Lexie opens up to Mark. (Written for the prompt: gray).
Here's the thing. She can't always be peppy. It just doesn't work that way, even for an ex-prom queen.
But somehow she still feels bad when Mark comes home and finds her huddled in a blanket, sipping at scotch she doesn't even like, and crying until her eyes are red and sore but still full of tears.
"Hey." He sits down next to her on the couch, taking the alcohol away from her and pulling her into a hug. "What's wrong, beautiful?"
She tries to pull herself together. "I'm . . . I'm sorry. I just . . . the intern exam." It doesn't work.
She's supposed to be the optimistic one in all this; but today, she can't . . . she just can't.
He leans back to get a better look at her, brushing a little damp hair away from her face. "Lexie," he says, misunderstanding. "You have a photographic memory. You have that thing in the bag."
"Not the exam," she says. "The day. Tuesday."
The problem with a photographic memory is you remember all kinds of things you don't want to, as well as the things you need. She pushed it down for the sake of the test. But now that's, as he says, in the bag, there's nothing to push it down for and she can't. She doesn't want to.
A year ago today she sat in the car her mother used to drive, waiting for her father to emerge from saying drunken, hurtful words to Meredith. A year ago today she dug up a dead cat like a crazy person. Because she was crazy – with grief and dislocation and sheer disbelief at the way her life had suddenly broken in pieces. A year ago today she stood in the rain, in a cemetery and watched them bury her mother and she never got to say goodbye.
She can remember every moment, every raindrop, every sigh her father made, and when Molly cried on her shoulder, and the feel of the earth in the back yard. She can remember it all. Like it was yesterday. Like, in fact, it was today.
"She died," she murmurs into his chest, allowing the tears to fall. "And sometimes it's just too hard to be me. Sometimes I need to be a little . . ."
"Grey?" he offers, growling the word softly into her ear.
She loves him for it, because he gets a smile out of her while he's letting her know he understands.
"You can be broken, Lex," he says, serious again, all concern and firm, gentle hands. "You get a turn too."
He wraps the blanket around her and hugs her a little tighter, his body warm against hers, utterly protective.
She gives in. She can be broken sometimes. Because he loves her enough to let her.