12/10 - I've recently been posting on AO3 under the name Mamihlapinatapai, and while doing such, have been doing some editing. Today, because I'm crazy, I've decided to update everything on here. The changes won't affect the story line, it's just to clean everything up a bit.

The thing is, and it's ridiculous really, but they go from rivals to in each other's back pockets in about point three seconds.

Okay, so maybe not rivals, per say, but it wasn't exactly like cordial back then.

And by back then, he means back when Izzie was still present enough to hate him, because everyone knows that the whole 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' thing is a load of bullshit. Hatred has to be fed or it will fizzle out and leave something resembling dull resentment in its wake. Back when George was still breathing. And people were still wary that Meredith still wanted to stop enough to drown herself again.

(And those same rumors went around months later. It's not like many people experience a gun to the head, and even less don't exactly fear taking a bullet.)

Back then, he had hated Avery. Not like he would later, personally, painfully, but instead with a sort of disconnection. They were all just players encroaching on an already filled team, except the punter was dead and the quarterback had one foot already out the door.

But still.

They didn't need another legacy, anyway, because Seattle Grace already had one of those, and she had a habit of getting herself almost killed.

Later, though, it wasn't anything, except the gaping hole where Avery's friends and a piece of Alex's lung, used to be.

000

He hears the story in his hospital bed, a bandage over his ribs and a headache forming.

The nightmares had started immediately. He's bruised and sore and sad, and it's a combination that has him drinking more whiskey than is reasonable. But he hasn't taken pain pills since he was fourteen when his dad broke his arm, instead of his mom's, so he figures he can call it even.

The nightmares had started immediately, not that he knows first-hand because, yeah, he spent an aggravating amount of time in a hospital bed convincing Teddy, and Bailey, and the chief, and Arizona freaking Robbins that just because the bullet wanted to take up permanent residence in his chest, it doesn't mean he can't, like, feed himself.

But according to Meredith, who spent every three days away from Derek's bed, and Kepner, the nightmares were a constant nighttime activity. Kepner, puffy-eyed and sleep deprived, mumbled that she had tried to intervene but since she liked her face the way it was and Avery had a nasty habit of waking up swinging, she was giving up, no really, if Alex wanted to take the chance he could go right on ahead, she wasn't stopping him. (Meredith's struggling through her own night terrors, not that she'd tell anyone, but she's always been sort of an open book to him. But he doesn't count it as anything but exhaustion that she hasn't tried to monologue Avery into sleeping.)

Alex found it wasn't something he really cared about until he got home and spent three sleepless nights listening to Jackson's breathing through their shared wall. (And sure it wasn't like he was sleeping anyway, but at least his constant fear to turn a corner didn't affect anyone else.)

The fourth night, he banged on the wall until Avery jerked awake. But then the kid had just tossed and turned the rest of the night and Alex has a soul, okay, so he felt a little guilty. Eventually, he just upped the whiskey volume, and lowered that pesky concern bar Izzie had installed somewhere during their intern year, and hadn't removed before she decided to rip his heart out of his chest.

In fact, it was only after listening to Kepner lost her shit in the middle of Joe's that he realized it was still going on, and even then it's not like it was his problem. (Because his elevator phobia being broadcasted was embarrassing enough, thanks oh so much for that.) But seriously, he's a doctor, and the skin beneath Avery's eyes was shading a bit darker every day. It wasn't safe for the guy to be diagnosing people, let alone cutting into their bodies.

Wall banging is an option, but it also means he has to wait for the nightmares to actually start, and Kepner keeps insinuating over breakfast counters and lab tables that his skanky scrub nurses are keeping her up at night and really that's not helping anyone. (Even though, he's pretty sure breaking her nose on the bullet-riddled corpse of her best friend is the source, not a little pounding. But, whatever.)

It took a couple of weeks, including seven down-right awful days when he had decided that timing his late-night trips for water (scotch) as soon as Avery started thrashing was a perfect solution, and only caused more hangovers than his first semester in college, but then he finally figured it out.

Because of course prevention is better than prescription, but hey, he's a surgeon, he spends most of his time wishing people would accidently cut off their hands. But, if anyone in that freaking house was going to get any sleep, he had to head the beast off at the pass.

It doesn't exactly go as planned.