A.N. Hey all! So this is my first time writing fanfiction in over a decade (I know, right?) so please bear with me. I love Meredith/Alex both as a friendship or romance, so had an idea to write a whole bunch of Merlex one-shots. They should be done in a format that means they can be read as continuous or alone, I'll specify in summaries if romance is involved or if it can be read as purely friendship for those who aren't fans of them as a relationship. They'll take place based from episodes, although likely won't be every episode, just ones I felt I could pull inspiration from. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Alex pulled his jacket tight around him and bit down on his thumb knuckle. Today had not been a good day. It had all started so well, with the fascination that was Annie.

Not only had she been insanely interesting from a medical standpoint, she was so lovely that when she smiled, your chest warmed. "And would it be possible for Alex to take me instead? I mean, he...He's just so fun to look at."... how could you resist such a sweet spirit? She didn't have a heart of gold, she was all gold. But then, even that had gone wrong.

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"Have you ever seen Alex like that? He actually seemed sincere."

Meredith knew a dangerous line would be crossed if she defended Alex too much. If what Izzie had to say was actually unfair, she would step in, but this was a casual observation that could have been made by anyone who watched Alex for more than five seconds.

It was endlessly infuriating to her that people made conclusions in their opinions of those who appeared even slightly tarnished on their exterior. Izzie and George were never going to be renowned for their surgical prowess, but they were hailed for their compassion and personable nature. It would shock people to know they could actually be the worst of humans when they wanted to be. Izzie had a cutting tongue and could hold a grudge like no one else Meredith knew. George may be sweet, but he played into that heavily and portrayed himself to be innocent a lot of the time, he had a serious victim complex and blamed the world for being against him. These were gripes that Meredith had with them both, and made their 'chosen family' union seem musty at times.

She realised that she hadn't actually responded, and needed to say something. It had to be something safe, innocuous.

"'Seemed' being the operative word."

Well, that worked.

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To anyone not in his own head, Alex appeared to lack the art of subtlety. Even now, he had chosen to have his sullen moment on a bench right in front of the entrance to the hospital, plonked down in perfect view of anyone coming in or out of those doors, when most people experiencing an emotional onslaught would have seeked shelter somewhere they couldn't be found. In reality, he was very talented and experienced at concealing truths he didn't want revealed, he had been doing it his entire life. With an upbringing like his, you had to master those skills.

Still, he found it hard to provide his brain with a filter between thought and speech when it came to others. His opinions of them often came spilling out a burst pipe. He supposed it was overflow, he had filled too much of the 'secrets' capacity of his mind with his own, there just wasn't room for anything else to stay in there. Despite what people thought, he never meant to cause hurt. If anything, his pain-filled existence made him feel protective of everyone else, even strangers, and gave him a need to provide them all with shelter, somehow it just got lost in translation. That's why he had managed to find room to hold the secret of him and Meredith - while he understood it as protection of her, he was able to keep it from making an escape from his lips.

He felt that way about his patients, too. He slipped up occasionally, but for the most part he managed to keep his opinions under wraps, He knew it didn't look that way, but if people understood the ratio between his thoughts and spoken words, they would see it. Unfortunately, he hadn't done that with Annie, to devastating consequences. He kicked the leg of the bench as his own words came back to haunt him. "Well, what I don't understand...is how a person lets it get like that. I mean, man, that is a whole lot of nasty." Why on earth would anyone say that about a person, especially one in their care?

But that wasn't the worst of it - "I don't know how she lives with herself." This vicious beast had leaped from within him, and he would never be able to hide from what he had done, and the impact it had. Those words would now live with him forever.

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"Since you're clearly uncomfortable with my decision in this case, it's probably best you don't scrub in."

Meredith felt as though she had been shot. She had really tried to carve out a success for herself here.

Entering Seattle Grace as 'Ellis Grey's daughter' was less a badge of honour that people thought it was, and more a noose around her neck. Any slight stumble and her feet would leave the ledge, the rope would restrict and she would lose the ability to breathe. She had to make her own name synonymous with respectability, someone whose medical knowledge and opinions were considered with dignity. Yet here was Derek Shepherd, shooting down the reputation she was trying to breed, simply because of his personal affiliations with her. She had to remember that ultimately, medicine was a race, and if you had to make sure someone else's race was run in order to cross the finish line, it was something that was done. She would never mean as much to him as his own reputation. Could she really blame him?

"It's a minor procedure. You won't be missed."

That one hurt, though.

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Annie's insistence on not having the surgery if Alex was present, was a sharp shock to him. He hadn't even considered the possibility that she had overheard his words, but the heat in her voice and determination was unpalpable and had made him squirm. This woman who earlier had been so admiring of him then wanted to be as far away as possible, and that had made him incredibly uncomfortable. Her eyes had been steely as she spat out "that's how I live with myself."

60%. That was what Burke had told him. If anything goes wrong, you are 60 percent more likely to be sued if you've offended the patient. For a passing second, he wondered if she would have taken this so painfully if he hadn't bothered trying to get close to her beforehand, buttered her up of sorts. Maybe not getting too close would have prevented this whole mess, she wouldn't have banned him from her surgery, and he would have been there to help save her. Really, he knew that wasn't true, he was just trying to find a way to comfort himself, but the truth wasn't comfortable.

Not realising that the microphone was switched on had not been the fatal error here, as much as he wanted to blame it on that. The bad move was saying the words, or even thinking them in the first place, being the part of himself that he hated the most. He wasn't in any position to be making judgements on anybody, and he hated when it was done to him, he should have lead by example. Instead, he had let his darkness consume that split second of his life, with dire consequences.

As he shifted himself around on the bench, wondering how long exactly his body was going to allow him to sit here in the cold, Alex noted that while it had hurt people before, this was the first time his demons had actually killed someone.

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Meredith could feel the light of a promising medical career burning out within her. The worst part of it was that as she tried to reach out for someone to balance on, it backfired completely. The one person she knew wanted to help, couldn't speak because of her own demands that things remain neutral in front of people they knew. All Alex could do was gaze up at her every now and again with that look in his eyes, the one that told her if she needed to seek shelter with him at another time, he would be there, but that he was desperate to reach out to her now and was using all of his inner restraint not to do so.

Then, there was George. Attempting to ask her out in his fumbling way would no doubt attract sympathy for him, poor George and his failure at getting a woman to look at him. She was his friend, and if it were anyone else he was asking instead of her, she would probably have felt the sympathy too. Right now, she resented him turning her into an object of affection when she was vulnerable, he was no better than any other man and if anything, this was a really sly move. Why do men have to come crawling out of the woodwork like they are trying to catch prey when the woman they desire is weakened?

Right on cue, her pager beeped. Saved by the bell, she made her excuses to escape and as she was leaving, she could swear she heard Alex say to George, "Dude."

She knew what that meant. George would take it as pity, of course he would. She knew Alex was really reprimanding him, both for pouncing and for coveting his person. Of course, he couldn't say any of that.

As much as she had wanted to escape that conversation, the place she ended up wasn't much better when Bailey gave her a total dressing down. "You see this, what's happening right here? This is the problem with you sleeping with my boss. Not whether or not you know him before, but how it affects my day. And me standing here talking to you about your sex life affects my day. And the longer this little fling goes on, the more favors you get over the others, who are fighting tooth and nail just to make it through this program without any assistance. When those people start finding out what's going on and they don't want to work with you and talk to you or look at you, and they start bitching and moaning at me, the more it affects my day. So, no, Dr. Grey, I don't care what you know, or when you know it. Are we understood?"

This was the curtain call of any chance of building a graceful reputation as a doctor. Bailey's word was last, and her image of Meredith was shattered.

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This mess was entirely his own making. He had dug his own grave, as they say. That was why he ended up with Izzie, when she clearly didn't think much of him. In some last ditch attempt to improve his day, Alex made a joking offer to Izzie about having sex in a stairwell, and briefly flirted with some fascination of a woman in the locker room.

They weren't serious attempts. Honestly, Alex didn't know what he'd do if one day Izzie offered herself to him on a plate. She was hot, there was no denying that, Doctor Model could set many a pulse racing. Nevertheless, he would panic, for the same reason he didn't entertain bedding the woman in the locker room. Meredith would always be somewhere in the back of his mind. When he touched them, their skin would feel alien under his fingertips when he was so used to hers.

He didn't need calling out on what he had done today. He was fully aware of the mess he had made. To be called out in such a gross and undeniable way, being covered in vomit, was the universe just kicking him while he was down.

It suddenly dawned on Alex why he had chosen to sit on this bench. He was waiting for her to appear. He was desperate for Meredith to sprout from those doors like the darling buds of may and make him forget this day.

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Derek's excuses were falling on deaf ears. "You trying to protect me is why she's on the warpath. You can't do me favors. You can't ask me to scrub in when I haven't earned it."

"Okay, okay."

"And you can't treat me like crap when I haven't earned that either."

Meredith knew he was trying his best to raise her up, but every effort he made had her feeling more like a deflated balloon. Why did every move he made come across as hell bound on her downfall?

She couldn't give him an answer about getting herself out of this mess. Instead, she just left, and found herself in the gallery with Alex.

"How did she live like that?"

"Watch what you say. You never know who's listening." She scowled at his comment. She was genuinely questioning how this woman had got by, clearly in so much discomfort. His words had been harsh for no reason. Now, he was laughing at George, and despite her earlier annoyance at him she suddenly felt defensive. That was her family.

"Are you really as shallow and callous as you seem?" She knew the real answer, because she knew the real Alex, but right now she felt pissed.

She thought she saw that impact him. "Oh, you want to go out for a drink later and hear about my secret pain?" Now, he knew they didn't do that. What was he thinking asking her that, here at work? It was an unspoken rule, that he was now breaking.

She brushed him off with some light flirty banter. Unfortunately, he took that as an invitation, and she had to tell him she was seeing someone.

"Look, if you don't want to go out with me, just say so. No need to lie." She could tell she had stung him. As much as she needed to shut this down, for her own sanity and for his benefit that he couldn't yet see, she really had to be honest with him.

"Oh, okay. Well, I don't want to go out with you. But I think I really might be seeing someone."

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He kept his eyes fixated on the door in desperation. Please, give me that drink to hear about my secret pain. It didn't need to be said in words, she would know in his touch and could comfort him with carnal behaviour rather than gentle handling.

Even though he had created this awful day for himself, fate had a part to play. Why else would the battery have died on his pager? Izzie had opened a heart bedside because he had not been reachable, he couldn't help but think that things were working against him. He couldn't deny though, that he deserved what she said to him. "You are hateful! You are a hateful, hateful, lazy, arrogant, hateful man! Hateful!"

That wasn't all. Running into Annie's OR with the blood needed, just after Shepherd had called time of death, was the fates conspiring against him. That moment of devastation, the inability to save her and her dying thinking people thought of her in those disgusting ways, would now be permanently etched onto his soul. Much in the same way as Meredith had done.

When George asked if he had seen her, Alex actually felt sorry for him. George needed to let her go, it was never going to happen, and he told him to save himself the misery. George couldn't see the fact that Meredith was seeing someone, wouldn't believe it. Alex knew he felt, for as much as he was telling him, he was also telling himself. He needed to let her go.

So, why was he still sat here waiting on her to save him from this terrible day?

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Meanwhile, Meredith wandered towards Derek's trailer, the whole time captivated by his eyes. They way they shined, they weren't piercing like Alex's, more like a warmth that spread over her, it reminded her of the sunrise.

"I, um, know this place where there's an amazing view of sunrise over the ferryboats." They they were, shining again. If she could bottle that, she would make millions. Speaking of bottles, she pulled a bottle of wine out of her bag, gesturing it towards Derek. No matter how she tried, she couldn't get away from him.

"I have a thing for ferryboats."

Unless, of course, he offered her a way through instead of out.

"I remember."