Current mood:	sleepy
Current music:	the shins in echo
Entry tags:	fic, grey's anatomy

fic: just a daisy in the shadow of the sun - grey's anatomy
title: Just a Daisy in the Shadow of the Sun
fandom: Grey's Anatomy
rating: PG(ish)
summary: George is a nice guy.
words: 1,820
warnings: Here there be het. Oh, like anyone on my f-list is reading this past the fandom anyway.
disclaimer: Not mine, don't own, no profit, woe.
notes: Twin thought I should write a drabble. It wouldn't die. Thanks to restless_jedi for the beta.


George is a good guy. Is a nice guy. Is the sweet one.

He keeps his shirt buttoned up to the collar, his fingernails trimmed, his face clean. He never forgets to wash behind his ears and he doesn't wear cologne because it gives certain people headaches.

So George isn't the one who gets the girl, but he never expected that he would be.

He's just the guy that loves the girl, mostly. The one who buys her chips from the vending machine and keeps watch for the Nazi while she takes a fifteen-minute nap around dawn.

(He doesn't watch the rise of the sun across her face, that's stupid and girly and probably creepy anyway. He's never understood how watching someone sleep was supposed to be romantic.)

And maybe he knows that if she's had a really hard day and disappeared for no reason that Meredith will come home looking like she's been crying and that night she'll snore so loudly that he can't sleep.

(Izzie comes in wearing next to nothing like every other guy dreams of, and she falls down on his bed and whines about Meredith being loud and not being able to sleep and it's cold, isn't it, until he's forced to offer up part of the blankets and his extra pillow and she falls asleep with her arm over her eyes and her hair tickling his nose and he's doubly awake then, and careful to not touch her in anyway, until she turns and throws her arm over his middle and in the morning she yawns and tells him he's like a teddy bear and hugs him before she gets out of his bed.)

His mother taught him manners, taught him to be polite to women. You open doors for them and buy them dinner and pat their shoulder when they cry and you love them, even when they break your heart, because some girls can't help but do that. Pick up their books when they drop them, pull out their chairs, never make lewd comments, never let your eyes linger below their neckline, women have eyes, they have brains, they should be respected.

George knows how to treat women, but he never gets them in the end.

Meredith smiles at Dr. Shepherd tightly when they pass in hallways, like they've got a secret when everybody knows. Like they're the only ones who are aware of their big love affair.

And Dr. Shepherd is (handsome, his mother would say) successful, a shoo-in for the job every doctor dreams of, a brain surgeon, more in her league than George could ever dream of being. Mostly he is alright with it because mostly he never really entertained the idea that he was.

("I don't get it," Cristina says, lying down on the bench in the hallway, a chart spread out and propped up against her raised knees. "I mean, sure she's got the parentage, and she's smart enough I guess, and, alright, she's pretty, but—Well, when I put it like that." She sighs, almost angry. "But it's not like she's a model or anything.")

Mr. Jackson is fifty-five in two weeks, he's worked construction since he was sixteen, he's got a wife and three kids, two of whom he's trying to put through college. When he's alone in the room with George he says that his heart is in his family. Later George has to tell him that his heart is failing him. His wife's name is Lucy and she smiles the entire time George says it, comforting. She holds Mr. Jackson's hand and she's (beautiful) got more strength in her than ten men combined.

(Izzie climbs into his bed sometimes when she knows he's had a bad day. She puts her hand over his heart and is quiet until they both fall asleep. She wears his sweats and the room is stifling. He likes the way her hair smells.)

Dr. Shepherd presses his fingertips into Meredith's arm where everyone can see. He grins and she smiles and it's not a game, not a joke. They look happy. They look like a couple that's going to continue to be happy and have pretty, happy babies that look good on Christmas cards they send out to everyone they've ever even superficially met to wish them a happy, merry Christmas.

Mr. Jackson dies at 4:32 in the morning, and George chokes on the time when he calls it. Mrs. Jackson stands in the back of the room and holds their youngest girl (Eliza) as she sobs. He thinks that he sees people on the worst days of their lives, and he sneaks off to the nursery to see the flip side.

He watches newborns yawn wide, blink open blue eyes and cry. He watches parents smile and shakes his head when someone asks if one of them is his.

George is a nice guy, and so he smiles and agrees when Meredith asks him to watch one of her patients while she goes (on a date) to dinner.

(Izzie cries and hides her pink toenails by curling her toes under the hem of her pants. She looks up at him and says, "I don't get it. I don't understand." And he doesn't have an answer because he doesn't know the question. He puts a hand on her shoulder for empty comfort. She says, "What does she have that I don't?" And he still doesn't know the question. She says, "Why does it have to be her, George, why can't it be me?")

Meredith flops down on the couch between them and steals the popcorn he made for Izzie. "What're we watching?" she asks.

"How was your date?" Izzie counters, and steals back her popcorn. "Was the good doctor good?" (And she doesn't sound bitter, she sounds sad and something in him wants nothing more than to run away from this conversation.)

"Always," Meredith grins.

"We're doctors," George says. "I mean, so does calling him "the good doctor" does that make us bad doctors?"

Izzie throws a piece of popcorn at him and giggles as she gets it out of his hair.

(Izzie slips into his bed at night when he's asleep. He puts his hand on her hip because he's half-asleep and isn't thinking fast enough to stop himself. "What's wrong?" he asks, tiredly, and the words are only mostly coherent. She presses a kiss to his cheek and wraps her arm around him and closes her eyes.)

Mrs. Jackson sends him a thank you card and Cristina finds it. She reads it with wide-eyed amusement and—"You sent his family flowers?" Meredith asks, reading over Cristina's shoulder.

"Yeah," he answers slowly, shifting and ready to defend himself if—

"That's so sweet," Meredith gushes, and pinches his cheek. "You're so sweet, George."

"Yeah, that's me," he grumbles, and takes the card back from Cristina before she can protest. He knows running away is the best way to deal with this conversation.

("You sent his family flowers?" Izzie asks, sitting on an empty bed in the hallway with her legs crossed. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail and they've been working for about three days straight so her make-up was gone about seventy hours ago, so she's rundown and tired and her fingers keep playing with her ink pen and he's pretty sure she was never this beautiful in any of her magazines. He nods before he can stop himself and she smiles and he smiles back. "Sometimes," she whispers, and shakes her head. "You're the best person I know, George.")

Cristina kicks his shin, when he's sitting along in the hallway dozing off. "You're an idiot, George," she tells him, and then hits his arm with a chart. "An idiot."

"Ok," he cries, throwing up his hands. "God, alright. I'm an idiot. I'm sorry. What'd I do?"

She snorts. "If you don't know I'm not going to tell you."

Sometimes he isn't convinced that he's not better off not getting the girl.

(Izzie hands him a daisy and smiles sadly. She doesn't answer when he asks why. He keeps it in the pocket of his lab coat with his spare pens and doesn't tell Meredith where it came from when she asks.)

Dr. Shepherd shows up at the door to pick up Meredith and George answers, he offers him a drink because of course Meredith isn't ready on time—that would be against all laws of man.

Izzie is sitting on the stairs in a pair of his sweats when he turns around from shutting the door behind them like he was just a father watching sadly as he lets his little girl go to prom.

"That was awkward," he says to the third to the last step where Izzie's red toenails show up bright against the wood. "I'm always so awkward," he adds, even though he doesn't mean to.

He thinks if Cristina were there she'd make fun of him, and he thinks if Meredith were here she'd pinch his cheeks again. He's pretty sure those fall on the same level though, so he's glad it's Izzie here.

(Izzie uses his toothbrush in the morning while he's in the shower and mostly he's stopped shrieking about it because it never did any good. "Meredith called, said she didn't come home last night and we should've been worried because that's what roommates are for, but she's fine and she'll see us at the hospital and could we please bring her a change of clothes," she pauses, like she's not sure she wants to finish whatever she wants to say and he interrupts with, "I'm not going through her underwear drawer." She laughs and asks, "Does that bother you? That she didn't come home?" He's pretty sure it doesn't bother him as much as it should.)

"You're so domesticated," Alex says, batting his eyelashes. "Do you cook them dinner too? Pick up their dirty clothes? Do their laundry?"

"Shut up," George answers, and hands Meredith her bag and doesn't blush. He figures it's an improvement and he rolls his eyes with Meredith.

"Wish he would," Meredith sighs dramatically. "Certainly can't get Izzie to do it."

"Shut up," Izzie says, and hands George a cup of coffee. "You're never home to know it."

"Hey, your bed is just as unmade as mine," Meredith teases and doesn't notice when George almost chokes on his coffee.

(Izzie crawls under his covers, and presses her nose against the back of his neck. "George," she hisses, until he yawns and rolls over. "You're an idiot," she says, and tangles their fingers together. He's pretty sure he knew that, but they like to repeat it. "Meredith isn't in love with you," she says, and he did know that, thanks. "You're an idiot," she repeats. "And I'm an idiot." And she kisses him, and he wonders if this is the end.)