Do I Have To Say The Words
Tom Sez: I know, I know. I need to finish what I start when it comes to my other Grey's fic, especially since I'm hearing such marvelous feedback (I think it's my most read piece on this site, and big thanks to y'all for the love) - but this damn George/Izzie/Callie thing showed up one night, climbed on to my chest, and just sits there, mocking me. If it don't come off now, it ain't never gonna. Also be advised that this is me at my angstiest angst. If you want angstier than my angstiest angst, be forewarned that my "medicine" budget is stretched thin as it is. Brown liquors don't grow on trees, my mother always said. Or at least I thought that's what she said.
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: Grey's Anatomy is a dramatic series on the ABC Television Network. The people who created and produce it are receiving sizeable paychecks from Disney's television unit. I am not one of them.
It had been six days and six nights. She knew this because she'd been counting, and the number of seconds added up to minutes to hours to days. On day seven, she stands across the locker room and looks at him as he pulls his scrub top over his torso.
His very nice torso, she thinks. He isn't a Greek god or anything, sure, but he has muscles and nice skin and great arms that held you and -
When he notices her gaze, he turns away. Every single day. He starts pretending that he can't find something so he doesn't have to look anywhere near her. Finished with that, he ducks out the door, keeping her out of his peripheral vision. He walks a pace ahead of her all during rounds. He latches on to the first case every day so he doesn't have to deal with her. He eats lunch alone, usually a quick bite in a stairwell or walking down a hallway. And worst of all, he doesn't talk. Not just to her, but to anyone, it seems. (Except for Callie, who was around every corner. But even she wasn't getting much from him, and she was the woman he went home with night after night...) This isn't just today, this is every day - not an aberration, but a building tradition.
But it wasn't like she knew what to say, anyway. She had tried, but just as her mouth would open to speak, she'd feel her tongue turn to sandpaper. Izzie even took to practicing in the bathroom mirror, smoothing out the patter as she combed kinks out of her hair: "Hey, George. How's it going, George? Tough day today, George?"
"Wanna grab a drink with me? Wanna go to a movie with me?"
"Wanna - whatever - with me?"
This is as far as she gets before the tears come, and she wants to resent him for his silence and his averted attentions, but then she thinks about him (and her - and him and her) and knows a fraction of what he must be going through, and that tucks her anger away quite nicely.
On rounds, he handles patients and colleagues professionally. Warmly, even. Two days ago (again, here's where her counting comes in), there were these adorable twin girls - four years old, mini-van they were riding in got T-boned, cuts and bruises everywhere - and he made them smile. Broad, bright smiles, when they had no reason to do so. He made them laugh, for Pete's sake. Out loud, for real. Then he explained his treatment methodology and Bailey nodded and that was it. Not another word. She had tried to position herself in front of him so that he couldn't look away, that he couldn't avoid her. He found a way.
That is what hurts her. It hurts her in a way she can't describe.
Doctor Huang is his therapist. When your father dies, and the hospital administrator wants to keep you from completely slipping off the ledge, Doctor Huang's the guy. And since he's on staff, well, it's all part of Seattle Grace's intern benefit package. "You didn't kill anybody, right?" he asks.
George snorts. It's a stupid question to his ears. "Don't need to. I'm this close to breaking two hearts. Two. Neither of whom deserve any of this."
Huang sits back in his chair. "What about you? Do you deserve it?"
"I'm the one doing the breaking, so yeah, I guess I do."
"There's no responsibility for anyone else to share?" Huang asks. "It's all on you?"
George shakes his head. "Dad always said, 'Carry your water.' You know? I have to do it."
"Why?"
"Nobody else should have to. Not Izzie, and certainly not Callie."
"I can understand you not wanting to burden your wife. But Izzie has to shoulder some of this."
"I know. And I'm sure she does. But she and Callie have distance, and as time goes by, that distance will allow her to get past it. I don't have that luxury of distance from Callie. I have to think about it and be ashamed of myself everytime I look at her beautiful face, all while trying to not destroy the first woman who ever really looked at me as a man. So I will embrace this. I will strap it to my back and I will put my head down and I will keep moving, and that's how I'll get through."
"What about you? The strain of shouldering this all alone? Aren't you afraid for your own heart?"
"Nope. And you wanna know why? 'Cause I've earned this, through what I did, and what I didn't do."
Callie can't get a bead on him. His emotions are locked away, which is something she's not used to with him. Yes, she's seen him at his most distant, his most disturbed. But not like this. It's like someone has been bricking off his capacity for joy. She knew this, most clearly, from when they were alone - separated by fractions of inches that might as well be astronomical distances. She reaches out to touch him at night, to feel the plain pleasures of human contact, and finds no reaction.
He doesn't even talk to his fellow interns, even those - or maybe especially those - whom he always calls his 'closest friends.' No half-witty battling with Karev or Yang, no banter with Grey - who broke him, broke him, broke him, and somehow had regained his trust - and most of all, not even a work exchange with Stevens. And she looks at him every day, with that elegant and fragile expression - a frozen effin' rose - like she did something wrong.
That's what it was, Callie decided. Guilt. She said something, she did something. Of course. George was wounded by her. Callie knew firsthand the sting he could dish out when he was hurt.
Granted, he probably left himself wide open to it. He tended to give Izzie - his quote-unquote best friend - a wide berth, even wider than he gave to his own wife. But he always seemed to forget that thing about roses and their thorns. As damn if the Izzie-rose thorns aren't twice as sharp.
But they'd fought. Recently. He said things. She said things. Didn't matter who was to blame, it had ended badly.
To be honest, this didn't make Callie unhappy. Stevens and Grey had always seemed to be tag-teaming her to keep George under their undernourished thumbs. With this recent turn of events, she now had a chance to have him all to herself.
And that was the other edge of the blade. He was clearly miserable. That misery was leeching into their marital bed. As much as she didn't like to admit it, George needed his friends, even those - or again, especially those - whom she didn't consider her 'closest friends,' if she, Callie O'Malley, could call them her friends at all.
George grimaced at his therapist. "What is that look?"
"What look?"
"That look you're giving me right now. Same look I got from parents and teachers and professors when they wanted something from me, and were just itching to hear me spill my guts."
"Do you want to spill your guts?"
"Sure. No big deal. Let's see. You want something that you think I need to tell you, so that - what? - you know you're earning your keep? Okay. You wanna know what keeps me awake at night about this whole thing?"
"Tell me."
"This...this'll make your day. My big secret thing." George bites his lip. "I have great sex with my wife, and it comes from loving her. Really, really loving her. And she actually loves me, which I still don't understand. Callie is amazing. She's powerful and vibrant and - so much better than I deserve. Better than I could dream of deserving. And I'm insecure because she's way over me, and instead of trying to talk to Callie, I decide to get plastered with another woman, and then..." George's voice trails off.
They sit in silence. Then Huang asks, "So it bothers you that you had a good drunk fuck?"
George looks ill. "No. 'Cause with Izzie, it wasn't a good drunk fuck." A tear shimmers in his eye. "It was perfect. And I'm so angry. At myself. At her."
"Because it was perfect?"
"I've never felt that before, with anyone. Even as marvelous as Callie is..." George's voice went away again.
"You think that's why you're angry? Because you've never experienced perfect with Callie, but you did with Izzie?"
George cleared his throat. "Izzie's not my wife. She's my friend - okay, my best friend, even. But you don't fuck your best friend. And you certainly don't have something perfect happen when you fuck your best friend." George's chest heaved. "It felt like..."
"Like what?"
"Like something I don't feel for her." The words hang in the air.
"You don't?"
"No. No." George's voice was defiant. "No, no, no."
George lay next to the woman he'd married. She was sleeping, making that cute little sound - practically a song - that escaped her lips when she was deep in slumber. It was one of the many things he loved about her.
He made a list. Her voice. Her laugh. Her eyes. Her scent. The way she looked the first time they met. The taste of her.
He thought about their first kiss. So deep and tender and rich. Decadent, that was the word. Something he never considered an option with her until it actually happened. That it led to sex - and not just sex, but something much more soul-shaking - well, that was beyond his comprehension.
And then, the whole relationship held together, even when things were shaky. They fought. They made up. She was stubborn, and she wanted what she wanted, but she didn't quit on him. She didn't know how, he guessed. She made herself into the woman she was - and she was complete. He didn't have to patch her up or nurse her back from the brink. If anything, she did it for him. He was the luckiest man alive.
Wasn't he?
He noticed her again. She had rolled over, and her eyes fluttered open. "Hey," she said, her voice dusky.
He smiled just a bit. "Hey."
"I was dreaming," she said.
His voice was soft. "Yeah?" His fingertips brushed her dark bangs from her forehead.
"Mm. I dreamed about a field, full of the greenest grass I've ever seen. And it was so soft and cool."
"Sounds nice."
"I found you there, lazy in the grass, and you looked up at me, and you smiled..." She painted his jawline with her fingers. "And then I woke up." She pressed a soft kiss on to his lips, broke it for an instant, then returned for more.
Soon his drowsiness was cancelled by sensory immersion. As he breathed during their kiss, tangling and untangling their tongues, his desire was multiplied by hers. Right away, his t-shirt was coming off, and she was moving kisses down his bare chest toward his navel. A tug at the waist of his sleeping shorts, and then he felt the cool crispness of clean hotel sheets against his naked body. Then the warmth and wetness of a hungry mouth enveloped him. A moan escaped, and he felt a quiver in his legs that rolled up into his belly. A few more tender licks produced a few more pronounced moans.
Then her mouth found his again, and they rolled over in the bedclothes. Eyes met. "You're so beautiful," he whispered.
"Undress me," she replied. "Please."
He lifted her shirt and pressed wet kisses against her breasts, feeling the thudding of her heart just beneath. Then his hands slid down to her hips, helping to remove her pajama bottoms, and taking her panties with them. His lips touched against her softest flesh, and he felt her entire being tremble. He parted her thighs a bit more, and brushed his mouth against her, darting his tongue just a bit, allowing the taste of dewdrops to spread across his lips.
A quivering sigh. "More...please, more..."
It was these words - her words - that ripped open the floodgates of his memory. Laying on another familiar bed, with another familiar woman. How hungry Izzie had been. How playful. How she had responded to every kiss. How they both knew exactly where to touch each other, and exactly when. How surprisingly smooth and round her body was. How her voice washed over his ears as he moved his body in rhythm with hers, and how it sounded so similar to the voice he'd known, but now mixed with a different tone, something like -
Love?
"More...please, more..." Izzie's body was appearing in front of his eyes, drifting like a ghost.
He tries to block it all out as he opens Callie's legs a bit further.
No, Izzie. No. You don't feel that way about me. It's the liquor. It's not love.
You don't love me, Izzie. You can't.
"Be inside me..."
The words were the same. He couldn't help hearing them both now, seeing them both, even as he slipped himself into Callie, and felt her body shake again as it took him in. The tremulous voice from his memory had blended with the shuddering voice from inches away.
"Oh, George...you're...mmm..."
No, Izzie...no...no. Don't smile that way at me. Don't look at me how you're looking at me.
Her face was in his mind now and he couldn't shake it. She was in his vision, as real now as she'd ever been. And as much as he was having sex with Callie and feeling the full intensity of her drive and desire...
"Don't stop...oh, God, please don't stop..."
...he was making love to Izzie, and his anger at this realization fed his passion, and he thrust himself again and again into Callie until he felt his back arch and freeze, and a bark escaped his throat as his hips bucked and pulsed when he exploded inside her. He lowers himself on to her warm, pliant body, his ear to her chest. He can feel it rise and fall with the thumping of her heart, and that her respirations are deep and satisfied.
"George?" she whispers. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," he replies.
"You're shaking," she says.
He realizes she's right, and his eyes begin to burn.
Day eight. Rounds. Izzie doesn't even try to look at him today. He's not coming back. Just thinking those words makes her feel sick. George volunteers for the first case. Bailey ignores him today. "You have to play with the group this time," she says. Karev gets the fourteen year old with the leaky heart valve. George is assigned a mother of six with a shattered kneecap. He'll be working with Callie today. Izzie can barely keep herself together all day. Meredith is blathering at lunch about Derek. Christina blathers about herself while watching Burke and Karev. Izzie wishes them into many cornfields to no avail.
That night, Izzie sits at the bar, ordering tequila by the shot. The others have come and gone. Joe notices that this has become her pattern. "Four nights in a row, Doctor?"
"Five," she corrects him. "Are you counting my drinks, too?"
"No," he says.
"Seven," she replies. "Keep pouring, or leave the bottle."
He nods. Leaves the bottle.
The door rings. She hears a voice off to her right. "Izzie."
Izzie downs a shot, and doesn't look over. "Callie."
A heavy sigh. One from the soul, and Izzie knows that sound, so she tries to listen. "I know we're not friends," Callie says. "I know I don't have your trust. I know you think that George made the biggest mistake of his life with me. But I need something from you, and your word that you'll do it."
"What?"
"I want - I need you and George to fix whatever's wrong between you two."
Izzie smiles at that. "I'll bet."
"I mean it." Callie is talking straight to her now. "He's sad, Izzie. Sadder than I've ever seen him. He loves you." Those words perk Izzie's ears, and a warm spark of joy crackles in her stomach. Callie's words keep coming - maybe because she can see that Izzie's attention is piqued. "Your friendship is vital to him. And if it's vital to his happiness to have you in his life, then I can swallow a lot of the shit you say and do."
Izzie wanted to make a crack at her, say something really cruel and cold. But she didn't, mainly because that ember was catching fire in her. "Okay," Izzie replied. "I'll do my best. But he has to try, too."
Callie nodded at that. "I'll talk to him."
George's frantic speech is tinged with amazement. "I still taste her. Right here." He touches two fingers to his lips, and they linger there. "It's been over a week. I've kissed Callie a few dozen times since then, kissed her everywhere - and I mean everywhere, and I still taste Izzie. That's not normal. That's not..." he says, his head shaking. "I've never had that with anyone."
"You know how a nervous system works, Doctor. Sense memory is identical to muscle memory. It's the same electrics. Taste, sight, touch." Huang looked over the top of his glasses. "Are you thinking about her right now?"
"Yeah." George's words poured out of him, unfiltered and unbroken. "It took one touch of our lips, and that was it. One little peck of a kiss on a kitchen floor and we were gone. I don't remember walking to the bedroom. I don't remember what time it was, or what we did exactly beforehand. I do remember that her clothes and my clothes just sort of dropped away. And we were naked together. And we went to the bed together, she didn't tug me down to her, I didn't pull her down to me. And it was so easy, so comfortable. I'd rest my hand somewhere on her, and it would travel and trace her, and it was right. And she'd kiss me somewhere and it felt better than anything. It was like that all night. We didn't stop, come up for air, fall asleep - at least I don't remember if we did. She would come, or I would come, and we'd look at each other and I'd smile or she would, and we didn't have to talk or ask each other permission. We'd just start all over again."
Huang nodded. "You don't have that with Callie?"
George breathed. "I don't know how to answer that. It's not like it's hard to make love to her. She's exquisite. It's just that...I don't feel her a week later." He was silent for a moment, then said, "But that's probably because I have her next to me all the time, right? No chance to forget her. And no reason, either." He laughed. "And maybe the reason for Izzie sticking in my brain, and on my skin, is because I haven't let her go yet. The electrics, right?"
"That's an absolutely realistic and plausible explanation." Huang leaned forward. "But is it the right one?"
"It has to be. It makes too much sense." George stood up. "Okay. So...I need to be finished with Izzie then."
Huang was expressionless. "If that's what you think you need to do."
George had made up his mind. "Yeah. I need to close the book on this. End it. It'll be hard, because of being around her at work, but I can do it. For my marriage, and for Izzie, and for the future - I can figure it out. I'm going to put an end to this."
Callie kisses George goodnight at the locker room door. Izzie, hiding around a corner, hears them just outside. She promises to see him at home, and he asks her to wait up for him. Izzie tries to block it out so she can think about what she's going to say that will put this thing to bed once and for all.
She closes her eyes and sees him smiling at her. That warm, genuine smile he has. She feels his bare skin against hers. Feels long fingers tenderly exploring the depth and breadth of her, like no other man had ever done. Senses his swollen member teasing her until she thought she was going to die, then entering her, filling her completely...
She opens her eyes. That was not the image she wanted to conjure.
George walks in, starts to undress. He tosses his scrub top on to the pile in the laundry basket, then pops open his locker, searching for his deodorant stick.
It's then that Izzie appears on the bench just behind him. George does a double-take, then grabs his clothes, startled. "Izzie? What the hell - " he says, covering himself with his shirt.
She looks up at him. Breathes. Opens her mouth. But nothing comes out.
George collects himself. He can speak. "Look, Izzie. I'm sorry. Not talking to you was - well, it wasn't right. And, uh, I am definitely sorry about, uh, a lot of things." He puts his shirt on. "I - I know now that this whole thing has been just disastrous - and - I - I don't want to fight with you. You're such a part of my life, a special part."
She hears him talking in circles, like he's trying to say something he doesn't want to say. That he's trying to blunt it so it won't hurt her. Oh, God, no, she thinks. He's trying to say goodbye.
Don't let him, Stevens, she thinks. Don't you dare...
She feels the words building like steam inside her, rising higher and higher. He's still talking, and she finds herself shaking her head.
"What? What, Izzie?" he asks.
Izzie breathes again. She locks her eyes on his. "What is it?" he asks.
"I love you." She blurts it out, suddenly feeling untethered from her better judgment. Her pounding pulse pushes adrenaline through her as she realizes that these are the exact ones she's been dying to speak, and her whole being is all at once light as air.
George's lips twisted into a scowl. He seems angry that she said it. "No. No, you don't."
"I love you," she says. This is not a blurt. This is a statement of fact.
"Stop it," George growls.
"I love you." It's easier to say now. So easy, so comfortable.
"Dammit, Iz," he moans. "Stop. It's not - "
"I love you." She feels like she's alive again for the first time in a long time.
"You are hurting me," George says, his voice shaking with what sounds like fear. "Please stop hurting me. Stop hurting my wife, stop hurting my marriage - "
"I love you." Izzie means every letter of every syllable.
"You don't love me," he says, underlining each word. "You don't. It's not - it's not real - "
"I love you." She underlines her words, too.
He grabs her by the shoulders and pins her against the wall, with enough force to stop her from speaking, but not enough to hurt her. He puts his trembling hands on her flushed face. She grasps his wrists. Hot tears stream down his and her cheeks. "Oh, God, Izzie. You can't love me. Please." He says it with a hiss - he's holding his emotions in check as well as he can, but they're bubbling out of him. "You can't love me. You don't love me. Say you don't love me. Please."
Izzie cries even harder, but says in between heaving sobs, in a clear voice, "I love you."
George feels the flood of her emotion feeding his, tries to steel his resolve, but it's too late. Before this moment, he was close to breaking open and pouring across the tiles, but her last confession splits him at the seams. He holds her tear-streaked face in his hands, not wanting to think about how beautiful it is, and his words fell out of him. "You're just sad right now - you're so sad - and you think you love me because you need somebody to love amd you're worth loving and I'm your friend so you're imagining that you love me. It's not true. It's not. You need to stop. You need to stop saying it to me. You need to stop looking at me." He closes his eyes. "You need to stop being the most beautiful creature that I've ever seen. You need to stop making love to me in my dreams. You need to stop making me want to love you." His eyes open. "Because I can't stop myself."
"I love you." It's all she wants him to know. And then, stripped defenseless, she reaches for him. Part of her fears that he won't respond, but then her lips meet his. Their kiss is tentative at the start, but begins to burn deeper and sweeter, and feels like nothing else either has ever known. When it breaks, they are face to face with their futures.
"Take me home, George," she says, her eyes wild with arousal. "Take me anywhere you want. Just stay with me."
He kisses her again, this time with the hunger of a starving soul. "Say it again," he whispers.
"I love you." Izzie's heart was warm and beating a mile a minute.
"And I love you," George replies. And for the first time in what felt like an eternity to Izzie, he smiles. For real. For her. Then they share another kiss before gathering themselves and leaving the locker room, bright-eyed.
Callie lays in the bed she shares with her husband. She notices the time. It's late, or early, depending on your point of view, and she wonders if he's all right. She wonders if Stevens has finished talking with him yet. She wonders if he's on his way. She thinks about calling his cell phone, but decides against it.
She hears the door open, and soft footfalls. Then weight on his side of the bed. "Callie," she hears him say. "Are you awake?"
She rolls over and sees his face. It's a familiar mix of love and hurt that she'd seen him carry before. "What's wrong, George?" she asks, pretending that she wasn't afraid of the answer.
"A lot of things," he replies, looking away.
The End