out an intelligible sentence.
He pushes the tray forward a few centimetres with the pads of his fingers, just enough to create a space for him to bury his head under his arms and lean his cheek against the cool surface of the formica table top. A weight settles opposite him, light and carefree, and he knows he should probably fill her in on what went down with Izzie, but he still can't quite believe it himself and the way his heart is pounding out a marching band beat in his chest seems to indicate that it's not just his head telling him that things can't be that easy, that things are never that easy for him....
Through barely slitted eyes he watches a hand dip into his long abandoned fries as he coughs out an indignantly affronted snort that he does not mean in the slightest but feels obliged to emit anyhow.
Unbending one arm he lays it across the table top in her direction, not even bothering to lift his head, “I think I'm having an MI, or maybe a TIA, or someother stupid acronym that means I'm about to drop dead... can you check?” His words are delivered lightly and with a huff of laughter but he's only half joking...
A set of cool fingertips press into the pulse point on his wrist, the pressure grounding him in a way that he hasn't experienced in months.
“Am I dead yet?”
The hand shifts, releasing his wrist, before re-settling on his forehead with an authority that confuses him somewhat. He goes rigid as the fingers creep up into his hairline, threading themselves through the hair above his ear with a familiarity that Meredith shouldn't know...
“You are a little warm actually, when was the last time you slept?”
Alex snaps his head up so fast that the world shifts a little on its axis before failing to completely right itself again.
“You're not Meredith...”
He squits around the figure seated opposite him, searching the almost empty room desperately for any sign that he'd not simply hallucinated her presence earlier.
“Nope!” she laughs, and the sound stirs something at the base of his spine. Something that he can't quite label, “I'm definitely not Meredith, sorry to disappoint you...”
There is a hint of hurt in her pout, in the way her lips crease into a soft, sad smile, but the laughter in her eyes is unmistakably triumphant and the combination is startling, disconcerting, confusing.
“Reed...” he breathes, feels his brow tense into a frown, “... what are you doing here?”
*
Cristina's panties hit the floor at the same time Preston dims the lights. She can't remember how the rest of her got undressed and, for that, she's more than just a little disappointed.
She has a feeling it's a memory she would probably have cherished.
*
Meredith escapes the soap opera that her mother's house has become by heading in to the hospital early. After all, she does have a liver resection scheduled with Dr. Bailey for the afternoon that she could study, progress notes that she could write up, post op. patients that she could check on.
After all, she does have all that...
Instead she finds herself frozen in the doorway to the hospital's cafeteria, a rigid Izzie tableaued beside her, watching Reed Adamson practically assault Alex Karev with her tiny hands, the excited chatter of her friend recounting how Alex had decided to forgive her, had decided to give them another chance, still echoing thickly at the base of her skull.
She reaches a hand out blindly, grabs at what she hopes is a bicep, and wraps her fingers around it forcefully. She doesn't have to look at Izzie to know that if she lets go anytime soon, Reed Adamson will not see the first swing coming. She may be cancer wife but Izzie still grew up in a trailer park, fighting dirty is her middle name.
She tenses under Merediths's fingers, shifts silently, coiled.
“Izz, no... don't... don't do anything...”
“Mere...” the syllable shifts midway, morphs from defiant to defeated in the space of a few letters, “I can't believe I fell for it...”
“Izz, no... I'm sure-”
“Sure what? That they're just friends? That she respects the fact that he's married? That he really has forgiven me?”
The cafeteria is quiet, Izzie's whispered indignation harsh and angry and dripping in sarcasm, and despite having no desire to watch Alex actively cheat on one of her best friends, Meredith finds that she can't bring herself to look away either.
It's like a car wreck in the making. The brakes have been applied and are already screeching, tyres are sliding, frictionless, across black ice and Meredith can only wait and hope that the air bags all inflate in time.
*
Cristina's skin is exactly as Preston remembers it. Smooth and rough in all the right places. He drags his beard teasingly across her stomach as she arches into him and giggles.
“I so should have made you shave that off before we got naked...”
*
Reed's fingers have fallen back to his forearm, and athough he's upright now and somewhat alert, Alex can't quite figure out why he hasn't yet shaken them off. His gaze lingers on her nails as they softly scratch at his skin and he can't even feel it, like his arm has somehow become detached from the rest of him.
“I wasn't joking about you being kinda warm, maybe you're coming down with something...”
He shrugs, a one shouldered movement that is more about conservation of energy than agreeing or disagreeing with whatever it is that she has to say.
“I'm serious, Alex. Maybe you should go get some sleep, I'll come check on you later...”
Sleep sounds like the best plan anyone has ever had in forever, but there is something in her tone that is grating at his edges, a force and an insistence that he doesn't remember hearing before. He presses his fingertips into his eyes, takes a moment to try and re-settle his crumbling foundations.
Truth be told, he does feel like shit, but he has a feeling sleep is not going to fix him.
And especially not the kind of sleep he's fairly certain Reed has in mind.
There is a commotion in the doorway that catches his attention finally, distracting enough to drag him out of the fog that has decended.
Izzie.
Shit.
He pulls his hand back and down into his lap as though scorched, and even as he's moving he knows that he couldn't look any more guilty if he tried.
She's upset, he can see that from where he's still seated, legs numb, lungs burning, head throbbing, and hurt and more than a lot angry. She's jumping to conclusions again, only it's hard to feel pissed off when her conclusions really aren't that far from the mark.
After all, she does know him better than anyone else ever has.
He slides his chair back as she turns to leave, the metal legs splitting the relative silence with a piercing screech as he heaves himself upright and lurches a few steps in her direction.
“Izzie!”
Meredith has hold of her, he can see that now. He thinks she's probably the only reason Izzie hasn't fled entirely.
“It's not what you think-”
She spins then, turns back to face him, almost throws Meredith into the wall.
“That's just it, isn't it Alex. It's never what I think... even when it is...”
“Izzie... Mere... just...” He drags a palm down his face, slick with sweat, feels it sting at the corners of his eyes. He's not entirely sure what's happening and whatever it is, it's going way too freaking fast for him to make up the ground he lost; is still losing.
“Alex?”
A voice from behind him breaks through the heavy silence. Questioning, gentle, calm.
“Alex,” Izzie mimics, face twisted into a sneer. Heated, sarcastic, furious.
The dichotomy is almost shocking.
*
Afterwards, as they lay entwined in the cotton sheets of his hotel bed, Preston almost can't believe he'd been so ready to give it all up. To slip away again without a fight, without even the closure of a conversation.
He has been many things in his life, Preston Burke, and he's excelled at more than the majority of them. But even he will admit that, when it comes to Cristina Yang, he has been far from perfect.
With her curls, sweat damp and ragged against his bare skin and her fingers delicately laced with his, he vows, this time, to be better.
*
Reed takes a deep breath to calm her excitement, to school her features into something resembling a friendly concern.
Because really, this could not have worked out any more perfectly. The one step she hadn't planned with a calculated precision is quickly turning into her greatest masterpiece.
Izzie Stevens is practically thrumming with anger, she can feel it from twenty metres away, and the insipid Grey woman clinging to her side is almost more than Reed can bear.
She can sense the absolute confusion hurtling through every cell of Alex's body as the stupid fool lurches his way across the cafeteria, coming to an unsteady halt just shy of halfway to the door. He really is ill, she hadn't been kidding about the possibility of a fever, about the need for sleep, and as she watches the colour drain from his face as he attempts to collect himself enough to formulate some sort of plan B, she almost has to look away.
Almost.
She stands up and moves in behind him, his uncertainty and indecisivness fueling a scream low in her gut that she fights to clamp down on. If the guy wasn't so fucking pretty to look at, and if his cancer wife wasn't such a Goddamn martyr, then the whole thing would be a complete waste of her time. As it is, the enjoyment is slowly ebbing away. It's all been just a little bit too easy really.
She relishes conquests that are far more challenging than this one has ever been.
*
Cristina can't help the small smile that she hides, slyly, in the shadowy darkness.
It almost feels like she's come full circle and in the space of a few heady days, everything about her that had been falling apart has now been ressurected.
*
The air in the cafeteria evaporates suddenly as the temperature rises by degrees. A weight settles on Alex's arm and all he knows is, it's not Izzie. It's not Izzie because she's still out of his reach. He shakes vigorously, uncontrolled, desperate, and the weight falls away as he steps forward.
“Izz, please... wait...”
He sees Izzie's eyes crease into a look he's probably mistaking as concern. A blur beside her, Meredith he guesses, reaches towards him, mouth open, speaking words he can not even begin to decipher over the pounding thrum of his own blood in his ears.
His knee kind of gives then, just the one, just the left, and just a little. He glances down at it, stares, restraightens it with a determination that belies exactly how crap he actually feels because, yes, she does make him feel like shit a lot of the time, especially lately, but at least she makes him feel like something.
There is half a bowl of cold fries on the table in front of him. The other half, already consumed, sit, concrete heavy, in the pit of his stomach, cramped around the doubt and anger and fear that have long since taken up residence there.
He can hear Meredith in the line at the counter, she's on the phone Alex guesses, her solitary laughter floating across the empty space, filling the echoing room, filling him. He wants to call out to her, to tell her not to buy anything because he has a tray almost full of food that there is no way he's going to touch, but he hardly has the energy required to lift his head in her direction, let alone to open his mouth and carve out an intelligible sentence.
He pushes the tray forward a few centimetres with the pads of his fingers, just enough to create a space for him to bury his head under his arms and lean his cheek against the cool surface of the formica table top. A weight settles opposite him, light and carefree, and he knows he should probably fill her in on what went down with Izzie, but he still can't quite believe it himself and the way his heart is pounding out a marching band beat in his chest seems to indicate that it's not just his head telling him that things can't be that easy, that things are never that easy for him....
Through barely slitted eyes he watches a hand dip into his long abandoned fries as he coughs out an indignantly affronted snort that he does not mean in the slightest but feels obliged to emit anyhow.
Unbending one arm he lays it across the table top in her direction, not even bothering to lift his head, “I think I'm having an MI, or maybe a TIA, or someother stupid acronym that means I'm about to drop dead... can you check?” His words are delivered lightly and with a huff of laughter but he's only half joking...
A set of cool fingertips press into the pulse point on his wrist, the pressure grounding him in a way that he hasn't experienced in months.
“Am I dead yet?”
The hand shifts, releasing his wrist, before re-settling on his forehead with an authority that confuses him somewhat. He goes rigid as the fingers creep up into his hairline, threading themselves through the hair above his ear with a familiarity that Meredith shouldn't know...
“You are a little warm actually, when was the last time you slept?”
Alex snaps his head up so fast that the world shifts a little on its axis before failing to completely right itself again.
“You're not Meredith...”
He squits around the figure seated opposite him, searching the almost empty room desperately for any sign that he'd not simply hallucinated her presence earlier.
“Nope!” she laughs, and the sound stirs something at the base of his spine. Something that he can't quite label, “I'm definitely not Meredith, sorry to disappoint you...”
There is a hint of hurt in her pout, in the way her lips crease into a soft, sad smile, but the laughter in her eyes is unmistakably triumphant and the combination is startling, disconcerting, confusing.
“Reed...” he breathes, feels his brow tense into a frown, “... what are you doing here?”
*
Cristina's panties hit the floor at the same time Preston dims the lights. She can't remember how the rest of her got undressed and, for that, she's more than just a little disappointed.
She has a feeling it's a memory she would probably have cherished.
*
Meredith escapes the soap opera that her mother's house has become by heading in to the hospital early. After all, she does have a liver resection scheduled with Dr. Bailey for the afternoon that she could study, progress notes that she could write up, post op. patients that she could check on.
After all, she does have all that...
Instead she finds herself frozen in the doorway to the hospital's cafeteria, a rigid Izzie tableaued beside her, watching Reed Adamson practically assault Alex Karev with her tiny hands, the excited chatter of her friend recounting how Alex had decided to forgive her, had decided to give them another chance, still echoing thickly at the base of her skull.
She reaches a hand out blindly, grabs at what she hopes is a bicep, and wraps her fingers around it forcefully. She doesn't have to look at Izzie to know that if she lets go anytime soon, Reed Adamson will not see the first swing coming. She may be cancer wife but Izzie still grew up in a trailer park, fighting dirty is her middle name.
She tenses under Merediths's fingers, shifts silently, coiled.
“Izz, no... don't... don't do anything...”
“Mere...” the syllable shifts midway, morphs from defiant to defeated in the space of a few letters, “I can't believe I fell for it...”
“Izz, no... I'm sure-”
“Sure what? That they're just friends? That she respects the fact that he's married? That he really has forgiven me?”
The cafeteria is quiet, Izzie's whispered indignation harsh and angry and dripping in sarcasm, and despite having no desire to watch Alex actively cheat on one of her best friends, Meredith finds that she can't bring herself to look away either.
It's like a car wreck in the making. The brakes have been applied and are already screeching, tyres are sliding, frictionless, across black ice and Meredith can only wait and hope that the air bags all inflate in time.
*
Cristina's skin is exactly as Preston remembers it. Smooth and rough in all the right places. He drags his beard teasingly across her stomach as she arches into him and giggles.
“I so should have made you shave that off before we got naked...”
*
Reed's fingers have fallen back to his forearm, and athough he's upright now and somewhat alert, Alex can't quite figure out why he hasn't yet shaken them off. His gaze lingers on her nails as they softly scratch at his skin and he can't even feel it, like his arm has somehow become detached from the rest of him.
“I wasn't joking about you being kinda warm, maybe you're coming down with something...”
He shrugs, a one shouldered movement that is more about conservation of energy than agreeing or disagreeing with whatever it is that she has to say.
“I'm serious, Alex. Maybe you should go get some sleep, I'll come check on you later...”
Sleep sounds like the best plan anyone has ever had in forever, but there is something in her tone that is grating at his edges, a force and an insistence that he doesn't remember hearing before. He presses his fingertips into his eyes, takes a moment to try and re-settle his crumbling foundations.
Truth be told, he does feel like shit, but he has a feeling sleep is not going to fix him.
And especially not the kind of sleep he's fairly certain Reed has in mind.
There is a commotion in the doorway that catches his attention finally, distracting enough to drag him out of the fog that has decended.
Izzie.
Shit.
He pulls his hand back and down into his lap as though scorched, and even as he's moving he knows that he couldn't look any more guilty if he tried.
She's upset, he can see that from where he's still seated, legs numb, lungs burning, head throbbing, and hurt and more than a lot angry. She's jumping to conclusions again, only it's hard to feel pissed off when her conclusions really aren't that far from the mark.
After all, she does know him better than anyone else ever has.
He slides his chair back as she turns to leave, the metal legs splitting the relative silence with a piercing screech as he heaves himself upright and lurches a few steps in her direction.
“Izzie!”
Meredith has hold of her, he can see that now. He thinks she's probably the only reason Izzie hasn't fled entirely.
“It's not what you think-”
She spins then, turns back to face him, almost throws Meredith into the wall.
“That's just it, isn't it Alex. It's never what I think... even when it is...”
“Izzie... Mere... just...” He drags a palm down his face, slick with sweat, feels it sting at the corners of his eyes. He's not entirely sure what's happening and whatever it is, it's going way too freaking fast for him to make up the ground he lost; is still losing.
“Alex?”
A voice from behind him breaks through the heavy silence. Questioning, gentle, calm.
“Alex,” Izzie mimics, face twisted into a sneer. Heated, sarcastic, furious.
The dichotomy is almost shocking.
*
Afterwards, as they lay entwined in the cotton sheets of his hotel bed, Preston almost can't believe he'd been so ready to give it all up. To slip away again without a fight, without even the closure of a conversation.
He has been many things in his life, Preston Burke, and he's excelled at more than the majority of them. But even he will admit that, when it comes to Cristina Yang, he has been far from perfect.
With her curls, sweat damp and ragged against his bare skin and her fingers delicately laced with his, he vows, this time, to be better.
*
Reed takes a deep breath to calm her excitement, to school her features into something resembling a friendly concern.
Because really, this could not have worked out any more perfectly. The one step she hadn't planned with a calculated precision is quickly turning into her greatest masterpiece.
Izzie Stevens is practically thrumming with anger, she can feel it from twenty metres away, and the insipid Grey woman clinging to her side is almost more than Reed can bear.
She can sense the absolute confusion hurtling through every cell of Alex's body as the stupid fool lurches his way across the cafeteria, coming to an unsteady halt just shy of halfway to the door. He really is ill, she hadn't been kidding about the possibility of a fever, about the need for sleep, and as she watches the colour drain from his face as he attempts to collect himself enough to formulate some sort of plan B, she almost has to look away.
Almost.
She stands up and moves in behind him, his uncertainty and indecisivness fueling a scream low in her gut that she fights to clamp down on. If the guy wasn't so fucking pretty to look at, and if his cancer wife wasn't such a Goddamn martyr, then the whole thing would be a complete waste of her time. As it is, the enjoyment is slowly ebbing away. It's all been just a little bit too easy really.
She relishes conquests that are far more challenging than this one has ever been.
*
Cristina can't help the small smile that she hides, slyly, in the shadowy darkness.
It almost feels like she's come full circle and in the space of a few heady days, everything about her that had been falling apart has now been ressurected.
*
The air in the cafeteria evaporates suddenly as the temperature rises by degrees. A weight settles on Alex's arm and all he knows is, it's not Izzie. It's not Izzie because she's still out of his reach. He shakes vigorously, uncontrolled, desperate, and the weight falls away as he steps forward.
“Izz, please... wait...”
He sees Izzie's eyes crease into a look he's probably mistaking as concern. A blur beside her, Meredith he guesses, reaches towards him, mouth open, speaking words he can not even begin to decipher over the pounding thrum of his own blood in his ears.
His knee kind of gives then, just the one, just the left, and just a little. He glances down at it, stares, restraightens it with a determination that belies exactly how crap he actually feels because, yes, she does make him feel like shit a lot of the time, especially lately, but at least she makes him feel like something.
no subject
*cough*
Now that I've gotten that out of the way ... this is ridiculously, ridiculously awesome. I absolutely adore how Alex is basically falling apart in front of everyone, I kind of love that this is happening to him (does that make me a bad person? Oh well!)
Reed is starting to creep me out just because she's so calculated and I love that as well, just so sneaky and perfect.
she does make him feel like shit a lot of the time, especially lately, but at least she makes him feel like something.
Damn, brilliant!
I loved how true to character the Preston/Cristina stuff was.
In summary, you are fabulous.
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When I was writing it, I was thinking, there is so not enough Alex!whump in this fic, I need to recifty it and I'm pretty sure
Thank you! And I'm glad you think Reed is creepy...
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And you do a great job capturing Alex's confusion as it's caused both by his illness and all the drama with Izzie and Reed. I love your descriptions!
Evil Reed is evil. Can we kill her off? Well, the next chapter is mine. I guess I could!
Poor Izzie! At the beginning of this story, I felt like we were all torturing Lexie. Now we seem to have moved on to Izzie and Alex.
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Thank you for reading, and more importantly, thank you for the brilliant bit you wrote to follow this...!
no subject
The Preston/Christina stuff was great and the Alex was amazing.
I liked the way you wrote about how sick Alex is and his determination to get to Izzie.
I absolutely despise Reed, so this was the perfect way for all of us readers to hate her even more. So, please someone kill her off!
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I'd say more but I just worked 4 12 hour shifts (which, really, are closer to 13 and a half by the time I'm done with everything..) in a row and I have run my ass off. I'm exhausted.
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Your Reed is now like, permanently implanted in my brain, you get that right? She's so.... Gah!
Also? You write Cristina so bloody awesome. “I so should have made you shave that off before we got naked...” FTW.
And Alex? He glances down at it, stares, restraightens it with a determination that belies exactly how crap he actually feels because, yes, she does make him feel like shit a lot of the time, especially lately, but at least she makes him feel like something. FTWFW.
no subject
So glad you liked!!