Winter Machine's prompt; Meredith and Alex's twisted season 2 relationship.

"I feel like one of those people who are so freaking miserable that they can't be around normal people. Like I'll infect the happy people. Like I'm some miserable, diseased, dirty ex-mistress."

"Here's to dreamy married boyfriends." she says, slamming the glass down, a smile she doesn't feel spreading across her numb lips.

"Here's to not dead-dead heart patients," he replies, grinning sloppily. "And here's to -"

"That's enough, guys." Joe says, uneasy. "I called you a cab."

He scoops them, slippery and giggling, into the dark yawning belly of the cab; she lets the dark swallow her up as she curls nauseous against the door.

At least now he can't see her, and now she can't see the pity drip from his eyes.

Not that he has any right. He's as miserable as she is.

"Where to?" the driver asks and somehow they're bumping along an unfamiliar road.

She moans when her head catches the hard glass and he cups a hand around it, eyes glittering.

"Watch yourself."

"Nice whorehouse," she smirks as she dumps her coat on the floor. There's nowhere else to put it. Cristina would gloat about being right.

"You fit right in." he flips back and then she's silent until he presses a sweating glass into her hand, liquid sliding cool and bitter down her throat.

He watches her drink, refills her glass, but doesn't touch a drop himself.

"Come on," she urges. "It makes you feel better."

It does, she feels numb, wrapped up in cotton that fills her mouth and muffles her ears, like nothing can touch her now. No one can touch her now.

"I'm good." he says, but his eyes don't look at her.

"I'm knitting." she informs him, peeling off the sweater that clings stickily to her skin.

Just so he knows.

"I'm sober." he says, kicking at her chair.

They laugh.

"You think she's pissed at me?" he asks, studying her intently as she leans over the toilet.

There's no need to ask who he means.

"You screwed another girl when you couldn't get it up with her," she says around a mouthful of regret. "Girls don't like that."

"What do you like?"

She stares at him in a confused moment that's over when it clicks into place in his head, how weird that just sounded.

"Not you, you." he says, swiping a hand across his sweaty face in a way that's almost cute. He has a thing, she notices, for saying words twice, like they mean more that way.

Dead - dead.

You - you.

"I meant normal girls. In general."

"I wouldn't know." she says, and he shakes his head.

"Of course you wouldn't."

"Do you think we'll get over it?" she asks when she's curled on his bed in a sweatshirt she doesn't remember putting on.

"What?"

"This...miserable thing. Like, will we ever be able to be with normal people? Not infect them?"

"We should probably just stay here." he suggests.

Here, is a tiny cluttered apartment whose walls close in on her every time she turns around, clothes and books tumbling across the floors but somehow she feels more free than she has in weeks.

"Sound good to me."

"We're the same." he tells her, his hand soothing against her heavy head. "You don't like it, but we're the same."

He's right - they are the same.

Broken and brilliant, mad and miserable.

Hiding.

Only they can see each other, behind the masks of normalcy that have fallen off tonight.

And he's doubly right - she doesn't like it.

She wants to be more , she wants to be better, than him.

But, stripped bare, they're the same. No one wants them; they need no one.

"We have each other."

She doesn't realise she's said it out loud until he freezes around her.

"I want to forget." she mutters.

"The tequila didn't do that for you?" he inquires, a smile as slight as her remaining dignity curving his lips.

Why is she noticing his lips.

"I might," she says ruefully. "I might get Alzheimers, and-"

And then the story she always edits so carefully is spilling uncensored out of loose lips, and he looks at her the same as before.

He doesn't judge.

His mother is schizophrenic.

"Maybe we'll land up in the same loony bin." he says casually but she sees his hands tremble.

"Maybe."

Maybe this is wrong.

Maybe she'll be sorry in the morning.

She's always sorry in the morning.

Maybe they're ruining things.

But it feels so right.

It feels right to lean in, press her buzzing lips to his, dig desperate fingers into his shoulders when he jerks away - don't - but he wants it too.

She knows he wants it, they all want it, it's all they want.

They're broken pieces; together, they're whole.

Together they're good, explosive, mindblowing; initial hesitation forgotten, he covers her, fills her, drowns her and blissfully, she forgets.

She's sorry in the morning, sore and sorry, and they hurry down hallways, heads down, not looking.

She wants more and knows she shouldn't; she's always been reckless so she drags him into a room when no one's looking - what a lie, they're always looking - and makes him make her forget.

Maybe she shouldn't have because now he has a taste for this medicine; hooked to her drug, he demands more than she's ready to give, coaxing with lips and tongue and hands until she's melting at his feet.

They don't tell anyone.

She ignores Derek unless absolutely necessary, one morning he squints at her wrists as they scrub in.

His eyes are so blue, blue like the sky and she watches herself falling out of them, hurtling to the ground.

What happened he asks, the marks on her skin screaming loud.

Nothing she says, licks her lips, tastes the lie.

It's just that - nothing. It's going nowhere. It's just means to an end, two friends helping each other through.

Just getting through.

She says it back to herself when she's bent double that night, panting in rhythm with him.

Just getting through.

The drug was never supposed to cause pain of its own, though, and now she can't stand to look at him because what she feels is never mirrored in his eyes.

It's not love, she reasons.

You don't use the people you love so shamelessly.

What are we doing he asks once, as she slumps over him, spent.

Whatever you want she purrs, tongue darting, and he stops talking.

Cristina eyes her suspiciously, she wants to know where she is all night.

Izzie says Alex is almost human now. She might be in love with him.

She presses him into a wall that night, hard enough to bruise, marking him.

It's not love and he's not hers but it's not fair, either.

She sits in the tub, warm water lapping at her body, sliding down the cool surface until the stained ceiling ripples above her and when he finds her, his fingers press down against her chest for just a terrifying moment before he hauls her out, spluttering with rage.

Do you like that he screams in her face, little droplets flecking her skin. You wanna feel like that forever?

Do you want to die?

He wraps her in a thin towel and strong arms, whispering apologies and threats into hair that smells of him.

I don't want to lose you he says when he thinks she's asleep.

She wants to tell him he never really had her.

She never really had him; she watches him stalk down lonely hallways, trailed by the wife who's quickly tiring of him.

She wonders why she doesn't just let go. There's nothing really special about him anyway.

Not worth pining over.

Izzie flings bitter words in his face and he's angry, brimming with it, wound tight as a spring and still she's not afraid, not when he slams her into the shower wall, stringing bruises along her spine, not when his teeth sink into her shoulder.

They're the same, and it always passes. She knows this better than anyone.

His fingers are rough and insistent, everywhere at once, she's boneless around him and his skin is heavenly against hers but his lips only ever skim the corner of her mouth.

He pushes her away when she turns her head towards him - I want it to be special, he says.

His lips go other places but never her mouth, his tongue is everywhere but she only hears the lies he tells her.

You love him he whispers hot and moist into her ear, fingers caressing her throat.

She does. No idea why, but she does, and instead of answering she reminds him he loves someone else too.

It's been months now, in secret, his house, cars, under bridges and toilets and places she never imagined, never in the hospital, never her house.

It's their secret, the two of them, and they don't tell because if they do it might be true and people might believe it and that would be wrong, because it's not love.

They don't tell, and the heart patient dies.

He stops calling, stops coming; she's not sore anymore but somehow it hurts all the more now.

The wife gives up and leaves and he comes back, sad and pleading and she stops calling and she stops coming and she's happy now except she imagined it would feel better, back when they used to lie naked on rooftops, blowing smoke and wishes into cold night air.

But she has everything she told him she wanted, and he has everything he thought he wanted, so they pretend to be happy.

They watch each other, waiting to see who will crack first, drop the mask and lose the pretences.

They're the same, so they don't.

And years later when the one he wanted is gone and the one she wanted is dead, they look at each other and think about what might have been.

It's a pretty picture.

Too dark? Too confusing?Leave me some prompts, and let me know!