Fools in love, well are there any other kinds of lovers?
Fools in love, is there any other kind of pain?
Everything you do, everywhere you go now
Everything you touch, everything you feel
Everything you see, everything you know now
Everything you do, you do it for your baby
Love your baby, lobe your baby
Love your baby, love...
Fools in love, are there any creatures more pathetic?
Fools in love, never knowing when they've lost the game
Everything you do, everywhere you go now
Everything you touch, everything you feel
Everything you see, everything you know now
Everything you do, you do it for your baby
Love your baby, love your babyLove your baby, love...
Burke and Cristina had been officially a couple for two months and nine days when he told her he loved her. She said she loved him too. Well, there was a little more to it than that.
The on-call room was small and cluttered; full of detritus accumulated from busy lives. Burke reclined on the low bed, his arms behind his head, watching Cristina as she searched for her clothing. Someone with no tact, like O'Malley, might have asked what need they had of on-call rooms, now that they unofficially co-habited Burke's apartment. Burke would have merely quirked an eyebrow and smiled a scornful smile had anyone dared ask that question. On-call rooms, it now seemed to him, were built for the sole purpose of trysts. Might as well not deprive them of the reason behind their existence.
Cristina was getting frustrated now in her attempt to locate her underwear, Burke could tell by the way her hand raked repeatedly through her hair, which resembled some sort of large bush. This comparison led him to chuckle, which earned him a glare from his tense girlfriend.
"Will you still be laughing when Bailey pages me and I stroll out of here completely naked?" Her hands were on her hips by now, and he adopted a suitably chastised expression. When she bent to look under the bed he allowed the smile to return to his face.
She emerged, triumphant, and set about restoring herself to a semblance of order. As she was attempting to wrestle her hair back into its clip her pager beeped.
"See," she said with a smirk. "Two minutes earlier and Seattle Grace would have gotten quite a show." She moved towards the door, pausing to retrieve her sweater and cell phone from their place forgotten on the floor.
"And that is not their show to see," Burke replied, still smiling. She was out the door by the time she replied.
"Damn right." The door was closing before he answered.
"I love you." The door stopped closing. He could see Cristina's face peeking back in, dark eyes wide, mouth open.
His pager went off, the particular code that was for emergencies. He only had time to see Cristina glance at her insistent pager as well before rushing to the scene of the crisis.
As he walked quickly down the crowded halls of Seattle Grace what he had just said was rattling around in his brain. He couldn't explain why he had told Cristina that he loved her. He did, he would be the first to admit it, but still. He knew her, knew that she would not welcome this admission, would in fact avoid it as much as humanly possible. Which would normally mean avoiding him, but since they were both being summoned to the same surgery that seemed an unfulfillable goal.
Dr. Preston Burke had a reputation around Seattle Grace as the consummate professional – a doctor whose primary goal was saving lives, not airing his private business in the confines of the OR. Thus it came as a surprise to the many spectators that he allowed his argument with Dr. Yang to stray so far from the professional realm.
What began as a hissed conversation over the patient, first her demand as to what, exactly, he had meant by what he said earlier, and his reply that he meant exactly what he said, that he loved her and had for some time, spiraled into sharp comments for the whole OR to hear, which culminated in his exclamation that (not shouted, but close enough) he loved her, dammit, and she could take it or leave it, but that was how he felt. Her response was to not respond at all.
With barely a horrified glance for Burke Cristina fled, not even hearing Dr. Bailey's sympathetic "you're excused, Yang." The door slammed in her haste to escape. The other occupants of the OR took that opportunity to direct their gazes everywhere except for Dr. Burke, whose frustration radiated from his entire body.
Were it not for Burke's reputation, the OR would have devolved at that point to middle school gossip and giggling. As it was, the looks passing between the nurses and the anesthesiologists were significant enough. And the observation gallery – the laughter was muffled and the conversations were whispered, but their attention was obvious. Drs Grey and Stevens tried to be subtle in their rush towards the door, and mostly failed miserably. One of the scrub nurses could be heard to remark to her neighbor that this was even better than the Shepherd/Grey triangle.
Anyone looking for Dr. Cristina Yang would have found her pacing the east wing of Seattle Grace – a place few surgeons ever had any reason to visit, and where her presence drew a few curious glances but no real scrutiny. No one was looking for her, however. Her friends, busy with their own patients, thought that she was either talking to Burke or wanted to be left alone. Since she had yelled at them to leave her alone, this was a valid assumption. She would have to emerge eventually, of course, but better to give her an hour or two to sulk and rage and spill her vitriol at other undeserving subjects. Burke, who could have been assumed to have been looking for her, was doing his own pacing, although in the west wing of the hospital rather than the east. His presence there drew more stares than Cristina's in the east wing, perhaps because the story of the OR argument had reached there.
There were, Burke realized as he paced the quiet fifth floor corridor, quite a few Cristinas. There was surgical intern Cristina, who knew the answer to every question, who tackled every problem with determination and who would probably tackle her fellow interns if she thought it would be to her advantage. Then there was the Cristina who he saw comforting Grey after Addison Shepherd's arrival, she was compassionate and always knew what to say to make Grey smile and buck up a bit. There was also the Cristina who interacted with her mother – a petulant glimpse of the teenager she must have been. Perhaps those years were better off missed, he mused.
Then there was the one who he liked to think of as his Cristina– though he doubted she would appreciate that distinction. His Cristina was the one who bought the kind of coffee he liked when she went to the store to stock up on diet soda, who tried to be quiet in the morning if she had an early shift, who even sometimes remembered to pick up her clothes instead of leaving them on the floor.
His Cristina wasn't the problem, he thought. It was the way that all of them combined to form one completely maddening, unknowable woman, who seemed dead set on remaining unknowable. He loved the fire in her eyes when she was discussing a case, he loved that she was a good friend to Grey and O'Malley and Stevens, he loved the way her voice would take on just the tiniest whine when she spoke to her mother on the phone, and he loved the tangled mess that her hair became each morning.
His feelings weren't the problem. He was as sure that he loved her as he was that he had never really felt this way before.
He'd never craved someone's presence the way he craved hers, he'd never noticed so many 'little things, just details,' as she'd called them, before. He noticed the way she feigned biting a nail to cover an inappropriate smirk, he noticed that she only used one clip to hold back her unruly hair – the large silver one that she'd once spent a half an hour searching for, insisting that no other clip would do. He noticed that although she seemed mostly to subsist entirely on junk food, her favorite food was green grapes. He noticed that she liked to watch old Law and Order episodes when she couldn't sleep, and that she was ticklish on her stomach. All of these things that he knew about her – for the most part they were gleaned from moments observing her, not from what she told him.
Cristina was a very reserved person – Burke knew this. Hell, the Chief probably knew this. She wore her detachment like a shroud, as if it could protect her from life and all of its complications. The only complications she seemed able to confront were surgical. But Burke could recognize that for what it was – her attempt at self-protection. She cared about people, she just didn't like to shout it from the rooftops. He saw it when she slipped Doc the dog an extra piece of meat when she thought no one was looking, or when she went to Joes with Grey, even after an 18-hour shift, because Grey needed her to be there. He saw it when she did her best to be quiet if she came in late from being on call or had to get up early for pre-rounds, or when there was more coffee in the cabinet.
And he especially saw it when she cuddled up to him unconsciously during the night. Cristina Yang, a cuddler. Who would have guessed? But he would invariably awake with her somehow entwined, an arm here, a leg there, with no clear aim besides contact. Frequently her hair was in his face, but he didn't really mind. It was a nice way to wake up, with her warm at his side. He remembered that warmth when she left abruptly, or was distant at the hospital. He hadn't been lying when he'd said that he knew her. He did, and more than just the details. What he knew was that she didn't open up easily.
He sighed, and leaned against the railing over the walkway. He loved her, even though she approached intimacy like it was the plague.
They were so preoccupied with their pacing and private reflections (although by then each had accumulated a surreptitious crowd of spectators, eager to see the drama play itself out) that it was not until much later that afternoon that their paths crossed again. Her initial impulse to flee was checked by his strong hand on her arm, forcefully guiding her into the closest on-call room, which by some vagary of fate was the same one they'd occupied that morning.
Cristina leaned against the door, refusing to make eye contact, as Burke sat on the bed.
"I," he began, but she cut him off.
"No. No, you don't love me – you can't love me. You don't know me." This poured out of her mouth in a rush, and she slumped against the door slightly when she was finished.
"I do." He still didn't know what had possessed him to tell her this morning, but dammed if he wasn't going to stick by what he had said.
"You know, I never wanted some knight in shining armor, or whatever, to come and sweep me off my feet. I can take care of myself – I do take care of myself. I don't need anyone else." Cristina crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Burke.
"I know you don't need me, even though I want you to. But you don't have to need me, you just have to want me. I didn't tell you that I loved you to force you to say it back. If you're not ready, that's ok." He was trying to keep his voice soothing; Cristina's eyes were reminiscent of a trapped animal's at this point.
"Don't patronize me!" She was yelling by now, and Burke thought resignedly of the many ears pressed eagerly up to the door of their on-call room. Metaphorically, of course.
"Why does this scare you so badly?" he asked, trying another tack. He kept his body language relaxed, hoping it would calm her a bit.
"I don't know." She looked sullen and deflated now, but at least she was no longer screaming. He reclined against the wall, holding her gaze.
"I'm trying." She was having a hard time meeting his eyes and couldn't seem to stop fidgeting.
He knew they were long due for a talk, a real talk, about their relationship, but today had been long, and trying to break down Cristina's barriers was exhausting. So he opened his arms, and smiled when she came to him and curled up beside him on the bed. He held her loosely, confident that she would stay. They'd laid there like that for a few minutes, her hair tickling his nose, when he heard her say so quietly that he might have imagined it: "I love you too."