The house was pitch black by the time Meredith got home. No lights in the windows, just a car in her driveway, and nothing but silence. Someone was home, probably asleep, and she hadn’t a clue who it was. Izzie had been sitting in the pews when she left the church, George and Alex had both disappeared, Derek certainly wasn’t coming home…Derek who had decided he didn’t want to keep breathing for her. She was tempted to point out that she didn’t need help breathing before she met him.

She tried not to make noise when she came in, closing the door softly and locking it. It was late, after eleven, she had a feeling that she was the last one home tonight. Not the only one though, which mattered because even if whoever it was (probably Izzie) was upstairs sleeping it still meant she wasn’t alone in an empty house (Cristina was, and though she’d said she wanted it that way, she had seen the panic in her friend’s eyes as she faced reality). She didn’t want to be alone right now, not feeling the way she was.

But it wasn’t Izzie and she knew it the minute she heard the sound of glass being set down on the coffee table. Heavy, like the sound of a half full bottle of tequila (years of drinking, of doing this exact same thing, taught her this). Izzie didn’t cope with pain and crumbling walls with alcohol as much as she did with baking flour and frosting. No, this was something else entirely, and she wasn’t surprised to find Alex seated on the couch, in the dark, glass in hand.

“Bad day?” She asked, as a way to announce her presence, and because she didn’t know. She could assume from the drinking but she still felt like asking, thinking maybe he’d tell her what was up. Meredith preferred to focus on someone else’s problems anyway.

He nodded, not looking up at her, “Going to take a guess and say the same for you. Want to compare.”

“Not especially.” She replied, crossing the room to collapse into the couch, next to him.

“Hope you don’t mind…” Alex lifted his glass slightly and then emptied it of its contents.

“Honestly I’m just surprised you even bothered to use a glass.” She observed, sitting up and grabbing the bottle, tilting it back and taking a gulp, realizing she hadn’t drunken straight from the bottle since the time Izzie had decided to throw that extremely out of hand party. She leaned back into the arm of the couch, knees bent, bare feet pressing against the soft denim of his jeans. “The wedding didn’t happen.”

He looked vaguely surprised, and she would’ve expected more of a reaction from him if he wasn’t three sheets to the wind. “She bail?”

“No, Burke did.” She told him, which got a slightly better reaction. “So that light at the end of the tunnel kind of the tunnel kind of turns out to be a train.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything less.” He said, and it was depressing, but true. After the year they’d all had why would anyone expect a happy ending? He fingered the rim of his empty glass, then, “Ava left.”

And that was the problem with getting close to patients, she thought. They always left, one way or another. “I left Derek.”

They were trading off, each countering the other. That way they didn’t have to think about how bad their own lives were, because it turned into almost a game of sorts. No time for pity. “She wanted me to give her a reason to stay. To not go back.”

“He wanted me to give him hope, to tell him there was some reason to try and make this relationship work.”

“She wanted me to tell her to leave her husband. That’s insane, right?”

“Right,” she agreed. “He actually said put me out of my misery. Like he was a dog or something. I mean who does that?”

“Exactly.” He paused. “I would’ve though. I would’ve given her a reason. But I kept thinking she’s got a life with this guy, a family. He’s not a bad guy, he isn’t screwed up. I’m not the good guy, I’m not stable, I don’t have anything to offer her. I’m not –“

“Good enough?” She finished for him, and he nodded. Somberly, she added, “That’s pretty much how I feel most of the time.”

“Well then why did you spend this entire year moping over McDreamy if you didn’t think you were worth it?” Alex asked, and really he was too drunk for such deep conversation.

That really was the question wasn’t it. Why all the heartbreak if she didn’t think this was a forever type of thing. “You always want what you can’t have.”

“So now we’re quoting songs.” He responded, and she smiled, though it didn’t quite meet her eyes. “You’ll get him back you know. You two are on one day and off the next.”

“This time it’s different.” It wasn’t that she was being overly dramatic. Far from it actually; she was serious. “I used to have this idea of the guy I was going to marry. And then I met Derek and everything about him was perfect, except it turns out perfect takes a lot of work and I just…I can’t tell him that I want to be with him because I don’t even know that.” The fact that he was still paying attention, even though she was just ranting now, her voice growing louder as she got going, was something like a miracle. “How is this not driving you crazy?”

“My sister had a love life that was more fucked up than yours.” He seemed to rethink that sentence. “If that’s possible. Point is I’m used to it the bad breakup rant with ice cream thing. Or, in your case, tequila.”

“I’m not nearly as drunk as you are.” She pointed out, although she had been into the wine at Cristina’s. Not much, but enough to make things a little more tolerable. Still, it didn’t compare to him. “Why don’t you ever talk about your sister?”

He looked grave, dark eyes filled with a past he didn’t want to let out to play. “Same reason you don’t like to talk about your mother. Or tell anyone she was in a home with no memory of the past few decades.”

“Enough said.” She let it go.

“You remind me of her.” He didn’t.

She nearly giggled, but decided it might not be the right time for that. “Seriously?”

“Why’s that so hard to believe?”

“One, because I’ve never heard anyone say that towards me. Two, because guys don’t usually go for the type of girls that remind them of their sisters.”

Confusion crept across his face. “What makes you think I’d go for you?”

“You pretty much asked me out that one time.” He still didn’t know what she was talking about. “When we first started our internship. And I said I was seeing someone and you thought I just told you that to get out of going out with you. I wasn’t lying.”

“How the hell did you remember that?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t even know I did until I thought about it. So you did go for me. Once.”

“I never said I still wouldn’t.”

This wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t gone and said that. If he hadn’t put ideas in her head, ideas that someone like her, who dealt like her, didn’t need to hear. But he did. And she leaned over, ignoring the fact that her knees digging into the couch cushions couldn’t be good for the furniture, and kissed him.

It wasn’t a fairy tale kiss, and it wasn’t necessarily the best she’s ever had (it was close; not that she’d ever tell anyone that, mostly because she’d never tell anyone about this at all) but it was full of all kinds of promises as for what the rest of the night could hold. His fingers slipped under her thin shirt, grazing her sides lightly, but stopping at her ribs. Stopping altogether because it was him who pulled back and gave her that look. Him that had to be the adult per say; the responsible one.

“This is what we do.” She told him, face inches away from his, and the close proximity, mixed with the darkness meant she couldn’t see his eyes. Couldn’t see what he was thinking. “We sleep with inappropriate people.”

It isn’t a lie. They’ve both had their share of wrong person at the wrong time syndrome. She slept with George to cope with Derek and with her own father. He slept with Olivia because the idea of commitment of any kind scared him (at least that was her guess, and she had a feeling that she was right on the money). They both didn’t put a lot of stock in love and sex having anything to do with each other either, which was why they were in the situation they were in now.

Sex they were used to, it was what they knew. Love wasn’t. It was where they got confused; it was where they slipped up. They didn’t know how to deal with it because they never had an example to draw from. They certainly couldn’t look at their own families. Neither knew how to deal with actual feelings other than to push them away. When there was a chance they might be mutual, that they might have a chance to finally finally get that happy ending, they intentionally ruined it because it was easier that way.

And that was also why she was sprawled out on the couch, half on top of him, as he removed her shirt, tracing his fingers along the outline of her bra, the contact making her shiver, and grind into him as if to say pick up the pace. He ignored her needy movements, probably for the sake of screwing with her head, holding out because he was Alex, and he was an asshole a good part of the time.

“You realize the longer you draw this out the longer it is before you get off right?” She breathed against his lips, her hand ghosting over his groin briefly enough to give him a taste of his own medicine.

“Much more fun this way.” He muttered, and she knew he didn’t mean to but he bucked against her, groping blindly for the clasp to her bra, as their lips collided again.

“Bastard.” She moaned and she felt his fingers slip under the waistband of her jeans, undoing them and pushing them down and off her body, ending up somewhere around her knees. She kicked them off the rest of the way, and switched focus to his own pants (he’d lost his shirt somewhere along the way, and really she couldn’t tell you when).

The brief thought that someone could walk in and see this invaded her mind and she almost pulled back and disentangled herself from him. Then he pushed into her and that thought was pretty much gone. She didn’t care if Izzie or George or Derek walked in. At the moment she didn’t think she’d even care if they joined in (not that that was normally a problem in her mind or anything).

It was over quickly, but she didn’t think they’d really set this up to be some kind of marathon session. On the couch in her living room wasn’t the most comfortable place (or the most creative but still). His thumb slipped down between them, finding her clit and winding her up just enough so that she was convulsing around him seconds later, any sound she would have made muffled by his lips. He groaned against her mouth when he came and she arched into him, short nails digging into his shoulders as she pulled him even closer.

“You’re kind of running out of inappropriate people to sleep with now.” Alex said, after they’d both gotten their bearings back, when ecstasy wore off.

“I can improvise.” She replied, her eyes seeking out his. “But thanks.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it.” He responded, dryly, and she laughed. “No, seriously, don’t. People already think you’re a slut, you don’t need the hospital to know this too.”

“And you aren’t? Mr. Patient Zero of the Seattle Grace syph epidemic.”

“Why’s it always got to come back to that with you people?” She didn’t need to see his face to know he was rolling his eyes. “You never give O’Malley any crap about it.”

“George didn’t sleep with a patient in the bathroom of Joe’s bar.” She felt him start next to her, and she muffled a giggle. “You thought nobody knew about that didn’t you.”

“I have four words for you: exam room during Prom.”

“Shut up.”