A birthday present for a dear friend of mine who means a whole lot to me and has been a huge part of my life, especially over the last year. I could count on one hand the number of people I love and trust as much as this wonderful person, and they brighten my life every day.
And now that I have sufficiently embarrassed them in the author's note, moving on to the fic!
This is basically words of platonic cuddle fic because let's face it the world always needs more of that. Set in some vague timeline of the first couple of seasons. Doesn't really get more specific than that.
Enjoy!
The house feels old and empty, making strange creaking noises like its very bones are aching in the cold, damp weather, when Meredith walks in the front door. This whole business of only being allowed to work so many hours a week is irritating enough on the rare days where it's nice enough to want to go outside, but on days like today, days where the entire universe seems to be conspiring to keep the residents of Seattle indoors, it's downright dreary.
For a moment, Meredith stands in the doorway, keys still in hand, coat still on, staring morosely into the empty, darkened building. She only moves when Cristina pushes irritably at her back, trying to get inside and out of the steady, relentless downpour slicking sidewalks and roadways all across the city. Her motorcycle is in the shop, and besides, Meredith at least has tapes of her mother's old surgeries to occupy the hours before sleep manages to take her. Much better, in Cristina's opinion, than sitting around her messy apartment alone, idly flipping through magazines while her fingers twitched, grasping phantom scalpels.
Downstairs, the dryer makes a low dinging noise, letting them know that the laundry Izzie put in before she left for her shift is done. For lack of something better to do, Meredith wanders down to get it out, leaving Cristina standing behind in her in the living room. As it turns out, the dryer seems to be entirely full of large mens clothing. She stares at it for a moment before shrugging, scooping it out into a basket, and heading back upstairs.
When she reaches the living room where Cristina is boiling water in the kettle, she pulls a hoodie sweatshirt out of the basket, pulling it over her head. Cristina turns around and raises an eyebrow at Meredith, who is holding out another hoodie, an earnest look on her face.
"Is that McDreamy's laundry?" Cristina asks, snorting.
"Nope, Alex's," Meredith answers, shaking the sweater at her friend impatiently until Cristina takes it. "His building's laundry room is getting renovated, so he washed his clothes over here. They're all warm and stuff, put it on before it gets cold."
Looking at the hoodie in her hands, Cristina shrugs and pulls it on. Meredith is right, it is very warm, and has that kind of fuzzy fabric on the inside that feels deliciously soft against exposed skin, which just barely makes up for the giant yellow silhouette of a bird's head on the front. Looking at the block lettered 'UNIVERSITY OF IOWA' now branded across Meredith's chest, Cristina snorts again.
"How many college sweatshirts can one guy have?"
Looking at the basket of dryer warm clothes, Meredith laughs. "Judging by this, a lot of them."
The two of them end up sprawled across the bed in the master bedroom, laptop balanced across Meredith's thighs. Recently, she had gotten a lot of her mother's tapes transferred to DVD, worried about what might happen if her VCR broke and she couldn't find a replacement. The complicated procedure being conducted by steady blue gloved hands proceeds slowly on the screen, and Meredith can feel her eyelids growing heavy.
It's two hours into a seven hour procedure when the lights overhead flicker once, then go dark.
"You have got to be kidding me," Meredith mutters. The storm raging outside seems to have taken out the power. Stiffly, she climbs off the bed and walks over to the window, feet freezing against the cold floorboards. Sure enough, all the houses she can see from the window are also darkened, not a single light visible as far as she can see. "Power outage. Shit."
"Whatever, Mere, can you please just come back over here? It's cold," Cristina whines, shuffling around to get under the covers, pulling the hood of Alex's U of I sweatshirt over her head. Along with the lights, the power outage seems to have killed the house's heating system as well, and she can already feel the chill creeping into her Los Angeles born and raised bones.
Meredith walks back over and climbs into bed, pushing herself against Cristina's side and shivering. The computer is fully charged at least, which means they will probably be able to get another couple hours worth of surgery watching out of it before it dies completely. Maybe by then the power company will have restored the electricity, though with the rager outside showing no sign of letting up, that seems unlikely.
Not that Cristina particularly cares whether or not the power makes a swift return. She has nowhere better to be for the next twelve or so hours, not until she's allowed back on hospital grounds without a lecture and an order back home from Bailey. Meredith's mother, while Cristina happens to find the woman despicable as a human being, was an amazing surgeon in her day, and she is content to sit here and watch the footage with Meredith for as long as the power lasts. Cristina shifts around until she is comfortable, and while Meredith's shoulder may be bony under her cheek, it's warm, and she can't think of anywhere she would rather be right now, the hospital having been taken soundly out of the equation.
Shortly after the power goes out, the door downstairs opens, and moments later footsteps sound up the staircase. Both Meredith and Cristina assume it's Izzie or George, and are thus surprised when Alex's face is the one that peeks into the doorway. He stands there for what feels like forever, taking in the sight of Meredith and Cristina huddled close together under the comforter, before Meredith sighs.
"Are you just gonna stand there, or are you gonna join us, or?"
"What?" Alex asks, looking startled and mildly alarmed.
"Look, it's cold as shit, I happen to know you're a human furnace, and it's not like you have anywhere else to be right now, so either get over here or go get your laundry and leave, you're making me cold just standing there. Why didn't you put on a jacket this morning?"
Alex looks like he's not entirely sure what's going on, blinks for a few seconds, then turns around and heads back downstairs. Meredith finds herself genuinely disappointed for a moment before she hears his footsteps returning back up to the room, tugging yet another University of Iowa hoodie over his head. Meredith hip checks Cristina to get her to scoot over, making room for Alex on her other side. He sits, awkward and stiff, on the very edge of the bed for a while before Meredith makes a huffing noise, not having the patience for weird boys right now, and slings an arm around his waist, tugging him closer.
After a couple moments of every muscle in Alex's body going rigid and taut, he relaxes, melting to into her side and pressing his thigh flush against hers.
"...are you wearing my sweater?" he asks after a moment. She nods.
"Yep."
Deeming that an acceptable answer, Alex shrugs and turns his focus to the procedure on the computer.
"What is sh-"
"Listen, evil spawn, you wanna get in on the surgery watching warmth party going on right now, that's totally fine with me, but seriously, can it," comes Cristina's voice from Meredith's other side.
Once again, an acceptable response, he decides. Several moments of silence pass and Cristina's hand comes across Meredith's torso to pat Alex on the arm.
"Good choice."
No more words are exchanged, and time drips lazily past. The battery percentage of the computer ticks slowly down from 100 to a mere 5 and by the time it reaches this point, Cristina is the only one left awake. She looks at the two people in the bed with her, Meredith at her side with her head resting against Alex's chest and one arm snaked around Cristina's back, and Alex on Meredith's other side turned towards them with his back to the cold and frowning in his sleep. As quietly as she can, Cristina slips the computer off Meredith's lap and sets it on the floor beside the bed.
She could wake them up, now that the computer is dead, move on with her day. But the longer she lays there, propped up on her elbow, watching these people who've become her family sleep in silence, tangled together, the more she doesn't want to do that. In the end, Cristina breathes deeply and lays back down, pushing her face half into the fabric of Meredith's borrowed hoodie, reaching across to lightly grasp Alex's wrist. The world can wait a while.
Outside the window, the rain continues on.