Disclaimer: Very much not mine
From the moment Aaron Karev enters the world, Alex is a big brother. His mother passes him the blanket wrapped bundle and a pinched little baby face peers up at him. The bundle squirms and begins to cry and Alex quickly hands it back to his mother. Babies, he decides, are not his thing.
Alex can't do the midnight crying, but when Aaron gets a little older, Alex does the best he can to be a good big brother. He makes sure that there's food when their mom is dead behind the eyes and won't come out of her room. As he continues to get older and get bigger he takes the hits from his dad for the both of them.
When he joins the wrestling team and bulks up he finally rams his fathers face through a wall.
With Aaron that's the kind of thing being a big brother means to him. It means interfering in fights, making sure food is being eaten, and making sure that school is as safe as possible. He's hands off with most of Aaron's homework but he makes sure the kid can at least drive. It's before he's technically legal, but it's when Alex has the time.
Not long after that he's a big brother again when Taylor shows up.
This time he's fifteen and he knows how the drill works. He helps with changing and making formula, and he's the one who's making most of the money to make sure they can afford a babysitter. He has to because his mom is farther gone than ever.
At least Aaron is twelve now, and starting to be able to take care of himself. Thanks to a favor from the high school football coach who thinks Alex is a good kid, Aaron is playing little league football, and they receive clothing donations that the coaches kids have out grown. His wrestling coaches' wife even digs out a pile of old baby clothes for Taylor.
Being Taylor's big brother means something different from being Aaron's. Being Taylor's big brother means occasionally playing tea party, and working out the cheapest possible way to procure a Barbie doll. He learns to survive on minimal sleep and read fairy tales. Taylor cares about school when she starts going so Alex tries to teach her to read.
He learns how to braid hair and put on band aides. In general, he gets good at patching things up. He cleans and covers cuts, he administers advil and Tylenol and cold meds, he checks for fevers and buys cough drops. With a little help from sports coaches and the school nurse he figures out what meds you can take combined with what over how long a period of time, and he figures out the best way to deal with sprains, fractures, and bruises.
Alex starts figuring out that medicine has an answer for almost every problem with a body. Even the pills his mother takes seem to help. Now at least she can work sometimes, and he isn't the only one making dinner at night. The cost of the pills serves another purpose too, it tells him that being a doctor pays well.
The fact that medicine and science stick in his head combined with the fact that dissections just don't bother him at the level they probably should makes him think that med school is going to have to come after college. It'll be expensive, but the grades he manages to pull combined with his test scores get him in to state school without too much debt.
He still lives at home and he still takes care of absolutely everything he can because Aaron is still a kid and Taylor is six. She's still wrapped in pink and sometimes runs around with fairy wings. Aaron isn't so in to school, but at least the kid is making money at the auto shop in town. Alex worries about all of it because the way he sees it that's his job. He's the big brother and he's got to do everything he can.
Alex gets through medical school and through a shit load of luck he qualifies for one of the countries' best internship programs. It's in Seattle, but it pays. The money isn't great but the promise is. Besides, the money will still be more than he would make anywhere else. It's money he can send home to keep things running. That's what they need more than anything to keep the meds coming for Mom and keep everything else running.
So he goes. He scoops Taylor up and spins her around to make her laugh so she's not so sad about his leaving. She's getting to be too big for that but Alex does it anyway because she used to ask him to, and doing what your little sister wants is part of being a big brother. His mom is in a fog so he skips her and goes to Aaron. He looks at him seriously for a moment and says, take care of her. Your her big brother to.
Then he walks out with all of his things fitting inside a duffle bag.
When he gets to Seattle he ends up being a big brother again. It's not biological and it's not immediate, but it does end up happening.
The first time he meets Meredith Grey he insults her and she gets her own back by thoroughly slamming him in front of the Chief. It's almost artful in execution because she jumps in right when Dr. Webber has opened the floor to other opinions when his isn't panning out. She literally slams him in to a wall further on in time when he's on her last nerve. Alex could push her off, but he just sticks with being an asshole verbally. Having a little sister makes you not so keen on punching out little blonde girls.
Dr. Derek Shepherd sums it up fairly well after he breaks in and pulls her away from him. Shepherd tells him to go before he lets Meredith beet him to a pulp with her tiny ineffectual fists. The fact that the Neurosurgeon uses Grey's first name pops a red signal in his head but he ignores it. He's already got problems from trying to pay off student loans and send money back home.
The next red flag pops when he's sitting next to Meredith in the OR gallery watching Shepherd operate. He asks her for a drink with a crap line that she calls him on with a bemused smile. He tells her to be honest with him when she says she doesn't want to go out with him and she shrugs. "Oh, okay. I don't want to go out with you. But I think I actually might be seeing someone."
Alex likes that she's honest when he confirms for her that it's not going to hurt his feelings or any crap like that. The fact that she looks down at Shepherd and smiles a little at his scrub cap covered in what looks like ferry boats doesn't escape his notice. He lets it go and does Meredith a little favor by telling O'Malley she's taken.
Alex doesn't really care when he finds out that Meredith and Shepherd were together. He doesn't even particularly care much when Shepherd's wife shows up. He even says so when Meredith asks him in the scrub room while she firmly shouts Shepherd down. He doesn't care because both of them are good doctors, and he's already had it irreversibly proved to him that people are pretty much a sum total of screw ups and bad choices.
At least, he's a mess of screw ups and bad choices. Meredith has never judged him for his so he resolves not to judge her for hers. The one thing he does do is tell her to stop saying she's fine. You've said that word so many times it doesn't even sound like a word anymore. He tells her because while he's screwed, Alex admits it to all the world and delivers plenty of warnings through being a jackass. Meredith is not fine, the least he can do for her is tell her that she doesn't have to be.
One day Meredith comes in a little late, telling Cristina that she had to take a cab because her car got a flat tire and she didn't have time to change it. Using the time he has after his shift ends, Alex goes to the house he's stopped by a couple times to see Izzie and opens the garage. He checks out the flattened tire, goes to the store and comes back with a new one. Alex jacks up the car, changes the tire, and checks the others before he leaves. He stores the key back under the eve and goes back to his place.
Alex tries not to think about why he did it, but ends up concluding that he was doing a favor for his friends. O'Malley, Cristina, Izzie, and Meredith all depended on that car on different levels to get them to work. A piece of him realizes that he's getting protective over Grey in a way that makes him think about Taylor. Two tiny blondes with bony fists.
He shuts the thoughts down quickly. He's already having trouble dealing with being a big brother to the people he doesn't have a choice over being a big brother to. Alex Karev does not need another little sister.
The pit of worry that opens up in his stomach while Grey has her hand on a bomb tells him that he might not have much of a choice about her either. As time goes on, he lets himself look out for her. She looks out for him to. Meredith is a drinking buddy who takes tequila like water and waits until he feels like venting his problems without forcing him in to it. He does the same for her a few times and the dynamic works because it's completely non judgy.
Meredith doesn't really expect much of anything from him, and he doesn't expect much from her. At the same time though, they are both undeniably there when it counts. They each ask if they need anything and both of them say no. She takes up knitting and Alex sits with her and eats Doritos.
Cristina has crept in on him to, but Alex doesn't worry about her so much. People should be afraid of Yang not the other way around. Meredith though, she's tough on an incredible level but she's still a tiny girl with even tinier fists. So he looks after her.
She helps him with Izzie, because Alex is actually trying to work out exactly how he can make that relationship work. Alex keeps out of it when the vet and the random string of guys comes along after Shepherd. He's also entirely too ready to beat up a guy who's technically his boss. Two guys actually if you count Burke, which Alex thinks he might have to. After all, if Yang asked him to he would to it.
He and Meredith have a lot in common. They're both a little twisted on the inside, and they both put up an outside layer for the sole purpose of keeping people from bothering them. On reflection, Alex thinks it's probably good that she never went out with him for that drink because the two of them are self destructive anyway and their luck is crappy enough when it comes to romantic relationships when the other person involved wants everything to go well.
In another life, maybe one where her mother gave a crap or one where his dad had never done drugs they would have worked out. In a life where at least one of them was bright and shiny having a romantic life together might have been a good idea. They are both pulled towards people who at least try to be lighter. It's why he tries with Izzie and Lexie, and it's why she's still stuck on Doctor McDreamy. As it is, it's probably good they're both screwed up. Misery loves company after all.
He offers to beat up Derek when Mere is freaking out about having kids because it seems like the appropriate response. He hasn't been home since Taylor was ten so he's not completely sure about appropriate protocol, but threats of bodily harm if Shepherd hurts her seem like they're probably appropriate. The nod that Derek gives him a few of the times that Alex fixes him with a glare for a warning makes him think that Shepherd already knows that the promise is there and hanging. In a way, Alex thinks Derek might appreciate that Meredith has extra people looking out for her.
Besides, if Alex is being a big brother to Meredith then Derek is definitely being a big brother to Lexie. Dr. Sloan, as weird as it is, kind of brother's Torres and Meredith is a sister to Yang and Lexie. Owen ends up in the mix to, and all together they're a weird kind of family. Without realizing it, Alex is a big brother again. More than that though, he's a big brother, and a little brother and a friend. This family knows what he expects, and he knows what they expect, and all together it's a role he doesn't have to think about to fill.
So, Alex doesn't interfere with Meredith and Dr. Shepherd. He watches from a little ways a way. He's ready to act if he has to but he knows that Meredith knows that he's there if she needs him. Yang is there to, and really she might get to Shepherd before he does if anything goes wrong. Owen would probably tell her the perfect way to get rid of the body to.
He watches through Shepherd's wife, Finn the veterinarian, the famous Alzheimer's mother, and the thing with O'Malley. Alex still watches through bombs and shootings and clinical trials. Through plane crashes, and multiple weddings and split ups among their friends, and a brief period of sex and mockery that Alex definitely wishes he didn't know existed.
As a big brother, Alex feels like he approves of Shepherd. It's a little backwards that he feels like he has any rights at passing approval on his boss, but those kind of boundaries pretty much vanished around the same time that the hospital's HR department officially gave up on trying to keep doctors from dating each other.
Derek Shepherd holds a good place in his mind. The placement improves drastically when Shepherd operates twice on Izzie's brain and gets her through it both times. He does it pro bono and Alex knows he did it as a favor or the two of them as much as it's a favor for Meredith. Shepherd hands over his credit card and lets Izzie plan her dream wedding because it makes her happy, and Alex has a feeling it's his idea when Meredith shows up on her wedding day and tells him it's his instead.
Shepherd lets him help build the deck for the house he planned with Meredith, and the very fact that that deck exists is another reason for brotherly approval. Building a house on a huge piece of land with one of the best views in Seattle for a girl speaks of being so stupidly and unchangeably in love that it's hard not to approve. Meredith is still dark and twisty on the inside but Shepherd is her optimism and so Alex just settles back and watches.
He helps the two of them adopt Zola, and he does it without hesitation. Shepherd is a big brother biologically four times over and treats every single kid he operates on him with a level of care and gentleness that tells Alex he's definitely going to be a good dad. Meredith for all her freaking out will be a good mom to so he tells her so. She'll be a good mom because she's already worried about weather or not she will be a good mom which is farther than either one of their mothers ever got with them.
He knows he was right when he sees the two of them with Zola. Being around kids and knowing which parents really care is something he gets used to working in Pediatrics. Changing over to peds is bizarrely easy for him, and Arizona tells him it's because he cares. Privately, Alex thinks he's just used to taking care of people.
Meredith and Derek are biological parents after the plane crash when everyone is starting to recover. Derek Bailey Shepherd enters the world through a cesarean section done in the dark in the middle of a huge storm and a power outage. Of course it's at the one point when Alex can't be there to do the procedure. He wasn't planning on going to watch Meredith give birth naturally but a C-Section he definitely would have rather showed up to help with than know some intern is doing it in the dark.
There are complications, which are almost expected because it's Meredith so of course it's not going to go according to plan. Bailey takes care of the splenic bleeding and Alex checks in to watch over little Bailey only to find that Derek hasn't stopped holding him. Derek looks up at him when Alex checks the baby and just says she told me not to leave him. Alex nods and tells him that Bailey is doing fine.
It's all he can do just then.
Derek and Meredith. The two of them have gone through every different level of emotional crap known to man and then discovered a few new ones and they're still together. It's kind of hopeful and Alex is hoping that maybe he and Joe can make something work that lasts a little like that.
He's still going to have to keep an eye on this whole job in D.C. thing. Alex doesn't know exactly how it's going to play out, but he does know what he'll do if he finds that Derek has gone to D.C. and Meredith is sitting on the couch with some crappy movie and a carton of ice cream.
First, Alex will swap out the ice cream for a bottle of tequila and change the crappy rom com to something where people are a bit more screwed up and violent. Then he'll sit with Meredith until she's done venting angrily. Then he'll wait until she's asleep to go and fire up his computer.
Shepherd may be fairly high up in his good books but if he's upset Mere then Alex won't hesitate to buy whatever cheep plane ticket he can find to get him to D.C. If Meredith asks him to, then there will be no miracle case/immune deficient/cancerous/diseased/other wise broken kid that will keep him from going to D.C. and kicking McDreamy's ass from the White House all the way back to the Space Needle.
That's the kind of thing big brothers do.
Alex Karev is an asshole to most people. He's impatient and he's screwed up. But he's also become a damn good doctor since starting this program.
He's also become a big brother again. Not as suddenly as it happened the first time but just as irreversibly.
Alex Karev is Meredith Grey's big brother for as long as she needs one, and he gets the feeling that that might mean forever.
A/N: So how was it? I hope I got Alex's personality and history right. I've always liked the sibling relationship between Meredith and Alex and I hope I captured it well. Besides, you hardly ever see Derek interact with Alex so I thought it might be interesting. Review for me!xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxxo