Fic: Like the Fortune Cookie Game (In Bed) (Grey's Anatomy, Meredith/Cristina, PG-13)

[scurvyknavery]

Originally posted 14 July, 2008.

Title: Like the Fortune Cookie Game (In Bed)
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Spoilers Through 4.16/4.17, Freedom
Challenge: Written as part of femslash08, for annavtree
Word Count: 1,693
Pairing: Meredith/Cristina
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Shut up," Meredith says, but it's the kind of shut up that means I'm glad you're here, because she's Meredith and Cristina's Cristina and that's just what they do.
Notes: Thanks to shopfront and fox1013 for help hammering out the details and making this work.

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.


"What are you doing?"

It's one in the morning, and Cristina's curled up in the on-call room, bleary eyed from twenty minutes of sleep and twenty minutes of fighting off interns before that, and six hours of rockstar surgery before that. "I'm sleeping."

Meredith huffs static into the phone, and there's a soft rustle like she's changing position. "Well, clearly, you're not sleeping. If you were sleeping, you wouldn't be able to talk to me."

"Alright," Cristina says, as sarcastically as she possibly can. "Fine, I'm not sleeping. I'm in the on-call room, hating my interns, talking on the phone."

It's quiet. For a long, dangerous moment, Cristina considers going back to sleep - except that it's Meredith, who has probably listened to her on far, far less sleep than this, which means that - well. Cristina isn't the best at having chick friends, but that probably means she should listen, too, or something.

"Ask me what I'm doing," Meredith says, and there's an oddly excited pull to her voice that Cristina knows by now. She'd be an idiot if she didn't know it. And part of her wants to snap the phone shut and call Meredith a thousand horrible names, because she knows that voice. It's Meredith's McDreamy voice, the one she uses when things are good and she's biting her lip and twirling her pigtails and thinking about how she's going to be having all the great (Cristina assumes) McDreamy sex.

(She also knows that phone calls like this always, always mean tears and a vicious tequila hangover later on. )

But, well.

Meredith's a big girl, and she can make her own damn mistakes. If she wants to hook up with McDreamy again and have tons of hot brain-surgery sex before he breaks her heart again, she can go right ahead. (Also, she gave Cristina the sparkle-pager. She gets at least a week of free passes on McDreamy for sharing the sparkle pager.)

So Cristina rolls her eyes, and humors Meredith. "What are you doing?"

"I'm sitting in a field."

Cristina rolls over, tucks the pillow under her head so that she's sitting up a little more. Clearly, this is going to take a while. "Why are you sitting in a field?"

"Because it's Derek's house."

"You're sitting in a field, alone, in the middle of the night, because it's Derek's house."

"Yes," Meredith says, and Cristina can almost hear the scared-excited look in her eyes from the way her voice twists.

"And where is Derek? Does he know you've broken into his field?"

Cristina can hear something like a cough on the other end of the line, and she can't tell if Meredith is laughing or embarrassed. "He, uh, he left." There's a long pause. "He wanted to talk to Rose, first."

Cristina just - there are days. There are days when she wants to find Derek Shepherd and shake him, because he does things like this and Meredith lets him get away with it and he should know that she'll let him and stop being so freaking McDreamy all the time, but. Cristina doesn't. She won't, not today. She just rubs her eyes, and sighs. "So you're waiting in the middle of the night, in a field that's not really a field because it's Derek's house, alone because Derek has to go break up with his girlfriend before he can have glorious make-up sex with you in all the future rooms of his future house."

"There are candles."

Cristina tries - she really tries - to hide her laugh in the pillow, but she can't quite. And she's pretty sure Meredith notices the way she's giggling when Cristina finally says, "Oh my god."

"Shut up," Meredith says, but it's the kind of shut up that means I'm glad you're here, because she's Meredith and Cristina's Cristina and that's just what they do. "Why are you sleeping in the on-call room, anyway?"

Because she can. Because she's a talented, gifted resident who taught her intern how to do a running whipstitch and then made her intern watch her do a running whipstitch on an actual, real heart, warm in her hands. (And also, because she heard from the scrub nurse who heard it from Mike the orderly who talked to the coffee stand girl who saw it - not that Cristina listens to that kind of thing - that Callie and Hahn were making out in the parking lot. And since they camped out on Cristina's couch almost every night before they started sleeping together, well. She's sleeping in the on-call room.)

"Because," Cristina finally says, because explaining all that in one go is too much work for dangerously close to two in the morning. "I like it in here."

"No you don't. It's dark and half the hospital's had sex in there and you probably had to spend half an hour kicking out interns to have it all to yourself, anyway. You hate the on-call room."

Cristina sighs, because Meredith is right and that's totally unfair. "Fine," she says, a little huffier than she should be. "Because Callie and Hahn are lesbians."

There's a sound like Meredith's choking. "They're what?"

Cristina can't not smile. "They're lesbians. Or - whatevers. Bi-something. The nurses said they saw them making out in the parking lot."

Meredith's voice is all barely-suppressed grin. "And you believe the nurses."

"If you think about it, it kind of makes sense."

Meredith takes a minute. "Yeah. It kind of does." There's a pause, like she needs to think of something to say. Cristina can hear her shifting again, possibly because she's trying to get comfy on damp grass in the middle of the night, surrounded by candles. "So they're lesbians, and that makes you homeless? They don't actually move in together on the first date, you know. That's mostly urban legend."

Cristina barks out a laugh, and rolls over. She loves Meredith, she does, but this isn't heart surgery and it isn't a crisis, and Cristina is freaking tired. She wants to go back to sleep again. "No, but I don't need to catch Hahn having athletic lesbian sex all over my kitchen and have her shut me out of surgery for another three months." There's a laugh on the other end of the phone. "Or, I don't know, whatever Callie and Hahn do after they make out. I don't judge."

"So you're sleeping in the on-call room," Meredith says, and there's still a smile in her voice.

"At least it's not a field," Cristina says, halfway to falling back to sleep.

Meredith laughs again, and Cristina can't not smile as they hang up, because, well. Meredith is an emotional basket-case with horrible taste in men, and the field thing is totally going to bite her (and, by extension, Cristina) in the ass later. But she's - well, she's still Meredith, you know? The girl who gives away the sparkle pager and doesn't judge Cristina's awful taste in men because, hi, it's not like she's one to talk, and sometimes sleeps in Cristina's bed.

But not in a Callie-and-Hahn way.

Probably.


++++


"What are you doing?"

It's three in the afternoon, and Cristina's curled up in Meredith's bed with the sheets pulled up over her face, bleary-eyed from a twenty-six hour shift and the fact that it's the middle of the day and she needs to sleep, dammit, because she has to be at the hospital tomorrow to educate her stupid interns on how to do stupid. . .surgery. (Not that surgery is ever stupid, she doesn't mean that. Surgery is freaking amazing.) "Go away."

"I'm not going to go away," Meredith says, and Cristina can feel the bed dip a little as she sits down. "This is my bed. Go find your own."

"No."

Meredith elbows Cristina in the side, a little harder than she needs to, and Cristina can't quite suppress a sleepy groan. "Move over."

"I hate you," Cristina says into the pillow, but she rolls over anyway, and lets Meredith crawl into bed next to her and wrap a lazy arm around Cristina's waist. It's sort of nice. (In a Meredith-and-Cristina way, not a Callie-and-Hahn way)

"If you hate me, why aren't you in your bed?"

"Because my bed is full of horny gay residents, and it's gross." Meredith just laughs. And laughs. And laughs some more, until Cristina's irritation finally wins out over the part of her brain that just wants to sleep forever, and she finds the energy to toss her pillow onto Meredith's face. "Shut up."

Meredith catches her breath after a minute, and smiles. "Is it gross because they're gay, or gross because they're horny?"

Cristina rolls her eyes, then shuts them again, because ow. Daylight. "Gross because they did it in my bed."

"In your bed?"

"In my bed. I may never sleep there again."

"Derek and I had sex."

When Cristina opens her eyes again, Meredith is staring at her, arms wrapped around the pillow. She's smiling a little, in between biting her lip, like she's nervous and excited and Cristina wants to smack her in the head and remind her that this is Derek Shepherd, the man who had a secret wife, the man who broke up with her because she drowned - but she won't. Because in with all of that there's a little bit of actual, not-bitter smiling, and they both know Meredith needs that right now. So instead, all Cristina says is, "In the field?"

"In our bedroom."

"Which, for the record, is currently a field."

"Possibly."

Cristina grins, and shifts - definitely not snuggling, because Cristina doesn't snuggle, but doing something with her arm and the rest of her body that involves moving Meredith a little bit closer. "Whore," she says, but there's a smile in her voice and a smile on her face that Meredith can't quite see with her head resting against the curve of Cristina's shoulder.

"Whatever," Meredith says, barely audible against Cristina's chest. "At least I'm not afraid of lesbians."

Cristina just presses a kiss to the top of Meredith's head, and smiles. "Bitch."