Owen chases you down the hall, apologizes again with a tongue rammed down your throat; you push him away. He stands too close, breathes down your neck, swears you're the only one, as if that's the problem; you take the stairs instead.
It's still push pull, it's always push pull, and his apologies always taste like stale scotch.
You watch Lexi nervously count the pills on Alex's tray, and prod him to eat. She pulls, he pushes. She clings, he pushes harder. He's still too weak to push back hard enough.
You're not; you were once, and it cost you your eye brows; never again.
Push, pull: It's not love or fate or fucking forty years – it physics. It's hardcore, and who cares about Teddy when Isaac freaking Newton is in your bed in some unholy threesome.
The tongue rams down your throat again a month later – more scotch, it's always scotch, coated with sticky sweet promises this time. Strike one.
Alcohol is all about chemistry, anyway, and you aced chemistry but physics damn near kicked you ass, and physics separates the surgeons from the vets and the shrinks, and chemistry is kid stuff but you can't fight physics.
Physics is law: There are pushers and pullers – it's like Yin / Yang – and you're Yang so Owen has to be Yin – the puller to your pusher – to balance the universe.
But the universe is already off its axis.
You push, he pulls - back to Wyatt's office a month later. You're still supposed to give more, and he's still yours to rescue; you consider drowning her in her fish tank, and toss the new PTSD pamphlet she gives you in the recycling bin.
Meredith pushed, McDreamy pulled, once upon a time. But he couldn't handle being Chief and he can't handle not being Chief so now he pushes and she pulls. It's surly and ugly and rancid; you give the stupid post-it note six more months, tops.
At least it was never a fairy tale to begin with.
Lexi still fusses over Alex but flirts with Sloan and she's cloying and guilt-ridden and twitchy as hell and it's pathetic what McSteamy's been reduced to and even Evil Spawn was better off with a bullet in his chest then he is with an anvil around his neck.
You push, Owen pulls - talks about sharing an apartment with you again the following month. At least you can laugh manically at the punch line, since his tongue's not down your throat for a change. Too bad he's dead serious, and doesn't get the joke at all.
It doesn't matter. You've already stared down a gun man. Now you cackle like a banshee when you want to, and have your choice of any surgeries, screw Teddy, and a fast track to Chief Resident; you're Cristina Yang again, and that's too intense a rush to quell, even with Tequila and rabid sex and your fingers wrapped tightly around a pulsing heart.
You snicker, though, since McSteamy's back with Lexi but doing Callie on the side so she can pop out the kid that Roller Derby Barbie doesn't really want. It's like Three's Company with a baby and it will all get horribly awkward since knocked up always does and it will never end well but Lexi and Barbie still chirp happily like caged birds.
Owen says he needs more – and it's still all about him the next month, too – and you've lost track of why he's apologizing, though it's vodka on his lips this time, not his usual scotch, and you should care but you don't, since you've offered him to her before.
You walk in on Alex in the locker room showers, smugly eying the angry scar that rakes his torso. He smirks and tosses you the soap – game on.
His hands are all over you by the time your scrubs pool around the drain, and he pushes hard and deep; you push back harder, too close to a still healing wound. He backs you against the steamy tiled wall, and pins your arms over your head, but his fingers don't stop and his eyes tell you he knows it's supposed to hurt – and the first set's a draw.
He's weak and trembling by the time he's close and you're winded and gasping but he's not allowed to hear that and your nails add to his scar collection and your teeth sink into his thick shoulder as he mutters your name through gritted teeth – and his curses tell you that you're winning as he collapses at your feet with a deep, shuddering groan.
Lexi's long gone but you're not cheating, either, as long as the teeming water washes it all away and he doesn't taste like vodka and he's still Evil Spawn but he'll crawl out of that shower on his knees before he'd ever ask you for a damn thing and he'd drown alone before he'd pull you down with him and that counts for way more than it probably should right now except that sometimes its all you can hope for, and sometimes its all you want.
You're still not living together the following month so Owen proposes; he pulls, you push back, grabbing your apartment keys from him. Strike two.
It's not baseball, though, it's a dance and you're always out of step – you're always too far away and he's always standing on your feet and one of you is always trying too hard – and you can't even tell who – and it's a different game but it's always the same score.
You meet him in the on-call room again and he's still Evil Spawn and he still winces too sharply when you move too quickly but you don't care who he's thinking about as long as you're on top, and he doesn't care if you scrape his back raw because Owen still talks about forty fucking years and it makes you want to claw your way out of your own skin but you'll settle for what's left of Alex's instead.
A month later Owen comes by your apartment late, almost not late enough, really, and his tongue pushes roughly past the stale beer that's still on your lips and he hears Callie and McSteamy trying again in the next bedroom and you roll your eyes at him and smirk until he suggests that it's time for the two of you to start trying, too.
You push him out of your bed because he obviously thought you were just sparring when really you were fighting for your life and you dead bolt the heavy door behind him and you curse your roommate and her girlfriend and their soon-to-be Barbie dream baby and that's strike three.
You go with Meredith and Shepherd to City Hall a month later - he's still pushing but now she's pulling harder and you go to witness her being McDreamied and you drag Alex, her other witness to the crime, to a deserted Court House stairwell afterward and you publicly scandalize the Scales of Justice statue, which blushes despite the blind fold.
Owen's gone the following month and the new owners of Casa Grey aren't running a youth hostel and you don't do strays but he's homeless and the sex is good and he can cook and at least all Alex wants from you is hot running water and satellite television.
Teddy's gone weeks later, off to the same city as Owen, and Callie squawks about the aerobic marathons in your bedroom as he regains his stamina and Meredith looks at you cross eyed when you mock his on-going reluctance in elevators and his avoidance of conference rooms but the deep wound is healing and the wide swath of blue and black bruising is finally fading and he just smirks when you poke at his ribs, daring you.
Callie's pregnant the following month, and you snark at her when Arizona and Lexi become less chirpy, and you squawk at Alex when he declares for Peads, and you snark at Mere when you become Chief Resident, and Meredith may have been McDreamied but you won't be Owen-ed or Burk-ed or any other man-ed– never again.
It's push, push with Evil Spawn instead – it's knock down drag outs over shower space and channel selection and what brand of dish soap to buy, and it's take no prisoners over chicken or turkey for dinner, as if they're not just different words for bird, and over what color toothpaste to use – as if the color even freaking matters - and people wager on your squabbles in the lunch room and occasionally have security on stand by and there are no sides in your bed since you own it and the whole place is a war zone, anyway.
It's still push, pull with your mother the next month, always has been, always will be, and she's the puller of all pullers and you assure her again that you've seen all the scans, and that your step father's heart attack was mild, and that she'll give him another one herself if she doesn't stop hovering over him like he's an invalid.
It's still push, push when you end the call and he's still sitting beside you and you glare as his eyes track your trembling hands and you have to push back harder and you can't be bleary eyed, you just can't, you won't, and sports news is still stupid and you rag on his teams and taunt him about being an over-grown stork and remind him of how much your mother would hate him and you're sure you've basically nagged him to sleep, slumped uncomfortably into the opposite corner of the sofa, before you wipe your eyes.
Callie can't take it anymore by the following month – the snarking from the living room and the squabbling in the kitchen and the shrieking from your bedroom – and she's not moved out ten minutes before the bathroom tiles are rattling again and you remind him that you simply don't accept mediocrity – that it's a sign of a sub-substandard work ethic - and that's the last thing that you can say for nearly an hour.
It pisses you off, that he left you speechless and gasping and trembling on the shower floor, so you pull off a rare scheduling coup with the newest Cardio attending and you compliment Alex on being a baby catcher that morning and smirk up at him in the gallery that afternoon as you open on a rare valve replacement, sure that the angry red and blue and black rainbow that still streaks his torso is now glowing green with envy.
Mere's trying again and it's coming up on a year and you roll your eyes whenever any one mentions the up-coming memorial service and you snark with him about being a rock star surgeon with a gun to your head - while he was flat on his back, screaming - and about being hard core when others were freaking out because – hey – someone has to set the universe back right on its axis, and as Chief Resident, that's your job.
The ceremony gathers and disperses and you mutter something about wilted lilies and a polished slab of chiseled marble and Meredith heads off to a surgery with McDreamy and Alex heads off to the NICU with Arizona and you return to cardio for rounds.
No one shows up for lunch but you get a frantic call from Lexi an hour later saying that Meredith is still in surgery, and she didn't know what else to do so she called you instead, and you find him crouched on the supply room floor, folded into a tight rocking ball and staring blankly at boxes of rubber gloves and cases of paper towels.
You're not pullers, neither of you, and you don't know where to push at the moment and you're half sure that he'll shatter if he's jostled, so you sit down on the floor across from him, legs folded beneath you, and you wonder idly if you're perched above the blood that edged toward him as he crawled to the elevator that was almost his coffin.
You stay there for nearly an hour and you don't watch him because he's him and you're you and you ignore every in-coming page and this probably isn't the time to tell him that you peed on a stick that morning, and that it's definitely his, and that you want it - all of it - and that he'll have hell to pay if the kid turns out to be an Evil Spawnlett, or ends up in state school - and that you'll use whatever color toothpaste he wants but the dish soap has to be Lemon Joy and you're not going over that again so he'd better just get used to it – all of it.