grey's anatomy; blurring the lines
TITLE: Blurring the Lines
CHARACTERS: Cristina Yang/Lexie Grey, one-sided Cristina/Meredith
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 6,226
SUMMARY: Sometimes, not even Cristina Yang can get what she wants.
NOTES: For neontehsheep.
*
Meredith's got that look on her face. The look that says she had sex at work, in the on-call room. And not just sex; it was break-up sex, with McDreamy. Cristina knows. Meredith doesn't say anything to that effect, but Cristina still knows.
They're laying on Meredith's bed with the covers bundled up around their waists, because it's cold, and the central heating takes a lifetime to pump heat into the house. The pipes in the house groan and splutter, and Cristina's spent so many nights and evenings there that she barely even notices the sounds of the house settling.
She lies there, patient, listening to the way Meredith artfully skirts around the issue that she really wants to talk about. Cristina knows that she wants to tell her all about the sex, about how many times it happened and, oh, does she think she's making a mistake? Cristina's seen enough productions of the Meredith and McDreamy show, and she knows all the lines. The second-hand embarrassment is making it difficult to invest in this round of the relationship, or lack thereof.
If she worded it like that, Meredith would call her bitter. And she'd be right, although not in the way that Cristina would choose to define the word. Because it's Meredith, it's her person, making the same old mistakes all over again; Meredith, who can no longer successfully be single.
The crux of the matter, Cristina thinks as Meredith rambles on about maybe getting somebody in to fix the boiler, because the rusted old thing is on its last legs, is that this was their one chance to be single at the same time. Before McDreamy, third round, same as the first, there was dating and there was McVet, and before McVet there was half of Seattle. Before that, of course, was McDreamy. And during that all, Cristina had Burke, even when she wasn't talking to him.
But, no, Meredith has to make a spectacle of herself, even in breaking up. There was a brief two week period in which they were both unattached, but there was no way that Cristina was going to even consider doing anything on her honeymoon. The rebound level would be off the chart. No; the honeymoon had been dedicated to not talking about how crap things were, and drinking brightly coloured cocktails straight out of coconuts.
Cristina sighs, and slouches down, against the pillows. Meredith raises an eyebrow, slows her talking, but doesn't ask her what's wrong. Because, as ever, things are about Meredith, and Cristina's there, and she's going to listen; she's not going to do anything.
She's not going to do anything, because she's Cristina Yang, and she doesn't do the chasing. She certainly doesn't pine after anybody, least of all Meredith Grey.
“Derek,” Meredith blurts out, when she finally tires of talking about maintaining her dead mother's house, “I had sex with Derek. Break up sex, in the on-call room. Three times. It's the last time, every time, but somehow, I keep having sex with Derek in on-call rooms and storage closets. That's bad, right?”
Sometimes, Cristina wonders why Meredith asks her these things. She should already know the general tone of Cristina's answer, if not the exact words themselves, because they've been over this sort of thing a hundred times. Meredith knows how Cristina feels about it, even if she doesn't know how she herself feels about it. That's how this works.
It works, Cristina reminds herself. That's all that matters. This, what she has right here with Meredith, works.
“It's bad, Mer. You're not even getting yourself drunk, and you're rebounding with the guy you're trying to get over,” Cristina says, rolling her eyes. “Only you'd do that.”
Meredith huffs out a sigh. “It's bad. It's really, really bad, and I'm a whore. Just a whore. Not even a whore on tequila.”
“That sounds about right,” Cristina says, smiling, and Meredith frowns at her, until her resolve melts away, and she decides that her time's better spent sleeping.
Meredith throws the duvet over the both of them, and Cristina shifts against the mattress, knowing the exact spot to get comfortable against.
*
It doesn't take long for Meredith's break-up sex with McDreamy in the on-call room to develop into break-up sex with McDreamy in the bedroom. After work, Cristina heads over to Meredith's, lets herself in, and gets half-way up the stairs before turning back.
She had to spend another night alone in her apartment, sooner or later. Cristina steps back into her shoes, and pulls open the front door, just as somebody's about to knock against it.
“Oh. Dr. Yang,” says a rather timid looking Lexie, who doesn't sound too surprised to find Cristina there. “Hey. I was looking for my sister. For Meredith. Is she in?”
Cristina stares at her for a good long moment. Lexie has certainly become less irritating over time, but that doesn't mean that she has any wish to see her outside of the hospital. At first, she considers snapping at Lexie, maybe reminding her that Meredith hates her, and that she should stop stalking her, but then Cristina realises that she's full of misplaced anger. That she's been brimming with it for days.
Besides, there's little use in repeating herself. Lexie's persistent. Cristina will give her that much.
“Mer's in. She's upstairs,” Cristina says, and wonders how terrible it would be to not give Lexie any warning. Lexie nods gratefully, and then hurries to head into the house. At the last possible moment, Cristina stretches out an arm, places her hand flat against the door frame, and stops Lexie in her tracks. “You don't want to go up there, Three.”
“Why not?” she asks, but works out the answer for herself, before Cristina gets the chance to reply. “Oh. Okay. I definitely don't want to go up there. I guess-I guess I'll have to try again some other time.”
Lexie rocks backwards and forwards on her tiptoes as she speaks, and probably doesn't even realise that she's doing it. She nods a few times, mostly to herself, like it's the conclusion to her sentence, and takes about four seconds too long to turn away, and start walking back towards the street.
Despite what she's certain Lexie believes, Cristina doesn't hate her. There'd been resentment at first, once she finally started caring enough about Lexie's existence to take the trouble of forming an opinion, because Meredith was her person, always had been, and she wasn't about to let some long-lost half-sister take her place. But that had fallen through, and Cristina barely needed to chase Lexie away herself. Meredith had done enough of that for the two of them.
Resentment quickly turned into annoyance, and that had eventually trickled down to being mild annoyance, because Lexie really was the best of her interns. Not that that was saying much, because she was only being compared to One, Two and Four, and none of them could place a chest tube without a resident to hold their hand, but Lexie had potential. The photographic memory was useful, too.
Still, it surprises even Cristina, when she calls out after her.
“Hey, Three,” she says, hands on her hips, hoping to look and sound stern, “Do you want a drink?”
Lexie stops walking, turns back and opens her mouth without forming words. She hesitates to answer, as if it could possibly be a trick question. Cristina doesn't see what the big deal is, because they've drank together before. They got through a bottle of tequila, and then they danced it out. Of course, Meredith had been with them, at the time.
“A drink. I'd love a drink. Do you want to go to Joe's?”
The thought hadn't actually crossed Cristina's mind.
“I have a better idea.”
Cristina leads Lexie into the house, moves quickly through the hallway, and shuts the door behind them, once they're in the kitchen. All the while, Lexie looks around, expression clearly one of trouble, like Meredith's going to finish with her sex at any moment, and find intruders in her house. Cristina expects that Lexie's only following her because it's her, and Lexie seems to go to great lengths not to piss her off. She's her resident, after all. She doesn't want to be doing nothing but sutures for the next month.
When she points at a chair, Lexie almost trips over her own feet in an effort to sit down. Cristina laughs flatly, and Lexie looks down at her hands. She starts murmuring something, but doesn't get out enough words for Cristina to make sense of it. Not interested in what she has to say, Cristina pushes herself up on tiptoes to take out two shot glasses from the top shelf of a cupboard, and then rummages around the cupboards for tequila. Because it's Meredith's house, and Meredith having tequila is a given.
With the glasses placed against the tabletop and the tequila poured out, Lexie seems even more skittish that she originally had been.
“Are you sure we should be doing this? This is Meredith's tequila, and we haven't asked, and tequila is kind of expensive. Not that she'd mind you drinking it, because it's you, but if she finds out that I drank her last bottle? She'd never speak to me again, and she barely speaks to me as it is. Should we be drinking this?”
Cristina looks up at Lexie, and then back to her shot glass. Maybe, if she has one or two or seven of these, then she'll be able to tune out Lexie's rambling more efficiently. Cristina downs the shot, and then slams the glass back down.
That seems like answer enough for Lexie. She reaches out, does her shot, and then purses her lips together. Like she knows that anything she could think to say would be inappropriate.
“We don't like family. Me and Meredith. It's not that Meredith doesn't want to talk to you, it's just that-whatever. Meredith has abandonment issues, and you're annoying. Annoying and clingy.” Cristina says as she pours out another two shots, not sure which part of that was supposed to be reassuring. “She'll come around. Maybe.”
Lexie lights up, like she misses the first part of what Cristina said entirely.
“You think so?” she asks, and her voice has taken on this painfully optimistic quality. It's like talking to Izzie, but without the dead fiancé and trailer park upbringing to even things out.
Cristina pushes Lexie's shot glass across the table with one finger, and then rests her jaw against her palm.
“She'll come around, or she won't. I don't know,” she says, raising her glass, even though she doesn't know what she's toasting to, “Drink up. We've got half a bottle to get through, and it won't be long before McDreamy escapes back to the woods.”
*
Cristina's almost completely certain that it was because she was becoming increasingly drunker, but as the evening progressed, Lexie seemed to become less irritating. That's why, when Lexie sits next to her at the bar the following night, Cristina doesn't do anything but narrow her eyes at her. She doesn't shout at her, she doesn't belittle her, and she doesn't try to scare her away.
Lexie talks a lot, but the sounds of the bar drown her out. The night after that, when Lexie sits on the stool next to her, Cristina doesn't even glare at her, because the last time they drank together, Lexie paid for the drinks. It goes on like that for almost two weeks. Cristina never makes a point of sitting near Lexie, when she's alone, but will nod at her from across the bar, as if giving her permission to come over.
God. Lexie probably thinks that Cristina is her friend. Cristina thinks that Lexie is barely tolerable, and that's being generous.
It's Thursday night, and no one Cristina knows is at Joe's. Joe himself excluded, of course. For a moment, she's tempted to call Meredith, because they worked the same shift today, and so Meredith should be free. Should being the key word; Cristina knows all too well where Meredith is.
Not that Cristina feels as if she's being ignored, in favour of McDreamy. Meredith's always spent more time with her, even when they were actually together, and amazing break-up sex isn't going to change that. Cristina's trying not to snap at Meredith for it, trying to let it run its course, because this will be over, soon enough. It has to be.
The bell rings when the door opens, and Cristina looks up, half out of habit, half out of boredom. There's Lexie, bag slung over one shoulder, and Cristina hates the way she's something close to relieved to see her. Lexie catches her eye, and Cristina holds the contact for half a second, before turning back to the peanuts shells that she's been cracking open for the last thirty minutes.
Over the buzz of conversation, Cristina can't really tell what's going on around her. She can pick up bits and pieces of conversations, but when you only hear a few seconds of what's being said, it always sounds stupid. She assumes that the delay in Lexie taking a seat next to her is because she's come across a group of her little intern friends, and stopped to say hi.
Cristina happens to glance up at the clock, and so when Lexie does sit down next to her, she notes that it's taken her ten minutes. Usually, it takes her at least twenty to get up the nerve to engage her in conversation outside of the hospital. Rewarding her new-found courage, Cristina pushes a beer across the bar.
Lexie looks down at it, as if she doesn't know what she's expected to do with it.
“You like beer, right?” Cristina asks, taking another shot. Lexie doesn't do so well, when spirits come into the equation; she always tries to keep up with Cristina, but then they have work the next morning, and Cristina can see how much Lexie's regretting each and every shot she did.
“I do. Thank you, Dr. Yang,” Lexie says with a smile, and wraps her lips around the glass. “So, hi. I'd ask you how your day was, but I'm kind of your intern. So I know how it was, because I was there, and asking would be pointless.”
“Pointless,” Cristina agrees, nodding slightly.
“How are you?” Lexie asks, trying somewhat desperately to strike up a conversation.
“I'm drinking,” Cristina says flatly, “If you want to talk and talk, then go back to your little intern friends. I'm sure George cares about what you have to say.”
“You're mean,” Lexie mutters into her drink, and Cristina looks at her, almost proud. She wouldn't have dared to speak back like that, this time last week.
“I'm not mean. I'm-” Cristina pauses. “I'm fine.”
“Fine. Fine's good, right?” Lexie says, perking up again. She never does stay deflated for long. “I'm fine too, in case you were wondering. Which you weren't, but it's long like you'd ever ask me how I am, so I might as well answer, even though there wasn't actually a question to reply to. But I'm fine, and you're fine, and we're not stuck at the hospital. And that's good.”
“I like the hospital.”
“Oh-I didn't mean that I don't. Because I do. I like the hospital, and I like working there. I like working with you, Dr. Yang,” Lexie says, and uses the back of her hand to wipe a stray drop of beer from the corner of her lips.
“You don't have to agree with everything I say, Three,” Cristina says, rolling her eyes. There's nothing more annoying than a suck-up, and she's starting to believe that Lexie would actually be interesting to talk to, if only she didn't trip over herself in order to say whatever she thinks Cristina wants to hear. “Grow a damn spine.”
“I have a spine,” Lexie says, brow furrowed, acting as if anything Cristina says can offend her still, “And I do like being at the hospital. It's just nice, to take a break from it. To have a drink. That, and I don't want to piss you off any more than I do usually.”
Cristina raises an eyebrow. That was definitely a little bolder; it's almost as if Lexie's taking the spine-related advice to heart. She holds her gaze, expression steady, and Cristina imagines that she's doing her Lexipedia thing in the back of her head, that she's reciting the periodic table or the first twelve lines of the Aeneid over and over again, in order to ground herself, to distract herself from her apparent fear of residents. Whatever she's doing works. She doesn't blink, and Cristina smiles.
Cristina wishes that she could say she doesn't know what happened next. Wishes that she could say the seconds all blurred into one, and every movement happened in a heartbeat. That there were no clear signs of who did what first.
But she knows. She watches, waiting for it to happen, as if it's unfolding in slow motion.
Lexie stares and then she stares some more, and her elbow slides across the bar, which causes her to move closer. Cristina doesn't move back, and she expects that Lexie wishes she had, because the next thing she knows, Lexie's got her lips pursed together, and she's making an odd, apologetic humming sound from the back of her throat.
If Lexie could stand her ground, then Cristina certainly can. Lexie bites down against her lower lip, moves closer, and presses her lips against Cristina's. She kisses her, and Cristina doesn't reciprocate, nor does she pull away, or push Lexie back. Lexie seems to hesitate, but then continues kissing her, in the hopes that something will happen. Or, maybe, she just doesn't want to break it off, to have to look Cristina in the face and see her reaction.
Cristina's still until the last possible moment. The moment Lexie begins to pull away, Cristina kisses back, which causes Lexie to push her lips rather firmly back against Cristina's. Cristina smiles, not because of the kiss, but because she knows that Lexie knows who has all the power.
It's not awful. Lexie's got soft lips, and she doesn't do too little or too much. There's also the fact that Cristina's slightly drunk.
When Cristina breaks off the kiss, Lexie blinks at her, as if she doesn't understand what happened. As if she doesn't believe that she really just kissed Cristina. She goes to speak, but finds herself silenced by Cristina's lopsided, almost pitying smile, and so she chooses to sit there and stare down at the surface of her beer.
Cristina pays her tab, swings her legs around, and gets to her feet. Lexie still isn't looking up at her.
“Don't be late for rounds tomorrow, Three,” Cristina says rather than some form of goodbye, and then leaves the bar at a walk, not a run.
*
The next morning, Lexie brings her a cup of coffee from the cart by the elevators. It's Cristina's favourite place in the hospital, but she doesn't know whether Lexie knew that, or if it's just pure luck. She doesn't particularly care to find out, either.
Cristina takes the coffee, used to her interns attempting to bribe her. She's also nursing a slight hangover, and so an offering of caffeine isn't the worst thing in the world. Still, this is different. Lexie's looking at her like she's expecting something non-surgical related in return, and Cristina's tempting to have her changing bedpans all day.
It's like Lexie's trying to communicate something with her eyes, but that only ever works when Meredith does it. Cristina stares at her, incredulous, and takes a small sip of the coffee. Well, she has no room to complain that it's not hot enough. It'll do.
Even though she's already been assigned to a case, Lexie continues to stand there, hopeful.
Cristina hasn't thought much about the kiss. Relatively, that is; she's thought as little about the fact that Meredith Grey's little sister kissed her, and that she kissed back as humanly possible. Not that Meredith's setting a much better example herself. If Meredith can continue to have break-up sex weeks after the fact, then Cristina can kiss interns, blood relations or no.
“You can go now,” Cristina says when Lexie doesn't budge.
Naturally, Lexie has something more that she wants to say, but she doesn't want to argue with Cristina. Not at work. With a nod, Lexie hurries to make herself scarce, and Cristina doesn't have it in her to point out that Lexie's running down the wrong corridor.
*
Meredith spends the whole of lunch talking about everything but the fact that she clearly just had sex in some inappropriate part of the hospital. Cristina leafs idly through a magazine that doesn't particularly interest her, and fulfils her role of best friend by nodding in all the right places.
Cristina swears they've had this conversation before, but doesn't go through the effort of pointing that out. She digests the important pieces of information, and mentally works how long it's going to take for Meredith to start getting phenomenally drunk. Because what she's doing isn't just stupid, it's damaging, but Cristina isn't going to tell her that again.
Not today, at least.
She gets a page towards the end of her sandwich, and welcomes the excuse to leave. She shoves the remainder of her lunch into her mouth, tells Meredith that she'll be over tonight, in case she doesn't get to see her again for whatever unforeseeable reason, and heads to the source of the problem.
The source of the problem being that One still can't place a central line. Cristina groans, lets him know how much she was enjoying that sandwich, and then scowls as she shows him how to do it for the umpteenth time.
Cristina paces back and forth, knowing that it's not solely One's fault that she's so annoyed, but refusing to even think about the actual problem. Because if she thinks about it, she's going to walk up to Meredith, and say something incredibly stupid.
It's at that point that she sees Lexie walking towards her, and decides that she's going to do something incredibly stupid instead. Lexie's trying not to look up at her, because then she can walk past Cristina without any awkward eye contact, and so Cristina has to take hold of her shoulder to stop her in her tracks.
“Dr. Yang?” Lexie says, and receives no reply.
Cristina stares at her, almost angrily, before abruptly stepping forward, and pushing her into the nearby on-call room. Lexie lets herself be led, and doesn't seem wholly surprised when Cristina pushes her against the door. Cristina stands there with her hands planted against the door, by Lexie's sides, and Lexie decides that if she doesn't do something soon, they might not ever progress past that point.
And so Lexie kisses her, and Cristina doesn't object; she moves into the kiss, hard, and in the dark of the on-call room, her hands find the waistband of Lexie's scrubs. Cristina tugs at the drawstrings, and Lexie's pants fall down around her ankles, where they were a size too big for her to begin with.
Cristina works fast, gets to the point, and doesn't waste any more time than she has to. Lexie is warm and receptive to her touch, and pushes herself up against Cristina's hands as they run over her body, which certainly makes things easier for her.
Tugging down Lexie's underwear, Cristina's body seems to work on its own, and she's only thinking one thing: that this isn't Meredith. That Lexie might be all skin and bones beneath her hands, and in the dark, from certain angles, there might be a slight trace of similarity, but she still isn't Meredith.
Cristina doesn't close her eyes, because she won't allow her mind to wander. She works her fingers inside of Lexie, and Lexie doesn't sound like Meredith. It doesn't bother Cristina as much as she thought it might. Lexie's still calling her Dr. Yang, even stripped down and pressed against the on-call room door, even as she rocks her hips against her hand, and Cristina finds that she likes that.
Once it's over, once they've somehow ended up on one of the lower bunks, Cristina stares up at the bed above them. She doesn't think, just lies there with one arm rested across her forehead, and barely realises that she still hasn't caught her breath. Lexie probably wants to sit back up, to get dressed and excuse herself, by she lies next to her, to be polite.
It's not until Cristina's pager starts buzzing that she finally makes a move. She sits up, reaches down to pick up her underwear and scrubs, and starts tugging her clothing back on. She'd throw Lexie her own clothes, but they're in a bundle by the door, out of arm's reach.
“This-” Lexie begins, confused even as she speaks, “This is just a sex thing, right?”
“It's just a sex thing,” Cristina says, “So no more coffee.”
“Right,” Lexie says, and then swings her legs over the side of the bed, so that she can grab her scrubs. “No more coffee.”
Cristina doesn't say anything more, after that point. Doesn't feel the need to tell Lexie to wait a few minutes before leaving the room. She opens the door, and light from the corridor filters in. Cristina glances back, purely to make sure that she hasn't left anything behind, and when she catches sight of Lexie, she thinks that maybe it doesn't matter if this is just a sex thing or not.
Maybe it doesn't matter if she isn't Meredith.
*
That night, Meredith's either too tired from work or sex or both to sit up talking for long. Cristina doesn't mind, for once, because she's in no mood to deal with Meredith's ramblings, and she herself has nothing to say. The day dragged on and on, and fittingly, when she finally got out of work, she was caught in a downpour. Her mood definitely isn't reflective of somebody who got laid less than eight hours ago.
In fact, she'd rather pretend that it never happened. Because this is definitely the bad kind of sex; it's on par with Meredith's break-up sex, and Cristina hates it when her sex-life is equally as pathetic as Meredith's. It's not the sort of thing that she can talk to her about, either. This is what she needs Meredith for, to listen to her when she makes stupid, stupid mistakes. Meredith's her person, but Meredith is also Lexie's sister, and Cristina isn't sure how the two issues balance out against one another.
Without Meredith to talk this through with, Cristina knows that it's going to happen again, and after that, it will most likely happen yet again.
Meredith's already sleeping. Cristina's got her eyes closed, but she can feel Meredith's back pressed against the side of her arm. She takes deep breaths, trying to relax enough to fall asleep, but ends up rolling over, turning to face Meredith.
“It matters,” Cristina murmurs, and Meredith stirs, opens her eyes and blinks heavily, like she's not certain who's in bed with her.
Meredith makes a noise that Cristina assumes is her trying to say What?, and so she pulls the covers up higher, hoping that Meredith will drift back off without any more barely-formed questions.
“Nothing, Mer. It's nothing.”
*
Cristina's apartment has seemed big, ever since Burke left, and seems bigger still when Meredith isn't around. Even Callie's out somewhere, and Cristina's left wondering how she ended up like this. With the volume on her iPod turned up full, she sits cross-legged in the centre of her bed, and reads through yet another medical journal.
It's already late, and although she only has six hours until her next shift starts, sleep hasn't so much as crossed her mind. For the last week or two, she's been restless, only able to fall asleep when she wasn't trying, and usually in the most uncomfortable places. This morning, she was almost late for rounds, because she drifted off in the shower, half-way through washing her hair.
When she reaches the point whereby she's reading without actually taking anything in, Cristina rolls over to the edge of the bed, and grabs the phone. She hits speed dial-one for Meredith, and the phone rings three times, before Derek answers. He's laughing for a reason that Cristina really doesn't want to know, and she's fairly certain that she can hear Meredith in the background. She cringes, and hangs up without saying anything in reply.
By the time Meredith calls her back, Cristina's already heading out the door. She ignores the phone call, slams the door behind her, and pulls on her helmet as she makes her way out of the building.
A few weeks back, there had been talk of George maybe inviting them over to his new apartment. In the end, the plans fell through, because it quickly became apparent that people would rather hang out at Meredith's or Joe's, and George seems to be too embarrassed of his living arrangements to exert any effort, in order to make things happen.
Still, George had made passing mentions of where he was living a few times, which is how Cristina's found herself standing outside of Lexie's apartment. She knocks once, loudly, because there's no bell, and steps back, waiting for a reply.
There's a rustling from inside, and a minute or two later, Lexie's opening the door a fraction of an inch, peering out cautiously. The moment she realises that it's Cristina, she quickly unlatches the bolt, opens the door all of the way, and then steps back, so that Cristina can make her way inside.
She doesn't ask Cristina what she's doing there so late, and Cristina's grateful for that. Lexie knows full well what's going on; on the surface, at least.
“This is where you live, Three?” Cristina asks, looking around, clearly unimpressed. “God-did you steal all of this from the hospital?”
Lexie bites down on her lower lip. “Um. Maybe? It's not like I was stealing crash carts, or anything important. I wanted to brighten the place up, and I'm pretty broke, so-I stole. Which kind of makes me terrible, stealing from a hospital, but it was so depressing in here.”
Lexie's looking at her, expression clouded with worry, as if she's pleading with Cristina not to turn her in for the crime that's greater in her head than it is in reality. Cristina, thankfully, seems nothing more than amused.
“Whatever. At least you're not stealing organs,” Cristina says, drops her bag on the sofa, and then heads across the apartment. “This is your room, right?”
“Right,” Lexie says, and then sensing the tone, adds, “George is out. He's working an extra shift tonight, so that we can buy a TV.”
Cristina nods to show that she isn't being entirely dismissive of her, and then heads into the bedroom. She kicks her shoes off and Lexie follows, having something of an advantage, considering that she was already wearing little more than pyjamas.
No matter how crappy the apartment may be, a bed is still a bed, and Cristina comes to learn that it's a lot more comfortable than the bunks in the on-call room. There's a lot less anger in it this time, and Cristina almost feels as if they're going about things properly. She rests her forehead against Lexie's shoulder, closes her eyes, and knows without having to look that this isn't Meredith.
There are similarities, of course. Cristina doesn't know whether that's because they're sisters, or down to pure coincidence, but she see pieces of Meredith in Lexie that Meredith would never own up to. It's like the time when Thatcher was in the hospital, and everyone could see him reflected in Meredith, except for Meredith herself.
There's the thing with the hands, when they talk. They both do that. Cristina's starting to think that Lexie is just Meredith, without all the abandonment issues and crappy upbringing. What Meredith could've been, but not necessarily any better for what she's been through.
The longer that Cristina does things to Lexie that Meredith will hate her for, the easier it is to not think about it. To not think about anything, other than what's directly in front of her. Eventually, Lexie falls asleep with her head against Cristina's shoulder, and Cristina's too worn out to roll her off of her.
Still, even as the muscles in her back and wrist kind of ache, Cristina doesn't fall asleep. She watches the shadows on the ceiling, watches the way the light slowly creeps in through the window, and hours later, once she's at work, she falls asleep in a storage closet.
*
“I'm going to do it,” Meredith says, determined. They're in bed once again, and Meredith's trying so hard to get her point across that her hands are almost shaking, “Tomorrow, I'm actually going to do it. I'm going to break up with him, and there isn't going to be any break-up sex. There won't even be a break-up kiss.”
Weeks ago, Cristina might've believed her. Weeks ago, Cristina might've felt vaguely hopeful, to hear Meredith say such a thing. She certainly sounds like she means it, and the worst part of all is that Meredith really believes that she's going to go through with it. That she can end things with McDreamy, and that will be that. Like she's wake up the next morning, bask in the knowledge that things between them are over, and go about her day like a fully functioning, perfectly healthy person.
Cristina wants to sit up and hit her pillow around Meredith's head, but knows that it isn't hard enough to knock any sense into her. She glances around. There's the lamp on the bedside cabinet, but Cristina doesn't want to have to mess around with reaching down behind the cabinet to try and find the plug.
“I can do it, right?” Meredith asks, and pauses for Cristina to reply. Cristina says nothing, and she sighs, “This is the part where you're supposed to tell me that I can do it. Because I can. What I can't do is keep heading over to the trailer, and get walked in on by The Chief.”
And then Meredith's talking again, talking herself up, and Cristina finds it hard to listen, because this time tomorrow night, Meredith's going to be complaining to her that she's slept with Derek again. Cristina doesn't know how many more times she can deal with this. Meredith needs to open her eyes, and realise that she isn't the only one being affected by this.
Cristina loves Meredith, no matter how many times she goes through the motions with Derek. Loves her in a really vital way, which means being her best friend is infinitely more important than anything else she wants her to be. More important than the urge she can barely suppress, to lean over and kiss her, to make her shut up.
Because if Meredith doesn't stop talking, Cristina's going to do something really, really stupid. Something that neither of them will come back from.
But she doesn't stop talking. Doesn't stop spouting out confidence that she shouldn't rightly have, because she's not going to go through with it. She's never going to go through with it, and Cristina isn't sure how long she's had this headache, but all she knows is that her temples are pounding, and it's making her nauseous.
“I slept with your sister,” Cristina says, and the pounding goes away. Everything goes away, from the creaking of the house to Meredith's incessant rambling. Meredith props herself up on one elbow, looks down at her, and doesn't even have to ask if she's being serious. Because this is Cristina, and Meredith's managed to work out how to tell whether she's lying or not. Cristina stares back, and then corrects herself. “Sleeping with. I'm sleeping with Lexie.”
Meredith doesn't say a single word. Not one. She pulls back the duvet on her corner of the bed, only a little, like she's trying not to disturb Cristina. Cristina keeps her eyes on her, even as Meredith picks up her pillow and walks across the length of the bedroom.
Cristina supposes that asking Meredith to start talking won't do any good.
Meredith leaves the bedroom, closes the door behind her, and Cristina assumes that she's going to sleep on the sofa. She's going to sleep on the sofa in her own house, because she can't even bring herself to kick Cristina out of her bed. Doesn't even want to look at her.
Rolling onto her side, Cristina places her hand against Meredith's pillow, if only to save herself from having to stare up at the ceiling. Alone in Meredith's bed, Cristina lies there, too exhausted to sleep.
CHARACTERS: Cristina Yang/Lexie Grey, one-sided Cristina/Meredith
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 6,226
SUMMARY: Sometimes, not even Cristina Yang can get what she wants.
NOTES: For neontehsheep.
*
Meredith's got that look on her face. The look that says she had sex at work, in the on-call room. And not just sex; it was break-up sex, with McDreamy. Cristina knows. Meredith doesn't say anything to that effect, but Cristina still knows.
They're laying on Meredith's bed with the covers bundled up around their waists, because it's cold, and the central heating takes a lifetime to pump heat into the house. The pipes in the house groan and splutter, and Cristina's spent so many nights and evenings there that she barely even notices the sounds of the house settling.
She lies there, patient, listening to the way Meredith artfully skirts around the issue that she really wants to talk about. Cristina knows that she wants to tell her all about the sex, about how many times it happened and, oh, does she think she's making a mistake? Cristina's seen enough productions of the Meredith and McDreamy show, and she knows all the lines. The second-hand embarrassment is making it difficult to invest in this round of the relationship, or lack thereof.
If she worded it like that, Meredith would call her bitter. And she'd be right, although not in the way that Cristina would choose to define the word. Because it's Meredith, it's her person, making the same old mistakes all over again; Meredith, who can no longer successfully be single.
The crux of the matter, Cristina thinks as Meredith rambles on about maybe getting somebody in to fix the boiler, because the rusted old thing is on its last legs, is that this was their one chance to be single at the same time. Before McDreamy, third round, same as the first, there was dating and there was McVet, and before McVet there was half of Seattle. Before that, of course, was McDreamy. And during that all, Cristina had Burke, even when she wasn't talking to him.
But, no, Meredith has to make a spectacle of herself, even in breaking up. There was a brief two week period in which they were both unattached, but there was no way that Cristina was going to even consider doing anything on her honeymoon. The rebound level would be off the chart. No; the honeymoon had been dedicated to not talking about how crap things were, and drinking brightly coloured cocktails straight out of coconuts.
Cristina sighs, and slouches down, against the pillows. Meredith raises an eyebrow, slows her talking, but doesn't ask her what's wrong. Because, as ever, things are about Meredith, and Cristina's there, and she's going to listen; she's not going to do anything.
She's not going to do anything, because she's Cristina Yang, and she doesn't do the chasing. She certainly doesn't pine after anybody, least of all Meredith Grey.
“Derek,” Meredith blurts out, when she finally tires of talking about maintaining her dead mother's house, “I had sex with Derek. Break up sex, in the on-call room. Three times. It's the last time, every time, but somehow, I keep having sex with Derek in on-call rooms and storage closets. That's bad, right?”
Sometimes, Cristina wonders why Meredith asks her these things. She should already know the general tone of Cristina's answer, if not the exact words themselves, because they've been over this sort of thing a hundred times. Meredith knows how Cristina feels about it, even if she doesn't know how she herself feels about it. That's how this works.
It works, Cristina reminds herself. That's all that matters. This, what she has right here with Meredith, works.
“It's bad, Mer. You're not even getting yourself drunk, and you're rebounding with the guy you're trying to get over,” Cristina says, rolling her eyes. “Only you'd do that.”
Meredith huffs out a sigh. “It's bad. It's really, really bad, and I'm a whore. Just a whore. Not even a whore on tequila.”
“That sounds about right,” Cristina says, smiling, and Meredith frowns at her, until her resolve melts away, and she decides that her time's better spent sleeping.
Meredith throws the duvet over the both of them, and Cristina shifts against the mattress, knowing the exact spot to get comfortable against.
*
It doesn't take long for Meredith's break-up sex with McDreamy in the on-call room to develop into break-up sex with McDreamy in the bedroom. After work, Cristina heads over to Meredith's, lets herself in, and gets half-way up the stairs before turning back.
She had to spend another night alone in her apartment, sooner or later. Cristina steps back into her shoes, and pulls open the front door, just as somebody's about to knock against it.
“Oh. Dr. Yang,” says a rather timid looking Lexie, who doesn't sound too surprised to find Cristina there. “Hey. I was looking for my sister. For Meredith. Is she in?”
Cristina stares at her for a good long moment. Lexie has certainly become less irritating over time, but that doesn't mean that she has any wish to see her outside of the hospital. At first, she considers snapping at Lexie, maybe reminding her that Meredith hates her, and that she should stop stalking her, but then Cristina realises that she's full of misplaced anger. That she's been brimming with it for days.
Besides, there's little use in repeating herself. Lexie's persistent. Cristina will give her that much.
“Mer's in. She's upstairs,” Cristina says, and wonders how terrible it would be to not give Lexie any warning. Lexie nods gratefully, and then hurries to head into the house. At the last possible moment, Cristina stretches out an arm, places her hand flat against the door frame, and stops Lexie in her tracks. “You don't want to go up there, Three.”
“Why not?” she asks, but works out the answer for herself, before Cristina gets the chance to reply. “Oh. Okay. I definitely don't want to go up there. I guess-I guess I'll have to try again some other time.”
Lexie rocks backwards and forwards on her tiptoes as she speaks, and probably doesn't even realise that she's doing it. She nods a few times, mostly to herself, like it's the conclusion to her sentence, and takes about four seconds too long to turn away, and start walking back towards the street.
Despite what she's certain Lexie believes, Cristina doesn't hate her. There'd been resentment at first, once she finally started caring enough about Lexie's existence to take the trouble of forming an opinion, because Meredith was her person, always had been, and she wasn't about to let some long-lost half-sister take her place. But that had fallen through, and Cristina barely needed to chase Lexie away herself. Meredith had done enough of that for the two of them.
Resentment quickly turned into annoyance, and that had eventually trickled down to being mild annoyance, because Lexie really was the best of her interns. Not that that was saying much, because she was only being compared to One, Two and Four, and none of them could place a chest tube without a resident to hold their hand, but Lexie had potential. The photographic memory was useful, too.
Still, it surprises even Cristina, when she calls out after her.
“Hey, Three,” she says, hands on her hips, hoping to look and sound stern, “Do you want a drink?”
Lexie stops walking, turns back and opens her mouth without forming words. She hesitates to answer, as if it could possibly be a trick question. Cristina doesn't see what the big deal is, because they've drank together before. They got through a bottle of tequila, and then they danced it out. Of course, Meredith had been with them, at the time.
“A drink. I'd love a drink. Do you want to go to Joe's?”
The thought hadn't actually crossed Cristina's mind.
“I have a better idea.”
Cristina leads Lexie into the house, moves quickly through the hallway, and shuts the door behind them, once they're in the kitchen. All the while, Lexie looks around, expression clearly one of trouble, like Meredith's going to finish with her sex at any moment, and find intruders in her house. Cristina expects that Lexie's only following her because it's her, and Lexie seems to go to great lengths not to piss her off. She's her resident, after all. She doesn't want to be doing nothing but sutures for the next month.
When she points at a chair, Lexie almost trips over her own feet in an effort to sit down. Cristina laughs flatly, and Lexie looks down at her hands. She starts murmuring something, but doesn't get out enough words for Cristina to make sense of it. Not interested in what she has to say, Cristina pushes herself up on tiptoes to take out two shot glasses from the top shelf of a cupboard, and then rummages around the cupboards for tequila. Because it's Meredith's house, and Meredith having tequila is a given.
With the glasses placed against the tabletop and the tequila poured out, Lexie seems even more skittish that she originally had been.
“Are you sure we should be doing this? This is Meredith's tequila, and we haven't asked, and tequila is kind of expensive. Not that she'd mind you drinking it, because it's you, but if she finds out that I drank her last bottle? She'd never speak to me again, and she barely speaks to me as it is. Should we be drinking this?”
Cristina looks up at Lexie, and then back to her shot glass. Maybe, if she has one or two or seven of these, then she'll be able to tune out Lexie's rambling more efficiently. Cristina downs the shot, and then slams the glass back down.
That seems like answer enough for Lexie. She reaches out, does her shot, and then purses her lips together. Like she knows that anything she could think to say would be inappropriate.
“We don't like family. Me and Meredith. It's not that Meredith doesn't want to talk to you, it's just that-whatever. Meredith has abandonment issues, and you're annoying. Annoying and clingy.” Cristina says as she pours out another two shots, not sure which part of that was supposed to be reassuring. “She'll come around. Maybe.”
Lexie lights up, like she misses the first part of what Cristina said entirely.
“You think so?” she asks, and her voice has taken on this painfully optimistic quality. It's like talking to Izzie, but without the dead fiancé and trailer park upbringing to even things out.
Cristina pushes Lexie's shot glass across the table with one finger, and then rests her jaw against her palm.
“She'll come around, or she won't. I don't know,” she says, raising her glass, even though she doesn't know what she's toasting to, “Drink up. We've got half a bottle to get through, and it won't be long before McDreamy escapes back to the woods.”
*
Cristina's almost completely certain that it was because she was becoming increasingly drunker, but as the evening progressed, Lexie seemed to become less irritating. That's why, when Lexie sits next to her at the bar the following night, Cristina doesn't do anything but narrow her eyes at her. She doesn't shout at her, she doesn't belittle her, and she doesn't try to scare her away.
Lexie talks a lot, but the sounds of the bar drown her out. The night after that, when Lexie sits on the stool next to her, Cristina doesn't even glare at her, because the last time they drank together, Lexie paid for the drinks. It goes on like that for almost two weeks. Cristina never makes a point of sitting near Lexie, when she's alone, but will nod at her from across the bar, as if giving her permission to come over.
God. Lexie probably thinks that Cristina is her friend. Cristina thinks that Lexie is barely tolerable, and that's being generous.
It's Thursday night, and no one Cristina knows is at Joe's. Joe himself excluded, of course. For a moment, she's tempted to call Meredith, because they worked the same shift today, and so Meredith should be free. Should being the key word; Cristina knows all too well where Meredith is.
Not that Cristina feels as if she's being ignored, in favour of McDreamy. Meredith's always spent more time with her, even when they were actually together, and amazing break-up sex isn't going to change that. Cristina's trying not to snap at Meredith for it, trying to let it run its course, because this will be over, soon enough. It has to be.
The bell rings when the door opens, and Cristina looks up, half out of habit, half out of boredom. There's Lexie, bag slung over one shoulder, and Cristina hates the way she's something close to relieved to see her. Lexie catches her eye, and Cristina holds the contact for half a second, before turning back to the peanuts shells that she's been cracking open for the last thirty minutes.
Over the buzz of conversation, Cristina can't really tell what's going on around her. She can pick up bits and pieces of conversations, but when you only hear a few seconds of what's being said, it always sounds stupid. She assumes that the delay in Lexie taking a seat next to her is because she's come across a group of her little intern friends, and stopped to say hi.
Cristina happens to glance up at the clock, and so when Lexie does sit down next to her, she notes that it's taken her ten minutes. Usually, it takes her at least twenty to get up the nerve to engage her in conversation outside of the hospital. Rewarding her new-found courage, Cristina pushes a beer across the bar.
Lexie looks down at it, as if she doesn't know what she's expected to do with it.
“You like beer, right?” Cristina asks, taking another shot. Lexie doesn't do so well, when spirits come into the equation; she always tries to keep up with Cristina, but then they have work the next morning, and Cristina can see how much Lexie's regretting each and every shot she did.
“I do. Thank you, Dr. Yang,” Lexie says with a smile, and wraps her lips around the glass. “So, hi. I'd ask you how your day was, but I'm kind of your intern. So I know how it was, because I was there, and asking would be pointless.”
“Pointless,” Cristina agrees, nodding slightly.
“How are you?” Lexie asks, trying somewhat desperately to strike up a conversation.
“I'm drinking,” Cristina says flatly, “If you want to talk and talk, then go back to your little intern friends. I'm sure George cares about what you have to say.”
“You're mean,” Lexie mutters into her drink, and Cristina looks at her, almost proud. She wouldn't have dared to speak back like that, this time last week.
“I'm not mean. I'm-” Cristina pauses. “I'm fine.”
“Fine. Fine's good, right?” Lexie says, perking up again. She never does stay deflated for long. “I'm fine too, in case you were wondering. Which you weren't, but it's long like you'd ever ask me how I am, so I might as well answer, even though there wasn't actually a question to reply to. But I'm fine, and you're fine, and we're not stuck at the hospital. And that's good.”
“I like the hospital.”
“Oh-I didn't mean that I don't. Because I do. I like the hospital, and I like working there. I like working with you, Dr. Yang,” Lexie says, and uses the back of her hand to wipe a stray drop of beer from the corner of her lips.
“You don't have to agree with everything I say, Three,” Cristina says, rolling her eyes. There's nothing more annoying than a suck-up, and she's starting to believe that Lexie would actually be interesting to talk to, if only she didn't trip over herself in order to say whatever she thinks Cristina wants to hear. “Grow a damn spine.”
“I have a spine,” Lexie says, brow furrowed, acting as if anything Cristina says can offend her still, “And I do like being at the hospital. It's just nice, to take a break from it. To have a drink. That, and I don't want to piss you off any more than I do usually.”
Cristina raises an eyebrow. That was definitely a little bolder; it's almost as if Lexie's taking the spine-related advice to heart. She holds her gaze, expression steady, and Cristina imagines that she's doing her Lexipedia thing in the back of her head, that she's reciting the periodic table or the first twelve lines of the Aeneid over and over again, in order to ground herself, to distract herself from her apparent fear of residents. Whatever she's doing works. She doesn't blink, and Cristina smiles.
Cristina wishes that she could say she doesn't know what happened next. Wishes that she could say the seconds all blurred into one, and every movement happened in a heartbeat. That there were no clear signs of who did what first.
But she knows. She watches, waiting for it to happen, as if it's unfolding in slow motion.
Lexie stares and then she stares some more, and her elbow slides across the bar, which causes her to move closer. Cristina doesn't move back, and she expects that Lexie wishes she had, because the next thing she knows, Lexie's got her lips pursed together, and she's making an odd, apologetic humming sound from the back of her throat.
If Lexie could stand her ground, then Cristina certainly can. Lexie bites down against her lower lip, moves closer, and presses her lips against Cristina's. She kisses her, and Cristina doesn't reciprocate, nor does she pull away, or push Lexie back. Lexie seems to hesitate, but then continues kissing her, in the hopes that something will happen. Or, maybe, she just doesn't want to break it off, to have to look Cristina in the face and see her reaction.
Cristina's still until the last possible moment. The moment Lexie begins to pull away, Cristina kisses back, which causes Lexie to push her lips rather firmly back against Cristina's. Cristina smiles, not because of the kiss, but because she knows that Lexie knows who has all the power.
It's not awful. Lexie's got soft lips, and she doesn't do too little or too much. There's also the fact that Cristina's slightly drunk.
When Cristina breaks off the kiss, Lexie blinks at her, as if she doesn't understand what happened. As if she doesn't believe that she really just kissed Cristina. She goes to speak, but finds herself silenced by Cristina's lopsided, almost pitying smile, and so she chooses to sit there and stare down at the surface of her beer.
Cristina pays her tab, swings her legs around, and gets to her feet. Lexie still isn't looking up at her.
“Don't be late for rounds tomorrow, Three,” Cristina says rather than some form of goodbye, and then leaves the bar at a walk, not a run.
*
The next morning, Lexie brings her a cup of coffee from the cart by the elevators. It's Cristina's favourite place in the hospital, but she doesn't know whether Lexie knew that, or if it's just pure luck. She doesn't particularly care to find out, either.
Cristina takes the coffee, used to her interns attempting to bribe her. She's also nursing a slight hangover, and so an offering of caffeine isn't the worst thing in the world. Still, this is different. Lexie's looking at her like she's expecting something non-surgical related in return, and Cristina's tempting to have her changing bedpans all day.
It's like Lexie's trying to communicate something with her eyes, but that only ever works when Meredith does it. Cristina stares at her, incredulous, and takes a small sip of the coffee. Well, she has no room to complain that it's not hot enough. It'll do.
Even though she's already been assigned to a case, Lexie continues to stand there, hopeful.
Cristina hasn't thought much about the kiss. Relatively, that is; she's thought as little about the fact that Meredith Grey's little sister kissed her, and that she kissed back as humanly possible. Not that Meredith's setting a much better example herself. If Meredith can continue to have break-up sex weeks after the fact, then Cristina can kiss interns, blood relations or no.
“You can go now,” Cristina says when Lexie doesn't budge.
Naturally, Lexie has something more that she wants to say, but she doesn't want to argue with Cristina. Not at work. With a nod, Lexie hurries to make herself scarce, and Cristina doesn't have it in her to point out that Lexie's running down the wrong corridor.
*
Meredith spends the whole of lunch talking about everything but the fact that she clearly just had sex in some inappropriate part of the hospital. Cristina leafs idly through a magazine that doesn't particularly interest her, and fulfils her role of best friend by nodding in all the right places.
Cristina swears they've had this conversation before, but doesn't go through the effort of pointing that out. She digests the important pieces of information, and mentally works how long it's going to take for Meredith to start getting phenomenally drunk. Because what she's doing isn't just stupid, it's damaging, but Cristina isn't going to tell her that again.
Not today, at least.
She gets a page towards the end of her sandwich, and welcomes the excuse to leave. She shoves the remainder of her lunch into her mouth, tells Meredith that she'll be over tonight, in case she doesn't get to see her again for whatever unforeseeable reason, and heads to the source of the problem.
The source of the problem being that One still can't place a central line. Cristina groans, lets him know how much she was enjoying that sandwich, and then scowls as she shows him how to do it for the umpteenth time.
Cristina paces back and forth, knowing that it's not solely One's fault that she's so annoyed, but refusing to even think about the actual problem. Because if she thinks about it, she's going to walk up to Meredith, and say something incredibly stupid.
It's at that point that she sees Lexie walking towards her, and decides that she's going to do something incredibly stupid instead. Lexie's trying not to look up at her, because then she can walk past Cristina without any awkward eye contact, and so Cristina has to take hold of her shoulder to stop her in her tracks.
“Dr. Yang?” Lexie says, and receives no reply.
Cristina stares at her, almost angrily, before abruptly stepping forward, and pushing her into the nearby on-call room. Lexie lets herself be led, and doesn't seem wholly surprised when Cristina pushes her against the door. Cristina stands there with her hands planted against the door, by Lexie's sides, and Lexie decides that if she doesn't do something soon, they might not ever progress past that point.
And so Lexie kisses her, and Cristina doesn't object; she moves into the kiss, hard, and in the dark of the on-call room, her hands find the waistband of Lexie's scrubs. Cristina tugs at the drawstrings, and Lexie's pants fall down around her ankles, where they were a size too big for her to begin with.
Cristina works fast, gets to the point, and doesn't waste any more time than she has to. Lexie is warm and receptive to her touch, and pushes herself up against Cristina's hands as they run over her body, which certainly makes things easier for her.
Tugging down Lexie's underwear, Cristina's body seems to work on its own, and she's only thinking one thing: that this isn't Meredith. That Lexie might be all skin and bones beneath her hands, and in the dark, from certain angles, there might be a slight trace of similarity, but she still isn't Meredith.
Cristina doesn't close her eyes, because she won't allow her mind to wander. She works her fingers inside of Lexie, and Lexie doesn't sound like Meredith. It doesn't bother Cristina as much as she thought it might. Lexie's still calling her Dr. Yang, even stripped down and pressed against the on-call room door, even as she rocks her hips against her hand, and Cristina finds that she likes that.
Once it's over, once they've somehow ended up on one of the lower bunks, Cristina stares up at the bed above them. She doesn't think, just lies there with one arm rested across her forehead, and barely realises that she still hasn't caught her breath. Lexie probably wants to sit back up, to get dressed and excuse herself, by she lies next to her, to be polite.
It's not until Cristina's pager starts buzzing that she finally makes a move. She sits up, reaches down to pick up her underwear and scrubs, and starts tugging her clothing back on. She'd throw Lexie her own clothes, but they're in a bundle by the door, out of arm's reach.
“This-” Lexie begins, confused even as she speaks, “This is just a sex thing, right?”
“It's just a sex thing,” Cristina says, “So no more coffee.”
“Right,” Lexie says, and then swings her legs over the side of the bed, so that she can grab her scrubs. “No more coffee.”
Cristina doesn't say anything more, after that point. Doesn't feel the need to tell Lexie to wait a few minutes before leaving the room. She opens the door, and light from the corridor filters in. Cristina glances back, purely to make sure that she hasn't left anything behind, and when she catches sight of Lexie, she thinks that maybe it doesn't matter if this is just a sex thing or not.
Maybe it doesn't matter if she isn't Meredith.
*
That night, Meredith's either too tired from work or sex or both to sit up talking for long. Cristina doesn't mind, for once, because she's in no mood to deal with Meredith's ramblings, and she herself has nothing to say. The day dragged on and on, and fittingly, when she finally got out of work, she was caught in a downpour. Her mood definitely isn't reflective of somebody who got laid less than eight hours ago.
In fact, she'd rather pretend that it never happened. Because this is definitely the bad kind of sex; it's on par with Meredith's break-up sex, and Cristina hates it when her sex-life is equally as pathetic as Meredith's. It's not the sort of thing that she can talk to her about, either. This is what she needs Meredith for, to listen to her when she makes stupid, stupid mistakes. Meredith's her person, but Meredith is also Lexie's sister, and Cristina isn't sure how the two issues balance out against one another.
Without Meredith to talk this through with, Cristina knows that it's going to happen again, and after that, it will most likely happen yet again.
Meredith's already sleeping. Cristina's got her eyes closed, but she can feel Meredith's back pressed against the side of her arm. She takes deep breaths, trying to relax enough to fall asleep, but ends up rolling over, turning to face Meredith.
“It matters,” Cristina murmurs, and Meredith stirs, opens her eyes and blinks heavily, like she's not certain who's in bed with her.
Meredith makes a noise that Cristina assumes is her trying to say What?, and so she pulls the covers up higher, hoping that Meredith will drift back off without any more barely-formed questions.
“Nothing, Mer. It's nothing.”
*
Cristina's apartment has seemed big, ever since Burke left, and seems bigger still when Meredith isn't around. Even Callie's out somewhere, and Cristina's left wondering how she ended up like this. With the volume on her iPod turned up full, she sits cross-legged in the centre of her bed, and reads through yet another medical journal.
It's already late, and although she only has six hours until her next shift starts, sleep hasn't so much as crossed her mind. For the last week or two, she's been restless, only able to fall asleep when she wasn't trying, and usually in the most uncomfortable places. This morning, she was almost late for rounds, because she drifted off in the shower, half-way through washing her hair.
When she reaches the point whereby she's reading without actually taking anything in, Cristina rolls over to the edge of the bed, and grabs the phone. She hits speed dial-one for Meredith, and the phone rings three times, before Derek answers. He's laughing for a reason that Cristina really doesn't want to know, and she's fairly certain that she can hear Meredith in the background. She cringes, and hangs up without saying anything in reply.
By the time Meredith calls her back, Cristina's already heading out the door. She ignores the phone call, slams the door behind her, and pulls on her helmet as she makes her way out of the building.
A few weeks back, there had been talk of George maybe inviting them over to his new apartment. In the end, the plans fell through, because it quickly became apparent that people would rather hang out at Meredith's or Joe's, and George seems to be too embarrassed of his living arrangements to exert any effort, in order to make things happen.
Still, George had made passing mentions of where he was living a few times, which is how Cristina's found herself standing outside of Lexie's apartment. She knocks once, loudly, because there's no bell, and steps back, waiting for a reply.
There's a rustling from inside, and a minute or two later, Lexie's opening the door a fraction of an inch, peering out cautiously. The moment she realises that it's Cristina, she quickly unlatches the bolt, opens the door all of the way, and then steps back, so that Cristina can make her way inside.
She doesn't ask Cristina what she's doing there so late, and Cristina's grateful for that. Lexie knows full well what's going on; on the surface, at least.
“This is where you live, Three?” Cristina asks, looking around, clearly unimpressed. “God-did you steal all of this from the hospital?”
Lexie bites down on her lower lip. “Um. Maybe? It's not like I was stealing crash carts, or anything important. I wanted to brighten the place up, and I'm pretty broke, so-I stole. Which kind of makes me terrible, stealing from a hospital, but it was so depressing in here.”
Lexie's looking at her, expression clouded with worry, as if she's pleading with Cristina not to turn her in for the crime that's greater in her head than it is in reality. Cristina, thankfully, seems nothing more than amused.
“Whatever. At least you're not stealing organs,” Cristina says, drops her bag on the sofa, and then heads across the apartment. “This is your room, right?”
“Right,” Lexie says, and then sensing the tone, adds, “George is out. He's working an extra shift tonight, so that we can buy a TV.”
Cristina nods to show that she isn't being entirely dismissive of her, and then heads into the bedroom. She kicks her shoes off and Lexie follows, having something of an advantage, considering that she was already wearing little more than pyjamas.
No matter how crappy the apartment may be, a bed is still a bed, and Cristina comes to learn that it's a lot more comfortable than the bunks in the on-call room. There's a lot less anger in it this time, and Cristina almost feels as if they're going about things properly. She rests her forehead against Lexie's shoulder, closes her eyes, and knows without having to look that this isn't Meredith.
There are similarities, of course. Cristina doesn't know whether that's because they're sisters, or down to pure coincidence, but she see pieces of Meredith in Lexie that Meredith would never own up to. It's like the time when Thatcher was in the hospital, and everyone could see him reflected in Meredith, except for Meredith herself.
There's the thing with the hands, when they talk. They both do that. Cristina's starting to think that Lexie is just Meredith, without all the abandonment issues and crappy upbringing. What Meredith could've been, but not necessarily any better for what she's been through.
The longer that Cristina does things to Lexie that Meredith will hate her for, the easier it is to not think about it. To not think about anything, other than what's directly in front of her. Eventually, Lexie falls asleep with her head against Cristina's shoulder, and Cristina's too worn out to roll her off of her.
Still, even as the muscles in her back and wrist kind of ache, Cristina doesn't fall asleep. She watches the shadows on the ceiling, watches the way the light slowly creeps in through the window, and hours later, once she's at work, she falls asleep in a storage closet.
*
“I'm going to do it,” Meredith says, determined. They're in bed once again, and Meredith's trying so hard to get her point across that her hands are almost shaking, “Tomorrow, I'm actually going to do it. I'm going to break up with him, and there isn't going to be any break-up sex. There won't even be a break-up kiss.”
Weeks ago, Cristina might've believed her. Weeks ago, Cristina might've felt vaguely hopeful, to hear Meredith say such a thing. She certainly sounds like she means it, and the worst part of all is that Meredith really believes that she's going to go through with it. That she can end things with McDreamy, and that will be that. Like she's wake up the next morning, bask in the knowledge that things between them are over, and go about her day like a fully functioning, perfectly healthy person.
Cristina wants to sit up and hit her pillow around Meredith's head, but knows that it isn't hard enough to knock any sense into her. She glances around. There's the lamp on the bedside cabinet, but Cristina doesn't want to have to mess around with reaching down behind the cabinet to try and find the plug.
“I can do it, right?” Meredith asks, and pauses for Cristina to reply. Cristina says nothing, and she sighs, “This is the part where you're supposed to tell me that I can do it. Because I can. What I can't do is keep heading over to the trailer, and get walked in on by The Chief.”
And then Meredith's talking again, talking herself up, and Cristina finds it hard to listen, because this time tomorrow night, Meredith's going to be complaining to her that she's slept with Derek again. Cristina doesn't know how many more times she can deal with this. Meredith needs to open her eyes, and realise that she isn't the only one being affected by this.
Cristina loves Meredith, no matter how many times she goes through the motions with Derek. Loves her in a really vital way, which means being her best friend is infinitely more important than anything else she wants her to be. More important than the urge she can barely suppress, to lean over and kiss her, to make her shut up.
Because if Meredith doesn't stop talking, Cristina's going to do something really, really stupid. Something that neither of them will come back from.
But she doesn't stop talking. Doesn't stop spouting out confidence that she shouldn't rightly have, because she's not going to go through with it. She's never going to go through with it, and Cristina isn't sure how long she's had this headache, but all she knows is that her temples are pounding, and it's making her nauseous.
“I slept with your sister,” Cristina says, and the pounding goes away. Everything goes away, from the creaking of the house to Meredith's incessant rambling. Meredith props herself up on one elbow, looks down at her, and doesn't even have to ask if she's being serious. Because this is Cristina, and Meredith's managed to work out how to tell whether she's lying or not. Cristina stares back, and then corrects herself. “Sleeping with. I'm sleeping with Lexie.”
Meredith doesn't say a single word. Not one. She pulls back the duvet on her corner of the bed, only a little, like she's trying not to disturb Cristina. Cristina keeps her eyes on her, even as Meredith picks up her pillow and walks across the length of the bedroom.
Cristina supposes that asking Meredith to start talking won't do any good.
Meredith leaves the bedroom, closes the door behind her, and Cristina assumes that she's going to sleep on the sofa. She's going to sleep on the sofa in her own house, because she can't even bring herself to kick Cristina out of her bed. Doesn't even want to look at her.
Rolling onto her side, Cristina places her hand against Meredith's pillow, if only to save herself from having to stare up at the ceiling. Alone in Meredith's bed, Cristina lies there, too exhausted to sleep.