They were in Cristina's kitchen, the evidence of their earlier dinner on the counter surrounding them. They had been in the middle of cleaning up when a few playful kisses had quickly turned intense. Her hand ran through his hair as he trailed kisses across her neck, occasionally dipping down to flicker his tongue along the top of her breast where the line of her scoop neck top ended. He drew his mouth back up to hers, and she could feel how turned on he was as they leaned into one another.
There was a knock at the door.
"Can we ignore that?" Owen mumbled, grabbing her bottom lip between his and sucking on it.
"Mmmmm," Cristina replied. She was sure he had said something, but all she could think about was how his hands seemed to be everywhere at once, and how good it felt.
There was a second knock, louder this time, jostling them both back to reality. Cristina eyed Owen with a frustrated look on her face. "Callie probably forgot her key again."
"I see," he answered, making a mental note to go to the hardware store the next day to make half a dozen copies of Cristina's key for Callie to scatter about where she wouldn't continue to lose them and thus interrupt their make out session yet again. And maybe an extra key for himself while he was at it, he thought, amused. "Answer the door," he said, letting her go, with a last quick kiss on the lips.
Cristina reluctantly broke away from him and went to the door to open it. She was surprised to find Meredith on the other side, who proceeded to walk in right past her.
"So Derek is being an ass again," Meredith began, as if they were in the middle of the conversation already. "We're right smack in the middle of surgery and he says to me that I should…" She had turned back towards Cristina and stopped short when she saw Owen in the kitchen. "Dr. Hunt?"
"Hello, Dr. Grey," he replied. Owen uncorked a wine bottle and refilled his and Cristina's empty glasses.
Meredith gave Cristina a look that Owen caught out of the corner of his eye as he was trying to be inconspicuous. It was a "what the hell are you doing" look.
"Um, can I talk to you for a minute?" Meredith asked. Cristina looked towards the kitchen.
"Go ahead," Owen said, knowing he had no choice in the matter anyway. "I'll finish cleaning up here and wrap up the extra pizza for Callie for later when she gets off her shift." He started collecting dishes to put in the dishwasher.
"Are you sure we can't talk about this later?" Cristina asked. "We were kind of right smack in the middle of something, too…" She saw Owen give a dirty little grin as he put the pizza box in the fridge.
Meredith grabbed Cristina's arm and pulled her down the hall towards Cristina's bedroom. "No, we need to talk now… about…um…"
"Derek's assholiness?" Cristina finished, smiling.
"Yeah, Derek's assholiness," Meredith agreed, pulling Cristina into the bedroom and shutting the door behind her.
"What the hell are you doing?" Meredith exclaimed. "He choked you!"
"Shhhh…keep your voice down. We're having dinner. That's all. Dinner."
"That's more than dinner. There's wine. There's a candle lit in the living room. This-" she pointed with her finger at the closed door, then waved it around, "This is more than just dinner."
"Okay, okay already. So maybe it's more than dinner. But it's not a big deal. Don't overreact." Cristina picked up some clothes off the floor, trying not to look Meredith in the eye.
"Don't overreact? He choked you. And you're still seeing him? He's—What the hell happened to your ceiling fan?" Meredith's eye was caught by the loose wires that hung from the ceiling though a dark ugly hole.
Cristina looked up curiously, as if she had forgotten about taking a hammer to the fan days ago. "Oh, that," she said, nonchalantly. "I decided to get a new fixture."
Meredith shook her head. This made no sense. Cristina was supposed to be the logical sensible one. She just cocked her head and looked at Cristina, not knowing what to say or think.
Cristina could tell Meredith wasn't going to leave without some sort of explanation. She took a breath, and thought for a moment about how to make the situation clear.
"Look. We're trying this again. We're taking it very slowly. He's in therapy. He's not sleeping over tonight or any time soon. He's had a lot of horrible things happen to him, and some of that came out while he was sleeping. It wasn't in his control, but he's getting help now to learn how he can control it. We're not pretending it didn't happen, and we're trying to make sure it doesn't happen again." She sat on the bed heavily. It was a burden being in love with someone your best friend didn't like. "I like him, Meredith. I don't know what else to tell you."
Meredith sat down next to Cristina. "You understand why this doesn't make sense to me, don't you?" She asked.
"Yeah, I do," Cristina answered. "It doesn't always make sense to me, either. But it feels right."
They sat quietly for a moment, thinking about the situation.
"So I'm just going to have to trust you on this, is what you're saying?" Meredith asked.
"Yep. That's what I'm saying."
"Okay, then." Meredith stood up and headed for the door. Cristina got up to follow when Meredith turned back to her.
"So are you having dirty sex with Owen Hunt?" She grinned.
"Ummm…clearly not while you're still here, so you need to leave now if there's going to be any chance of that happening." Cristina opened the bedroom door and steered Meredith back out of the bedroom and down the hallway. Owen had finished in the kitchen and was sitting on the couch watching a ballgame on TV.
Cristina continued to push Meredith towards the front door. At the threshold Meredith whispered to Cristina, "We're going to talk about this more tomorrow."
"I don't think so," Cristina whispered back.
"I do think so," Meredith retorted, backing away from the doorway.
"Go home, Meredith," Cristina said loudly, down the corridor of the apartment building.
"Tomorrow," she heard, echoing up to her from the stairwell. Cristina backed into her apartment and shut the door. She walked over to the sofa and threw herself down on it next to Owen. He shut off the TV and handed her the other glass of wine that had been waiting for her on the coffee table. She took a long drink and then put it down.
"That wasn't about Derek, was it?" He asked, quietly.
She looked over at him. "No. It wasn't."
He rubbed the back of his neck and leaned forward, staring down at the floor. "This is not going to be very easy, is it?" He asked, not looking at her.
"Nope."
He sighed, and continued to look away from her. After a few minutes of silence, she nudged his thigh with her knee. When he didn't respond, she poked his side with her finger. He jumped, and laughed unexpectedly.
"You're ticklish!" She said, laughing.
"I am not," he said, trying to stifle his smile.
She reached over to poke him again and he quickly maneuvered out of her way so that she fell forward on the couch a little. He took her ungraceful tumble as a chance for retribution and poked her in the side in the same spot she had poked him. She squealed a giggle, something virtually unheard of coming out of Cristina Yang's mouth previously, and told him to stop.
"You're ticklish, too!" He said, laughing and pointing at her.
"No, I'm not." She tried to compose herself. They sat still for a moment, looking at each other and trying not to laugh. Suddenly they were both trying to clumsily tickle the other while not being tickled themselves, which turned into an awkward wrestling match on the couch, which soon turned into a kiss, and then another, and another. It was not long before they were passionately wrapped around each other on the sofa, completely forgetting about everything except how good it felt to kiss each other and how their bodies seem to fit perfectly together.
Cristina had a last fleeting thought as they sank deeper into the sofa and Owen ran his tongue along that little sensitive spot she had by her ear. This is how you're supposed to feel when you're with someone who loves you, she realized. This is the way it is supposed to be.
