Fic: Grey's Anatomy: One Thing That Didn't Happen [George/Bailey]
So I was going to write a fic called "five things that didn't happen that time the guy took an unexploded bomb to the chest" for the last Grey's Anatomy episode, but then I started writing it and it kind of ended up being more like, one kind of long thing that didn't happen that time the guy took an unexploded bomb to the chest, so, whoops, I guess. There was going to be one where Meredith blew up, too. And another one where McDreamy blew up and then Addison and Meredith hooked up. OH WELL. Too bad. And happy Valentine's Day.
Title: One Thing That Didn't Happen at Seattle Grace the Time Everyone Almost Blew Up
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: George/Bailey
Rating: PG
**
George insists that he be the one to tell Dr. Bailey about her husband. He's the one that sat with her back to his chest and his cheek to her cheek and the bones in his hand mashed together by her hand as they pushed a whole other person out of her. Which had been weird. She was softer than it seemed like Dr. Bailey should be, and smaller. She fit inside his body - he wrapped around her just fine.
He puts his hand on her knee when he tells her, and as her face crumples her hand comes down on top of his, and two hours afterwards there are still little half moons white on the back of his hand from her fingernails.
**
He drives her home from the hospital, too, because somebody has to do it, and he doesn't like that she has that lost look on her face, like she's not Dr. Bailey anymore. He straps William into a car seat in the back, the little warm body all tiny and newborn. "Hey there, Will," he says, quiet, as he tucks the blanket around him. "You ready to go home?" Will gurgles at him and waves a chubby fist. Bailey spends the whole way home looking out the window, blank, and when they pull into her driveway, she doesn't move.
"I can't," she says. Her house looks empty and dark, lifeless, and he doesn't blame her. The funeral's the next day - her husband's family planned it, because since he died Dr. Bailey just sits. It's creepy.
"You can," George says. He unbuckles his seat belt, and when she still just sits there, he reaches over and unbuckles hers too.
"O'Malley," she says, in what is a shade of her fed-up tone, and for a second she's almost her again.
"Dr. Bailey!" he says, all I-mean-it and you-look-here, trying to startle some more fed-upness out of her, because without it she scares him even more than with it. "I am surprised at you!"
She almost laughs, a puff of air out of her nose. "That's not going to work twice, junior."
But she moves the seatbelt off her and opens the car door, so maybe it does work twice after all, and George hurries around the car to help her out. She just had a baby, she's moving slow. He grips her forearm to help her out, and as she's up and steadying herself she puts her hand on his shoulder and her thumb rests against the skin of his neck.
"Okay," he says, to cover his surprise, how he's blushing a little bit. "See? We're doing it."
"Alert the media," Bailey mutters, and if she's being sarcastic, it's better. George can handle sarcastic.
He leans into the back to get the baby, whose head can fit in the palm of his hand, who is wearing a little hat, and George cradles him against his chest. George can't help it, babies do something to him. And when it's a baby that's named after him, when it's Bailey's baby - well, he can't be expected to resist that. He's not made of stone. "Who's the cutest baby in the world? Who's the most adorablest little guy in the whole universe? You are! Yes, you are."
When he straightens up with William in the crook of his arm, Bailey's looking at him with this weird mix of exasperation and surprise and maybe kind of… well, no. Well, okay, yeah, maybe affection or something. Underneath the are-you-kidding-me and the exhaustion and the grief and the whatever else, there is this little sheen of affection she's not quite hiding. He beams at her, and there's a second where he thinks she's going to smile back, but she doesn't.
The house is dark and quiet and the newspaper from the day her husband died is still strewn over the breakfast table, full of headlines about the State of the Union and the Super Bowl, just as though a bomb never blew up in Seattle Grace, just as though there was never a car accident, like nobody died.
Bailey looks at the mess and the empty room and then she's just standing there next to a pile of breakfast dishes her husband will never eat out of again, and she's crying.
George doesn't know what to do except hold the baby with one arm and hold onto her shoulder with the other and not leave her alone. This is the plan from now on, he guesses. Dr. Bailey shouldn't be alone.
**
He brings groceries over to her house after work, and learns to make casseroles because otherwise he's worried she isn't eating.
"That's what you do when someone dies, right? You make casseroles," George says to Izzie. He's got the Joy of Cooking out and is flipping through the recipes.
She gives him a weird look. "I guess."
"What?" he says.
"Nothing," she says. "I mean. You're just over there a lot."
"So?" George says.
"So, nothing," Izzie says. "I'm just saying."
"Do you think Dr. Bailey likes tuna casserole? People like tuna, right? And that's, like, protein and stuff. I mean, and the recipe looks easy. And she needs protein."
"George," Izzie says, and shakes her head like she's trying to shake the confusion out.
"I think she likes tuna casserole," George says, and gets the can opener.
"George," Izzie says again, but he keeps opening the tuna can. "George! Okay. I don't know what's weirder, you making casseroles or Dr. Bailey letting you."
"She's sad, Izzie," George says. "And she has a baby. Someone has to take care of her."
"And you're that person."
"You know what she named that baby, Iz?"
Izzie rolls her eyes and grabs a bottle of vodka on her way out of the kitchen. "You've only told me three thousand times." She heads down the hallway.
"William George Bailey Jones!" George calls after her. "William George, Izzie!"
"I know!" Izzie yells back over her shoulder, and then turns around and walks backwards for a few steps, holding her hands up. "I wash my hands of this, George. No good will come of this, you mark my words." She disappears up the stairs, and George makes a face at where she'd been standing.
"Mark your own words," he mutters, and measures out the salt.
**
The first time he spends the night at Dr. Bailey's house, it's sort of an accident. He makes her eat dinner, and he brings the baby to her to be fed, and settles him back in his bassinet when he's done. And then they're on the couch watching that show about the smug teenage private eye, because without the TV on it's too quiet in the house, and when it's too quiet in the house George has to keep up a steady stream of talk so that Dr. Bailey doesn't get that lost look, so that she keeps that annoyed look instead, that I-can't-believe-you're-in-my-house-talking-to-me-about-shrimp look. She never kicks him out. Her looking annoyed just means that things are okay.
So they're watching TV, and George just came off a 48 hour shift, and he's a little sleepy, but if he just rests his head back on the couch it's okay, and he'll go home to Meredith's house in a little while, and then the next thing he knows he can hear William crying and Dr. Bailey's head is on his shoulder, sleeping, and she's heavy and warm against his arm, and she doesn't even wake up when he goes to feed William from some of the bottles of breast milk in the fridge. She must be really tired. He thinks she hasn't been sleeping enough, lately.
Once Will's settled back down, George looks at his jacket thrown over the back of the couch, and looks at Dr. Bailey, and thinks that he should go home. But her eyes blink open sleepily, and she says, "George."
"Yeah," he says, and he sits back down on the couch too fast. "I'm here. Don't worry." And he can't leave, after that, when she curls up against his side and goes back to sleep, when she needs him.
**
He drives her to the cemetery sometimes, and stays by the car while she goes to the plot. He goes along to the baby's first doctor's appointment, and once she goes back to work, he baby-sits sometimes. If she's got a surgery that's running over, he picks William up from daycare. They know him there now. After a month, he buys an extra toothbrush to leave at her place, and after two months he's keeping a change of clothes in a duffle bag next to the couch. Three months and he gets a drawer.
"O'Malley," she says one time, after one of the bad days, the ones where she just looks like she wants to die, where George has to talk up a storm about stupid things to keep it from overwhelming both of them. "Go home already."
He's caught off guard, and says, "Why?" before he thinks about it.
Weirdly, she actually doesn't have anything to say to that. After a long moment she shrugs and he turns on a rerun of Friends, and he spends the night on her couch again, and when he gets to work Izzie gives him that look that he will have to spend the whole day ignoring.
But Cristina grabs him by the front of his scrubs after rounds and the girls all hustle him into a supply closet.
"Hey!" he says, shaking them off. "What is wrong with you?"
"Are you sleeping with Bailey?" Meredith says. They all glower at him.
"What? No!"
"You wouldn't lie to us, would you, George?" Cristina says. She's scary when she glares like that.
"No, I would not," George says, trying to keep his dignity intact. "I have a very healthy sense of self-preservation."
They all give him the evil eye for a full thirty seconds.
"Okay," Izzie says finally, her eyes still narrowed. "I think he's telling the truth."
"Yes!" George says. "I am! She is a widow! Have some respect."
"Then what *are* you doing over there, George?" Meredith says.
"I," George says, with as much aplomb as he can muster, reaching for the door handle, "unlike some people, am minding my own business."
**
After all this time, George cooks at her house instead of bringing over the casseroles, and he's chopping garlic when she comes into the kitchen, bouncing William.
"Hey," George says, looking up and smiling. "Spaghetti okay tonight?"
She stands in the doorway for a long moment. The baby grabs at her hair. "You're not my husband, George," she says, out of the blue.
The clock on the wall has a loud tick. George had never noticed it before. He blinks and looks back down at the garlic. "I know that."
"Good," Bailey says. Then William starts to cry and she goes to change him, and the water's boiling and George looks at it for a whole minute before he remembers that he's supposed to put the noodles in.
After dinner, George says, "I guess I better get home," and looks at her sideways, but she's clearing the dishes and doesn't look at him.
"You better," she says, stacking the plates. "We have rounds early tomorrow."
So George goes home and crawls into bed and lies on his back in the dark feeling empty for a long time.
Good thing he's living with girls who are dating assholes, because just as he's contemplating throwing himself out the window, his light flips on and Izzie says, "Unbelievable!"
"I'm sleeping!" George says, automatically protesting, but secretly he's glad, and once his eyes get used to the light, he can see that she's wearing a shiny dress and makeup
"Seriously, you have got to be kidding me," Izzie says, and flops onto his bed.
"No, I am not," George says. "What did Alex do, give you syphilis?"
"Shut up, George," Izzie says, and rests her arm on his chest as she settles down. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the feel of her next to him.
"Unbelievable!" Meredith says from the doorway, and nobody's surprised. The bed isn't big enough for three of them, but it always is anyway.
"Guys are assholes," Izzie says.
"Tell me about it," Meredith agrees, and he's sandwiched between them feeling safe.
"Seriously," he says, because he's already half asleep and warm.
Izzie's head turns towards him in the dark. "Hey, wait, what're you doing home, George?"
He can't think of anything to say, so he just listens to them breathing, and then both the girls are slinging their arms across him so the three of them are all tangled up, and they lie like that for a long time.
**
Rounds go on like normal, and he presents patients, and Dr. Bailey is back to being herself again, which means she doesn't look at him except to glare. She seems okay, though, and isn't that what he wanted? He watches her closely, but she's all business, and she puts Alex in the Pit doing sutures for being flippant about a patient, and Izzie gets an appendectomy, and Meredith takes a heart patient down for tests, and Cristina gets to assist on a subdural hematoma, and George doesn't get anything.
"O'Malley," she says, "I need to talk to you." The girls look at each other and scatter and Bailey rolls her eyes and walks him into an empty room. "What's wrong? Because I have about had it with the puppy dog eyes."
"What? Nothing," George says quickly. "Nothing's wrong."
She sighs and rubs at her forehead, and she looks tired. He wonders if William kept her up a lot. "You're an intern," she says. "You're *my* intern. It's inappropriate."
That's not what he was expecting. Inappropriate means that something's happening. He didn't think anything was happening but him making casseroles and handing her Kleenex. "What's inappropriate?" he asks, as he's processing it and trying not to smile, and when she looks at him he makes sure he has a straight face. She doesn't say anything at all, so he takes a chance on moving a step closer.
"O'Malley," she says in a warning tone.
"What?" he says, and he's talking really softly. "Everyone can date their bosses but me?"
She's shaking her head, but in this quiet way where she doesn't mean it, and she's not looking at him, so he reaches out and touches her chin, and she doesn't move away. She doesn't even move away when he kisses her, either, and when she kisses him back, it just might be the greatest moment of George's life.
**
END
Title: One Thing That Didn't Happen at Seattle Grace the Time Everyone Almost Blew Up
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: George/Bailey
Rating: PG
**
George insists that he be the one to tell Dr. Bailey about her husband. He's the one that sat with her back to his chest and his cheek to her cheek and the bones in his hand mashed together by her hand as they pushed a whole other person out of her. Which had been weird. She was softer than it seemed like Dr. Bailey should be, and smaller. She fit inside his body - he wrapped around her just fine.
He puts his hand on her knee when he tells her, and as her face crumples her hand comes down on top of his, and two hours afterwards there are still little half moons white on the back of his hand from her fingernails.
**
He drives her home from the hospital, too, because somebody has to do it, and he doesn't like that she has that lost look on her face, like she's not Dr. Bailey anymore. He straps William into a car seat in the back, the little warm body all tiny and newborn. "Hey there, Will," he says, quiet, as he tucks the blanket around him. "You ready to go home?" Will gurgles at him and waves a chubby fist. Bailey spends the whole way home looking out the window, blank, and when they pull into her driveway, she doesn't move.
"I can't," she says. Her house looks empty and dark, lifeless, and he doesn't blame her. The funeral's the next day - her husband's family planned it, because since he died Dr. Bailey just sits. It's creepy.
"You can," George says. He unbuckles his seat belt, and when she still just sits there, he reaches over and unbuckles hers too.
"O'Malley," she says, in what is a shade of her fed-up tone, and for a second she's almost her again.
"Dr. Bailey!" he says, all I-mean-it and you-look-here, trying to startle some more fed-upness out of her, because without it she scares him even more than with it. "I am surprised at you!"
She almost laughs, a puff of air out of her nose. "That's not going to work twice, junior."
But she moves the seatbelt off her and opens the car door, so maybe it does work twice after all, and George hurries around the car to help her out. She just had a baby, she's moving slow. He grips her forearm to help her out, and as she's up and steadying herself she puts her hand on his shoulder and her thumb rests against the skin of his neck.
"Okay," he says, to cover his surprise, how he's blushing a little bit. "See? We're doing it."
"Alert the media," Bailey mutters, and if she's being sarcastic, it's better. George can handle sarcastic.
He leans into the back to get the baby, whose head can fit in the palm of his hand, who is wearing a little hat, and George cradles him against his chest. George can't help it, babies do something to him. And when it's a baby that's named after him, when it's Bailey's baby - well, he can't be expected to resist that. He's not made of stone. "Who's the cutest baby in the world? Who's the most adorablest little guy in the whole universe? You are! Yes, you are."
When he straightens up with William in the crook of his arm, Bailey's looking at him with this weird mix of exasperation and surprise and maybe kind of… well, no. Well, okay, yeah, maybe affection or something. Underneath the are-you-kidding-me and the exhaustion and the grief and the whatever else, there is this little sheen of affection she's not quite hiding. He beams at her, and there's a second where he thinks she's going to smile back, but she doesn't.
The house is dark and quiet and the newspaper from the day her husband died is still strewn over the breakfast table, full of headlines about the State of the Union and the Super Bowl, just as though a bomb never blew up in Seattle Grace, just as though there was never a car accident, like nobody died.
Bailey looks at the mess and the empty room and then she's just standing there next to a pile of breakfast dishes her husband will never eat out of again, and she's crying.
George doesn't know what to do except hold the baby with one arm and hold onto her shoulder with the other and not leave her alone. This is the plan from now on, he guesses. Dr. Bailey shouldn't be alone.
**
He brings groceries over to her house after work, and learns to make casseroles because otherwise he's worried she isn't eating.
"That's what you do when someone dies, right? You make casseroles," George says to Izzie. He's got the Joy of Cooking out and is flipping through the recipes.
She gives him a weird look. "I guess."
"What?" he says.
"Nothing," she says. "I mean. You're just over there a lot."
"So?" George says.
"So, nothing," Izzie says. "I'm just saying."
"Do you think Dr. Bailey likes tuna casserole? People like tuna, right? And that's, like, protein and stuff. I mean, and the recipe looks easy. And she needs protein."
"George," Izzie says, and shakes her head like she's trying to shake the confusion out.
"I think she likes tuna casserole," George says, and gets the can opener.
"George," Izzie says again, but he keeps opening the tuna can. "George! Okay. I don't know what's weirder, you making casseroles or Dr. Bailey letting you."
"She's sad, Izzie," George says. "And she has a baby. Someone has to take care of her."
"And you're that person."
"You know what she named that baby, Iz?"
Izzie rolls her eyes and grabs a bottle of vodka on her way out of the kitchen. "You've only told me three thousand times." She heads down the hallway.
"William George Bailey Jones!" George calls after her. "William George, Izzie!"
"I know!" Izzie yells back over her shoulder, and then turns around and walks backwards for a few steps, holding her hands up. "I wash my hands of this, George. No good will come of this, you mark my words." She disappears up the stairs, and George makes a face at where she'd been standing.
"Mark your own words," he mutters, and measures out the salt.
**
The first time he spends the night at Dr. Bailey's house, it's sort of an accident. He makes her eat dinner, and he brings the baby to her to be fed, and settles him back in his bassinet when he's done. And then they're on the couch watching that show about the smug teenage private eye, because without the TV on it's too quiet in the house, and when it's too quiet in the house George has to keep up a steady stream of talk so that Dr. Bailey doesn't get that lost look, so that she keeps that annoyed look instead, that I-can't-believe-you're-in-my-house-talking-to-me-about-shrimp look. She never kicks him out. Her looking annoyed just means that things are okay.
So they're watching TV, and George just came off a 48 hour shift, and he's a little sleepy, but if he just rests his head back on the couch it's okay, and he'll go home to Meredith's house in a little while, and then the next thing he knows he can hear William crying and Dr. Bailey's head is on his shoulder, sleeping, and she's heavy and warm against his arm, and she doesn't even wake up when he goes to feed William from some of the bottles of breast milk in the fridge. She must be really tired. He thinks she hasn't been sleeping enough, lately.
Once Will's settled back down, George looks at his jacket thrown over the back of the couch, and looks at Dr. Bailey, and thinks that he should go home. But her eyes blink open sleepily, and she says, "George."
"Yeah," he says, and he sits back down on the couch too fast. "I'm here. Don't worry." And he can't leave, after that, when she curls up against his side and goes back to sleep, when she needs him.
**
He drives her to the cemetery sometimes, and stays by the car while she goes to the plot. He goes along to the baby's first doctor's appointment, and once she goes back to work, he baby-sits sometimes. If she's got a surgery that's running over, he picks William up from daycare. They know him there now. After a month, he buys an extra toothbrush to leave at her place, and after two months he's keeping a change of clothes in a duffle bag next to the couch. Three months and he gets a drawer.
"O'Malley," she says one time, after one of the bad days, the ones where she just looks like she wants to die, where George has to talk up a storm about stupid things to keep it from overwhelming both of them. "Go home already."
He's caught off guard, and says, "Why?" before he thinks about it.
Weirdly, she actually doesn't have anything to say to that. After a long moment she shrugs and he turns on a rerun of Friends, and he spends the night on her couch again, and when he gets to work Izzie gives him that look that he will have to spend the whole day ignoring.
But Cristina grabs him by the front of his scrubs after rounds and the girls all hustle him into a supply closet.
"Hey!" he says, shaking them off. "What is wrong with you?"
"Are you sleeping with Bailey?" Meredith says. They all glower at him.
"What? No!"
"You wouldn't lie to us, would you, George?" Cristina says. She's scary when she glares like that.
"No, I would not," George says, trying to keep his dignity intact. "I have a very healthy sense of self-preservation."
They all give him the evil eye for a full thirty seconds.
"Okay," Izzie says finally, her eyes still narrowed. "I think he's telling the truth."
"Yes!" George says. "I am! She is a widow! Have some respect."
"Then what *are* you doing over there, George?" Meredith says.
"I," George says, with as much aplomb as he can muster, reaching for the door handle, "unlike some people, am minding my own business."
**
After all this time, George cooks at her house instead of bringing over the casseroles, and he's chopping garlic when she comes into the kitchen, bouncing William.
"Hey," George says, looking up and smiling. "Spaghetti okay tonight?"
She stands in the doorway for a long moment. The baby grabs at her hair. "You're not my husband, George," she says, out of the blue.
The clock on the wall has a loud tick. George had never noticed it before. He blinks and looks back down at the garlic. "I know that."
"Good," Bailey says. Then William starts to cry and she goes to change him, and the water's boiling and George looks at it for a whole minute before he remembers that he's supposed to put the noodles in.
After dinner, George says, "I guess I better get home," and looks at her sideways, but she's clearing the dishes and doesn't look at him.
"You better," she says, stacking the plates. "We have rounds early tomorrow."
So George goes home and crawls into bed and lies on his back in the dark feeling empty for a long time.
Good thing he's living with girls who are dating assholes, because just as he's contemplating throwing himself out the window, his light flips on and Izzie says, "Unbelievable!"
"I'm sleeping!" George says, automatically protesting, but secretly he's glad, and once his eyes get used to the light, he can see that she's wearing a shiny dress and makeup
"Seriously, you have got to be kidding me," Izzie says, and flops onto his bed.
"No, I am not," George says. "What did Alex do, give you syphilis?"
"Shut up, George," Izzie says, and rests her arm on his chest as she settles down. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the feel of her next to him.
"Unbelievable!" Meredith says from the doorway, and nobody's surprised. The bed isn't big enough for three of them, but it always is anyway.
"Guys are assholes," Izzie says.
"Tell me about it," Meredith agrees, and he's sandwiched between them feeling safe.
"Seriously," he says, because he's already half asleep and warm.
Izzie's head turns towards him in the dark. "Hey, wait, what're you doing home, George?"
He can't think of anything to say, so he just listens to them breathing, and then both the girls are slinging their arms across him so the three of them are all tangled up, and they lie like that for a long time.
**
Rounds go on like normal, and he presents patients, and Dr. Bailey is back to being herself again, which means she doesn't look at him except to glare. She seems okay, though, and isn't that what he wanted? He watches her closely, but she's all business, and she puts Alex in the Pit doing sutures for being flippant about a patient, and Izzie gets an appendectomy, and Meredith takes a heart patient down for tests, and Cristina gets to assist on a subdural hematoma, and George doesn't get anything.
"O'Malley," she says, "I need to talk to you." The girls look at each other and scatter and Bailey rolls her eyes and walks him into an empty room. "What's wrong? Because I have about had it with the puppy dog eyes."
"What? Nothing," George says quickly. "Nothing's wrong."
She sighs and rubs at her forehead, and she looks tired. He wonders if William kept her up a lot. "You're an intern," she says. "You're *my* intern. It's inappropriate."
That's not what he was expecting. Inappropriate means that something's happening. He didn't think anything was happening but him making casseroles and handing her Kleenex. "What's inappropriate?" he asks, as he's processing it and trying not to smile, and when she looks at him he makes sure he has a straight face. She doesn't say anything at all, so he takes a chance on moving a step closer.
"O'Malley," she says in a warning tone.
"What?" he says, and he's talking really softly. "Everyone can date their bosses but me?"
She's shaking her head, but in this quiet way where she doesn't mean it, and she's not looking at him, so he reaches out and touches her chin, and she doesn't move away. She doesn't even move away when he kisses her, either, and when she kisses him back, it just might be the greatest moment of George's life.
**
END