"Glass Against the Cheek"
by TehFuzzyPenguin
disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy is not mine, even though I'm sure this season will get SOMEwhat better and will therefore rise in value.
Callie and George's family sans George liked cars. They could talk for hours and hours about cars, their horsepower and suspension and smooth transmission and whatever else there is about vintage cars to talk about. No one besides them knew.
Cristina and Preston didn't like cars. Preston, being Preston, had a nice Mercedes-Benz of a series that Cristina didn't care about because she didn't drive a car. It was sleek and black and had a sound system made for an arena of several hundred people. Not that either of them ever appreciated it; they never agreed on appropriate driving music. But it had a leather interior and heated seats, and sometimes they would get in the car and drive drive drive because it was a Mercedes-Benz, for god's sake, not an everyday gets-to-work box on four wheels.
Preston usually drove, because it was his car. He always had a destination, planned the route out in his head as they descended the stairs, knew exactly how long it would take for them to get there. There was usually a picturesque view from the top of something, bolstered with ice cream and cake. He always said, "Want to go out tonight?" and Cristina always knew that "out" never meant a dinner or party. Preston would say if it did.
Sometimes, she said no, and he'd shrug and mess around with his trumpet or go take a shower. It was never a point of contention. Most of the time, she raised her eyebrows and started looking for her coat.
Between the times she said no, and the times they ended up on top of the Space Needle dipping biscotti in cups of coffee, Cristina sometimes said, "I'll drive this time." Preston never denied her, just bunched the keys up in his hand and tossed them to her. Threw them at her, really, and she almost inevitably dropped them because she didn't believe in physical exercise, which included catching and throwing.
Cristina liked to find a nice long deserted road or highway and let go. A Mercedes something-series could go fast, and she always knew that it was a waste when they went anywhere in the city. Preston pretended to care about safety and crash tests and accidents that would land them in the OR, but in reality he liked to hold on to the oh-shit handle and watch the road almost swallow them up. Sometimes, he suggested going out in hopes that Cristina would want to drive.
It was silent a lot of the time, except for the low purr of the engine and the hum of wheels grinding on the road. Once, Preston had asked about Cristina's dad, in response to her driving habits. She'd turned her head and pressed her foot down for that one last centimeter to the floor of the car. They didn't ask life questions after that.
They weren't a problematic couple. They didn't fight explosively and slam doors, because there was little to slam about. They simmered. They glared. They sniped. But they didn't fight. The worst thing to do when you're mad, they say, is get in a car because there's no damn place to go, but Cristina and Preston always did. The silence was soothing, and every now and then, Preston would look to his right and Cristina would be resting her head against the window, eyes closed but not sleeping. If Cristina was driving, she'd look less frequently (because she wasn't suicidal), and Preston would be curling his fingers around the door handle instead of the oh-shit handle. And when they'd reached the end of their drive, someone would say something like "I'll pick up my towels from now on," or "You don't like olive oil," and that would be the end of it until the next time.
Maybe that was the best part of their relationship, that they didn't have to say much because they never meant much, they weren't very subtle people. They were only ironic around not each other. The only parts that had to be said out loud were the parts that they had to hear themselves. It was self-serving and self-disciplining and self-discovering, but that was what they both wanted.
That should have been the warning, because people's wants tend to get mixed up.
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The week before the wedding, they hadn't driven at all. Not once. Cristina rode her motorcycle to work before Preston every day, and sometimes they ate together (no olive oil), but the customary nighttime drives, the biscotti and cake, the wide-eyed speed past repetitive trees, those didn't happen. Preston decided that right after the wedding, he'd jump in the Mercedes and let Cristina crash it into a tree before going on the honeymoon, because she deserved something like that. Cristina decided that right after the wedding, she'd let Preston drive before going on the honeymoon because she would wreck the damn thing.
And then after the wedding, Preston drove his Mercedes to his mother's house, never once turning his head to the right because he knew what he would see there. His mother took one good look at his box, his single, lonely box of things most important to him, and she cannot, she cannot say, "I'm proud of you," because he was still staring straight ahead, afraid to take his eyes from the road (the door, the hallway), trying to resist keep his foot from going all the way down on the pedal (his eye from twitching, his fingers from flexing).
It was a selfish thing to do, he knew, and there was no way to take it back, he knew, and his mother would say the same thing, only about Cristina, he knew, and there was no way to stop her. All he asked was for her to wait until after the honeymoon was supposed to end to get the rest of his things from Cristina.
And then after the wedding, Cristina rode in the passenger seat of Callie's car, pressing her cheek against the cold window because it didn't matter how much she didn't know Callie or disliked Callie, Callie was married, she didn't want anyone judging her because she let down the entirety of the happily-ever-after interns. At least Callie already had hers. And Callie had the decency to never look to the right.
Callie let her go at Preston's apartment without a single question, because any question would have been stupid, and didn't comment on the fact that the Mercedes was gone because—because of course it would be. So when Meredith cut Cristina out of her dress, Cristina already knew what she was going to do, because she'd had time, all the time in the world because there wasn't that stupid wedding anymore, and there wasn't that stupid commitment anymore, and now all she had to do was get rid of this stupid dress and this stupid choker. Meredith was enough to help with that.
Cristina insisted on driving Meredith's car to the airport, because Meredith didn't know where they were going and kept asking during the drive, until finally Cristina broke down and told her something about a honeymoon. The idea came to her as she had made her rounds, making sure that Preston had really, seriously left, and now she had to see it through. It was broad daylight and Cristina was driving in her reckless, just-try-to-cite-me-for-speeding way, and no matter how much Meredith talked, Cristina kept her eyes, for once, safely on the road and tried hard not to tell Meredith to shut up because she was ruining the whole thing. (The Jeep and the sunlight and the cars around them ruined it, too, but the problem was mainly Meredith on her right.)
Around the time Cristina got to the airport and rested her head against the window, Preston called Derek and asked him to meet for a drink.
Around the time Meredith decided that maybe letting Cristina pack was a bad idea (because she hadn't known where they were going, and Cristina was messy and had just thrown brightly colored articles of clothing into Meredith's suitcase, having already packed her own), Derek decided that he would wait until Cristina asked him to say anything about Preston (because he knew where Meredith and Cristina had gone, and he didn't understand anything except that Cristina didn't like being told things unless she asked for it).
Around the time, around the time, around the time, when Meredith and Cristina came back, full of sunrays and false cheer, Cristina drove them to Meredith's house and turned off the engine and looked to her right. Something in her face broke, but then she got out of the car, left her suitcase, and got on her motorcycle. She just got on and went, exhaust and forced optimism flaring from behind her. Around that time, then, Preston was in his car, his left hand on the oh-shit handle, going somewhere somewhere somewhere, somewhere for a nice coffee and a quiet view and no one to share it with.
And it didn't matter how much Callie and George's family sans George loved talking about cars, because with Cristina and Preston, it wasn't about the actual car. It was about looking to the right and seeing someone there that had the exact same thoughts, about silence that was uncomfortable yet familiar, about going somewhere, not just the somewhere.
Their relationship wasn't defined by that Mercedes, it didn't disintegrate with the lapse of their drives, because what kind of relationship does?
But everything, everything, everything did fall apart, either way, and Preston sometimes wished he'd asked more about her father's accident, and Cristina sometimes wished she'd said yes more times.
And sometimes, when they brought up that stupid, stupid wedding to other people, they felt sort of sad.
And most of the time, when Cristina thought about specializing in cardiothoracics and Preston thought about calling someone and explaining, their visions sort of hazed.
And every day, when they needed to go somewhere, when they were having bad days and wanted to just drive drive drive, their hearts sort of broke.
what is up with my writing? I don't know. But I felt like a good Burktina angst fic, and even though this didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to, I still like it. Inspiration and title drawn from Tegan and Sara's "Burn Your Life Down." It's pretty amazing.
Review?