Disclaimer: I don't own Grey's. And I don't even really like Meredith or Alex, nor do I ship them together, so I really don't know how this happened!
A/n: So this past week, I made a deal with my cousin (who writes many Mentalist fics but has yet to finish or post one). To motivate her to finish something for once, we made a deal: we both had to finish and post a one-shot by Sunday at midnight. And late last night, somehow this plot bunny spawned out of thin air and hit me over the head, so Moony, here's mine. Now where's yours? ;) Also: this is twice in a row in which I wrote random Grey's couplings. Weird. Lastly, this is set circa season 2 (AUishly). Enjoy!
It Isn't Just Coffee (Anymore)
It all started when she'd spent yet another miserable night at Joe's, trying to drink thoughts of McDreamy away. It pretty well never worked, but she continued to keep trying nonetheless. Cristina dropped her off back at the house and then Meredith stumbled upstairs, none too quietly.
She was already opening the door and going into the bedroom when her mind rather belatedly reminded her that this was Alex's room now and not George's, and there was no way Alex would share his bed like George used to. But she was drunk and she didn't care and frankly didn't care if Alex cared.
"Meredith, what the hell - ?" Alex sat up in a sleepy haze as Meredith tossed her shoes aside and climbed under the covers.
She didn't respond which prompted him to snap at her again.
"Hey, I'm not O'Malley. I'm not doing the pit-party-in-my-bed thing, so shove off and get in your own bed."
She glared at him with shiny eyes. "Make me." She snuggled down deeper into his bed, her back to him.
He gave a loud aggravated noise and then made a big show of making sure there was a large enough space between them and moving himself to the very edge of his side of the bed. He was just being Alex, but it still made her thoughts turn to why men - or, one in particular - wouldn't be with her.
"God Meredith, will you keep it down?" he finally said after a good half hour of her trying to cry quietly. "You're getting snot all over my pillow." His tone was soft, however, and he rolled towards her, putting his arm around her and letting her cry on him instead. She thought that getting snot on the pillow was less offensive than snot on his shirt but she didn't argue.
It was easy when morning came to act like it'd never happened. In truth, neither really gave much thought to it at all. She'd simply slipped out of his room in the early morning hours to get ready for work, and he got up when it was nearly time to leave to change clothes and brush his teeth. They went to work, the day was normal and that was it.
Until a week later, when it happened again.
Like last time, she barged into his room and his bed with no preamble. He was annoyed but protested a little less than last time. She wasn't crying so much this time and besides a "You gonna be ok?" to which she sort of half-nodded and half-shrugged, there was no other conversation.
The third time, he growled, "We're not making this habit."
"Shut up." she snapped back.
A few days later, he bought her a coffee. She stared at it as if it might spontaneously combust when he plopped it down in front of her with a loud thunk. Then she looked at him rather warily, as he took a large swig of his own coffee, pretending he wasn't suddenly feeling a bit uncomfortable.
"What?" he said defensively.
"Nothing." she replied quickly and just as defensively.
She gingerly took the coffee and he hurried away, trying not to think about what buying coffee meant and convincing herself it meant nothing. He was Alex. Alex. There was nothing behind the coffee, there wouldn't be, ever, and she shouldn't even be having further thoughts about it. And that was it.
"It's weird, isn't it?" she asked one night as she lay beside him.
He didn't answer.
"Is it weird?"
He turned away from her.
She sighed. "I don't care if it's weird. It's comfortable."
And even if it really did mean nothing, she really liked that he'd bought her coffee. Twice.
She'd never really considered him to be good-looking, mostly because he'd kind of always been Evil Spawn or Dirty Uncle Sal. But he was - good-looking, that is (well, he was still kind of Evil Spawn/Dirty Uncle Sal too, but maybe less so than usual). He had those "chiseled features" or whatever, and that rugged bad-boy thing going on which so many girls liked. And his smile was nice, even if he barely ever genuinely used it.
"What?" he practically barked, startling her.
"Nothing! God," she shook her head.
"You were staring."
"Was not."
"Whatever." he scooped up his pile of charts and swept away.
She forced herself to look away from him.
Okay, so she'd realized he was good-looking. That didn't mean anything. He was still a jerk, he was still Alex, and yeah, they slept in the same bed a lot more than either of them would ever admit, but it was platonic. Seriously, totally platonic. There was totally nothing going on and she didn't even want anything to be going on. And yeah, okay, he'd bought her coffee like four times now, but he was her friend and he was being nice. She was still struggling to get over McDreamy. He was just being nice.
Except...
He didn't buy Izzie or Cristina coffee and they were his friends too. Friends who were girls, even. And she really didn't want to make it sound cheap or desperate, but Alex was there, he was available and good-looking. He was her friend and he cared and he bought her coffee. McDreamy was off choosing his perfectly impossible and impossibly perfect wife and she was really, really tired of the one-night stands and the drunken binging and the hangovers. She was trying to get over it, get over him and she was really only making herself very, very depressed. So depressed, in fact, that she was actually looking at Alex and thinking about how good-looking he was and how he cared and bought her coffee.
Then she would usually think that maybe them, as a together-thing wouldn't be quite so bad. It wouldn't be, right? They had a lot in common. After all, he'd had a sucky childhood and so did she, and he had all these issues and baggage and so did she (that was why Derek had really left her, wasn't it? Her issues and baggage?), he'd just been dumped and so had she (Izzie was falling for Denny and Derek went back to the She-Devil herself, Addison frickin-gorgeous Montgomery). So he had no one and neither did she.
They were dark and twisty and there were no happy endings or rainbows or bright and shiny for them. Not now and probably not ever. And that was, she thought, the main reason why she kept sharing his bed at night. Because even though he and Izzie had not been nearly as serious as she and Derek had, he still understood the pain of it all. He understood the apparent need to fill the hole with drinks and sex and whatever. It was that whole dark and twisty thing again: them, those kind of people. They really got it.
He brushed past her and she forced her thoughts away from the whole thing. It was stupid to consider. He was Alex and she was Meredith. And besides, it wasn't like she had any feelings for him in the first place.
And for God's sake, it was just coffee, not damn wedding ring or something.
Most nights, they tended to fall asleep by bashing the Shepherds. It made her laugh and him smile and released the tension of the day. She was exhausted by hating Mr and Mrs McDreamy and it was easier to have someone to bash them with.
"He's a jackass." (True.)
"He didn't even care about you that much." (She hoped that wasn't true.)
"She's not even that hot." (A bold-faced lie and they both knew it.)
"Whatever. Dr. Jackass and Satan are meant for each-other anyway." he said and she laughed and then his hand was idly playing with her hair, sending abrupt shivers down her spine.
"Alex..."
"What?"
She didn't know how to say it, didn't know if she should, if she could...
"If you had her, if you were married to... if you..." She stopped. "Never mind."
They were quiet. And Meredith shut her eyes, pretending to be asleep. She didn't know how or why she'd gotten so comfortable with Alex, but he was not a pour-your-heart-and-soul-out guy. He'd end this strange arrangement between them once and for all if she got all mushy or suddenly got some weird romantic-like feelings him. Which she totally didn't have, she was just saying, that if she ever did -
"I'd choose you." he said quietly.
Her eyes snapped opened and she turned her head to find his much too close. Awkward close if they were just friends who sometimes bought each other coffee and a real nice kind of close if they weren't or were about to be a lot more than that. And judging by the way her heart was going ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum (was it healthy that it was pounding so fast and hard all of the sudden? Could he hear it?) and the way he was looking at her (like he was seeing her - really seeing her for the first time or something - the kind of look that used to make her weak in the knees with McDreamy but this was different and somehow much better), it definitely wasn't the awkward kind of close.
As the clothes and covers came off in a flurry of motion, she couldn't help but think that dark and twisty finally found some sort of bright and shiny.
And: thank God for coffee.
-end-
A/n: Well, that was out of character for me, and hopefully not out of character for them...! Thanks for reading, reviews are so, so, SO loved! :)