KISSED.
remorse taints the still air of the room at a suffocating pace, it’s destructive qualities weighing heavily on their shoulders. one thing izzie hadn’t intended when she accepted the case request was to make things w o r s e with the man she once (& still) loved. years anger & regret had a way of plaguing good intentions, though. words previously left unsaid uncontrollably spilled out. 7 years, 84 months, 4,368 weeks, 30,576 days, 733,824 hours, regardless of however the hell you looked at it, that amount of time gave them both countless, precious minutes to ponder what they should have said. all of those pre-planned speeches went out the window when she saw that face again, perched over a child’s bed with a little salt & pepper in his hair paired with a compassionate look of warmth on his features.
agitation continuously bubbled on his features, daring to EXPLODE at any second. his posture remains defensive, something the blonde had expected from the get-go. building walls was one of alex’s most prominent attributes. she realized over time that he didn’t build walls to keep people out, but he did it to see who cared enough to knock them down. she wipes the stray tears with the back of her hand, eyes retreating to the floor to avoid his icy gaze. almost makes up for the fact that you didn’t. the comment chills her to the core, figure stiffening at the brash bump of their shoulders. she doesn’t dare respond. instead, she waits for a few moments in the lounge before bracing herself & returning to the hallway in the opposite direction.
it took everything in her not to lash out at the curious bystanders. some of them were familiar faces, most not. nonetheless, izzie spent the remainder of the workday in fits of rage & soul-crushing desolation. coming back was a mistake. a big, fat, ugly mistake that set her back about six years on the ‘moving on’ scale. she lashes out unrelentingly at the residents, nurses, & even the patient’s parents. projecting her personal anguish into her work was something only alex karev could cause her to do.
hours after her grueling shift ended & two vodka tonics later, she finds herself sitting on a bar stool at joe’s, praying to whatever god was out there that the person she simultaneously really wanted to and really DIDN’T want to see wouldn't show up. maybe she would get lucky and he would be on-call. but if there was ONE thing the neurosurgeon KNEW, it was that alex liked to flush out a particularly stressful day by drinking, too. she had convinced herself that she simply came to the bar for nostalgia purposes, not as another last-ditch effort to try to repair the empty void in her heart left by her & alex’s nearly decade old decisions. nope, definitely not that. just as the tonic was polished off & she requested a refill, the bar door opened to unveil the man where all of her fears & hopes were packaged into one human being.
let’s be honest —- when has izzie stevens ever been called LUCKY?
the solitude of the nicu that had been sought out so that he might not run into izzie again only leaves him at the merciless whim of unrelenting thoughts as he tends to the infants in his care — thoughts that don’t seem to focus on anything but HER. tresses of pure gold have grown long since he last saw her, laughter lines noticeable now even when her expression is neutral. she no longer looks sick, and he wonders briefly at the state of her health before scolding himself and moving on to something else: her apology. because that’s what it was. an apology that he can’t bring himself to accept because if he does, there will be nothing keeping him from getting hurt again. once that surgery is performed, she’s gone. she isn’t sticking around for him. she’s just clearing her guilty conscience so that she can go on with her life without the weight of him holding her down anymore.
true to form, alex heads over to joe’s as soon as his shift ends to drink away the stress of the day. the sheer volume of people obscures her from his sweep of the place as he walks over to the bar. a bittersweet sigh of relief is let out before lips press themselves back into a line, the dimple on the left side of his face reserved for this very expression making itself prominent. ❛ just give me whatever’s on tap, ❜ he requests, settling on a stool. he’s not sure what draws him to glance down the bar — maybe it’s the flicker of movement that comes from some guy lifting his glass to his lips, maybe it’s just the curse of idleness — but umber hues fall upon the one person he’s trying to forget about for two damn seconds, too bright and sunny for such a dim room. it hurts his eyes to look at her for too long, so they quickly fix themselves on the shelves of liquor in front of him. ❛ actually, make that a double whiskey on the rocks — and keep ‘em coming. ❜
one drink turns into two, and then three, and then half of four, and pretty soon he’s warm all over and can’t quite think straight. (maybe he shouldn’t have downed so many doubles.) he keeps glancing over at her, able to brave the way her light burns a little longer every time with the onslaught of alcohol flooding his system. eventually he decides that there’s no point in just sitting here and waiting for — what? something to happen? he doesn’t even know why he bothered staying, let alone so long. money is left behind where he’d been sitting for what must have been an hour(?) and then he’s uncouthly pushing his way through people to get to the door, chorused by a lot of “watch where you’re going!”s. a pause.
there’s a reason people get their phones taken away when they’re as drunk as he is. they do stupid things, like text their exes about how much they’re missed and loved and hey, maybe we can make it work if we try again.
or, if you’re alex karev and your ex is right there in the bar with you, you decide to make your way over to her. psyche dredges up the distant, distant memory of their first date, when he stupidly didn’t kiss her, and then the next day when he dipped her off of her stool at this very bar and kissed her like he should have in the first place. his gesture now isn’t quite as grand. it’s clumsier when he sidles up between her and the guy next to her, when he brushes her hair behind her ear and cups her jaw in his palm, when his lips find her lips and pour all of the hurt and hatred and longing and love into this one, reckless kiss. he doesn’t know why he does it. maybe to make up for all the years of not kissing her, just like that first time. he’ll blame it on the alcohol in the morning, though. there are no words as he walks away again, somehow feeling both heavier and lighter.