#TSJolexWeek21
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Mister Perfectly Fine (Part 2)
Fearless - Taylor’s Version (From The Vault)
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After way to long here’s finally the second part of this fic. Hope you like it. Enjoy!
Thanks again @angry-slytherin !
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Of course his sister had to pick this city out of the millions of cities in the freaking country for her wedding. Sure, her soon to be husband is from there but when she told him on the phone that they are going to have their wedding there he thought she had to be kidding. Not only was it the city he heavy hearted turned his back to almost a year and a half ago, but his little sister also decided to have her wedding at the exact same location his and Jo's first wedding was supposed to be.
Of course Amber apologized a million times, knowing how hard it still was for him to be confronted with anything that is somehow connected to his ex-wife. Amber offered to find a new location but he immediately denied it the second it came out of her mouth. It wasn't her fault, he had been an idiot a year and a half ago and had thrown the best thing he had ever had in his life away. He simply had to man up for one day and put a smile on for his sister. He knew that going back there would bring up a lot of emotions, but he had to live with that. After all it was his fault he was in this exact situation right now.
His sister also offered that he could skip the ceremony and only come to the celebration afterwards but he denied that too, knowing how much it meant to her to have him as the only male family of hers at her wedding. Also, years ago when she first started seeing Matt and slowly knowing that he was the one, she asked Alex to walk her down the aisle once the time had come and he would keep that promise. He was the one that mainly raised her when their mothers illness became too much and their dad had finally left, so he had to be there. Also she had asked quiet a while ago if Alexis would join her daughter to be a flower girl and if Eli would help her son to bear the rings, so he couldn't let his kids run around on her wedding with no adult around - because Izzie wouldn't come with them to the wedding.
So he finds himself in the exact same parking spot he once parked in three years ago but instead of Mer and Zola he has his very excited twins with him. He takes a deep breath before he helps his kids out of the car and smoothes their clothes before they walk towards the oh-so-familiar location. For one second he thought about turning around and just hiding in the little, red shed until the wedding was over but the second he set foot on the deck above the venue he saw her - standing next to his mom while they where talking. He immediately froze as he just stared at her back.
He couldn't see much of her but by just the sight of her back he could tell that she was just as beautiful as always. Her hair was short now and the dress she was wearing just hugged her curves perfectly. He couldn't see her face but by the smile on his mother's face, as she was talking to her, he knew she was smiling too. He kept his glance at her when she turned a little and gives him a good view at the sleeping baby she is holding against her chest. A little girl probably a year old, sucking on a green pacifier while Jo straightened her little grey dress that was matching the little bow in her short, blonde hair.
Jo's eyes are sparkling as she kisses the little girls head, swaying to the music while she kept her conversation with his mom going.
A little tug on his pants interrupts Alex from starring at Jo.
"Daddy, I need to pee." His son announces staring up at him, nervously dancing on his feet showing how urgent it already was.
"Ok. Let's see." He quickly answers trying to memorize where the toilets were before he takes the twins there.
As they reach them his daughter revels that she has to pee too so Alex quickly opens the door to the men bathroom, expecting his daughter too follow them inside.
"Come on Alexis." He calls, holding the door open for Alexis to follow them.
"No daddy it's the boys bathroom. I'm a girl." She quickly complaines, crossing her arms to make her point clear that she will not use the boys restroom.
"You can use the boys bathroom too. It's ok. Come on." Alex tries again.
"No." His daughter answers stumping her little foot while she looks at her dad.
"Alright then you have to wait here until we're done or you have to use the girls bathroom on your own."
She nods at her dad and disappears inside the girls bathroom.
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After her conversation with Helen, Jo was happy to find the bathroom empty. She loves her ex mother-in-law but after all she was also just a reminder of what Alex took from her when he decided to leave. She doesn't have to say how surprised she had been when she found Ambers wedding invitation in her mail one day. Surprised was probably an understatement because after her divorce with Alex, Jo and Amber hadn't really been talking to each other as often as they used to when Jo was still a Karev. But Jo had found a great friend in her ex sister-in-law so she was happy to be invited to her wedding even though she knew that he would be here too.
Luna was still sleeping on her arm but her little girl needed a new diaper nevertheless. She put the diaper bag down on the counter of the sink before she laid her sleeping daughter on the little changing mat next to the sink. Jo is just about to pack the diaper bag again when she hears a little voice from one of the stalls.
"Hello?"
"Hello? You ok sweetie?" Jo answers, picking her how awake daughter up in her arms before she walks closer to the stall the little voice is coming from.
"Can you help me?"
"Sure. Did you lock the door, sweetie?"
"No."
Jo carefully opens the stall to see a little girl fighting with the amount of tulle of her white dress.
"Hi." Jo smiles.
"Can you help me, I'm tangled." The little girl asks politely smiling shy at Jo.
She helps she girl out of the stall and adjusts Luna on her hip before she kneels in front of the little blonde and helps her putting her little arms where they belong before she sips the dress back up and knots the bow on the back of the dress.
"I love your dress. Are you a flower girl?" Jo asks, already knowing the answer because she saw the other flower girls when she said hi to Amber in her dressing room.
"Mmhhh." The girl smiles proudly as Jo fluffs the tulle of the dress before she's done. "I like yours too and hers. What's her name?"
"Her name is Luna." Jo smiles, looking at her now wide awake daughter. "Right sweet girl?"
Jo takes Luna's pacifier out as she only needs it when she sleeps and puts it in the diaper bag before she kisses Lunas cheek which makes the little girl smile.
"She's so cute."
"You're pretty cute too." Jo smiles as she takes the diaper bag and puts it on her shoulder watching the girls washing her hands. "Can I ask you what your name is?"
"Alexis." She smirks while drying her hands.
"Oh- Alexis… I'm Jo."
"Thank you, Jo." He little girl smiles.
"Of course sweetie. Let's go find your dad. He's probably looking for you, don't you think so?" Jo smiles a toothless smile, adjusting Luna on her hip.
The little girls nods before she takes Jo's free hand and follows her outside.
"Do you see your daddy?"
"No." She shakes her head.
"Mmmhh were could he be?"
"There." Alexis points towards were he's standing next to Amber.
His back is turned towards them so Amber is the first to see Jo and Alexis walking towards them. Before Alex turns around too.
"There you are. Did everything work? You flushed and washed your hands?" He asks watching his daughter closely.
"Jip. I had help from my new friend Jo." She answers, still holding onto Jo's hand.
Alex few goes from his daughter to Jo for the first time after one and a half years and it immediately feels so familiar as if nothing ever happened between them.
"Thank you." He smiles warmly at her.
"Sure."
They throw each other another smile before Jo goes to sit down.
"Ok. Are you ready Alexis?" Alex asks his daughter.
The little girl nods as she gets her little basket full of flower panels from one of Amber’s brides mates.
"Are you ready?" Alex asks as he holds his arm out for Amber to walk her down the aisle.
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Jo's just about to sit down in one of the back rows as Helen comes up to her and asks her to sit with her. Jo couldn't turn it down so of course she followed her ex mother-in-law and sits with her.
The ceremony begins with the music starting to play. Amber’s daughter Grace, Alexis and two girls from Matt's side come down the aisle and throw their flower panels. After that Liam, Amber’s oldest and Eli come with the rings. The music changes and Alex brings Amber down the aisle. He kisses her cheek before he hands her over to Matt.
Alex sits down on the other side of Helen and puts his arm on the back of his moms chair, brushing Jo's arm with his fingers without notice while doing it. His little touch immediately fills Jo's body with sparks.
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The feeling of her whole body responding to Alex's touch never really leaves Jo. Even after two hours she still fells his fingers where they delicately touched her arm and the undiscribable feeling of warmth inside her body follows her the whole evening. The effect he still has on her makes her wonder; her thoughts stay on it all night.
While everyone is enjoying themselves dancing along with the bridal couple Jo sits at her place feeding Luna. She watches the wedding guests having fun which lets her think back to her own wedding that was actually supposed to happen here. Instead she remembers the chaos that lead them to Jackson’s, now her, penthouse where she was the bride dancing in between all of her friends. Even though their first wedding had been the most chaotic wedding she had ever been to- and she was a guest at April Kepner's first wedding- dancing in Alex's arms to their favourite songs was one of her favourite memory about that day.
Seeing him now dancing with his kids makes her smile for different reasons. She knows how much he hates dancing, especially when people he knows are around. Getting him to dance with her on their wedding day had been quite a challenge but in the end he couldn't resist her and danced with her. The other thing that made her smile were his kids. She always knew that kids bring out the best in him and seeing him now with his twins fills her heart, even though they are the reason he left her. But after meeting them she knows that him wanting to be their dad and having to leave her in the process was the right thing to do. Even though she wishes it would be different. But if Jo knows one thing than it's that you can never know what the future holds for you. One minute you are a teenager living in your car the next you are attending med school at Harvard. One minute you think you can never be happy again and then you meet the most perfect little girl that becomes your daughter.
Still deep in her thoughts Jo doesn't notice Alexis taking the chair beside her. Just as the little girl begins to play with Luna’s foot, making her daughter wiggle on her lap Jo snap out of her daydreaming.
"Will you dance with me?" The girl asks with big brown eyes Jo has never been able to resist.
"Ahm sure." Jo smiles, putting Luna’s stuff together before she gets up.
Just like when they left the bathroom earlier Alexis grabs Jo's free hand and guides her to the dance floor.
They dance together for a while before Alex comes up to them.
"Do you trust me to take her? Then you can dance better." He offers.
"Oh no it's fine." Jo smiles but her daughter had other plans. As she puts her arms out and leans towards Alex. Something she never did before. She's a rather shy little girl, not letting anyone she doesn't know touch or hold her but with Alex it looks like she's making an exception.
"Well ok."
She hands Luna to Alex, watching him carefully before she goes back to dancing with Alexis.
Alex keeps close to Jo for a little longer swaying Luna in his arms to the current song.
He can hear her little giggles as he tickles her feet. With her head on his shoulder her eyes close a little more with every sway.
Alex watches Jo and his daughter dancing until he's sure Luna is asleep. He sits down with her at Jo’s place when Amber comes and sits with him.
"You're here for only half a day and you already got her baby?"
"Well she stole mine too. And Alexis declined her as their new friend." He points to were Jo's dancing with Alexis and Eli now too.
"Did you know she had a daughter?" Alex asks after a while.
"We kept in touch a little bit, not like we did when she was still my sister-in-law but a little bit. She called mom the day she got her, Luna by the way-"
"Luna." He smiles at the little girl in his arms.
"Yeah. She called mom and they talked a little bit. And you know our mom the next time I visited she told me all about Jo and her little baby girl."
"So she kept in touch with mom too?" He asks interested.
"Yeah. They talk like once a month I think."
"That's more often than mom talks to me."
"Well now you know which side mom choose after your divorce." Amber shrugs before she starts laughing.
"I don't blame her."
"Mmhh. You really are a big idiot for letting her go."
"You think I don't know that?" He answers, stroking Lunas back.
"Just letting you know one more time." She winks at him before she stands up and pads his free shoulder.
"The black one with the elder top is Luna's. I'm sure there's a blanked or something inside."
He smiles at his sister before he gets toward the strollers standing in the corner, carefully not to wake the little girl sleeping on his shoulder. As he pulls the stroller aside a little he immediately spots the diaperbag in the bottom and successfully get it out onehandet to look through it from a blanket. His heart stops for a second as one of his mothers knitted baby heads falls out of it as he pulls the blanket out.
Pictures of Jo's shocked face when his mom told them that she knitted them for their future babies start showing in his head. He remembers how she asked him if he was pregnant and didn't tell her as they apparently were in the baby head place. She ignored him or more avoided him the whole day but later that day he watched her sneaking one of them out of his moms knitting bag and putting it in her purse.
Seeing that she still has this exact same head she took years ago and uses it for her daughter now let's his heart flutter a little. It's like a small thing from him was always with her.
Shaking that thought out of his head he grabs the blue moon blanket and wraps it loosely around the sleeping baby on his arm. After working in peds for years now it's still an amazing feeling for him to hold a baby in his arms. The little body pressed tight to his, their tiny hands grabbing onto his clothes and their sweet smell lingering in his nose.
Alex carefully puts his mother's head on the little girls head before he puts her pacifier back in her open mouth, which she immediately starts sucking on.
He sits back down, holding Luna tight as she snuggles closer in his chest and grabs onto his shirt.
"I see you found her stroller. You could have just put her in there; she's used to sleeping in there." Jo tells him as she sits down on the chair beside him.
"Nah. It's nice to hold her. It's actually been a while since I've been holding a baby, so-"
"Do you forget that you're a peds surgeon?" She asks with a laugh.
"I mean yeah I hold them at work but like this it's probably been Ellis that last fell asleep on my chest." He answers not taking his eyes off of the sleeping girl on his chest.
The sign of her daughter on the chest of the man she once called her husband has a bittersweet.
"Where did you leave the twins?" He asks, now looking at her.
"They wanted to go and play with Liam." Jo points out to the three sitting over a tablet.
"Is- ahm- Is she-"
"Yours?" She watches him nod before she continues. "No. I adopted her. Her mom, Val was my patient but she died unfortunately."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah."
They are both silent for a minute before Alex speaks again.
"You wanna dance with me?"
Jo looks at him a little shocked.
"Are you serious?" She asks in disbelief.
"Yeah. What? Because of her? I can dance with one hand."
"No it's just-" She takes a deep breath before she continues. "You left me, Alex. Just like that and without a warning you left me. You ignored me for weeks and then send divorce papers expecting me to sign them. You broke my freaking heart and undid everything you ever promised to me. You left me thinking you were helping your mom but instead you were with your new family. Six weeks I thought you were dead. Lying in a ditch unidentifiable, just to get a lazy ass letter with divorce papers. And now you wanna dance? You hate dancing."
"I do, but I love dancing with you." He says, looking at her softly. "And I know that this letter was the worst thing I ever did in my life but I want to make it right again. Everything- I'm not whole when I'm not with you. I- I never stopped loving you, Jo. I'm an idiot and I don't expect you to ever forgive me but I want us to be friends again. I miss my best friend." He stops for a second but continues. "Also because me and the twins are moving back here and I guess I can't say no to them when they want to visit their new friend Jo."
"I will need time to-" She whispers.
"You can have all the time you need." Alex answers softly.
It's silent again for a while.
"Than let's start with dancing maybe." Jo agrees.
They stand up and he guides her to the dance floor. She carefully puts her arms around him as he puts his free hand on her waist. He slowly starts swaying them to the song, not taking his eyes off Jo until she puts her head against his shoulder looking into her daughter’s sleeping face.
Seeing Luna peacefully sleeping against Alex's chest is everything she never knew she needed. It hurts seeing her with him but it also filled her heart with so much love. She knows it will take a while until her broken heart can let him in again, but feeling his strong arm around her waist, holding her close helps putting the shattered pieces of her heart slowly back together. Right now she feels finally completely whole again after a long time - right in this moment she feels perfectly fine.
#jolex#fanfic#fanfiction#jo x alex#alex#alex karev#grey's#grey's fanfic#grey's anatomy#tsjolexweek21#jolex fic#jolex fanfiction#jo wilson#jo
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T.S. x Jolex Week 2021
It’s baaaaaaack! Please help us celebrate one of our favorite Jolex ‘holidays’ ever with the Second Annual Taylor Swift x Jolex Week! Just like last year every day has an album tied to it and you can use whatever song(s) you want as inspiration for your fic. Don’t feel obligated to write for everyday obviously but it’s always a fun challenge to set for yourself. And since we love her album so much we’ve added a bonus day for SOUR by Olivia Rodrigo!
We hope you’ll all join us next month for this super fun event! Don’t forget to tag your fics with #TSJolexWeek21 and tag thejolexgroupchat as well. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!!
Here’s the lineup for this year (Week of August 22):
8/22: Fearless (Taylor’s Version)
8/23: Speak Now
8/24: Red
8/25: 1989
8/26: reputation
8/27: Lover
8/28: folklore/evermore
8/29: SOUR
xoxo from your friendly neighborhood group chat
@odd-birds-and-booksellers
@doc-pickles
@angry-slytherin
@cicinicole-14
@mac-andcheeses
@renipedia
@jobrookekarev
@kidneys4karev
@only-freaking-sunflowers
@iamtrebleclefstories
and tumblrless Nat and Dani
#TSJolexWeek21#jolex#grey's anatomy#alex karev#jo wilson#jolex fanfic#grey's anatomy fanfic#jo x alex#Jo Karev
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how's your heart after breaking mine?
ts x jolex week 21
day one: fearless - mr. perfectly fine (taylor's verion) (from the vault)
wc: 2.5k
pairing: Jo Wilson/Alex Karev. Alex Karev/Izzie Steven (mentioned)
summary: years after they last saw each other, jo and alex reunite at a conference, and while she is still struggling from her heartache, he seems to be mr. perfectly fine.
rating: general audiences
category: angst.
warnings: angst, no happy ending, alcohol consumption.
A/N: guess who finished this just now? me. that's who. I was actually working on this one long before the announcement for this event came out, but it gave me the motivation to continue this! Alex is unintentionally an ass in this and for that, i’m sorry. Anyways… hope you enjoy! (first part's pretty crappy, but after that it gets better.)
(this was also proofread, like...once, so of there are a plethora of errors i apologize)
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The absolute last thing Jo wanted right now was to attend a medical conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. There were multiple reasons why she should’ve said no. One; she had just started her second year of her OB GYN residency a few weeks prior, and there were a very limited number of lectures on her new line of study where she was headed. Two; she now held an absolute hatred for the Seattle Tacoma International Airport, since it was the place where her ex-husband stood before her, placed a soft kiss on her lips and promised to see her in a couple of weeks, lying to her face about seeing his mother in Iowa, when in reality he was going to see his ex-wife and kids, never really planning on returning home.
It was ironic really; how not even two years ago, she was standing in front of gate 48, saying goodbye to him, and now she stood in the same spot, in front of the exact same gate, with him nowhere near her side as she glared up at the same exact entrance she last saw him at.
(She also now hated the number forty-eight)
But, since Meredith had been hounding her non-stop about attending this event, she gave in. Because how was she supposed to say no to the woman who had barely survived the pandemic? Along with a plethora of other things she was too lazy to memorize. (The answer was that she couldn’t. She felt guilty for leaving Meredith behind for OB, so she now did whatever her former mentor wanted, even if more than two years had passed) If Meredith Grey asked for something, Meredith Grey got it. She was turning back into the intern who cried fake tears and would do anything to earn her approval, and Jo was not a fan.
“It’ll be good for you Wilson. You need to leave that loft of your’s and go somewhere Wilson, blah blah blah,” she mutters to herself as she shows the attendant her ticket, not even bothering to return the smile, settling on brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear instead. The messy bun on the top of her head bounced in place, and she felt like a college student after a night of studying, but rather than books tucked under her arm it was a neck pillow and a carry-on.
She shuffles into her seat, thankful that it was an aisle one before letting her eyes shut, trying to catch a wink of sleep in an attempt to make up for the less than few hours she had gotten the night before. It proves to be unsuccessful, because the businessman sitting next to her ate his chips so loud she had to restrain herself from coiling into herself every time a chip crunched beneath his teeth, and the toddler behind her continuously managed to kick her seat, no matter how many times his mother told him to stop.
After three hours of loud chewing, seat kicking, and crying babies, she lands in Salt Lake, taking in a deep breath when she finally escapes the crowded airport and is met with humid air. She picks up her rental car, and arrives at her hotel not long after, immediately tossing her bags into the corner and sprawling onto the bed. Eventually, she moves to unpack her clothes and other necessities, casting a glance at the clock which read 10:37.
Taking a look around the room, she decided that nothing more needs to be done; all of her makeup is laid out for the morning, and what she chose to wear is already hanging up in the closet, freshly ironed and wrinkle-free. She yawns, crawling under the covers and flicking off the light, sleep coming easily.
When she wakes up the next morning to her alarm clock going off, she’s freshly rested and in a better mood than she normally was when she had to wake up before nine. The early morning sun beats down onto her face, and she knows that if she wanted to get to the first lecture on time, she needed to start getting ready sooner rather than later.
With a sigh, she begrudgingly gets out of bed, hopping in a quick shower and changing into her clothes. She adds some soft waves to her hair, in the hopes that it made her look more put together than she felt. It didn’t seem that just because she got hours of sleep made up for the fact that she would rather be curled up in the soft sheets of her bed at home than the stiff ones the hotel provided.
It doesn’t take long until she’s arrived in the lobby, where doctors all around her were dressed in firmly pressed suits and skirts. Tables advertising different events throughout the day were lined up and down the hallways, fellow surgeons and mentees passing out little pamphlets with information about their courses littering the pages.
Jo passes by a few stands displaying lectures on the OBGYN field, mentally making a list of the ones she would like to attend.
A quick glance to her watch tells her that the first item on her list was starting soon, and with that she dumps the now-empty coffee cup she had ordered a few minutes prior as a pick-me-up, and shuffles into the seat of the auditorium, the chairs around her filling up quicker than she expects.
It’s only a few minutes later Dr. Maria Cavanaugh steps out onto the stage, silencing the crowd after a round of applause. Jo leans back into her seat, feeling grateful that Meredith had pushed her to go to this conference.
If her whole weekend is spent listening to experts talk and teach about her new specialty, she thinks she’s going to enjoy it.
____
It’s hours and a multitude of lectures later when she exits another grand room, fellow surgeons beside her chatting about the new information they’d acquired. She feels a small smile grace her lips as she realizes that the excited squeals could only come from the med school students that had been invited from the nearby college.
She pulls out her phone, seeing a text from Link and Meredith, both along the lines of that they hoped she arrived safely and that she enjoyed her time away from home. She responds, pocketing her phone and making her way to the hotel bar, settling into one of the few empty seats and ordering a whiskey sour, thanking the bartender when it's placed in front of her not even a minute later.
She sips the drink slowly, feeling some leftover tenseness from sitting all day leave her body as the alcohol starts to flow through her veins. She was far from drunk, but even saying tipsy felt like too much of a stretch.
Pleasantly buzzed, she decides on, taking another sip of her drink, making a brief second of eye contact with a man on the other end of the bar. He raises her glass with a slight nod of his head, and she does the same. She’s tempted to continue; take use of the way the man’s making subtle glances to the seat next to him when her ears pick up another conversion from a few feet away, freezing her in place, glass nearly dropping to the floor.
“Do you want anything?”
“Just a water’s fine. I’m gonna go talk to Dr. Conwell about some of the research her and her team were talking about.”
She turns in her seat, against her better judgment. She watches as he kisses her cheek before leaning against the bar’s counter a few feet away.
She feels as if ice had just been dropped down her back —frozen in place, unable to move as she watches Alex drum his fingers on the dark wood, head nodding along to the soft tune playing through the speakers. He grabs his drinks from the bartender; two waters, one with ice and one without, about to walk towards the woman he was with earlier when he spots her.
“Jo?” he questions, blinking multiple times as if to see if it was really her, and not a trick of the light.
She wants to run when he makes his way over to her. She wants to run, and scream, and throw her drink in his face. But instead, she places a tight, thin smile on her lips and acts as if nothing was wrong.
“Alex, hi!” She turns to face him, her voice too high for her enthusiasm to be true, but if he knows it he doesn’t make any move to show it.
He runs a hand through his hair —it's longer than the last time she saw it, a bit of grey speckled in so lightly that it wouldn’t be noticeable to someone who wasn’t looking.”I uh, I didn't know you’d be here.”
She wants to roll her eyes, but refrains. “Well,” she spins her drink with the straw, watching as the ice cubes clink against the glass “The feeling’s mutual.”
“How are you?” He asks after a few beats of silence, and she wants nothing more than to yell at him that he couldn’t talk to her like this —like they were old friends who had lost contact after a while, and were due for a catch up. Because they weren’t old friends. They were so far from friends that someone could build a bridge with the amount of space they had between them.
“Fine,” she lies through her teeth, her heart nearly beating out of her chest in nervousness. She was worried that she was going to break down at any second, spew the words that she had said to Carly in anger at him if he looked at her any longer as if things were okay between them.
“You?” she questions, not interested in the answer, sipping her drink similarly to how she had the night of Bailey’s wedding, the unwelcome memory of the start of their relationship blossoming to the front of her mind.
He sips his water, “Good. I’ve been good.”
With his hand clasped around the glass she catches sight of the pristine, shiny gold ring that sits on his fourth finger, and she has to fight back the growing lump in her throat that threatens to escape.
“Congrats,” she says instead, eyebrows pinched together as she nods towards the ring, a tell that always told whether or not her words rang true.
He seems to have forgotten that, and takes her words as a compliment. He gives her a small smile, “Thanks.”
Jo wants to laugh, because this was so far from the Alex Karev she had known, the man in front of her unfamiliar and so, so different from the one she married years ago. The Alex she knew would’ve never ordered a water instead of a beer, or act as if everything was okay between them when it was so far from it.
He’d changed, and she couldn’t say that she liked it.
“How are the kids?” she asks, and she can tell that she’s surprised him. He looks taken aback for a moment, before smiling gently and reaching into his pocket for his phone. “They’re great,” he says, pulling up a photo of them, the twins smiling brightly into the camera.
“That was at their birthday party last week,” he explains, and she notices the large 7 balloons that are floating in the background.
“He looks like you,” she comments about the boy. He grins, and she wants nothing more than to slap him for not being able to see that she’s so obviously hurting, that her heart is breaking inside of her chest. That she selfishly wants him to say that he made a mistake, that he was in love with her, not Izzie. But her life wasn’t a trashy romance novel, and even if it was, Alex was never one to admit to his faults, his pride and ego too large to have it bruised in such a way.
She had always wondered what he had been up to after he had left. If he was okay. She’d imagined different futures for him, some including Izzie and the kids, some of them not. She’s even naively envisioned ones with her and the children they had always talked about having one day.
Somedays, when she was feeling worse for wear, she had wished that he was miserable —that he and Izzie weren’t together and as far as they went communication-wise was a phone call to see who had the kids that week; that he was as alone and bitter as she was.
But instead, here he was, Mr. Perfectly Fine. The man who had looked her in the eyes and told her he would never go away.
Here he was, Mr. Perfectly Fine. Married to the woman he had left her for, a shiny gold ring on his finger instead of neat, polished wood.
For the past two years she’d been picking up the pieces of herself that he had shattered and left behind, only just starting to put herself back together, and here he was, Mr. Perfectly Fine. While she was piecing together her shattered heart, he was picking up her, the woman he had left her for.
She had thought that he was different from the rest; different from everyone who had ever left her. But he wasn’t —the man she had thought was so different was so exactly the same as everyone else.
“I’m sorry, Jo.” he says, and she has the urge to laugh —laugh because he wasn’t sorry, she could tell. He was sorry that he left her and caused her pain, sure. But he wasn’t sorry that he had done it, that he had married Izzie again and lived with her and his kids on a farm in the middle of Kansas. He wasn’t sorry about that at all.
Mr. Insincere Apology so he didn’t look like the bad guy.
She acts as if she believes him, giving him another tight smile, and lies through her teeth once more. “It’s fine Alex. It’s in the past.”
Jo checks phone, making a face when she ‘realizes’ the time, eager to get out of there as soon as she could. “I need to go, early morning,” she fibs, and she internally rolls her eyes at how he believes her. While he seemed to have forgotten everything about her, she still remembers every detail about him.
“It was nice seeing you again Jo,” he’s playing with the sleeves of his jacket and his eyes meet hers, and for less than a second it’s almost enough to break her resolve.
Another tight smile graces her lips, and she begins to walk away when her body fights her mind and she finds herself leaning down, her lips against his ear.
“I’m glad it was worth it, Alex.”
Her voice is harsh and bitter, yet broken, and she doesn’t need to look at him to know that his face has fallen, and he’s realized that everything she’d told him that night was a lie. She turns and lets the tears fall silently, making her way back up to her room with a head full of thoughts about her ex-husband, about Alex Karev.
About Mr. Perfectly Fine.
____
@thejolexgroupchat #tsjolexweek21
#tsjolexweek21#jo wilson#alex karev#jo karev#jolex#jolex fanfic#jolex fanfiction#grey's anatomy#greys anatomy#grey's anatomy fic#grey's anatomy fanfic#grey's anatomy fanfiction#jolex fic#jo wilson-karev#izzie stevens#angst#no happy ending#jo x alex#alex x jo#taylor swift#you gotta love some angst#camilla luddington#justin chambers
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be this close forever and ever
DAY 6: LOVER
take me out, take me home
you’re my, my, my, my, lover
did I finally post a fic on time? Yes. Yes I did :))
We could leave the Christmas lights up 'til January
And this is our place, we make the rules
And there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you dear
Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?
+
“No, it needs to go more to the left. The left! Alex, my left, not your left,” Jo directed a frustrated Alex as he struggled to position the Christmas lights on the roof to Jo’s liking.
“Why are we doing this again?” Alex huffed as he placed the final line of lights.
“Because,” Jo sighed as she watched Alex climb down the ladder. “I’ve never had a real Christmas or lived in a house where I could put up lights and a tree in the window so that all the neighborhood kids could see. Last year, we were hardly friends and we spent Christmas in your house that had no furniture and ate pizza and drank beer when we got back from the hospital. But this year, this year it's our house and although she doesn’t like me all that much, Meredith has two kids who deserve to go to Uncle Alex’s house and see lights and presents and smell wood burning in the fireplace. And we deserve it. We deserve the holidays we never had as kids.”
Alex’s eyes softened as he listened to Jo’s rant. He stared at her in silence for a moment.
“What?” Jo crossed her arms over her chest.
“Nothing,” Alex shook his head and took her hand. “I just love you.” Jo’s cheeks flushed at his words. Alex cracked a smile. “We can leave the Christmas lights up ‘til January if that’s what you want.”
“Really?” Jo raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’d leave them up?”
“Hell yeah,” Alex nodded. “This is our place. We make the rules.”
“If that’s the case, I say that one of our Christmas rules is that you have to give me an organsm every time I try on that fancy new dark green lingerie that I bought in the spirit of the holidays,” Jo’s eyes shined with mirth.
“I could get behind that,” Alex’s smirk grew. “God, where have you been my whole life?”
+
Can I go where you go?
Can we always be this close forever and ever?
And ah, take me out, and take me home
You're my, my, my, my
Lover
+
“You ready to go home?” Alex asked as he came to stand behind Jo.
“Huh? Yeah. Yeah, let’s go,” Jo reached for her purse inside her locker.
“Is everything okay?” Alex’s eyebrows scrunched in question. “You seem, I don't know… kind of out of it.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just…” Jo let out a sigh. “I met this patient today who thought she’d have forever with her husband. Instead, I had to tell her that the surgery we performed was unsuccessful. She’s going to die and all her hopes and dreams about this happily ever after she thought she’d have got thrown out the window… I don’t know. It just reminded me of why I always kept people at a distance. Of why I was so scared to be with you.”
“You know that’s not going to happen to us right?” Alex brought her into a hug.
“Can we always be this close?” Jo looked up at Alex, eyes vulnerable.
“Forever,” Alex pressed a kiss to her brow. “You’re stuck with me, Wilson.”
“Take me home?” Jo asked quietly.
“Yeah. Let’s go home.”
+
We could let our friends crash in the living room
This is our place, we make the call
And I'm highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you
I've loved you three summers now, honey, but I want 'em all
+
“Why is Pierce still crashing in the living room when we have two perfectly good, empty bedrooms upstairs?” Jo asked as they passed Maggie’s sleeping form on the couch. “Robbins has her room and only needs one of the others when Sofia stays here. There’s always at least one empty bedroom. Not to mention the attic room and the den.”
“I told her to make herself at home,” Alex shrugged as they climbed up the steps into their room. “I just wasn’t expecting her to camp out on our couch for this long. She might as well get rid of her place and pay rent here. It’s a lot cheaper.”
“What do you think will happen once Grey comes back?” Jo tiptoed over to the dresser to grab her pajamas. “Do you think Pierce will still live here?”
“You mean if Meredith comes back,” Alex’s face turned somber.
“She’s going to come back,” Jo wrapped her arms around Alex tightly. “She’s gonna come back. I know she is. This is where her family is. This is where you are. This is her home.”
“It’s also where her husband died,” Alex leaned into her embrace. “I hate her for leaving like this, but I get it. I was almost the guy whose wife died, and it terrified the shit out of me. For a few minutes, I forgot how to breathe… and then she left me anyway.” Alex laughed bitterly. “The point is, I don’t blame Mer for leaving because I’d probably do the same thing. I’d probably fall off the face of the earth, too. I know it’s horrible, because Mer is my best friend and I love her, but I kept thanking whatever is out there that it wasn’t you. Everyday I wake up and I’m grateful that you’re beside me, that you’re breathing.”
“You see… this right here is exactly why I’m convinced that all the women we work with are secretly in love with you. Because you say things like that while holding cute kids,” Jo tried to lighten the mood a bit. She knew she had succeeded when she saw Alex crack a smile. “For the record, I’m happy you’re breathing too. I can’t imagine the past three years without you and I never want to. I want all the years with you.”
“We’ll have them,” Alex turned to get a good look at her. “I promise. We’ll have them all.”
+
Can I go where you go?
Can we always be this close forever and ever?
And ah, take me out, and take me home (forever and ever)
You're my, my, my, my
Lover
+
“I miss you,” Jo swallowed her pride as the words seemed to burst out of her lips. “I probably shouldn’t because I messed this up. I messed us up and I don’t deserve to tell you any of this or feel bad when you almost went to prison for me. But I miss you. I miss you so much my—my body literally aches at the thought of being away from you because it was never the plan. We were supposed to be close forever. We were supposed to be building a life together. But I blew it and I hate it and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Alex. You’ve apologized to me about a hundred times and I still haven’t apologized to you, but I’m saying it now. I’m sorry.”
Alex stood there stunned. He hadn’t been expecting Jo to still be standing outside when he opened the door again seconds after closely it, with every intention to run after her after the hug they shared on Meredith’s porch.
“I—I should go. I don’t even know why I came here. I’m sorry,” Jo turned on her heel to leave.
Alex’s hands caught up with his brain and he cupped her elbow lightly, “I forgive you.”
“Oh,” Jo’s eyes watered, not expecting that response.
“I know we’re not there yet and maybe we won’t be for a while,” Alex started. “But I promised you forever and I’m going to keep that. I’m gonna take you out and take you home again someday. Because I’m yours, Jo. I’ll always be yours.”
“You’re mine,” Jo’s eyes filled with relief and what seemed to be hope for the first time in months. She gave him a shaky nod before taking a step back. “Goodnight, Alex.”
“Goodnight, Jo.”
+
Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?
With every guitar string scar on my hand
I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover
My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue
All's well that ends well to end up with you
Swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover
+
“Where the frick is my ring?” Alex sat back on the bed in frustration.
“Alex! I’m wearing it,” Jo held up her hand in front of him. Sure enough, the ring was finally on her finger.
Jo let out a sigh at Alex’s stunned expression and kneeled down in front of him, “I always thought that there was something wrong with me and I always wanted to run, until I met you... You’re so screwed up that you make me make sense. You and me, we just fit. And I don’t want to leave you, Alex. I want a great, big, giant career, but I never wanna go anywhere without you.” She leaned in to give him a kiss. “You are my home.” She kissed him again. “And you are my heart.”
Jo let out a watery laugh, “Alex Karev, will you marry me?”
This time Alex leaned in for the kiss.
“Wait, so that’s a…?”
“It’s a yes,” Alex grinned brightly.
“It’s a yes?” Jo giggled excitedly.
“It’s a hell yes,” he moved in to kiss her again. “God, Jo, I love you so much.”
“I love you more,” Jo cradled Alex’s face in her hands. “And I can’t wait to be your wife.”
“My wife,” Alex tested out the words on his tongue. “I like the sound of that.”
“I’m sorry, it took so long to get here. If it were up to me, I would’ve married you years ago,” Jo pressed her forehead against his.
“Hey, none of that,” Alex wouldn’t allow her to beat herself up about something that she couldn’t control. “All that matters is this right now.”
“Yeah. This is all that matters,” Jo whispered quietly. “As long as I end up with you.”
+
And you'll save all your dirtiest jokes for me
And at every table, I'll save you a seat, lover
+
“Hey! What was that for?” Jo glared playfully at her husband as she rubbed her butt where he’d pinched.
“That was for the comment about the couch in my office you made in front of Link earlier,” Alex grinned amused at his wife. “You’ve really got to watch for who’s around when you say things like that. First Webber, then Altman, and now Link? I’m the chief of surgery, I can’t have them thinking that I’m sneaking off to go have sex on hospital property.”
“But you do sneak off to go have sex on hospital property all the time,” Jo pointed out.
“Yeah but they don’t need to know that.”
“I don’t see what the problem is,” Jo rolled her eyes. “We’re married. We’re newlyweds for crying out loud. We’re allowed to be a little crazy and have sex inappropriate places. Besides, it’s not like you haven’t been doing this exact thing since you were an intern. These walls have heard what you sound like mid-orgasm multiple times.”
“Jo! Keep your voice down,” Alex hushed as he noticed some nurses giggle nearby.
“Whatever,” Jo laughed brightly. She leaned in to give him a light kiss. “I’ll see you later tonight at the charity dinner. Don’t forget to save me a seat!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
+
Can I go where you go?
Can we always be this close forever and ever?
And ah, take me out, and take me home (forever and ever)
You're my, my, my, my
Oh, you're my, my, my, my
+
“You came,” Jo stared at Alex in surprise. “You’re here.”
“There’s something I have to do. It’s a little cheesy, but I’m gonna…” Alex got down on one knee in front of Jo and took both of her hands in his own. “I don’t want an out. You hear me? You offered me an out… And you were right. I was scared. So I thought about it, and what I know for sure now is I’m a better man with you. I want to be your husband. I want you to be my wife.”
“I did the work here but I’m not magically fixed. I can’t promise that it won’t happen again,” Jo warned Alex gently.
“I don’t care. I love you,” Alex insisted. “I wanna grow old with you, no matter what. For better or worse, in sickness and in health.” Alex’s eyes bore all the sincerity and love in his heart. “Marry me again. Please.”
Jo felt the tears prickle at her eyes as she nodded. And with all the certainty in her heart, she made the simplest declaration she’d ever made, “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
+
Darling, you're my, my, my, my
Lover
#jolex#alex karev#jo wilson#tsjolexweek21#jolex fanfiction#jolex fic#jolex fanfic#jo karev#grey's anatomy#grey's anatomy fanfiction#jo x alex#jo and alex#i will go down with this ship#lover#jolex fluff#fluff#made for each other#maggie pierce#meredith grey
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anywhere i want (just not home)
I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
And so the battleships will sink beneath the waves
You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same
For the love of my life, the inspiration behind TS week, the wind in my sails… Happy later birthday @odd-birds-and-booksellers I hope you enjoy this
Always, Your Computer Wife,
Nina
+
We gather here, we line up
Weepin' in a sunlit room, and
If I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too
Even on my worst day, did I deserve, babe
All the hell you gave me?
The pain in her cheek is still stinging as she struggles to open her eyes. There’s the faintest hint of sunlight filtering through the large window of her bedroom, a new day just beginning only hours after she’d finally been left alone long enough to find some peace.
The bed next to her is cold and empty, Paul having left for work while she was still crying and groaning in pain. He hadn’t spared her a second glance as he’d gotten dressed for the day, stepping over the puddle of blood that had collected on the floor where she’d laid for hours as he kicked her mercilessly, hurling harsh blows and leering insults as she’d tried to protect herself.
She pulls herself up and drags her barely conscious body to the shower, rinsing off the dried blood and sweat as she tends to the wounds she can see. She already knows she has at least one bruised rib and a sprained ankle, but she can’t do much about it now. For now all she can do is rinse off, lay in bed and hope that tonight doesn’t bring more of the same.
+
Jo bolts upright in bed, hand pressed to her chest as she attempts to slow her breathing down. The dream echoes in the back of her head, the painful memories replaying themselves in vivid technicolor right before her eyes.
She knows why they’re haunting her again, knows that he’s looking for her right now and that he won’t stop until he’s found her. Paul has made that much clear with his texts and letters, little signs to make it clear that they’re not done yet.
A hand closes over hers and she almost jumps before she remembers where she is. Jo squeezes Alex’s hand back, letting him pull her back down and into his embrace. As soon as his arms circle around her she can feel her body begin to calm down.
“It’s not even 2 AM, try and get some sleep, you need it,” Alex’s voice in her ears convinces her to close her eyes, even if sleep is far off the feeling of him so close helps to relax her. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
'Cause I loved you, I swear I loved you
'Til my dying day
It’s later that same day when Jo receives another text, the ping stopping her during rounds and prompting her to make a flimsy excuse to Meredith as she rushes to the nearest bathroom.
Can’t wait to see you soon, both of you.
The text lingers in her mind as her breakfast reappears, tears flowing as she tries to drown out the overwhelming noise in her mind. Paul didn’t make empty threats, that’s one thing she knew for sure. The texts she was receiving were just the tip of the iceberg for whatever he had in store for her.
“Jo? You in here?”
She can barely respond to Alex in between crying and being sick, her body overwhelmed as she tries to keep herself calm. Jo can hear Alex saying something incomprehensible as she begins to hyperventilate, his voice growing further away as her breathing became more ragged.
The last thing Jo registers before everything goes black is Alex holding her against his chest, his fingers threading through her hair in an attempt to calm her as his heartbeat echoed unsteadily in her ears.
When she comes back around Jo’s not shocked to find herself laying in a hospital bed, an IV and monitoring wires hooked up to her pale skin. Before she has a chance to overthink anything though Alex is in front of her, his hands running down her cheeks and wiping away the tears she hadn’t realized had collected there.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve helped you,” Alex’s voice is soft as she meets his eyes, his gaze causing her to melt into another round of tears. “Oh Jo, it’s okay.”
“It’s not! He’s going to kill me, he already knows where I am and this time he’s going to make sure I don’t survive,” Jo chokes the words out, her fingers ghosting over her protruding stomach. “Alex, he's not going to leave me alone until both of us are dead. I can’t put our baby at risk like that.”
The thought almost makes her sick again, her daughter kicking against her hand as she draws in a deep breath. Of all the wild and unexpected things her and Alex had been through, their daughter was by far her favorite. Even with a few weeks left until she arrived Jo already felt a fierce instinct to protect the little girl growing in her womb.
“I’m not going to let him get anywhere near the two of you, I promise,” Alex brushes back a few strands of hair lingering on her forehead, pressing a kiss to the cool skin as he settles into the bed next to her. “You’re safe with me Jo, both of you are.”
I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
Jo wants to believe Alex, she really does. Since her breakdown over Paul’s threats he had been by her side whenever he could. His presence was comforting but it did little to calm the raging mental battle she was fighting inside her head.
Now though, as she stares down at her daughter sleeping peacefully in her arms, she knows that she made the right decision. She just hopes Alex agrees with her.
“She's perfect, you did so good,” Alex had repeated the words over and over since Isla had made her appearance almost six hours ago, but they still prompt a smile on Jo’s face. “I love you two so much.”
“I love you, we both do,” Jo leans up and captures his lips with her own, lingering a little longer than she normally would as Alex’s fingers trace her cheek delicately. “Would you do me a big favor? I left my robe at home and it’s freezing in here. Could you go home real quick and grab it?”
Alex nods, a grin on his face as he stands from the chair at her bedside and gathers his keys and wallet. Jo watches him intently, memorizing every movement and expression that makes him exactly the man she fell in love with. He leans down to press one more kiss to her forehead then Isla’s before promising to be back soon.
As the door to her hospital room shuts, Jo looks down at her daughter, tears splashing onto the newborn's cheeks as her mother watches her, “Your daddy loves you very much, don’t you ever forget that.”
And you're the hero flying around, saving face
“Alex, are you coming to work today? It’s been a week,” Meredith’s voice rings out from the doorway of the loft, but Alex can’t bring himself to answer her. She’d been by everyday since he’d come home, her voice prodding at him the only sound in the loft.
He’d gone home to get Jo’s robe like she’d asked, finally finding it tucked away at the very back of the closet instead of hanging in the bathroom like it usually was. On his way back to her room, he’d stopped in the hospital gift shop and grabbed the fluffiest pink and white teddy bear sitting in the window. He had told the cashier that his daughter had just been born and showed off the photo of Jo and Isla that was already his phone lock screen.
And then he’d gone upstairs, the missing robe and teddy bear tumbling from his hands as he found an empty bed and bassinet, Jo and Isla’s bags gone from the room that they’d occupied not even an hour before when he’d left. He’d asked every nurse and doctor on shift but no one had an answer for him. When he finally made it back to the room, he saw the note hastily scribbled across a spare piece of paper, his knees giving way as he read the words printed in Jo’s recognizable script.
I couldn’t let him find us, I’m so sorry. Please don’t worry, we’re safe.
Love you always.
J & I
He’d sat on the floor of the hospital room until Meredith had come to collect him at the bidding of the nurses on the floor. She’d given him a sympathetic look and held him as he cried, only letting his guard down for his closest friend.
The reality hadn’t truly sunk in until he came home later that night to an empty loft filled with baby gear and the scent of Jo lingering on every surface. He’d screamed then, throwing pillows and couch cushions and anything he could find in an attempt to get some of his emotions out in the open.
It hadn’t helped though, the sadness he’d felt morphing into feelings of anger and helplessness. Alex knew that Jo was acting out of desperation, doing what she truly thought was right, and he couldn’t be mad at her for that. No, his anger was directed at the man that had pushed her to that point, had scared her and haunted her every move so horribly that she’d fled Seattle with their newborn daughter in tow.
As he ignores Meredith for yet another day, Alex let his mind wander to Jo and Isla for a moment. He knows Jo would never run with their daughter if she didn’t have a plan to keep her safe, but just the knowledge that they were out there without him broke his heart.
And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?
Cursing my name, wishing I stayed
Look at how my tears ricochet
His fingers press down the collar of the light blue button up once more before sliding the black suit jacket over it. He examines himself in the mirror of the hotel room one last time before turning to leave. He’d only been to Seattle once before for a medical conference, but this trip held a much more important air to it.
Brooke, his Brooke, was close. Closer than she’d ever been before and he couldn’t wait to see her again. He was delighted when he’d found her again, even more so when he found out that she was a doctor giving him the perfect opportunity to drop in on her. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when he saw her.
We gather stones, never knowing what they'll mean
Some to throw, some to make a diamond ring
When Alex finally makes it back to work he’s met with an abundance of pitying looks and unhelpful comments. He knows most of his coworkers have good intentions but he’s in the verge of screaming at the next person who interacts with him. All he wants to do is work and try and forget that his daughter and the love of his life aren’t waiting for him at home like they should be.
“Alex! I have someone I want you to meet,” Arizona’s bubbly voice almost makes Alex roll his eyes, the blonde not doing much to improve his demeanor since he was in no mood to meet anyone new. “This is Doctor Paul Stadler, he’s an expert on laparoscopic surgery techniques which is always helpful when we have tiny humans to save.”
Alex can feel his blood run cold as he turns towards Arizona and the man standing next to her. Whatever picture he had painted in his head fades as he stares at the man in front of him. Despite his bright grin Alex knows exactly what Paul is capable of, what he had done and threatened to do to Jo.
“While I’d love to meet your whole team Doctor Robbins, I’m not here on business today. I’m looking for Doctor Wilson actually.”
“Oh,” Arizona’s face falls, gaze turning to Alex as his jaw tightens. “Actually she’s-“
“She’s gone, she left,” Alex’s voice has an edge that makes even him flinch at how harsh and cold it is.
Paul eyes Alex for a moment, looking him over before speaking again, “That’s unfortunate. Would you happen to know where she is? I’d love to speak with her.”
“Well get in line then because I've been waiting for her to come home for the past three weeks,” Alex slams the iPad in his hands onto the counter of the nurses station, eyes ablaze as he stares Paul down. “You harassed her for months on end and scared her so much that she ran away with our daughter hours after giving birth.”
Paul attempts to conceal the smirk on his face but fails, causing Alex to step towards him with clenched fists. Arizona steps between the two men, fixing Alex with a hard stare.
“Back up Alex. I know that you’re upset about Jo but-“
“But nothing! He’s the reason my girlfriend and daughter are gone!”
“Okay why don’t you take the rest of the day off,” Arizona’s hands squeezing his shoulders finally breaks Alex’s gaze away from Paul whose face has broken into a full on shit eating grin. Arizona and Alex exchange a look and he can tell she’s holding back her anger now as well. “Alex, go home.”
How can I when they’re not there?
The question echoes in his mind the whole drive back to the loft, Alex’s heart constricting as he sat on the edge of his and Jo’s bed. The loft was still empty, sounds still echoing off the walls as he sat alone. His mind brings up the image of Jo and Isla sitting in their hospital room as he walked away, not knowing that was the last time he’d see them.
He leans forward, reaching into his dresser and rummages around his sock drawer for a minute before pulling out a velvet box. When Jo had told him she was pregnant he’d immediately gone out and bought the ring. Not because of Isla, but because starting a family with Jo was all the confirmation he needed that she was it for him. Now the box sat collecting dust in his drawer, it’s future uncertain as he wondered exactly where Jo was.
You know I didn't want to have to haunt you
But what a ghostly scene
“And this is your daddy and your Auntie Meredith. They love you so much,” despite knowing that the infant couldn’t understand what she said or even clearly see the photo she had pulled up on her phone, Jo made sure that Isla knew about all of the people they loved in Seattle. “Your daddy misses you so much, baby girl. I’m sorry I took you away from him, I know that makes me a crappy mom.”
“You’re not a crappy mom,” Jo looks from Isla to the man sitting next to her, his hand settling on her shoulder as he fixes her with a knowing look. “You did what you had to do.”
“Some days it doesn’t feel like that,” Jo sighs, her head falling to his shoulder as she fights back tears. “I took her from her dad! I took her away from the only family she’ll ever have, Link. And why? Because I’m scared?”
Link pulls back from Jo, meeting her eyes as he speaks, “You had every reason to run, you know that. I’ve seen what he’s capable of, I wouldn’t want to worry about that all the time if I were you. Especially with a newborn, I get it. So don’t feel too bad for yourself, I think you made the right choice.”
I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
'Cause when I'd fight, you used to tell me I was brave
“Jo?”
The lights in the loft are off but Jo’s car is parked out front. When he switches the lights on Alex sees Jo shoving clothes into a tote bag, tear stains tracking down her cheeks.
“Jo what are you doing?”
"I'm going to Stephanie’s for a few nights, just until I can figure things out.”
Jo’s voice is nervous and she's talking a mile a minute. She still hasn't looked up at Alex but he can see the bright red hives cropping up on her neck already.
"I'm sorry it was an accident but I’m going to
fix it. It's my fault, I'll fix it!”
"What are you talking about,” despite the fact that he's spoken up more than once Jo seems to be in a world of her own.
“Don't worry about it, you don't need more stress,” Jo’s hands are shaking as she closes the bag she's holding. "It's still early, it'll be an easy fix. I'm going to fix it, I have an appointment scheduled."
It clicks for Alex then just exactly what Jo is talking about. He sinks to his knees next to her tilting her chin up so she’ll finally look at him.
“Are you pregnant?”
"I'm sorry, I missed my birth control it was an accident," Jo’s tone is frantic now as more tears begin to fall. "I have an appointment, I'm going to fix it-“
"Jo slow down, I'm not mad so stop apologizing,” Alex wiped at the tears that had collected on Jo’s cheeks. "You don't want our baby?”
Jo blinked up at Alex as if nothing he was saying was making sense to her.
“What's actually the matter Jo? Why were you so scared to tell me?"
“I… I'm married."
“What?"
“I'm married to a guy who nearly beat me to death. And when I got pregnant I thought he'd
be happy and maybe he'd let up, instead he yelled and screamed and then he,” Jo pauses, eyes downcast as she looks down at her hands. “When he was done with me for the night I wasn't pregnant anymore.
“He wouldn't let me get birth control though so the next time I just solved the problem quietly. And when it happened a third time I ran. I ran and changed my name and never turned back,” Jo finally looks up and meets Alex’s gaze, eyes watery still as he watches her. “I had a miscarraige that time, probably because of how banged up I was. But it got me out of there. So when I started having the same symptoms again I freaked out.”
“Oh Jo…”
“Alex, I’m terrified of my past and of losing you and losing this baby… I’ve already lost far too much. I don’t want to lose any more.”
“You’re not going to lose me. I’m all in with you even if it means we never get married. You and this baby mean everything to me. That is if you want it.”
“Of course I do, I want this more than anything. I want kids with you, I really do but…”
“Okay then we’ll do it.”
“Really? You dont think I’m too damaged or crazy?”
“Yes Jo, I want all of that,” Alex pulled Jo into his lap, placing a hand over her stomach as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I love you and you’re just about the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?
Cursing my name, wishing I stayed
Look at how my tears ricochet
The room is spinning when she pries her eyes open, dried blood making the task difficult. She tries to sit up, but the pain radiating from her stomach keeps her down. She knows if she moves she’ll make it worse, but her body is in pain and she can’t lay in this position much longer.
As soon as she makes a move, the pain is back. She thinks it’s his foot that’s making contact with her ribs now, digging into her back as her body curls in on itself.
“Stop! Please!”
The cries are useless, they always are, but she hopes that maybe they’ll convince him to end her suffering sooner or throw the next punch a little softer.
“Please stop! Stop!”
Her shoulders are shaking as she blinks her eyes open again, a pair of blue eyes staring down at her in concern.
“It was just a nightmare, you’re okay and you’re safe,” Link’s words help to steady her heartbeat a little, her eyes moving to Isla who's peacefully sleeping in his arms. “I woke you up because I just turned the news on. Take a look.”
“Former Harvard University professor Paul Stadler was arrested early yesterday morning on charges of battery and assault against his girlfriend, who is still being treated for her injuries at Massachusetts General Hospital. Since his arrest, three more women have come forward with allegations against Stadler ranging from ongoing harassment to physical violence and sexual assault. Boston PD is asking any other victims to contact them at this time.”
Jo stares blankly at the television in front of her, eyes welling with tears as the news footage continues to roll. She wasn’t alone and she was so close to being free from Paul’s hold on her.
“You have to go to Boston, your testimony could put him away,” Link’s voice snaps her out of her reverie, eyes moving from the television to him. “Jo, he’s going to prison. You can finally be free.”
The hope that had ignited her heart just moments earlier was crushed as she played through the possibilities before her. What if she testified and Paul wasn’t put in prison? What if he continued to harass her? What if he hurt Isla? Or Alex?
“I can’t. I can’t face him again… There's too much on the line,” Jo looks away from Link, her tears finally falling. “I have too much to lose.”
“And you’ll be stuck right here if you don’t do anything!”
“At least I’ll be safe then.”
“And what about Alex? You’re okay never seeing him again? Never letting Isla see him?”
Jo stands suddenly, facing Link with an angry expression, “You don’t get to make the calls here Link! I appreciate everything you’ve done for us but I can’t risk everything when there’s not a guarantee that it’ll end up well.”
Jo storms out of the room then, complex emotions overwhelming her as she sinks into her bed. She wishes things were easier, were more black and white instead of the fuzzy grey she’d become so accustomed to. But they aren’t, they never would be with Paul and now she’d dragged Alex and Isla and even Link into the pools of grey she’d spent so long trying to avoid.
And I can go anywhere I want
Anywhere I want, just not home
Alex watched his phone ring for a moment, debating on picking up at all. He doesn’t recognize the number and he doesn’t know anyone from California. But he still clicks the green accept button, hoping whoever it was wasn’t going to waste his time.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m so glad you picked up.”
Alex freezes, stares at his phone for a moment, then brings it back up to his ear, “Jo? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” there’s a long pause and Alex almost thinks she’s hung up before she begins to cry. “I’m so sorry Alex. I’m so sorry we left you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I know, I get why you left. I hate it but I understand,” a sigh leaves him as he rests his head against the wall next to him, tears forming in his eyes as well, “Are you okay?”
“Yes we’re both fine, I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t have somewhere safe to run to,” Jo sucks in a breath, as if her next words are taking everything out of her. “Paul is going to prison.”
“I know, I saw. Are you going to testify?”
“I don’t know. I want to but… There's too much at risk. I don’t want him to hurt you or Isla.”
Just the sound of his daughter's name tugs at Alex’s heart, the tears that had been welling in his eyes spilling onto his cheeks.
“If you don’t go you’re going to be living in fear for the rest of your life. But if you do, you can get closure. And you can save more people from getting hurt by Paul.”
She lets his words sink in for a moment before he hears her voice again, “I miss you so much.”
“I miss you too, you and Isla both,” Alex can hear shuffling in the background, a deep voice and then a small cry.
“I have to go, Alex.”
“Wait Jo-”
“I love you. We both do.”
“I love you too.”
The line goes dead then and Alex can’t help the sob that breaks from his chest. He misses Jo, misses Isla, misses the feeling of wholeness that came to him when he would climb into bed with Jo at the end of every day.
And you can aim for my heart, go for blood
But you would still miss me in your bones
Alex doesn't know what drives him to fly to Boston, but he feels a small sense of relief when he sees Paul Stadler in the defendant's seat. A sick feeling makes itself at home in the pit of his stomach as he watches half a dozen women testify to the horrors that Paul had put them through, detailing the ways he had tormented them. Jo had never gone into detail to him but if what she went through was even half as bad as what he was hearing then he understood why she had gone to such extremes to hide from Paul.
He watches as the final woman testifies and finds her seat again, the courtroom silent except for the prosecuting attorneys whispering among themselves. Finally, one of the lawyers stands and addresses the courtroom, “Your honor, we’d like to call our final witness. The prosecution calls Brooke Elizabeth Stadler, now Josephine Alice Wilson, to the stand.”
Alex feels the air leave his lungs as he watches Jo approach the bench. Her hair is shorter and a dirty blonde color but she’s still the same woman he knows so well. The dark blue dress she’s wearing sways lightly as she takes the stand, stating her name and swearing in before she begins to give her testimony. Jo explains how she and Paul met, how they married, and then she goes into the abuse she endured. Alex listens to the detailed accounts she gives, accompanied by the numerous hospital reports.
“And then one day I got sick of it and I ran. I knew Paul would find me though so I fled the state and changed my name. I started a new life and I have a beautiful daughter,” Jo finally meets Alex’s gaze and he gets the overwhelming urge to wrap her up in his arms and hold her close. “But Paul found me again and he was threatening me so as soon as my daughter was born I ran again. I left behind my new life, the only place I’ve ever felt safe because I knew he would find me again and I couldn’t risk him hurting my daughter.”
The air in the courtroom is thick as Jo’s words sink in. Alex knows he’s not the only one who’s been affected by her testimony and the words of everyone that went before her. The prosecutor thanks Jo, the defending attorney waiving their right to question her. As she steps down from the stand she meets Alex’s gaze for a moment before turning away and going back to her seat.
And I still talk to you (when I'm screaming at the sky)
And when you can't sleep at night (you hear my stolen lullabies)
“Jurors, have you come to a decision?”
“We have your honor,” there’s a tense silence in the courtroom as the decision is handed off to the judge. “We find the defendant Paul Stadler guilty on all charges.”
A breath of relief leaves Alex as he turns to look at Jo. There’s tears streaming down her face and the slightest hint of a smile as she looks at him. Before he can get up and go to her though she's surrounded by the other women who had testified, all of them crying in relief.
I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
And so the battleships will sink beneath the waves
She sees him about fifty feet in front of her, his back to her as he stands almost perfectly still. She watches him for a moment, his slumped shoulders and overall defeated attitude and for a moment she feels guilty for what she’s put him through in the past three months. Before she can dwell on the feeling for too long Alex is turning towards her, looking over her with that same sad expression he’d been wearing in the courtroom.
There’s a moment where all Jo and Alex do is stare at each other before she finds herself rushing forward and launching herself into his embrace. His arms are holding her tightly, refusing to let go even as she begins to cry into his chest.
This moment, the feeling of being in Alex’s arms again, is all Jo has wanted since she’d left Seattle.
You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same
“Alex, I’m so-”
“Stop, you don't need to apologize to me,” Alex pulls back from Jo, one hand coming to cup her cheek. “I get it, I understand where you’re coming from. I know why you ran so don’t ever think of apologizing to me. I’m just glad that you’re safe.”
A fresh round of tears springs to Jo’s eyes as she looks up at Alex, “I don’t deserve you. I’ve put you through so much.”
Alex blinks down at Jo, not believing what he’s hearing. Their relationship had never been one sided, they’d both supported each through tough situations and had come out stronger at the end. In his eyes this was nothing more than another speed bump.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want you back Jo. I love you and all of this? None of it changes how I feel about you,” Alex leans down and presses a gentle kiss to Jo’s lips. “I love you and I’m glad you’re back in my arms.”
And you're cursing my name, wishing I stayed
“Hey! I just heard the verdict!”
Jo turns at the sound of Link’s voice, a wide smile spreading across her face as her best friend comes into view. It’s not so much the blonde man’s presence that makes her grin as it is the infant in his arms. Isla is wide eyed as she looks at Jo, the three month old blinking up at her mother with a sense of wonder.
“Hi baby girl, I have someone who’s very excited to see you,” Jo eagerly takes her daughter from Link before turning and looking at Alex. “Isla say hi to daddy, he missed you sooo much.”
The look on Alex’s face as he takes Isla from Jo’s arms is priceless, tears welling in his eyes as he lets out a watery laugh. The little girl snuggles comfortably into his arms, as if she had done it a hundred times before and Jo can’t help her own tears as they leak onto her cheeks.
“You three get together, I think this moment needs to be remembered.”
Alex and Jo both heed Link’s instruction and wipe their tears away to boast wide grins. The photo of the three of them squeezed together after a grueling ordeal graces their family mantle for years to come. Even when there are dozens of other family photos, pictures from Alex and Jo’s wedding, and the birth of their second daughter, the photo of Jo, Alex, and Isla standing in front of the courthouse in Boston remains the centerpiece of their living room as a reminder of the sacrifices they all made to keep their family together.
Look at how my tears ricochet
#jolex#alex karev#jo wilson#jo karev#greys anatomy#jo x alex#jolex fanfic#greys anatomy fanfic#tsjolexweek21#nina writes#jolex fanfiction
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Just to Break Me Like a Promise
T.S. x Jolex Week 2021 hosted by @thejolexgroupchat
Chapter One of Two: In the Name of Being Honest
Words: 6974
Summary: When Jo goes into labor, she finally picks up the phone and calls Alex to tell him that she's in labor with their baby girl. As she asked him to come back she remembers the life that they had together all too well.
Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy.
Relationship: Alex Karev/Jo Wilson.
Characters: Jo Wilson, Alex Karev, and Levi Schmitt.
Rating: General Audiences.
Additional Tags: Angst, Taylor Swift, All Too Well, The Letter, Pregnancy, Labor.
Read at AO3
Read at FFN
AN: I do not own any of Taylor Swift’s music.
……………………………………………………………………
Jo held her swollen baby bump as she pushed open the red door of the loft. She didn't know why but it seemed heavier than usual as she pushed it open. Alex was always the one to keep the door well oiled, but now he was gone, that was her responsibility. However, it wasn't easy to remember to do the things that he used to do for her now that she was on her own. Sometimes the responsibilities seemed endless and she missed having a partner to share the burden with.
The Loft was cold and dark, and it reminded her of the first night she showed it to him as they walked through the door of the Loft together. There was something about this place that drew her in. She thought that they could take it and make it into anything they wanted, and they did. As she flicked on the lights, the warm light revealed the cozy home they had and the life that they created together. That other life they had created stirred in her belly as her daughter kicked against her hand.
Jo shrugged off the coat that she wore now that summer had turned to fall and hung it up on the hook. That morning as she and Levi left for work, she wished that she had her favorite scarf, but she can’t remember where it was and suspected that she left it at Meredith's house the last time they had waffles Sunday. They still had waffle Sundays, but it wasn't the same without Alex. Nothing was the same without him.
She waddled over to the cabinet behind the couch and put her bag down along with her keys and everything else. At 39 weeks pregnant, the only thing she wanted to do each night was collapse on the couch, watch TV, and fall asleep until she gave birth. Thanks to her friends, most nights, she did. They kept her fridge well stocked, so she didn't have to worry about cooking dinner. Link came over and did her laundry every week, and Bailey and Carina had her on a light work schedule, so she was home by 6 p.m. every night. Jo loved her new mentor, and after switching from surgery to OB, she had grown to admire Carina, and the two had become close friends. Jo didn't mind that she was keeping a close eye on her baby. Except when it meant keeping a close eye on her.
Apart from that, Jo had at least one visitor a night who would come in and check on her before Levi got home from work. Some nights Jo appreciated the company, but most nights, she felt like a toddler who needed babysitting. Still, the worry of her friends was much needed, especially since she didn't have Alex to worry over her.
Jo didn't want to think about the husband that left her tonight, but it was hard not to think about him when she carried around a little part of him every day. Her daughter had been quiet on the drive home, but as Jo walked around the Loft, she was greeted with a series of movements as her daughter wiggled around.
“Hello, my sweet girl,” Jo whispered as she pressed her hand into the side of her belly as her daughter kicked against her fingers. Jo moved her hand over and pressed into the other side of her belly as her daughter lightly kicked her hand again. They played a little bit of back and forth, poking and kicking for a second before Jo rubbed her belly and walked over to the kitchen.
The latest pre-made dinner was her favorite macaroni and cheese, made by Levi, although he did put broccoli in it. After she warmed up her dinner, she walked over to the window and watched the rainfall on the parking lot while the city lights glittered in the rain. The views from the Loft certainly weren't the best in the city, but it was nice, and Jo enjoyed watching the rain.
She looked down at her rain stained car next to Alex’s Audi. She didn’t know what to do with it, so it just sat abandoned beside her own. She remembered the time they drove upstate to stay at a cabin in Bellingham for a long weekend. She controlled the music and got him to sing along to Taylor Swift. He didn’t lie and say he only knew the lyrics because of the kids who blasted it on the ped’s floor. With her, he never hid what he liked. They drove through the autumn trees on a winding road and the leaves fell like the rain. Everything was golden as the setting sun came in through the windows and the red and orange leaves were a colorful paint on the grey pavement. The memory was as vivid as ever and she could hear his laugh as he insisted on carrying her into the cabin and straight to the bed.
She pulled her sweater closer around her shoulders and held her cup of tea close to her lips, feeling the warmth of steam and the sweet scent before she took a sip. As she looked around the Loft and waddled over to the couch. They had designed the Loft in a way that it always fit the fall theme. It was always cozy and warm on the dreary winter rainy days. Which was good considering that was pretty much the majority of the weather in Seattle. This October, Jo, and Levi had put up more decorations than usual. There were pumpkins everywhere, although their carved Mini pumpkins sat next to colorful corn cobs on the kitchen table. They had strings of leaves all around them, although a lot of those were just the ones that they brought in on their shoes. The theme of the Loft had always been red, and that red fall theme had trickled over into the nursery she had set up in the corner where the dining table used to be.
She thought she would set it all up on her own bit by bit, doing a little each day, and she did. She slowly bought everything she needed, but the day the crib and the dresser were delivered, her friends surprised her with a decorating nursery party in favor of a baby shower she wouldn't let April plan for her. Meredith, Jackson, April, Link and Amelia, Maggie and Winston, and all the kids came over along with Schmitt and Taryn and Nico, and the rest of the Grey-Slone family. They all put together the furniture, folded and washed the baby clothes, and put the toys away. They got the dresser, and the changing station set up all while Jo just sat in her new rocking chair and directed traffic. Everybody else from the hospital had stopped by and delivered gifts, and at the end of the day, Jo had a full nursery ready for her daughter.
It was so wonderful she nearly cried. After Alex left, she decided to go through with her pregnancy alone. She would tell him eventually, but for now, she needed to do this by herself. She thought that she would be completely alone, but Jo was never alone. She had a family now, and even in the loneliest of times, they all banded together to take care of her. That meant more to her than anything else. It was perfect, but the one person who should have been there putting together the nursery with her wasn't there.
Jo let out a sigh as she rested her tea mug on the end table and reached for the remote that was too far away. Levi always put it on the coffee table, not the end table like Alex did, and it was almost impossible to reach from her reclined position. She leaned forward and stretched to reach it as she bruised it with her fingertips before she grabbed ahold of it.
“I’m gonna kick you out pretty soon if you keep restricting my movements, kiddo. It’s bad enough that I can’t take the stairs or walk faster than a duck,” Jo huffed as she sat back and sipped her tea.
In response, her daughter gave her a series of swift kicks to her ribs.
“Ow, okay, I get it you want out too. I know there’s not much room in there, but it’s not my fault you're so big,” Jo said as she rubbed her belly to comfort her daughter.
However, this time, her daughter didn't kick her, and instead, a painful contraction gripped her stomach. Jo and mediately sat up and tried to breathe through it. She had had a few Braxton Hicks contractions earlier in the day but nothing this strong.
“No, no, no,” Jo moaned as she breathed out and tried to get through it. Once the contraction passed, she scolded her daughter. “You can't send me into labor now. I haven't even told your father about you.”
The day they had driven up to the cabin was long gone, but a part of him was still with her. She tried to pretend that she was okay, but she wasn’t. She knew she had to tell Alex about their daughter, but even then, it wouldn't fix anything. It wouldn't bring his love back. She had gotten so close to telling him a number of times, but every time she heard his voice on the phone, she just couldn't. The day she had her 20 week scan and found out she was having a girl, she had gotten so close to telling him. In a rush of excitement, she pulled out her phone and dialed his number to tell him that they were having a daughter. But the phone just rang and rang, and when he didn't pick up. She was once again left listening to his voicemail, her excitement had turned to disappointment, and she just ended the call. Looking back now, she didn't know why she didn't tell him. She should have, but she couldn't bear the thought of not seeing his face or hearing his voice when she told him. She wanted him to pick up the phone for her, but he never did.
Jo didn't remember the rest of the day too well, but she remembered how Meredith and Link, and to her surprise, even Bailey, offered to let her stay with them as her mood darken. But Jo was determined, maintain her stability for the sake of her daughter, and she didn't want to leave the Loft. It was her home and it held so many memories of Alex. It was hard to face the memories of him after he left, but when she found out she was pregnant, she clung to every bit of him that she could, in the hope that she could give it all to her baby.
Jo closed her eyes as she sat back on the couch and listened to the news anchor go on and on as she heard the rain pelt against the windows. She sat cozy and warm on the couch as she got lost in her memory. She could see it all again. The drive up to that little town with the cabin. She remembered the wind in her hair and the music of the radio. She didn't know what it was about her smile that day, but Alex couldn’t stop staring at her. He had looked over and stared at her with that little crooked smile, and it was only because she rolled her eyes and looked back at the road that she noticed the light turn yellow. Alex had to slam on the brakes to avoid running the red light. It was a bit scary, but she laughed because he got distracted by her, and she would never get tired of the way that he looked at her like that. It was happy and painful to remember, but she remembered it all too well.
She wasn't surprised when she fell asleep, she was so tired these days, but she was woken up only a few minutes later to another contraction. This one was just as strong as the one before, and Jo tried to remember all the breathing techniques and exercises that she had learned over the past few months now that she was an OB/GYN resident. She did her breathing and set her tea down. It was still warm in her hand as she set it down on the arm of the couch. Jo tried to move into a more comfortable position and rolled onto her side. As the contraction finally passed as she let out of breath.
“Hey you, I thought we agreed you weren't coming yet,” Jo said as she put her hand over her bump and her daughter replied with gentle and soft movements as she squirmed around but pushed her arm out. “You can't come yet, please.”
Jo got up and started walking around the loft, or rather waddling. She looked at her watch, waiting for the next contraction to come, but it never did. Jo finally relaxed, letting her shoulders sag as she finished her tea. She went over to the nursery, brushing her hand along the railing of the crib as she sat down and the rocking chair. She put her feet up on the ottoman as she gently rocked back and forth. She had chosen a classic glider, but it was insanely comfortable, and both her and her baby were calmed by the rocking motion.
She reached over to the nightstand to grab the baby blanket. It was the leaf printed muslin swaddle that she intended to bring her daughter home from the hospital in. She had been carrying it around so that it would have her scent on it when her daughter was born. As she grabbed the swaddle, her hand brushed over the photo albums she had been looking at a few days ago. It was Alex's photos from when he was a kid. When his mom had visited, she had brought it with her. The album was something she had created for Alex, Amber, and Arron.
Alex had cried when he first saw it. Neither of them had many photos from when they were kids. After Helen had gotten more stable, she started sorting through the things in the house and found all the photos. She had made each of her kids, and each album was filled with photos and little descriptions of the memories of each photo. Having the photo album meant the world to him.
Jo had loved the album too and she had sat next to Helen on the couch as they all went through every photo. Alex had blushed this deep red color and tried to keep certain photos from her, but she loved every single one of them. It was filled with photos from his childhood, from when he was a baby to when he was a teenager. Helen even managed to track down a few photos of him in college when he was on the wrestling team. Jo’s favorite was from when he was a little kid, sitting in a twin-size bed with dinosaur sheets. She smiled because she loved that little chubby kid as much as she loved her tall, scruff husband. He was just so cute and her heart just melted on the spot. Helen told her stories about him in the library, how he took care of his siblings, and his successes on the wrestling team. Jo loved every second of it, especially when Alex blushed and hid in her shoulders.
That night as he laid next to her before he fell asleep, he whispered that he wanted to do that for their baby. He wanted them to have a photo album and memories of their childhood for them to look back on. It was the reason Jo had the photo album out because she had started a baby book. She had written down every detail of her pregnancy and tucked away every little ultrasound. She had no idea what she was doing, but luckily the book was all set up, and all she had to do was write everything down and add the photos. It wasn't much, but it was something that their baby would always have.
Jo knew everything about Alex’s childhood, just like he knew everything about hers. She remembered how he promised that their baby would have a better childhood than either of them did. She put a hand on her belly and felt her daughter move around. She knew that their daughter would have that good childhood that they never got, whether she had to do it alone or not. She didn't know how they would work it out, but even if she and her daughter only had Alex part-time, she knew that he would be the best father in the world. In the meantime, she could be a good enough mother to make up for the rest of it.
She had another Braxton Hicks contraction and laid back and let go of the photo album as it fell to the floor. This one lasted a little longer, but it finally passed, and Jo looked down at the photo album open on the floor. She hadn’t been able to reach anything on the floor since she hit 30 weeks, and she can't remember the last time she was able to tie her shoes. At least Levi didn't mind picking up after her as Jo decided to leave it.
She looked down at the photo album again. It was open on pictures of Alex in high school. He was so handsome in his wrestling uniform. Despite how much she tried to tell herself that she could do this on her own, she knew she never could. The memories of their life together were so vivid and fresh, and Jo was glad that she got to keep them. As the fridge came to life and hummed, she looked over and remembered the night that they danced together in the refrigerator light. It was late, and they were both on night shift and had come home to make dinner. As they cooked together, Jo put on some music, and then she grabbed his hand and pulled him in the dance with her. He laughed and kissed her, then gave in and danced with her for a few minutes before the pasta started to boil over. She could still remember the sound of his laughter and the feel of his hands on her waist. She remembered it all too well.
This time after she fell asleep, she woke up to Levi gently calling her name and shaking her shoulder. “Jo, Jo, wakey, wakey,”
Jo groaned and swatted at the hand that poked her shoulder. “Leave me alone, Schmitt.”
“Fine, I just thought that you wouldn't want to sleep all night in the rocking chair,” Levi said as she opened her eyes, looking up at him as he pulled back and shrugged.
Jo sighed as she realized she was still sitting in the glider and held out her hands to him. “Ugh, help me up, please.”
Levi pulled her up, although not without a strain on them both. He wasn't quite strong enough, and although she was reluctant to admit it, she was getting too big. After he helped her up, she walked towards the bed as she heard him pick up the photo album and put it back on that nightstand.
“Was there anything else you dropped,” Levi asked as he looked around the room and collected her dinner dishes and then the mug of tea she left on the couch.
“No, just the...” Jo trailed off with a groan as she leaned against the post as she had another Braxton Hicks contraction.
“You okay?” Levi asked, but she just squeezed her eyes shut and ignored him. He had long since learned not to touch her or interfere when she was having a Braxton Hicks, or she would bite off his head.
“Yeah,” Jo said as the contraction finally passed, and she went over to sit back down on the couch. “She's just been dramatic today. I've been having Braxton Hicks since this afternoon.”
“You've been counting them, though right,” Levi asked, suddenly worried as he came over to her.
“Yes, of course, I've been counting them. I'm not a moron, and I'm not in labor,” Jo said, waving her hand to dismiss him.
“Okay, I'm just saying your full term, so it can happen any day now,” Levi said, walking back to the kitchen. “Did you have dinner already?”
“Yes, Dad,” Jo said as she rolled her eyes. She didn't need a lecture on how close she was to her due date.
It was something everybody, especially Meredith and Link, had been annoying her about. Jo was highly aware of it as the day she would have to call Alex and tell them that she had their daughter was getting closer and closer. She had avoided him for nine months, saying that she wouldn't tell him until she had the baby. She was still on the fence about whether she wanted him there, and she delivered. She knew that he would be there for her, and he would comfort her and hold her hand and get her ice chips and let her scream and cry and yell at him for leaving her. However, other times the thought of seeing him again while she was in labor was too hard. As she made her birth plan and attended to the labor and births of countless other birth givers and babies, she wanted things to be calm. She wanted people there who would support her, and although Alex was the best person for that since he left her, things had changed, and she wasn’t sure he would be.
Her daughter wiggled and painfully stretched out inside of her pushing on her organs as Jo let out gasped and rubbed up and down her belly. She pressed down on where her daughter's feet were. She had dropped lower a few days ago, giving her a little extra room, but she and Carina estimated that she was at least 9 pounds, so regardless, she didn't have much room.
“I know,” Jo said with a sigh as she talked to her baby girl. “You're ready to come out, but I'm not ready for you yet. You got to hang tight just for a little bit longer, please, baby girl.”
Her daughter relaxed as she gently kicked her hands, and Jo smiled. However, it doesn't seem that her daughter wanted to listen to her tonight. As then she heard a pop and felt a gush of water. It was just a little trickle, and Jo blushed in embarrassment as she thought it was her bladder releasing as her daughter pushed on it. However, as she drenched her jeans, instead of smelling like pee, it smelled a little sweet, and Jo suddenly realized what happened.
“No, no, not yet, please not yet,” Jo said as she put her hand on her belly as she looked down at her lap that was soaked in her amniotic fluid.
“What's wrong,” Levi said in a panic as he came over to her. He looked down at the dark patch in her jeans as her amniotic fluid continued to soak her pants and then looked up at her. “Oy vey, you're in labor, your water broke, you're in labor.”
“Levi,” Jo said through gritted teeth as she had another contraction. “Call Meredith.”
“Yeah, okay, okay,” Levi said, taking a deep breath as he scrambled to try and find his phone. “Oy vey.”
Jo tried to relax as best she could and breathe through the contraction, going to the technique of counting in her head as she breathed in and out. As soon as the contraction passed, Jo put her hand on the sidearm of the couch and pulled herself up. She looked back at the white couch that was now stained wet and a little red with blood.
She tried to remember not to freak out seeing the blood as she knew it was normal, but she couldn't help but grieve for the ruined couch cushion. It was kind of fitting that her water broke on their couch. The couch had been through so much. They had spilled beer and pizza sauce and teriyaki on that couch, but they'd always manage to get the stains out, but this was one stain that probably would mark the fabric forever.
Jo looked over at Levi in his little space where Alex’s weights used to be. He rummaged through everything on his twin-size bed, mumbling and trying to find his phone. Jo rolled her eyes as she made her way over to her bed. She grabbed her purse from the cabinet behind the couch and her pillow. Her hospital bag and the car seat were already in her car as she figured she didn't want to lug all of it down there while she was in labor, and she was so glad she did. Now that she was in labor, she realized she wanted a few extra things. She grabbed a few snacks from the kitchen, her favorite hair scrunchie, her headphones, and of course, the baby book. Jo put everything on her bed before realizing she was still in her wet jeans and grabbed a pair of sweatpants before she went over to the bathroom.
“What are you doing,” Levi asked, his head popping up as he rushed over to her. “You don't need to push, do you? Cuz if you need to push, I can be ready. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”
“Okay, first off, you are not going to be in the room while I’m pushing. Secondly, I don't need to push ye. I just want to change out of my wet jeans,” Jo said as she put her hand on the door handle to the bathroom and shut it in his face.
“Okay, but leave the door unlocked in case anything happens,” Levi shouted as Jo kicked off her jeans and left them in a mess on the floor.
There was a reason why she didn't pick Levi to be her labor partner, and now she severely regretted Meredith’s offer to let her stay with her. If Meredith were here, she would have already helped Jo change and then helped her to the car. But Meredith’s house was so crowded with Maggie, Link, Amelia, and all the kids. During the last few weeks of her pregnancy, Jo's nesting instincts had kicked in, and she felt the need to be at the Loft and make sure that everything was ready for her daughter. Besides, knowing Link, if she went into labor when he was around, he would probably be just as panicked as Levi.
It was a struggle to put on anything that involved her feet these days. She also had to pause as she had another contraction, but she managed to put on her sweatpants before she went back out. Levi was still running around the Loft collecting things, but at least he was on the phone with Meredith. Jo went over to the bed and got her things. Jo stood in the entryway with her bag on her shoulder, and her pillow under her arm as Levi still scrambled to find his things.
“Alright, I’m gonna go wait in the car,” Jo said as she waddled over to the door, reaching for her jacket and her favorite pair of gray slippers.
“Okay, I’m coming too,” Levi said as he scooped up his things before taking her bag and the pillow from her as they made their way down to her car.
Jo put her hood up and pulled her coat around her middle, although her belly stuck out and her white T-shirt got wet. She handed her car keys to Levi as she had another contraction and paused as she leaned on the hood of the car. They were still ten minutes apart, but now that her water had broken, they were much more painful, and she watched the rain fall on the windshield, trying to let it calm her as she followed the water droplets down the glass. After it passed, she let Levi help her into the front seat as he finished putting everything in the back. Finally, he climbed into the driver seat and started up the car before he froze.
“What now,” Jo said in annoyance, gritting her teeth.
“I think I forgot my wallet upstairs,” Levi said quickly, padding his thighs and then his butt only to come up empty.
“Well, go get it,” Jo yelled at him as he quickly scrambled out of the car and ran back upstairs. “And don't forget to lock the door.”
Now that she was finally alone in the car, with only the grey skies and the rain that pitter pattered on the rooftop. Jo pulled out her phone as she figured that now was as good a time as any to call Alex. She put one hand on her belly as she pulled up his contact. Even if she got his voicemail now, she knew she had to tell him that they were having a baby.
To her surprise, she had a voicemail from Alex waiting for her. She knew she shouldn't be surprised. He left her a few voicemails in the past few months. He always called in the middle of the night or early in the morning when he knew she would be sleeping, and even if he did call during the day, she never picked up for him. Since he sent the divorce papers and the letter, he had left her a few voicemails asking for her to sign the papers and send them back, but she couldn't do that yet. She quickly pulled up the voicemail and held her phone to her ear as his familiar voice came through her phone.
“Hey Jo, I was just wondering if you had filed the divorce papers yet. I still haven't heard from you, and Meredith won't tell me anything, so I just thought I'd call and ask you. I know this is hard, this is hard for me too, but,” Alex trailed off with a sigh, and she could tell that he had pushed the phone away from his ear and put a hand over his face like he always did when he was tired and frustrated. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry I had to end things like this. I'm sorry that it's all on you to end our marriage. I could make it easier for you, and I could meet up with your lawyer or you or something, just let me know. Again I'm really sorry Jo, but I really need those papers, please. Please just call me and tell me what you want to do, okay?”
She knew Alex better than anybody. She knew about his father and his mother and Amber and Arron. She knew that he was the wrestling state champion in junior year in college. She knew that Mr. Myers who worked the night shift with his favorite foster parent. She knew that even though Amber was grown up and had a family of her own, Alex still felt the need to take care of his baby sister, which is why they visited her twice a year. She knew he loved to drive as he always said it was where he could really think. She knew that he loved Taylor Swift music, and she knew that he loved dancing but only with her. She knew that when he found out about the twins, he had panicked and he ran. It was always his first thought, and it was hers too, but she had stopped running a long time ago, and she thought he did too, but his letter was his way of running away again.
“I swear I love him, but sometimes I hate him. I know he's your father's baby girl, but he is the most frustrating person I've ever met,” Jo nearly screamed as she clenched her phone before she let out a breath and rubbed her hand across her belly. “Even when we were together. And even now, I can tell that he still loves me too. He's trying to make the divorce easy for me, but he doesn't know that I’ve been put off filing the papers because I have you. Once he meets you, he's going to be faced with the reality of what he's done. I don't know if he'll come back to us, but I want him to be there for you. I wish this was easy, baby girl, and I'm sorry it's not. You deserve parents who aren't in the midst of a divorce. You deserve parents who are so much better than this.”
Jo took a deep breath as tears collected in her eyes. She had always wanted the best for her daughter. She wanted things to be good for her. So she had ignored the truth that things weren't in the hopes that if she ignored it long enough, Alex would come back to her and things would be good again. She knew now that she was foolish to think that. Every time he had called her since he sent the letter, it felt so casually cruel, but she knew he was just being honest. She felt like every promise he ever made to her, he broke again and again. All she could hear some nights with him saying that he wasn't going anywhere except home with her, but none of the words on the letter replayed in her head, saying that he wasn't coming home. If it wasn't for their baby girl, Jo thought she would have broken down.
She let a few tears fall down her cheeks before She had another contraction. This time she let herself cry out in pain. But when the pain passed, she wiped away her tears and took a deep breath. As hard as this was and as much as it wouldn't fix anything, she had to tell Alex. He deserved to know. She wasn't going to be like Izzie and keep his daughter from him. She couldn't do that to either of them, but she couldn't help but feel like she was throwing a bomb into the middle of his life.
Still, she picked up her phone and dialed his number again. He was the first name in her contacts and last call that she had gotten. So she wasn't surprised when it rang for a little while, but she was surprised when he picked up.
“Hi Jo,” Alex said with such sadness in his voice as if it physically pained him to say her name.
“Alex,” Jo breathed out his name despite the pain. He always filled her with a sense of relief. Jo took a deep breath as she looked at the clock, and she only had a few more minutes until her next contractions hit, and she wanted to get it all out to him.
“Look, about the divorce papers…” Alex started to say.
“Alex, I can't file them, not now, just not now, because I'm pregnant. I'm having our baby girl, right now actually. I'm, I'm in labor, and I can't file the divorce papers because they only allow family members in the delivery room right now, and you're my family, and I need you. Our baby girl needs you.”
Alex was silent on the other end of the line, and Jo was a little grateful for that because her next contraction hit, and she let out a moan as she tried to breathe through the pain again. She leaned forward and put her head on her arms as she leaned against the dashboard. She could hear Alex calling her name, but in the midst of her contraction, she couldn't respond until finally, it passed.
“Jo, Jo, are you still there? Are you alright? Is, is she alright,” Alex begged her for answers, and she could tell that he was moving around in the background. “Please talk to me!”
“I'm fine and she's fine too,” Jo said, still a little breathless from her contraction. “She's perfect actually, she's healthy, and she's strong, but my contractions are really strong too.”
“How far apart are they? Has your water broken yet? How long have you been having contractions? Are you at the hospital?” Alex asked a series of questions as he rambled off in a panic, just like she didn't know he would.
“Alex, stop,” Jo cut him off before he started asking her more questions. “My contractions are ten minutes apart, and my water broke a few minutes ago. So I've only been having them for a couple of hours. It's still really early, I can tell, but I'm headed to the hospital now. Levi's driving me, or he's supposed to be.”
“Schmitt is driving you to the hospital?” Alex asked as Jo looked up to the window to see him finally coming out the door of the apartment building and rushing over to the car.
“It's a long story. A lot has changed since you left, Alex,” Jo said in a whisper, so much had changed.
“I’m sorry,” Alex whispered too.
“Okay, ready to go. Did you call Meredith?” Levi asked, breaking their little bubble of silence as he got in the car.
“Just drive,” Jo said, putting her hand over the receiver as Levi pulled out of the parking lot before she went back to her call with Alex. “I'm headed to Grey-Sloan right now. I umm, I have Meredith and Carina, and they’re going to be with me through my labor but, but I want you there too.”
“Of course, of course, I'm going to be there. I'll be there as soon as I can, and you can scream and cry and yell at me or just hold my hand, and I'll feed you ice chips or something. I'll get you whatever you want, Jo,” Alex said in the same voice that he used to promise her the world with, and although she knew she shouldn't, she believed that he would keep his word this time.
“Okay,” Jo said with a nod, tears springing in her eyes. He was coming back to her, to her and their baby.
“Okay, do you want me to stay on the line with you until I get there?” Alex offered, god, he was so sweet, but Jo didn't know what she wanted.
“Don't you have to catch a plane or something?” Jo asked, trying not to hold her breath as she waited for his answer.
“No, actually I'm in Chehalis with…” Alex trailed off, not wanting to say her name, and Jo was glad because she didn't want to hear it. “I'm just, I'm in Chehalis, and I can be there in an hour if traffic isn't too bad.”
“You’ll have to go through Tacoma and the traffic in Tacoma is always terrible,” Jo said, closing her eyes and her tears finally fell down her cheeks as Levi drove through the downtown streets. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes as she looked at the road ahead of them. “Okay, just why don't you just get here as soon as you can, and I'm going to call Meredith, but not before I yell at Levi's for taking the wrong street.”
“I'm not taking the wrong street. This is the best way to get to the hospital,” Levi insisted as he gripped the wheel and painfully went this exact speed limit as he cautiously drove.
“No, you're on 4th ave, but you should have hopped on Highway 99. It’s faster!” Jo insisted as she pointed at the map he had up on his phone showing the option for the route she wanted.
“Yeah, but it's dangerous to drive on the highway,” Levi protested as he stayed the course. “And this is the way that I take when I ride my bike, so this is the way we're going.”
Jo threw her head back against the headrest and groaned as she had another contraction. She tried to breathe again as she gripped the door handle as if it was Alex’s hand. She didn't want to go through this alone. She wanted him here now.
“That’s it, deep breaths, Jo, you're doing great,” Alex's gentle voice came through the phone as he was there for her. “Just keep breathing and trying not to kill Schmidt. He should be careful he's got precious cargo.”
Jo took comfort in his words as she let out a breath and the contraction finally passed. “Our daughter is going to be so excited to meet you, so just get here as soon as you can, please, Alex.”
“I'm excited to meet her too,” Alex said, and for the first time since he left her, he sounded happy. “I can't wait to meet her, and I can't wait to see you again, so I'm going to hang up and hop in the car right now. I'll be there as fast as I can, okay?”
“Okay,” Jo said with another nod as she put a hand on her belly and Alex hung up.
His voice was still ringing in her ear as she remembered it all too well. Yet, soon she would hear his voice as he sat beside her and supported her as she delivered their baby girl, and she wouldn't have to remember because she would have him back. If only for tonight, if only for her baby girl.
……………………………………………………………………
AN: Part 2 is coming soon!
#jo wilson#alex karev#grey's anatomy#jolex#TSJolexWeek21#otp: home and heart#grey's anatomy fanfic#my work#my writing#my fanfiction#my photos#my edits
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Happiness (Part 3)
Evermore
Hey everyone here’s part 3, the last part, as requested by so many of you. Hope you like it. Enjoy!
-
After they dropped Izzie of at the hospital to see her mother alone at first, Jo convinced Alex to drive them to the loft and order some lunch. The twins were already sleepy from the flight and also jet lagged, so Alex gave in and drove them to the place he once called home instead of driving them around city, looking for a hotel to stay at.
As soon as they walked through the loft door, Alex has this weird feeling of being home again. It feels like the place where he belongs, the place he once thought he would start a family with Jo in - now he sort of does but he also feels like a complete stranger. Like he shouldn't be here. Like he shouldn't be allowed to feel like home here.
He immediately notices the missing of all their pictures. The corner were is workout stuff used to be holds two cribs and a changing table now. Most of the stuff he once brought into the loft is gone. Jo's closet is half empty and all in all it just doesn't look like it used to.
All of them get rid of their shoes and jackets and Jo prepares the bed for the twins, so they could take a nap. She and Alex sat on the couch talking until the twins woke up again and they ordered pizza.
The evening went over rather quickly with them watching movies and playing games. Heavy hearted the twins said goodbye to their new friend Jo, but got immediately excited again when she promised to accompany them at the zoo tomorrow.
Exhausted Jo falls into bed that night. Letting the day reminisce. She's really relieved that the twins immediately liked her and also that Alex is back or at least near. It makes her feel safer, to know that if something would happen now Alex is only a fifteen minutes drive away and not a three and a half hours flight. Although her due date is still seven weeks away, you just never know.
-
For Alex the next morning starts quite early - like almost every day with the twins but today they are extra excited. From getting them dressed, through breakfast and through out the whole car ride to the loft, they couldn't stop talking and asking about Jo.
They pick Jo up from the loft and Alex drives them to the zoo. The twins chat happily with Jo and sing along to the Taylor Swift songs she plays for them. Alex is quiet the whole car ride, smiling and thinking about how this right here is everything he ever wanted - a family with Jo.
At the zoo they start with the otter as requested by the twins. They walk the big round, looking at all the animals before then decide to take a break at the playground.
While the twins play and show Jo their skills at the monkeybars, Alex sits down on one of the benches from where he has a good few at them.
"Are they all yours?" An old man that sat down on the bench with Alex a few minutes ago asks all of a sudden.
"Yeah." Alex answers simply with a toothless smile, not really in the mood to explain his family constellation to a complete stranger.
"If an old man can give you an advise, try to keep them as happy as they are right now. If they are happy you are happy." He says before he stands up again and walks away.
"I see while I was gone you made a new friend your age." Jo jokes as she comes towards him and sits down on the bench.
"Shut up." He snorts, keeping his eyes on the twins.
"Never." She mocks, laughing at the sulky look on his face.
They sit in silence watching the twins play for a while, when out of nowhere Jo grabs Alex's leg and doubles over in pain.
"Jo what is it? Are you in pain? Jo talk to me!" Alex immediately asks concerned, grabbing her hand that's on his thigh, while his other hand strokes her back.
"I think I'm having contractions." Jo answers as the pain subsides and she sits up straight again.
"Since when?" He asks worried, not letting go of her hand while he's also not taking his eyes off of her.
"This morning?" She answers a little quieter, looking away to escape his look.
"What?"
"I'm having braxton hicks since probably a week. I saw Carina and she said everything was alright. But I don't think that those are braxton hicks, this one was way stronger and it hurt a lot more." She answers, trying to take deep breaths to calm herself down. Alex hand on hers was helping a little bit.
"Ok. Ahm we can do this. We're gonna get you to the hospital. Can you walk?" He asks before he gets up from the bench, holding his hands out to help her up.
"Yeah." Jo answers, taking both of his hands and letting him pull her up.
"Ok. Alexis! Eli! Come here! We need to go!" He screams in the twins direction, waving at them.
"Noo, Daddy." His daughter immediately complains from the sandpit.
"Yes. No complaints we need to take Jo to the hospital now!" He shouts again.
The twins know their dads serious voice so without further complaints they come running towards them and all of them make their way out of the zoo as fast as Jo can. Alex arm is around her to support her while walking and to stabalize her when another contraction hits.
"You're doing so good. Deep breaths." Alex whispers in her ear when they stop for another contraction break. His arms are around Jo, calmly stroking her back while her head is against his chest.
"It's way too early." She whispers a little out of breath from working through the contraction.
"I know. Let's get you to the hospital and see from there ok-" He says while her head still leans against his chest.
"Sir, Ma'am do you need help?" An older lady asks, coming up to them.
"No!" Alex immediately answers rather rudely which scares the lady off.
"Alex! They just wanted to be nice."
"They should mind their own god damn business." He answers "You good again?"
"Yeah." Jo nods and they keep walking, finally making their way out of the zoo.
"Ok you stay here with Jo and have an eye on her and I'm getting the car." Alex orders, already running off to get the car.
"Are the babies hurting you, Jojo?" Eli asks as he sits down beside Jo on the bench in front of the zoo.
"A little bit but it's fine. It's nothing you have to worry about, ok?" Jo assures him with a smile stroking his hair. "There's your dad. Come on."
They get up from the bench while Alex parks in front of them. He quickly gets out of the car to help Jo in the passenger seat and the twins buckling up in the backseats.
During their ride to the hospital the car is silent. The twins are completely quiet while Jo calmly works through her contractions and Alex tries to get them as fast but also as safe as possible to the hospital.
"Kiddos when we are at the hospital a nurse will take you to your mom, ok?" He explains to the twins, watching them nod in the rearview mirror.
"Ok daddy."
"Good." He takes his view from his kids and takes a quick look at Jo, "You ok?"
"Yeah." She smiles as he reaches for her hand to let her squeeze it during the next contraction.
"Ok unbuckle. I'm gonna get you in a second ok?" He tells Jo before he gets the twins inside where a nurse takes them to Izzie. He comes back with a wheelchair and helps Jo sitting down in it.
"Karev? You can't park here." Owen orders as he comes around the car, which is parked directly in front of the ER door.
"Jo's in labor!" Alex replies immediately, handing his key to Owen.
"Alright don't worry. Go get her admitted I'm gonna take care of your car."
"Thanks Owen." Alex screams as he pushes Jo into the ER.
"Stop!" Jo interrupts Alex before he can get them into the elevator, "Levi! Can you go to my place and get me my hospital bag it's right at the front door?" She stops the resident before he could walk past them.
"Are you in labor?" He asks totally surprised.
"Yes."
"Oh my god. Ahm- Of course. I still have my key."
"Thanks." Jo smiles, letting go of his arm so Alex can get them onto the elevator.
He pushes the number to the OB/Gyn floor and squads down in front of Jo, taking her hands in his.
"You're doing so good." He smiles up to her, his eyes softly looking at her.
"It's way too early." She whispers, trying to hold back tears while she keeps looking into his soft, brown eyes.
"It's not. You are 30 weeks which is far enough for them to survive. You kept them save as long as you could and once they're out I promise that I'll keep them save as long as they need, ok?" He assures her softly.
"I'm so glad you are here right now." She whispers.
"Me too."
The opening doors of the elevator interrupt their moment of intimacy and Alex gets her admitted and into a room.
"Jo, bambina I didn't expect you here so soon. Oh hello Doctor Karev." Carina DeLuca greets then as she walks into Jo's room.
"Hi Doctor DeLuca." Alex returns her greeting.
"Carina." She smiles at him, as she puts on a pair of gloves.
"Carina. Alex." He smiles back, taking Jo's clothes from her and puts them on the chair in corner.
"Ok let's see. Did your water already break, Jo?" Carina asks, getting the ultrasound machine ready.
"No- yes." Jo corrects her answer, as she feels the liquid running down her leg.
"Alright then there's no turning back now. Your bambino's want to come today. Can you lay down so I can do an ultrasound and check how far you are dialated?" She asks, getting everything ready.
Alex helps Jo on the bed and sits down on the chair beside her while Carina does the ultrasound and checks her.
"Your babies look great. They are both with their heads down which means we can try the vaginal birth you wanted." Carina smiles, taking off her gloves.
"Yes."
"Perfecto. I'll give you an IV with fluids and something to develop their little lungs and then we'll see. You are seven centimeters so you'll have a little more to go." Carina informs them before she gets the ultrasound machine to take it with her again.
"Thank you Carina." Alex smiles at the OB as he gets up to help Jo sit up again.
"Of course. I'll send a nurse for your IV and check on you in an hour."
"Thank you." Jo smiles.
Carina pads Alexs shoulder before she leaves the two alone again.
"If you need to get the twins or something you can go, I'm fine." Jo turns to Alex.
"Hell no I'm not leaving your side again. Izzie can take care of them for once." He replies, sitting down in his chair again.
"What do you mean?"
"Since the day I got there she plays the 'You missed five years of their life' card which means I have them 24/7 and she doesn't give a shit about them. Don't get me wrong I love my kids but Izzie couldn't care less. She's happy when they are at school or at a friends house and she doesn't have to deal with them all day. Why do you think she has this big ass farm with a hundred animals and a nanny? Just so they can run around outside and she has her quiet inside the house." He vents, laying his head back agains the headrest of the chair.
"So you have them all the time?"
"Yeah they basically live at my place and visit Izzie when she's free on the weekends."
Jo had heard enough, with Alex's help she gets up from the bed and sits down on one of the yoga balls. Closing her eyes and thinking about everything Alex just told her.
The next few hours go by quietly. Carina checks on Jo every hour and Alex tries to help Jo whenever she needs it.
"I'm thinking about moving here again." Alex voice breaks the silence from his new place on the bed, "Would that be ok with you?"
"What?" She asks again, opening her eyes to be sure he really said what he said.
"I wanna be closer to you and our babies. I wanna see them growing up, Jo. I already missed the first five years once and I don't wanna miss them again. I wanna be their dad - who is around, who is there for their their first words and their first steps. I wanna change dirty diapers and get puked on, I wanna take them to daddy and me classes, I wanna have the whole damn thing - if you'll let me." He finishes, waiting for her answer, "Jo?"
He gets up from the bed and walks to her. Seeing that her eyes are closed, he takes her hands.
"I need to push."
-
An hour later their beautiful babies are born.
Small but healthy. They need a little help with their breathing but other than that they are both perfectly fine.
Jo has Emery on her chest, Alex has Parker for a little skin to skin time. They are all four curled up on the hospital bed - happier than they ever believed they could be.
"They are so perfect Jo." Alex whispers, watching his son and daughter sleeping peacefully.
"They really are." She smiles towards Alex, "And yes."
"Yes what?" He asks, now looking at Jo.
"You can have the whole damn thing if you want but only if I'll get the whole damn thing with your twins too." She throws him a toothless smile.
"Are you saying-"
"I'm saying after all I still love you and I wanna do this with you. I'll probably need a little more time to fully trust you again but I want them to have their dad around." She nods, not interrupting their stare.
"Thank you." He really doesn't know what other to say.
They get interrupt by a knock and the door opening.
"I'm so sorry Jo that it took this long. I got pulled into a surgery with Bailey- Oh my god you had the babies." Levi stops in this movement.
"Thanks Levi." Jo smiles at him.
"Sure. They are perfect, Jo. Congratulations."
He smiles at them before he puts the bag down at the door and leaves the four alone again.
"How come you call him Levi?" Alex asks interested, watching her carefully.
"He was my roommate for a while right after you left." She answers, carefully stroking her daughters rosy cheek.
"Oh-"
"And Taryn too." She adds, taking her glance of her daughter now looking at him again.
"Who?" He asks, scrunching his nose as he returns her glance.
"Helm."
"Oh ok."
Another knock at the door interrupts them. This time it's one of the nurses.
"Are you up for some visitors?" She asks carefully before she opens the door completely as Jo nods. And the twins come into the room.
"Hey guys. Come on in." Alex assures them as they are a little careful. But within a minute they are on the bed with the rest.
"Eli, Alexis those are Emery and Parker." Alex announces with the biggest smile an his face. Right in this moment he was the happiest man alive.
"They are so tiny." His daughter marvels over her little siblings. Scooting closer to her dad to have a better look at her new baby brother.
"They are." Jo laughs at the twins reaction.
"But they are soo cute." Eli adds, scooting a little closer to Jo to get an even better look.
"Right? Don't you think that Parker looks just like your daddy?" Jo asks, pulling the blanket a little from Parker's face so the twins have a better few.
"A little." Alexis agrees with a nod.
"Can we hold them?" Eli asks excited, scooting even closer to Jo.
"Sure. Are you guys strong enough to get me this bag?" Jo asks them, ponying towards the bag Levi just brought.
"I'll get it."
"Thank you, Eli. Let's get them dressed then you can hold them ok?"
The twins nod before they help Jo dressing Emery and Parker. When the smallest Karevs are dressed Jo gets something else out of the bag and hands one to Alex.
"I think you were right about their heads. These are a little big now but just think about their heads if they would have been full term."
"Where do you have those from?" Alex looks at the little hat in his hand, before he looks at Jo.
"Your mom send them."
"You're still in touch with my mom?" He blankly.
"Yeah. And Amber and Matt. And I finally met Aaron too-"
"When?" He asks quite surprised.
"Well your mom invited me to Easter and Amber, Matt, the kids and Aaron where there too."
"We would have been there too but the twins were sick," Alex gasps, looking at Jo.
"Well now we're all gonna be there for Christmas." Jo smiles at him.
"We will." He smiles back.
#jolex#fanfic#fanfiction#jo x alex#alex#alex karev#jo karev#jo wilson#grey's#grey's fanfic#grey's anatomy#fan.4196#tsjolexweek21
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Happiness
Evermore
"- Ok, bye." Alex hangs up his phone after the probably weirdest call he ever had to take. This call makes him feel every kind of emotion mixed together into one big snowball of emotions - joy, happiness, excitement, but also regret, sadness, even anger and shame. Out of all of them shame is probably the strongest - shame that he again is the reason that another person has to suffer. He hates himself for always dragging other people down with him. That he's the reason they go crazy, get cancer, leave him or end up hurt. The last person he dragged down with him was the one person he never ever wanted to entangle into all of his problems, but she turned out to be the only person that was always more than willing to help him through all of his crap and loved him unconditionally with all his flaws.
He keeps looking down on his phone for a few more seconds, before he puts it down on the coffee table and buries his face in his hands.
"Who was that?" Izzie asks as she walks into the living room, a plate in her hand from the snack the twins just had in the kitchen.
"Jo." He answeres quietly, as he looks up again but avoiding Izzies look.
"As in your Ex-wife, Jo?" Izzie askes surprised, fiddling with the plate in her hand.
He nodds before he watches Izzie standing in the door between the kitchen and the living room.
"You should sit down." He suggests quietly, stroking his hand through his hair.
"Ok?!" She walks into the living room and sits down opposite of Alex, waiting for him to start.
"She- she's pregnant." Alex begins, not knowing how to continue, while a million thoughts run through his head.
"Ahm. Ok? Well good for her. That means she moved on rather quickly. That's good, right?" Izzie answeres, pretending to be happy for Alex's ex-wife, even though she has no idea why his ex felt the need to call him and rub this under his nose.
"No, Izzie. It's mine. I'm the father." He explains to the woman on the other side of the coffee table, "She said she had all the symptoms, so she took a test this morning and it was positiv. She also did a blood test at the hospital during her lunch break and it came back positive too. She also saw Doctor DeLuca, the OB/Gyn at Grey-Sloan, when she was done with her shift and had her first ultrasound - she's already thirteen weeks. She said she wasn't sure if she should call me but she wanted me to know - she wanted me to know that she's having my baby. And that it was up me if I want to be in their life or not. She has a whole damn village taking care of her, but she would never keep me away from my kid. She's due at the end of June and if I want to be there she would be ok with it. Her voice was so happy, you should have heard her. I always knew that she would be a great mom. She never believed me considering her past but I knew that her past only made her stronger and prepared her to be the best mom possible for our kids. And her laugh, I missed her laugh-" He stops after the last sentence he said.
He really tries to be as happy as he could for his kids - which he is, he's happy to be in their lives but nevertheless there's something missing. He knows that but he doesn't want to admit it. His kids should be enough to make him completely happy, right? But he's not, not entirely and he hates it. He hates that a piece of his heart is still in Seattle. He feels so selfish for wishing that she was here. That she was here with him. That she could meet his kids and that he could see his kid growing inside of her.
Just the thought of Jo with a cute little bump, that she hides under his shirts lets his heart flutter. Since the day he knew he wanted to spent the rest of his life with her he often found himself day dreaming about their future - about her lying next to him in bed, snuggled into his side while he paints circles on her big baby belly, calming the little one inside of her down so she could sleep after a long day of work. Something he was also almost one hundred percent sure of - that she would work until the day of her due date. He could see himself getting pulled out of a surgery because she went into labor while she was in an OR herself. He had already painted everything out but now everything is different - completely different.
It's silent in the living room. Izzie's not saying a word. Noticeably shocked, not knowing what to say right now.
"Are you sure?" She asks the first thing that comes to her mind.
"What?"
"Are you really sure it's yours?" She clarifies her question, a little annoyed because he wasn't listening.
"Are you serious?" He can't believe that she really asks this right now. "Of course I'm sure. She's thirteen weeks along, I'm here since ten weeks. Even if it wouldn't add up, I believe Jo if she says that I'm the father-"
"What if she's lying? Maybe she's further or fewer along than she says. Maybe she cheated on you and now tries to tell you that it's yours just to get you back into her life. Or she's not pregnant at all. What if this is just a trick to get you back?" Izzie asks, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
"Ok stop right there. What the hell, Izzie?" He replies angrily, ruffly pushing himself up from the couch. "I will not listen to all of this crap. What the hell? I will also not accept you talking bad about Jo. Hell no!" He's about to walk out of the living room, not wanting to hear any more of the crap Izzie has to say.
"But-"
"NO, IZZIE THERE IS NO BUT. FOR ONCE THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU. THIS IS ABOUT ME. MY LIFE. MY JO. MY KID. THIS HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU, SO YOU HAVE NO SAYING IN THIS." He screams angrily, letting everything out that he had bottled up inside of himself for so long.
"Of course it has something to do with me. It means I'm losing you to her."
"Oh my God. It's exactly like that one time I thought Rebecca was pregnant with my child. Back then you also tried to talk everything bad. And even though Rebecca's pregnancy was fake, Jo's isn't. Jo's pregnancy is real and if you like it or not I will support her. I will be there for my kid, no matter what you say. Because she's pregnant with my child and I will be the father that kid deserves, because Jo made me that kind of guy. Also Jo would never lie to me about something like that. She's not like that; she knows how much I would give for every single one of my children." He pauses for a moment, when he realizes something.
"Alex- It's just- I'm afraid that I'm losing you now that I just have you back." She answers with tears in her eyes.
"Izzie you are not losing me, because you never had me. I came here for one reason and one reason only - my kids. If it would have only been you I would have never left my wife because you told me so many times that I'm not good enough for you. I tried so hard to be good enough for you - I changed so much and pretend to be someone I'm not, but it was never enough for you. And now that you had my kids you want me back? Now all of my flaws don't bother you? No. You only want me because you have no one else and that's no one's fault but your own. Jo on the other side always wanted me exactly how I was. She never changed me, she never tried to, she never told me that I'm not good enough for her. No, she always told me that I'm too good for her. She accepted me like I am. She respects me so much that she puts my needs before hers. God, she told me to stay here to be with my kids, other than begging me to come back home to her. She's freaking pregnant with my child, she would have every right to tell me to get my ass back home, but she doesn't. She wants me to do what's best for me. She loved me enough to let me go and live with my kids instead or her and my baby."
It's silent again. No one's saying a word for a minute.
"So you are staying?" Izzie asks, breaking through the awkward silence.
Alex is not answering, everything he would say now wouldn’t be nice. So he storms out of the house into the frontyard, where his kids are playing. He sits down on the porch step and watches his kids, when he hears the notification noise of his phone, he pulls it out of his back pocket and looks down on it. It's a message from Jo, which he immediately opens and his heart skips a beat as soon as he sees the picture in front of him - an ultrasound picture with Jos neatly handwriting underneath: Someone wants to say 'hi'.
He can't but smile.
"Daddy, what are you smiling about?" His daughter asks as she sits down beside Alex on the steps, a little out of breath from running around in the frontyard.
"Nothing, Alexis." He answers with a smile, locking his phone while he puts a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"But I want to know, daddy. I wanna smile too." She begs, looking at him with her big puppy dog eyes.
"Well- I told you about Jo once, right?" He asks, getting a nod from his daughter.
"Yes, she looks just like Bell from Beauty and the Beast." She answeres.
"She called me today and told me that she is having a baby. And that makes me really happy." He explains, unlocking his phone and turning it towards Alexis. "Look she send me this picture of the baby. It's still very little, you almost can't see it. It's still in her tummy, that's why the picture looks like this, it's an ultrasound picture." He tells his daughter child appropriate so she understands everything.
"We should visit her, daddy." Alexis tells him simply still looking at the picture on his phone.
"But the baby isn't born yet. It will be in Jo's tummy for another six months." He replies.
"I don't mean the baby, daddy. I mean Jo. She makes you happy and I like that." His five year old says, smiling at her dad.
"If it would be that easy, Alexis." He sighs, putting one arm around his daughter, holding her tight while she tips on his handy.
"It is easy, daddy. We go to the airport, get into the right plane and fly to her. And then you are as happy as you were here." She points towards Alex phone, the picture of their ferry boat wedding showing.
-
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you’re name, forever the name on my lips
ts x jolex week 21
day 2: last kiss- speak now
wc: 919
pairing: Jo Wilson/Alex Karev
summary: she never did think that they'd have a last kiss. but they did
rating: gen.
category: angst.
warnings" angst. no happy ending
AN: this is technically in before midnight where im from haha. go me! also, we’re going to ignore the fact that all of this was written today…
____
It had been long and beautiful, she remembers that much.
Standing in the gate twenty-three’s terminal, she stood in an oversized sweatshirt that normally clung to Alex’s frame, but hung loosely on hers, and a pair of old, ripped skinny jeans that she’d had longer than she or anyone else could deem rational.
Her hair was up and out of her face, tied into a loose ponytail on the top of her head. Her eyes had bags underneath them from working a twenty-four hour shift, but instead of going home to the warm and cozy sheets of their bed, she had insisted that she see him off before his flight.
When they hear his group being called, she pulls away from her place in his arms, blinking sleep out of her eyes and looking up at him dreamily, the exhaustion from the day hitting her full force. “You gotta go,” she whispers softly, and he brushes a strand of hair away from her face.
“You need to go to sleep,” he chuckles, amused with how tired she looks under the bright fluorescent lights of the airport. When she gazes back up and him and gives him a sleepy smile, he can’t help but be thankful that’s she’s too tired to see that his heart is breaking inside his chest at the fact that he’s lying to her while she looks at him like this,—lying to her because in reality his flight leaves in another hour, and he wasn’t going to visit his mom in Iowa, he was getting on a plane to see his ex-wife and two kids in Kansas.
She sighs, reaching on her toes and wrapping her arms around his neck, humming into his chest. “I know. Give your mom my best for me.”
He swallows the words on the tip of his tongue, threatening to spill over and tell her the truth. But he holds them back, because they would cause her pain, and that’s the absolute last thing he wants to do.
She nuzzles into him, feeling an overwhelming sense of safety and security, taking in the scent that she had gotten to know all too well the past seven years, a scent she can only describe as purely ‘Alex’. She places a peck on his lips, leaving some of her chapstick on the corner of his mouth, but he doesn’t seem to mind, as he leans in for another one; short and sweet, just like the one before it.
“I love you,” she murmurs to his lips, leaning her forehead against his.
He feels a deep pain hit him, and he knows it’s the guilt eating at him. He wants to tell her, more than anything. But it was too much; too much for him to handle, and it would certainly be too much for her as well. She was fragile —and as much as he hated that word and would always be the last thing he would use to describe his wife— at this moment in time, it was true. A revelation like this could send her in a downward spiral, and he didn’t want to ever see her so broken again. Even if she could take it, he couldn’t. He couldn’t bear to see the woman he loved more than anything struggle to get out of bed every morning, and he was scared news like this would cause her to do just that.
“I love you too Jo, so much,” when his lips meet hers that time, it’s filled with love and adoration, passion and heartache —all the things he wished he could say he communicated through his lips. He just hopes that she understands it all.
They don’t pull away completely, their lips still barely brushing up against one another, but enough to feel the fire that coursed through their veins, “I love you Alex,” she says into his lips, one more time for good measure. They eventually break their hold, and before they know it, he’s waving goodbye tp her as he prepares to ‘board the plane’, and she’s turning away, off to find the nearest coffee shop to wake her up before the drive home.
On the floor of their loft, she sat in an old sweatshirt of his, faded and worn from years of use, but his scent still permanently etched in the seams. She lifts the fabric up to her nose, breathing in the scent of him that had left everywhere in her home except for there.
She catches a glance on the photo perched on her bedside table —one from their wedding, the same one he’d always thought he kept secretly tucked in the back of his wallet.
All she hoped was that in Kansas, the sun shined, and it was a beautiful day. And when he pulled out his wallet, looking for a dollar to give the kids for ice cream, he finds their picture, and it makes him wish he had stayed. Because she had planned for a lot of things in life, but never once had she planned on him changing her mind.
She crawls into the covers of her bed, casting a glance at the clock. 1:58. And she closes her eyes, and goes to sleep.
She’s thankful that she doesn’t pull out her phone to check the time once her and Alex were apart, otherwise she would’ve seen that it was 1:58 am. The time of their last kiss, with his name forever the name on her lips.
____
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Mister Perfectly Fine
Fearless - Taylor's Version (From The Vault)
As long as he's going, working his eight hours at the hospital, running from one meeting to the other, squeezing surgeries in every free minute he has or running behind the twins at home, everything is fine. As long as his mind is going he's perfectly fine. But as soon as his head hids the pillow or he sits down alone in his office and his mind starts to calms down he's not fine anymore. As soon as his mind stops thinking about the hospital he has to run, the patients he has to save or about his twins, his thoughts take over - thoughts he hates and loves at the same time. Deep thoughts that bring forth every kind of emotion in his body. Thoughts about her. The one good thing he had in his life for so long and now not anymore because he chose his kids. He chose his kids over her and after months he still doesn't know if it was the right or wrong decision. Since the day he left her, this thought lives in his head like a parasite, never leaving him. In every quiet second his mind goes back to this decision and everything involved in it and makes him go nuts. But not only his mind goes crazy also his heart. He could cry everytime he thinks about her and the potential future he lost by leaving her. He could beat himself at the thought of how much he hurt her - again. It beats him up that he not only broke the vow he gave her not to long before he left but that he broke the biggest promise he ever gave her - to always be her home and to never leave her. He knew that this was and still is her biggest insecurity. Way to many people left her or pushed her aside like she was nothing and Alex promised to himself, pretty early in their relationship, that he would never do that to her. But he did, more than once.
Every quiet minute his heart aches at his biggest lost he ever experienced and at the unconditional love he had received from her daily and now never will again.
Of course his kids love him and he knows that Izzie does too in some way but it's just not the same. It's not the kind of love that overfills his heart with warmth every day. The kind of love that let him growl at the ceiling, fake break up in front of a whole hospital, that is ok with going jail to prevent someone from having to testify, that puts on fake vampire teeth and marries someone for a second time after a crappy day at work. The kind of love that, now that it's gone, makes him realise how big of an impact it had on him, his mind and his heart. Because now that it's gone, his body wants it back like a drug. But nothing, sadly not even his kids, can fill his empty heart completely. There's always this whole that nothing can fill.
And so everytime his mind gets the chance to calm down it craves for the drug he can't consume. She is 1800 miles away, living her life like he should too - but he just can't, not really.
He leans back in his chair starring at the picture of the twins that's standing on his office desk right beside his work laptop. Their silly faces smile towards the camera. He loves his kids, they are one of the best things that ever happened to him but every time he looks at them he can't stop but wonder what his and Jo's kids would have been like. If they would have had a little boy first, who was through and through a mommas boy or if they would have had a little girl first, who would have looked like a carbon copy of Jo and would have adored her daddy to death. Or if they would have had both; twins - silly and foul-mouthed but still the cutes little angels.
He hates those uncontrolled, silent thoughts of what if. He hates that he secretly wishes things were different. He hates that he's not fine when he should be.
He loosens his stare from the only picture on his desk and turns his chair to reach for the lowest drawer of his desk - like he did so many times before. He opens it to take the only item out and carefully strokes his thumb over the wooden frame until it hits the silky red ribbon he never took off. Starring at the picture in the frame, memories of one of the best days in his life play in his head. From her excited face when she showed up at Mer's house, to her excitingly kissing Arizona, to her storming into his dressing room mocking him for something she thought he did, to her loud, pure laugh in the shed, her soft lips on his after they said I do, to her sleepy smile as he picked her up to carry her bridal stile through their loft door.
Everything about this day was perfect even though nothing went according to plan. But that was so them. Nothing in their six years together ever went according to plan. If it would have, he would have married her a year into their relationship. They would have started making babies immediately and would now live in a big suburban house with their five kids, two dogs and probably some fish. But it's not, their life didn't go according to plan, they had some massive bumps in their road - their ups and downs, they broke up and found their way back together, they had their difficult paths to navigate through but they did it and it made them stronger - as a person and as a couple. He always thought that nothing could ever break them. And he loved the thought of getting old with Jo and to die with her at his side once they were wrinkly and grey. Now everything changed and it's his fault.
Looking at the big smile on her face, the urge to call her comes over him - to hear her voice, to talk to her about everything he hates right now.
Way to many times the thinks of just dialing her number and calling her. The thought of hearing her voice again makes his heart flutter. He misses her. He misses talking to her. He misses his friend he can tell everything. He misses their lazy nights curled up in each other's arms on the couch, a trashy reality show in the background, while they just talk - about everyone and everything for hours without loosing a topic.
He also misses her silly self. Her bad jokes that she thought were hilarious. Her face when she told them. Her pure laugh after she told them. When they were alone she never took herself to serious. She was one hundred percent herself around him. Joking, laughing, running around without pans and only one of his shirts on.
He's not gonna lie, he also misses her body. Her perfect body - her ass, her boobs, her mouth, her smell, her hair, her perfect hands that she loved to bury in his hair. He loves and misses every bit of her. He misses what her body was able to do to his. How her hand in his neck was able to give him goosebumps on his entire body. How her presence when she walked into a room, made his stomach flutter. How her lips on his let him forget everything. How her curled up in his arms, close against his body made him love her even more. It wasn't just the amazing sex he misses, it is her.
He puts the picture down on his desk running his hands over his face. He never thought that he could miss someone this much - and he had lost a lot of people over time.
The little knock on his door let him sit up straight again. He quickly puts the picture back in the drawer and closes it before he let's the person come inside.
"Doctor Karev. You wanted to speak me?"
"Doctor Jones. Yeah, please sit down." He points to the chairs in front of his desk to let the resident sit. "I heard you were at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital in Seattle. Tell me how it was."
"Oh. It was amazing. I've never seen a this innovative and cutting edge hospital before. No offense." The brunette smiles a little nervous as she sits down in front of her boss.
"Absolutely not. I know how good it is. I learned in that hospital and worked there for many years." Alex replies with a little, toothless smile.
"Really? I never knew that." She answers surprised.
"So tell me a little bit. What did you do while you were there? Who did you meet?" Alex asks, interested in hearing about his former colleagues and friends.
"Oh I- Ok on the first day I was in their ER. Doctor Hunt showed me around and I assisted him. The second day I met the Doctor Meredith Grey. God she's everything, but I guess you know that. She showed me around the ICU and I met Doctor Webber and Doctor Bailey. On the third day I was in ortho and met Doctor Lincoln, he's amazing. Well they call him Ortho-God for a reason. My third day I was with Doctor Sheppard. She showed me her newest scans and let me join in on an operation. The last day I was with Doctor Hayes on the Peds floor. He was so nice and showed me around the NICU and PICU. I also met Doctor DeLuca and Doctor Wilson there, they were both so nice and showed me some of their cute little pacients." She smiles after finishing.
"Sorry, Doctor Wilson?" He asks a little confused.
"Yeah. She was so nice. She showed and explained me everything and let me hold one of her patients. She was so cute. The baby not Doctor Wilson. I mean Doctor Wilson is pretty cute too, especially when she's talking to her little patients but that's not the point, right?" She laughs.
"I guess I missed something, little patients? What is she doing on the Peds floor?" Alex asks again, trying to get every single little bit of information from the resident.
"Well that's where OB/Gyn's are sometimes, right?" She shrugs.
"Wait. OB/Gyn?" Now he's confused. Did Jo change specialties or was the resident in front of him talking about someone completely different?
"Yeah. Oh right. She was a general surgeon before but changed specialties during the pandemic. She told me everything when we were having lunch. She said she needed some joy in her life after her husband left her and she found that in OB so she changed specialties." Doctor Jones clarifies, with a smile.
"Thank you." Alex nods, to signal the brunette that he got all the information he wanted.
"Ahm sure. Anything else, Doctor Karev?" She asks before she stands up to leave.
"No. It's good to hear you had a great time in Seattle." He gives her a toothless smile before he leans forwards.
"I did. Thank you again for letting me do that."
"No problem."
As the door closes he leans back in his chair again. Thinking about what Doctor Jones just told him.
He's happy that she's happy. That she found new joy in her life. That's everything he needs to know. He needs her to be fine. Even though he misses her even more now and is not fine, he is happy that she is fine.
-
It’s finally Taylor Swift x Jolex Week! So excited for all the stories. Here’s mine, hope you like it.
Enjoy!
-
@odd-birds-and-booksellers @doc-pickles @angry-slytherin @cicinicole-14 @mac-andcheeses @renipedia @jobrookekarev @kidneys4karev @only-freaking-sunflowers @iamtrebleclefstories
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you belong with me
DAY 1: FEARLESS - YOU BELONG WITH ME
(Am I a day late? Yes. Are we gonna ignore that fact? Also, yes.)
If you could see that I'm the one
Who understands you
Been here all along
So, why can't you see?
You belong with me
hi guys! my fearless fic was inspired by you belong with me :)
I'm very excited for you guys to read this. it is an au fic where jo was a part of the MAGIC class of interns and takes places somewhere around the early seasons of greys.
Also, I didn’t proofread this, but you know what I'm trying to say.
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You're on the phone with your girlfriend, she's upset
She's going off about something that you said
'Cause she doesn't get your humor like I do
I'm in the room, it's a typical Tuesday night
I'm listening to the kind of music she doesn't like
And she'll never know your story like I do
+++
“God dammit, Iz! Can’t you just let it go? I was trying to make my patient feel more comfortable in her dying moments. Why are you so hellbent on believing something that didn’t even happen?” Alex huffed as he laid down on the bed, cell phone by his ear.
“Because I know you, Alex. I know you and I wouldn’t put it above you to sleep with your patient’s mom,” Izzie’s accusing tone came through the phone.
“I wasn’t being serious. It was a joke,” Alex tried to explain the context once again. “Look, I'm not going to keep arguing with you. Besides, you’re on call. Shouldn’t you be taking care of patients instead of yelling at me?”
“I’m only hanging up because I’m tired of hearing your excuses,” Izzie huffed indignantly. “This conversation is not over.”
The line went quiet and Alex thanked whatever powers were above that Izzie decided to hang up the call. He’d had the longest day on Robbins’ service and had to break it to a single mother that her daughter most likely wouldn’t make it past the end of the week. The last thing he wanted was to spend his evening arguing on the phone with his girlfriend about something he said when all he wanted to do was shower and drink some beer.
“That sounded intense.”
A voice sounded from behind Alex. He’d been so caught up in his thoughts that he failed to notice that the music coming from Jo’s room had stopped. Alex sat up on his elbows to see Jo standing in his doorway, two bottles of beer in hand.
“Here,” Jo stretched out her arm to give him one of the unopened bottles. “You look like you need this.”
“You read my mind,” Alex took the beer from her gratefully. “How do you do that? Know what I need before I even know it?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just go with what I think I’d want in that situation,” Jo shrugged casually. “Don’t be too hard on Izzie. She doesn’t get it. She didn’t have to go through some of the things we went through, so she doesn’t understand that humor is how you cope.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I should just end it. Maybe we’re too different,” Alex’s face grew serious. “But then she does this thing with her nose when she’s concentrating really hard and I don't know… I guess I forget about all the bad stuff.”
“There’s nothing wrong with focusing on the good stuff,” Jo shook her head. “All that matters is that you love her and that you’re happy.”
“Yeah… I guess you’re right.”
+++
But she wears short skirts
I wear T-shirts
She's Cheer Captain, and I'm on the bleachers
Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find
That what you're looking for has been here the whole time
+++
“Wow, Iz you look fantastic,” Jo’s eyes widened as Izzie made her way inside the house. “You know this was supposed to be a casual thing right?”
“Aww thanks,” Izzie flipped her hair proudly. “Oh I know, but it’s New Years Eve and I had a crappy day at the hospital so I decided to make myself feel better by dressing up. I’m glad I still had this dress in my car.”
“Huh, yeah I guess that’s as good a reason as any,” Jo looked down at her own worn out Harvard t-shirt. “I just put on whatever is most comfortable so I can go straight to sleep at midnight.”
Hearing a commotion at the door, Alex peeked into the foyer, “Iz.” Alex’s eyebrows shot up in surprise as he took her in. “You look… wow.”
“That’s what I was just saying,” Jo’s lips curved up into a smile. “I can see how you booked all those modeling gigs back in the day.”
“Please,” Izzie scoffed playfully. “Jo could wear a paper bag and still look hot. I have to try to look this good. Alex, tell her. Jo looks great in everything.”
“You do,” Alex looked at Jo sincerely. Even in her old med school t-shirt, she looked beautiful. It was something Alex had noticed from the first time he met her and something he was reminded of everyday. “You always look great.”
Jo couldn’t stop the little flutter in her stomach at his words. But they slowly dissipated when Alex returned his focus to Izzie’s dressed up frame. Jo couldn’t help the pain that bubbled underneath her skin. For months now, she’d been fighting her feelings for Alex. She’d been doing a pretty good job of hiding it. That was made easier since Izzie was her friend and Jo would never dream of hurting her friend like that. It didn’t make the feelings go away, but it reminded Jo that all those nights she spent dreaming that Alex would wake up and realize that she had been the one he’d been looking for all this time were just that, dreams.
+++
Walk in the streets with you in your worn-out jeans
I can't help thinking this is how it ought to be
Laughing on a park bench thinking to myself
Hey, isn't this easy?
And you've got a smile
That can light up this whole town
I haven't seen it in a while
Since she brought you down
You say you're fine, I know you better than that
Hey, what you doing with a girl like that?
+++
“Shut up, no you didn’t!” Jo laughed as she and Alex walked towards the park near the hospital. “And Bailey didn’t threaten to murder you on-site?”
“Dude, she laughed. Bailey freaking laughed out loud and had to walk out the patient’s room so that the poor guy wouldn’t notice,” Alex recounted the story of that morning with amusement.
“Bailey laughed?” Jo’s eyebrows shot up. “At a joke you made about your patient?”
“Yup,” Alex chuckled again as he and Jo took a seat on one of the park benches to eat their lunch. “I swear, I didn’t do it on purpose. The comment just came flying out of me and I could stop it before it was too late. I thought she was going to kick me off the case, but even she had to laugh at how ridiculous it was. The guy had a literal stick up his ass. It perfed his colon.”
“God, I love this job,” Jo snorted.
“I know, me too,” Alex grinned brightly.
Jo stared at Alex for a few moments and admired the grin on his face. It was a surprising sight nowadays. Alex rarely smiled as is, but in the past few weeks the number of times Jo had seen him crack a smile had gone down and she hated it. As far as Jo was concerned, Alex’s real, genuine smile could light up whatever room he was in. Yet, he was increasingly grumpy and brooding, not at all like the jokester she’d fallen in love with over the past year and a half that they had known each other.
“Do I have food on my face?” Alex asked, breaking Jo out of her thoughts.
“Huh?”
“You’re staring at me all weird, is there something on my face?” Alex’s lips twitched as his teasing grin widened. “Or are you just admiring the view?”
“Oh, shut up,” Jo rolled her eyes and gave him an easy smile. “I was just thinking that it’s nice to see you smiling and laughing so much. I haven’t seen you this carefree and happy in a while.”
Alex’s smile faltered a bit and he let out a dismissive scoff, “I haven’t noticed.”
“Alex,” Jo’s eyes softened. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Alex’s statement sounded unconvincing even to his own ears.
“Come on, I know you better than that,” Jo set her food aside for a moment to give him her full attention. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Izzie. We’ve been having some issues lately, but then again, when aren’t we having issues?” Alex trailed off. “I don’t know. Sometimes I just feel like I’m not enough for her.”
“Alex, that’s bullshit. You are a great guy. You’re the best guy I know,” Jo placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “How could you not be enough?”
“I don’t know. It just always feels like she is trying to change me to be the guy she wants me to become instead of loving me for the guy I am,” Alex shook his head quietly. “I feel like I’m losing a part of myself to please her sometimes.
“Look, I’m going to say something and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, because I care about Izzie and she’s my friend. I would never want to say something bad about her behind her back… but, why are you still with her?” Jo asked. “Why do you keep trying to make your relationship work when you deserve better?”
Because I can’t have you and if I thought for a second that you’d have me, I’d end it all. Alex thought. He couldn’t say that though. Admitting that he’d been in love with Jo practically since the first moment he saw her. So instead, Alex shrugged and answered simply, “Because I love her.”
Honestly though, Alex wasn’t sure if that was true anymore.
+++
She wears high heels
I wear sneakers
She's Cheer Captain, and I'm on the bleachers
Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find
That what you're looking for has been here the whole time
+++
“What’s that about?”
“What’s what about?” Izzie looked over to where George was motioning towards. “Jo and Alex?”
“Yeah,” George scrunched his eyebrows as he watched Jo and Alex continuously giggling about something while sitting on the couch. “I know they’ve always been close, but they've gotten really… touchy in the past few weeks. Aren’t you worried about it? ”
Izzie let out a laugh, “You’re kidding, right? It’s Jo. I have nothing to worry about.”
“What do you mean, it’s Jo? Iz, I know you’re a confident woman who’s used to being called pretty and all, but if you’re somehow trying to imply that Jo doesn't compare to you, you’d be wrong. Jo is hot and Alex is all over her,” George expressed his concern.
“I’m not saying Jo isn’t hot or that she’s less than me,” Izzie rolled her eyes. “We both know that’s not true. But it’s Jo… she’s simple and I don’t know…”
“You don’t know what?” George was still trying to understand Izzie’s nonchalant attitude towards the situation.
“Let me put it this way. If we were in high school right now, I’m the kind of girl who wears short skirts and high heels. Jo is the girl constantly in oversized t-shirts and sneakers,” Izzie explained. “She’s one of the guys. So yes, she’s hot, but she doesn’t know she’s hot. She doesn’t do anything to emphasize it. And if I know one thing about Alex, is that he likes it when you emphasize it. So, no. I’m not worried about that. They’re best friends. He’s her person. It would be like me hooking up with you.”
Although he wasn’t convinced, George decided to keep his mouth shut, “Whatever you say, Iz.”
+++
If you could see that I'm the one
Who understands you
Been here all along
So, why can't you see?
You belong with me
Standing by and waiting at your backdoor
All this time how could you not know, baby?
You belong with me
You belong with me
+++
“Can’t sleep?”
Jo jumped up in surprise at Meredith’s voice, “Oh my God. Mer, you scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry,” Meredith smiled sheepishly and made her way around the counter to pour herself a cup of the tea Jo had prepared. “They’ve been going at it for a while now. Any idea what happened?”
“I’m not sure. I just keep catching bits and pieces of it,” Jo shrugged as she tried to continue deciphering the yelling match currently unfolding upstairs. “It started with Izzie criticizing something Alex did and then it escalated when George called.”
“This can’t keep happening,” Meredith frowned and leaned against the kitchen island. “They aren’t good for each other. All they do is fight and make each other upset.”
“She’s trying to change him into her idea of the perfect man and it’s obviously not working,” Jo crossed her arms in annoyance. “Alex doesn’t need to change. He’s perfectly fine the way he is. If she doesn’t like it, then she should find someone else that actually meets her standards. Or is okay with being walked all over.”
Meredith was about to open her mouth in response when they caught a part of the conversation going on between the bickering couple.
“I’m not fucking other people because I got bored!” Alex shouted.
Jo and Meredith exchanged a look of confusion. They continued listening as the volume of the argument increased.
“Please. Don’t go acting like a saint. You went and slept with Olivia when we first started dating!” Izzie countered.
“Yeah, and so what? You act as if we were exclusive back then. We went out on a couple of dates and then you met Denny and called me trash! You told me that I wasn’t good enough for you or anyone.” Alex yelled angrily. “You treated me horribly for weeks and what do you do? YOU SLEPT WITH O’MALLEY! You slept with a married man!”
Both Meredith and Jo froze in shock at the revelation. Out of all the things they had predicted, the reality of the situation had definitely not been one of them. After that, the conversation didn’t last much longer. Before either one of them knew it, Izzie was storming out of the house angrily with an overnight bag and her hospital badge in her hands, breezing past them without saying a word.
“Do you want to go talk to him or should I?” Meredith pointed upstairs.
“I’ll go,” Jo stood up from her stool. “You should try to get some sleep.”
Jo made her way up the stairs and walked cautiously towards Alex’s door. Taking a deep breath, she knocked quietly, “Alex? It’s me. Jo. I know you probably don’t want to talk to anyone right now, but I just want you to know that I’m here for you if you need me. I’m always here for you.”
She waited outside his door for a few moments. After some time, Jo figured that he wanted to be alone. She turned on her heel and was about to walk away when she heard the door open behind her. Jo stopped and looked back at Alex who was sporting red eyes and a pained expression on his face. He moved aside and let her step into the room before shutting the door. She felt her heart crack in half at the hurt in his eyes and didn’t hesitate to envelop him in a hug.
Alex gratefully accepted the gesture and held onto her tightly, allowing some more tears to fall. He sniffled into her neck, “I ended things with Izzie.”
“I heard,” Jo ran her hands through his hair in a comforting manner. “I’m sorry.”
Alex straightened and sat down on the bed. He took one of Jo’s hands in his and started to play with her fingers absentmindedly, “I know this is probably weird, but could you stay? I just… I need a friend tonight.”
“Of course,” Jo cupped his cheek. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
+++
I'm the one who makes you laugh
When you know you're 'bout to cry
And I know your favorite songs
And you tell me 'bout your dreams
Think I know where you belong
Think I know it's with me
+++
“Dude, grow a pair and ask her out already,” Cristina groaned. “I’m tired of seeing you pining for her from afar. It’s disgusting and annoying.”
Alex glared at Cristina from across the nurses’ station. Jo had just left to scrub in on a meningioma resection with Shepherd, leaving Cristina, Alex, and Meredith alone as they went over charts. “Shut up. I’m not pining over her.”
“Yeah and the earth is the center of the universe,” Cristina smirked. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were listing things that weren’t true. Because it’s obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes that you’re in love with her.”
“I’m not pining over Jo. Tell her, Mer.”
Meredith raised an eyebrow, “I know you say that there is nothing going on between you and Jo, but maybe there should be.”
“Oh come on,” Alex scoffed. “You can’t be serious can you.”
“As a heart attack,” Cristina deadpanned. “You can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it.”
“Of course I’ve thought about it,” Alex sighed. “But she’s my best friend and I don’t want to lose her if something were to go wrong. Not to mention that it doesn’t matter how I think or feel if she doesn’t feel the same about me.”
“Wait? You think Jo doesn’t feel the same way about you?” Cristina put down the chart in her hands. “God, you really are an idiot.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Alex, Jo is in love with you,” Meredith revealed. “I know it because she told us. She’s been in love with you since you guys got into that darts competition at the bar a few months into our intern year and you both mopped the floor with those guys. She wanted to ask you out, but she was too scared and you started dating Izzie soon after that.”
“She what?” Alex couldn’t believe what he was hearing. There was no way that Jo had been in love with him. “No. No. Jo could do so much better than me. She deserves better than me. There’s no way that she’d go for a guy like me when she could have anyone she wants.”
“She wants you, you moron,” Cristina slapped Alex on the arm. “Don’t ask me why, because I don’t understand it. But she wants you.”
“Of course she wants you. You’re her best friend,” Meredith smiled. “You are Jo’s favorite person on the planet. You are the only person she really trusts. You know how hard that is for her. But she did it anyway. She loves you.”
Alex stared dumbfounded at the chart in his hands. In the months since he had broken up with Izzie, he’d spent even more time with Jo than he had before and his feelings for Jo increased exponentially. There were so many moments while they were hanging out on the couch or her room or the resident’s lounge or the park where he was tempted to throw caution out the window and just kiss her. But every time, he stopped himself, afraid of what would happen to their friendship if she didn’t feel the same way.
“I’ve gotta go,” Alex put down the papers in his hands.
“Hey! Where are you going?” Meredith called out behind him.
“I’m sorry, I—I gotta find Jo. I’ll finish this later,” Alex continued down the hall.
“You better not come back until you’ve made progress with Wilson!” Cristina shouted so that he could hear.
Typically, Alex would have shot back at Cristina, but he had more important things to do at the moment. Namely, catching Jo before she scrubbed in on that surgery. He searched the OR board to check on the status of the operation and was pleased to see that it had been pushed back an hour. He paged her to one of the quieter supply closets on the floor and waited patiently until she showed up.
“Hey, why did you page me to a closet? Do you need help bringing something somewhere?” Jo asked as she walked in the room.
“You’re the only one who can make me laugh when I’m about to cry,” Alex blurted out.
Jo stared at him in confusion, “What?”
“Just let me get this out,” Alex took a breath to steady himself and he placed his hands on her shoulders. “You’re the one person who turns a bad day into a good day. You know my favorite songs and that when I’m in the car I like to blast them really loud. You’re the only person I can talk to about my dreams. When I came here, I thought I wanted to be a plastic surgeon. But you listened when I started hanging out with Robbins and told you that I wanted to go into peds. You didn’t laugh at me or make me feel stupid for wanting it. You just smiled and hugged me because I found the thing that I want to do for the rest of my life. You are the person who’s supported me every step of the way, even when everyone hated me and if I didn’t really deserve it. You’ve been there. And I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realize it, but somewhere along the way, you became my favorite person. You’re my best friend, but you’re also the woman that I’m in love with. And maybe I’m wrong, but I think you feel the same way too. I think we have something here and I’d be an idiot if I let another second pass without saying anything. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wanna be with you.”
Jo didn’t know what to say. She was utterly speechless. For years she’d hoped that one day something like this would happen, but she’d given up on it long before Alex and Izzie even got together. She had resigned herself to the fact that she’d have to move on and figure out a way to get over Alex so as not to ruin their friendship with something as messy as feelings.
She must’ve been quiet for too long, because Alex pulled away and put his head down in embarrassment, “I-I’m sorry. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut and not said anything. Just forget it-”
“Alex,” Jo reached for him. She cradled his face and pressed her forehead against his. And although she had no words at the moment, she knew she could show him and leaned in for a kiss.
+++
Three years later...
“Do you, Alexander Michael Karev, take Josephine Brooke Wilson to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as you both shall live?”
“I do,” Alex’s face shined as he nodded emphatically at the priest’s question.
The priest smiled at Alex’s enthusiasm and turned to look at Jo, “And do you Josephine Brooke Wilson, take Alexander Michael Karev to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as you both shall live?”
“I super do,” Jo beamed as she answered without hesitation.
Laughing lightly, the priest grinned, “Well, then by the power vested in me. I now pronounce you, husband and wife. What God has brought together, let no man separate. You may kiss the bride.”
+++
Have you ever thought just maybe
You belong with me?
You belong with me
#jolex#jolex fanfic#TSJolexWeek21#you belong with me#jolex fanfiction#jo wilson#alex karev#Izzex#izzie stevens#mutual pining#requited unrequited love#grey's anatomy#grey's anatomy au#grey's anatomy fanfiction#magic#CANON DIVERGENCE#rewriting canon#alternate universe#friends to lovers#best friends#implied cheating#early seasons grey's#seattle grace
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hoping, dreaming, dying to keep
And all at once, you are all I want, I'll never let you go
King of my heart, body and soul
“You know, I found your husband.”
The voice in the doorway of the lounge made Jo look up in shock, brows furrowing as she comprehended what Alex had just said. “What?”
“I hired a guy. I found his name. I looked him up,” Alex paused, gauging Jo’s reaction as he relayed his actions. “And then I went and found him.”
“Oh, my God, Alex.”
“Look. You didn't ask me to do that, and you didn't give me permission to do that, and it was wrong, and I'm sorry. But Jo, I swear to God, I could never, ever hurt you,” Alex wore a pitiful expression as he looked at Jo, obviously hoping she would hear him out. “My dad, he was like your ex. I'm not like that, all right? I'm not like my dad. I mean, I do things that are wrong. I do things that are stupid. But I swear to you I would never hurt you.”
Jo let Alex’s words sink in, heart pounding as she realized that Alex had gone behind her back, “You saw Paul?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you serious? After I told you what I went through you just went behind my back and found Paul,” Jo ran a hand through her hair as she fought back tears. “I’ve spent so many years hiding from him and you just what? Found him on the internet? What if he figures out where I am? What then?”
“Jo I-”
“No this… This is unforgivable. I’m sorry Alex but I don’t think I can trust you again after this,” Jo turned away from Alex, attempting to stem her tears long enough for her to get herself alone. “Can you just leave? Please?”
There’s a long pause and she almost thinks that he’s left her there before his voice pipes up, “I’m sorry Jo. Really I am.”
Once she hears him leave the lounge and shut the door behind himself, Jo let’s a few quiet tears escape. She contemplates running, leaving everything behind once again and starting over. But she’s built a life here in Seattle, Alex be damned. She wasn’t going to let Paul or her fear keep her from living her life. If Paul became an issue again then she’d face the problem when it was standing in front of her. She wasn’t the same scared girl she used to be, she was a fighter and she could handle this.
+
“The Heparin should have helped by now. I think I made the wrong call.”
Jo’s heart drops as she approaches Alex and Amelia. She had run herself ragged around the hospital trying to find an answer only for her search to be useless.
“Wait. Heparin? No. I texted,” Alex turns at the sound of her voice, eyeing her warily. ��They didn't reverse him.”
“Damn it. We can't access the reversal agent,” Alex looks at Amelia, who nods at him as she moves into the room. “Prep him to move.”
“What is it? What's wrong,” Frankie’s mom is frantic as Helm and Amelia begin to prep Frankie.
“Frankie's AVM might be bleeding. We've got to get him to the O.R. now.”
“But the medicine you gave him. It was supposed to help.”
“I'm sorry. We need to go.”
Amelia and Helm push Frankie out of the room, his mom hot on their heels. Jo watches them, her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip in worry. Finally she looks up to Alex who hasn’t moved from his spot next to her.
“Hey. I'm so sorry. I texted. It didn't go through. And then…”
“And then what,” Jo is expecting anger from Alex but instead his voice is laced with concern as he places a hand on her shoulder. “Jo, what’s wrong?”
She doesn’t know why the words slip out so easily for her but as Jo looks at Alex she can’t help herself, “Paul is here. I… I saw him downstairs.”
She doesn’t need to say anything else as Alex steps forward and wraps his arms around her, pulling her close as she takes a few shuddering breaths, “Why don’t you come sit in the gallery while Amelia and I operate? That way you aren’t totally alone.”
Jo nods, silently agreeing to Alex’s plan as they walked down the hall towards the OR. Jo stops a few feet away from the scrub room, gripping Alex’s arm tightly. In front of them sits Paul Stadler, fixing his shoe covers without a care in the world. Alex quickly turns to Jo, blocking her from Paul’s view.
“I’m in OR 3, go up to the gallery and don’t move until I come up later,” Alex watched as Jo let out a shaky breath and nodded, eyes still trained on Paul. “It’s gonna be alright Jo.”
Alex wants nothing more than to reach down and kiss Jo, to hold her tight as a comfort to both of them that things would be okay. Instead he watches her walk down the hallway, turning a corner and disappearing from his line of view, unknowingly carrying a large piece of his heart with her.
-
It’s late the next day when Alex walks Jo up to the door of the loft. After signing the divorce papers only for Paul to die a few hours later Jo had been through a lot. Alex had driven her home, making sure she got into the loft safely, “I’m gonna head out, do you need anything before I go?”
“Can you maybe just camp out on the couch tonight,” Jo sat on her bed, a ratty Princeton sweatshirt engulfing her a s she stared helplessly at Alex. “I just… I really don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude or anything,” Alex rubs the back of his neck nervously, glancing up at Jo who has tears welling in her eyes. “Hey, don’t cry. I’ll stay okay?”
Jo sucks in a deep breath before a sob breaks from her, “I’m just really shaken up. I don’t want to be alone again. I know… I know that Paul is dead but I can’t stop my mind from playing worst case scenarios on an endless loop.
Alex closes the gap between them and pulls Jo into his arms as she continues to cry. He wanted nothing more than to hold her all night, comfort her the way she wanted. But he knew that wasn’t his place anymore so he started on the couch, the same one Jo had bought him. He leapt up when Jo was startled awake by a nightmare, comforting her until she drifted back to sleep. He feels selfish for loving the way her body so easily curls against his, but if this is the only way he can have Jo then so be it.
+
“You get ditched already too?”
Jo jumps at the voice that sounds behind her, louder than the crowded room around her. She turns with a small grin as she meets Alex’s eyes, “Yeah I came down with Meredith but as soon as we got here she went off with Hayes. I’m pretty sure they already left.”
“Well if I was having the amount of sex they were having I wouldn’t want to stick around at some stuffy party either,” Alex takes a long gulp of his beer, Jo eyeing him for just a moment too long. His eyes glance over her and she can almost hear the gears in his brain turning. “What’s that look for?”
Jo gulps her own red wine, feeling a blush creep up from her neck to her cheeks, “Nothing, I just haven’t gotten laid in a pathetically long time. I don’t have time for casual sex.”
A deep laugh escapes Alex and the sound vibrates through Jo’s body, lighting her up with an electricity she hadn’t felt in far too long. Her eyes meet his, a grin forming on his cheeks, and before Alex could say anything else she was speaking, one hand pressing a finger into his chest, “Don’t say it!”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Yes but you have that cocky grin that you always used to wear when you thought you were going to get laid,” Jo narrows her eyes in Alex’s direction as his smirk widens. “Don’t even think about it, I am not going home with you.”
The moment isn’t as tense or awkward as Jo would’ve assumed, instead the same electricity fluttering around her chest was now buzzing around her and Alex. Even though they’d been broken up for over a year and a half now, their chemistry was still there burning just as strong as ever.
“You said it yourself, you haven’t gotten laid in awhile. We could help each other out,” Jo hates how her body reacts to him, melting at the mere suggestion of having sex. “It could be a no strings attached kind of thing, you know just scratching an itch.”
“And you think that you and I could be no strings attached? After all, we do have a history.”
The way their eyes meet then confirms for Jo that no matter what she says next her body is going to betray her and give into the primal urge building up rapidly within her. Alex’s eyes are dark and filled with a sense of longing as he stares at her, fingers reaching out to grab her hand, “There’s only one way to find out.”
They barely make it to Alex’s car before their hands are all over each other, clothing being ripped away as they fall into the backseat in a whirlwind of moans and gasps. It feels as if no time has passed between them as she and Alex fall over the edge together, heavy breaths echoing around them as Jo rests her cheek against his chest.
His heartbeat sounding in her ear comforts her in a way she’d forgotten about, never lingering like this with any of her one night stands or casual flings. She almost lets herself get caught up in the feeling before Alex’s voice rings in her ear.
“So… no strings attached?”
+
She knows she’s had a drink too many when she let’s Alex’s arms wrap around her waist, her body melting at his touch despite the fact that they were surrounded by their friends and coworkers. Meredith and Hayes had said their vows hours earlier, the couple happily dancing with all five of their combined children as everyone around them celebrated.
“Let’s get out of here,” Alex’s breath is burning hot against her neck, his presence overwhelming all of her senses. “I’ve got a room upstairs.”
“Aren’t you supposed to stick around since you’re the man of honor,” Jo turns in his embrace and settles her hands on Alex’s chest as she fixes him with a stern look. “I don’t think Mer will be too happy to look around and find you missing.”
Alex rolls his eyes as his hands snake down to her waist, pulling her closer to him, “She’ll live. Now c'mon, I've been staring at you in that dress all night and all I’ve wanted is to take it off of you.”
The rest of the night is a blur, Jo and Alex falling into bed with each other multiple times before they finally succumb to sleep. It’s not until late the next afternoon when she wakes up in his embrace that Jo realizes that they hadn’t used any protection. Staring at Alex’s sleeping form she decides to keep that revelation to herself, dressing quietly and slipping out the hotel room before he can wake up.
+
The next few weeks are excruciating, Jo avoiding Alex at any and all costs. They’d usually meet up at least once a week, but she’d been ignoring his texts and avoiding the peds floor whenever possible. She knew Alex could tell something was wrong, even before they’d started their ‘no strings attached’ relationship they’d see each other around the hospital or at Joe’s. But since Meredith and Hayes’ wedding she’d given him the cold shoulder, her anxious mind spinning out as she played over what their future might look like.
It’s a month after the wedding when she finally gets hit with a bout of nausea in the middle of rounds. She barely makes it out of the patient room and to the trashcan in the hallway before her breakfast is reappearing in front of her, a sinking feeling settling in her stomach as she shoos her group of residents away. Once she’s confident that she won’t throw up again, Jo finds herself darting to the nearest supply closet and grabbing a pregnancy test.
She’s known in the back of her head for almost a week but she hadn’t dared to confirm the growing suspicion lingering there. Now however there would be no more denying as what she assumed was morning sickness and the accompanying nausea had plagued her since rolling out of bed that morning.
“C’mon, just tell me already,” Jo mumbles the words to herself as she stares down at the two tests resting on the bathroom counter in the attendings lounge.
“Jo? You okay?”
The question is met with a knock on the bathroom door but before Jo can answer the person on the other side the timer on her phone is blaring, startling her into knocking both tests and her still sounding phone onto the floor. She scrambles to pick everything up just as the door swings open, Alex standing before her with a worried expression on his face.
Great, just what I needed.
She’s about to speak when she follows his line of sight to the two plastic tests sitting right in front of his feet, both brandishing a bright pink plus sign. Jo picks the tests up quickly but she knows the damage has already been done. When she stands up and faces Alex her mind immediately flashes back to the night he proposed to her in the loft. His face has the same mix of heartache and hurt that it had that day two years ago and Jo’s own heart twists as she meets his eyes.
“Oh.”
The word slips from Alex’s mouth easily and his eyes dart to Jo’s abdomen. Before he can say anything else Jo is speaking in a nervous tangent, “I was throwing up this morning and I’ve already suspected for a few weeks, well I assumed something might have happened since we weren’t exactly careful at the wedding and I was just waiting for this stupid stick to turn pink and then-”
“You knew?,” Alex’s voice stops her nervous tangent, blinking up at him in confusion. “You knew, or you thought you might know, and you didn’t say anything to me?”
“Well I wasn’t for sure about it-”
“But you knew we didn’t use protection? And that you might be pregnant for weeks and you didn’t say anything. Instead you just avoided me the whole time,” Jo could feel Alex’s anger rising as his brain worked through the situation at hand. “Were you even going to tell me you were pregnant if I hadn’t shown up just now?”
“Of course I was! But I didn’t think I needed to keep you in the loop on every little thing in my life seeing as you’re not my boyfriend,” Jo crosses her arms as she stares down Alex, her own anger boiling under her skin. “You were the one that insisted on this being no strings attached, well that’s exactly what you’ve got! I’ll let you know when I book an appointment, other than that don’t expect to hear from me.”
Jo brushes past Alex, ignoring his calls to her as she walks briskly out of the attendings lounge. She would deal with the repercussions later, for now all she wanted was to be left alone and to be as far away from Alex as possible.
+
Weeks pass by and true to her word Jo doesn't contact Alex except to tell him about her first ultrasound. He misses the appointment, an emergency surgery calling him away half an hour beforehand, and Jo feels a small twinge of sadness as she tucks the ultrasound into his wallet. While part of her is still upset with him, another part is sad that he wasn’t able to experience the appointment with her.
“Wilson I’ve got a patient in room 4 that needs a consult,” Hunt’s voice booms from behind her and Jo turns to meet his eye. “Car crash victim with minor injuries. Do you mind grabbing it? We’re filling up fast here.”
Jo nods, grabbing an iPad and bringing up the electronic chart. She feels like crap, even though she’s approaching the 12 week mark she’s still plagued with nausea and heartburn most days. Her stomach now has the slightest curve to it and Jo can’t help but run her hand over the small bump throughout the day.
“Hi Mr. Greene, my name is Doctor Wilson and I’m-“
“I don’t really care who you are, I’m not staying in this damn hospital,” the older man seems disgruntled, sitting on the edge of the gurney and fixing Jo with a glare. “I’m perfectly fine anyways.”
Despite what he says, the man has a large gash across his forehead and his right arm is clearly bothering him. Jo takes his reluctance in stride, taking another step towards the bed, “I just want to check out that cut on your forehead and make sure it doesn’t get infected. It looks like you might need stitches.”
“I told you I’m fine! I don’t trust any of you doctors.”
“Well we’re going to have to keep you for obser-“
Before she can move out of the way, the man is springing up from the gurney and lunging towards her. His hands grab her arms roughly and slam her into the wall of the trauma room. Jo can feel her head smack against the plaster as she lets a scream out, eyes screwing shut as she tries not to let her racing mind overwhelm her.
Paul. Running away. Jason. Fighting back. DeLuca. Mistakes. Alex. Heartbreak. Her baby… Her baby. Her baby.
Suddenly the pressure against her arms releases and Jo opens her eyes in time to see Alex pulling the now screaming patient away from her. Instead of the angry and visceral reaction she’s expecting from him, Jo watches as Alex pulls the patient away just long enough to let Owen sedate him. As soon as he hands him off, Alex is in front of her, his hands now resting on her shoulders as he looks her over. She’s frozen in place, her body shaking involuntarily as she tries to stop the panic attack she can feel coming on.
“Are you okay? Jo?”
“Um yeah, I think so. I hit my head pretty hard but I’m okay,” she can hear the way her voice is trembling as she meets Alex’s eyes. “I’m fine, I’m okay. I’m fine, really I’m fine.”
She keeps repeating the words as Alex pulls her into him, tears floating down her cheeks as her chest constricts tightly. Jo has been through her share of scary situations before, she’s been beaten within an inch of her life but she’s never been this scared. She’s never had to worry about someone else before but right now all she could think about was if her baby had somehow been hurt.
“Do you want me to page Carina to check you out?”
Any other day she would have brushed off concerns from anyone about her well-being but Jo’s anxiety is already peaking and she doesn’t want to leave anything to chance. She nods slowly, listening as Alex asks Owen to page Carina and then leads her out of the room.
+
Hours later Jo is crawling into bed, ready for the day to be over. Her head is pounding but she’d been instructed to stay awake for a few hours following her injury to make sure she truly was okay. After having both Amelia and Carina poke and prod her, she was more than ready to lay in bed until late tomorrow.
“Your meds are on the counter and I filled up a water bottle for you to keep on your side table,” Jo gazes up at Alex who's standing in front of her, a concerned yet genuine smile on his face as he looks at her. “You need anything else before I head out?”
“Stay.”
Alex pauses only for a second, his expression showing his shock and hope for only a second before he schools his emotions once again, “I don’t wanna intrude. But you can call me if you need anything.”
“No I want you to stay Alex,” Jo sits up in bed, despite how tired her body is and fixes Alex with a sincere gaze. An alarming sense of deja vu comes over her as she remembers a similar conversation happening after Paul’s death. Jo had wanted Alex to stay with her and crawl into bed beside her, seeking his comfort after the traumatic events. But always the gentlemen Alex had stayed true to his word and stuck to the couch, except to comfort her in the middle of the night. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my suspicions, but I swear as soon as I knew I was going to tell you.”
“You didn’t need to tell me anything Jo, I was overreacting. I panicked and I’m sorry.”
Jo shakes her head, eyes watering as she reaches for Alex’s hand, “I don’t care about any of that. You… When you pulled that patient off of me I was convinced that you were going to lunge at him or.... It doesn’t matter what I thought, what matters is that you kept your cool and you made sure I was okay. You showed me that you’ve changed.”
“Of course I did Jo, you mean a lot to me,” Alex moves his free hand up to cup Jo’s cheek and swipe at the few tears that had collected there.
“And you mean so much to me Alex, more than you know. I know we’ve been through alot but I still care about you. And I don’t want to continue this stupid ‘no strings attached’ thing we have going.”
“Oh… Okay.”
A grin spreads across Jo’s face as she leans up, pressing her forehead against Alex’s, “I mean I want more with you. I don’t want random hookups or meaningless sex, I want the whole thing. I want you here with me every night. And I want to raise our baby together. I love you Alex, so much. It might’ve taken me a while to realize it but I want it all with you.”
Alex doesn’t bother responding, instead he leans forward and kisses her sweetly. Relief floods Jo as she tangles her fingers in his hair, the stress and pain of the day melting away as she leans into Alex.
“I love you too. And I’m really glad you’re both okay,” Alex’s hand slides down to the small bump that had grown in just days beforehand, a smile taking over his face as he did so. “You have a bump!”
“Pretty sure it’s all bloat but there’s definitely a baby in there,” Jo let’s a small laugh out as she covers his hand with her own. “We’re sure doing everything out of order aren't we?”
“Have we ever done anything the easy way?”
#jo wilson#jo karev#alex karev#jo x alex#jolex#jolex fanfic#greys anatomy#greys anatomy fanfic#tsjolexweek21#nina writes#jolex fanfiction
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all roads they lead me here
This is the last time you tell me I've got it wrong
This is the last time I say it's been you all along
This is the last time I let you in my door
This is the last time, I won't hurt you anymore
“Hey it’s Alex, leave me a message or whatever.”
“Alex, it's Jo. I just talked to your mom because you weren’t answering my calls and she said she hasn’t seen you or heard from you in awhile. So… please call me back. I just need to know you’re okay. I love you.”
“It’s me. It’s just been… A really long day and all I really want to do is curl up in bed with you. But you’re not here and you’re not in Iowa and I’m starting to worry that you’re dead in a ditch somewhere. Anyways I love you, please call me back.”
“Hi, it’s me again. Jo, you know your wife? The woman you married? I just… I’m worried about you and the longer I don’t hear from you the more worried I get. So please just call me back. I love you.”
“Alex, please pick up the phone. I don’t care where you are or what you’ve been doing. I don’t care if you’ve… committed murder or something. I don’t know, I just… I need you to answer me. If you’re not coming home I need to know so please just stop my wondering and answer me. Please. I love you, call me back.”
Alex sighed as he listened to the plethora of voicemails that Jo had left for him, her voice sounding more desperate the more messages she left. He wanted to call her, to answer one of her phone calls but he didn’t think it was fair to her. How was he supposed to drag her away from Seattle and everyone they loved to come to the middle of nowhere? How could he ask her to make that sacrifice when he was struggling to accept it himself?
As if hearing his thoughts, his phone screen lit up with a photo of Jo and him on their wedding day. Despite his doubts and worries Alex punched the green accept button and brought the phone up to his ear.
“Alex? Is that you?”
He only hesitates for a moment before letting out a sigh and answering, “Yeah it’s me.”
The relieved sigh and barely concealed tears break his heart as he listens to Jo on the other line. This was why he couldn’t go back, why he couldn’t face Jo again. Just hearing her on the other end of the phone was breaking his heart, he knew if he stood across from her and told her the choice he’d made that he would never be able to walk away.
“Oh my god, I thought you were dead,” Jo’s voice rang across the line, cries punctuating her words as she spoke a mile a minute. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt or in trouble or anything are you?”
“No… No, I'm okay. I’m fine I promise.”
“Good then where the hell are you,” Jo’s voice went from worried to stern in a flash, her tone almost scaring Alex as he listened to her. “I haven’t seen you in a month and a half and no one has been able to contact you for almost three weeks now. I thought you were lying in a coma somewhere so you better have a damn good reason as to why you haven’t been answering your phone.”
Of course she was angry, she had every right to be. If Alex were in Jo’s shoes he would’ve lost his mind trying to figure out where she was. But he wasn’t, instead he was lying in a hotel room thousands of miles away from Seattle keeping a huge secret from his wife who he normally told everything to. Alex let his eyes roam to the crisp white envelope on the bedside table next to him, Jo’s name in large letters across the front of it.
“It’s a long story, Jo.”
“Well start talking then Alex. I have been losing my mind here and I deserve an explanation,” Jo paused for a moment, her voice coming back clear and resolute when she spoke again. “If you’re leaving us, if you’re not coming home I need you to say it. I can’t keep sitting here playing back everything I’ve done trying to figure out what I did wrong.”
“Jo you haven’t done anything wrong, you could never,” Alex is quick to stop the destructive thoughts he knows are swirling around in Jo’s head. A deep pang of guilt hits him as he realizes that his lack of communication has probably torn her apart. “I’m just trying to figure some things out and… that might mean I don’t come back to Seattle.”
The line is silent and for a long moment Alex almost thinks that she’s hung up on him. Finally Jo speaks again, “You're telling me I didn’t do anything wrong but you’re not coming home? I don’t get it. Can you just tell me what's really happening?”
“I have kids.”
“I was going to-“
“With Izzie. She used the embryos and she has twins. We have twins,”
The all consuming silence from the other end of the line surrounds him once again. This time though, the pause felt like the heaviest thing he’d ever felt, the weight settling on his chest and taking his breath with it as he waited for Jo to respond to him.
“Oh.”
“Jo, I had no idea. I called Izzie before Mer’s trial and I was telling her all about you and then… then I heard them in the background. Alexis was singing some song and Eli was yelling at her to stop and I couldn’t not ask about them,” Alex let out a sigh as he ran a hand across his face. “They’re perfect Jo, god they're… They’re everything, the best of me and the best of Izzie. I have a chance to make this family whole, and I just hope you love me back enough to let me ta-“
“You have a family here too Alex! You have people that are depending on you and waiting for you to come home,” Jo was on the verge of tears and she yelled down the line, her voice trembling as she tried to get her point across. “Why didn’t you tell me? Or answer your phone? God Alex I love you but sometimes you can be so stupid. I’m looking up flights now, I can get there tomorrow afternoon.”
“No babe, I don’t need you to come out here.”
“Then tell me what I’m supposed to do! Because I’ve been sitting at home for the last month and a half waiting for you to come home and that didn’t do anything.”
Alex let out a sigh, his shoulders falling as he leaned back against the headboard of his hotel bed, “Jo I’m sorry but I have kids and I need to be here for them. I’ve already missed five years of their lives, I don’t want to miss anymore.”
“Then let me come out there Alex! If you’re planning on staying why won’t you let me come out,” the next pause that comes is from Alex as Jo let’s his silence answer her questions. “You really weren’t planning on coming back to me, were you?”
“Jo, please-“
“No Alex! You don’t just choose to end things without asking me! It's like the past seven years have meant nothing to you,” a steadying breath sounded over the line, Alex’s heart beating out of time as he listened to Jo. “You cannot just leave us here like garbage Alex. I deserve more than that, we deserve more than that! So either you come home or…. Fuck! I don’t know. Alex please.”
Alex thinks he can almost tangibly feel his heart breaking in two as Jo cries out to him. He loves her, more than anything he thinks, but he has children and their faces pop into his mind every second of the day now. He can’t fathom leaving them after already missing so much of their lives.
“Were you even planning on coming back home? Or were you just going to ignore my calls until I got the hint.”
“I didn't know she would have my kids, and now that she does, I don't know how to look anyone in the eye if I don't stay and do everything I can to make this work, make this a life, make this a family,” Alex’s pauses to catch his breath, listening to Jo’s cries. “I never meant to hurt you Jo-“
“Then you should’ve told me! You knew for weeks before you left and you didn’t say anything. You just kissed me and laughed at my jokes and ate dinner across from me crawled into bed next to me and made love to me like nothing was wrong. But the whole time you were just counting down the days until you left without another word,” her breaths are unsteady now, Jo hyperventilating on the other end of the phone in a way that makes Alex want to forget everything he’s seen in Kansas. “I can’t breathe, I can’t do this Alex. If you’re leaving us just say it. Please.”
“Jo, I’m sorry-“
“Just say it!”
“I wish getting everything I always wanted didn't have to hurt you in the process. But I can't lie to you. And I can't come home,” Alex is forcing the words out, barely able to say them without bursting into tears himself. “I'm not coming home, Jo. I can't face you. I can't look you in the eye because I wouldn't be able to walk away.”
“And that doesn’t mean anything to you? Everything we worked for, every uphill battle we fought to be together means nothing now? Did you ever think I would go with you, no questions asked,” Jo takes a deep breath before finishing. “I get that you have kids in Kansas, but you have a family here too Alex and we’ve been here for years, we’re always going to be here waiting and wondering and… I have to go. I love you and I’m sorry we weren’t enough.”
The line finally drops silent and Alex lets the tears he’d been holding back fall. He thinks he’s making the right choice, being there for his kids and giving them what he and Jo never had as children. But the pain and aching in his heart make him second guess his decision, if only for a moment.
-
It’s two days after his phone call with Jo when Alex realizes that he might have royally screwed everything up. His eyes follow Eli and Alexis around the farmyard as Izzie tells him about their life.
“We were actually in Tacoma before moving out to Kansas. Well, really it was just me but I was already four months pregnant by the time I decided to move,” Izzie let a chuckle out as Alex’s brain began to work overtime. “Somehow we made it though, I swear those two have been keeping me on my toes since they were in the womb.”
Alex ran back Jo’s words from their conversation in slow motion. He had played them over and over again in his head since she’d hung up on him but now he realized they might have a new meaning.
“If you’re leaving us, if you’re not coming home I need you to say it.”
“You have a family here too Alex!”
“You cannot just leave us here like garbage Alex. I deserve more than that, we deserve more than that!”
“We’re always going to be here waiting and wondering.”
“I love you and I’m sorry we weren’t enough.”
Sure she might have meant Meredith and her kids and the family he’d found for himself in Seattle but Alex knew Jo better than that.
“You know what I mean,” Izzie’s voice snapped Alex out of his daze, his eyes glassy as he looked from his hands to the blonde next to him. “You okay?”
“I uh… I think my wife is pregnant.”
+
It’s nearly 10 PM when a knock sounds on the loft door. Jo almost doesn’t get up from her spot on the couch as her fatigued body sinks into the cushions, reasoning with herself that anyone of importance has a key. When there’s another knock however, she begrudgingly drags herself up to slide the metal door open.
“Oh my god…”
Standing in front of her is Alex, eyes tired and hair damp from the near constant downpour of Seattle rain. She tries to ignore the suitcase at his feet, not wanting to get her hopes up when they’d already been so crushed just a week before when she’d spoken to him.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I walked away from you and from all of this,” Alex runs a hand through his hair, his gaze floating to the ceiling as he struggles to keep his composure. “I want to be here Jo, you mean everything to me.”
“How am I supposed to believe that? How am I supposed to let you back in when I know you were about to leave me without a word,” she’s begging herself not to cry right now, she’s done enough of that in the past week. But her stupid hormones bring tears to her eyes that she tries unsuccessfully to blink away. “Alex, you were ready to walk away from everything we’ve built without so much as a goodbye!”
“I know but-“
“But what?! Izzie sent you back home? Your conscience suddenly crawled back into your body after taking a two month vacation,” Jo’s voice rises as she stares Alex down. “What do you think you could possibly say that would make this better?”
Alex takes a step forward and Jo can’t bring herself to step away from him. Her mind is swirling, tears stinging her eyes as she meets his gaze, “Jo, I’m sorry.”
“Well sorry doesn't fix everything Alex.”
There’s a quiet moment between them as they stand mere inches from each other, eyes locked but no words exchanged. Alex does look remorseful, like every decision he had excluded her from is finally weighing heavily on his shoulders.
“I’m not going back to Kansas. Well, I’m not staying there at least,” Jo blinks up at Alex, waiting for him to continue before she says anything else. “I love my kids, god they're perfect, but that’s not where I belong. And I’m sorry it took so long for me to realize that, I’m sorry it took you yelling at me to realize that because it just confirmed that I should’ve talked to you as soon as I found out.”
Alex takes another step forward, his chest almost touching hers as his hand comes up to cradle the curve of her stomach that one of his old shirts had hidden. In the month and a half that he’s been gone Jo’s figure had curved outward significantly, the baby bump now noticeable no matter what she wore. She’s not sure how he’d figured it out, but the simple act breaks the flimsy hold she has on her emotions. Instead of the tears she’d become so used to though, Jo finds herself overwhelmed with anger as she pushes away from Alex.
“If this is why you're back you can turn around and leave again.”
"It's not…. Well it is but it's not the only reason."
"Alex!”
“Just listen please. I'm not back because we're having a baby, I’m back because you being pregnant made me realize how stupid I was being when I decided to move to Kansas. Eli and Alexis... They're amazing, but they were amazing before I got there too. And I don't want to be a dad without you by my side. I want it all with you Jo and I know that might be hard to believe right now but-“
Before Alex finished his statement Jo had launched herself into his arms, tears staining his shirt where she had her face pressed against his chest, "I'm still pissed at you but these stupid hormones all telling me to give you another chance.”
“Thank god, I didn't have a backup plan if you kicked me out again.”
"But,” Jo leaned up and fixed Alex with a serious look. "This is your last chance. If you EVER screw up this badly again…”
“I won't.”
Jo leans back, pressing her lips to Alex’s as she pulled him into the loft, “Welcome home.”
#jolex#alex karev#jo wilson#jo karev#jo x alex#jolex fanfic#tsjolexweek21#grey’s fanfic#greys anatomy#nina writes#jolex fanfiction
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Wildest Dreams
T.S. x Jolex Week 2021 hosted by @thejolexgroupchat
Chapter One of One
Words: 6900
Summary: Jo wasn’t sure how she found herself standing on the balcony in Alex's hotel room, staring at the sunset, at Maggie's wedding, looking down at her daughter in Meredith’s arms. As she turns around to face the man who left her a year ago and if she only saw him again in her wildest dreams at least, she'll have one last night with him.
Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy.
Relationship: Alex Karev/Jo Wilson.
Characters: Alex Karev, Jo Wilson, Meredith Grey, Luna Ashton, Luna Wilson.
Rating: Mature Audiences.
Additional Tags: Fluff, Hotel Sax, Wedding Sex, Hand Jobs, Fingering, Sex, Dreams, Reconciliation, Affairs, Cheating, Soft Sex.
Read at AO3
Read at FFN
AN: I do not own any of Taylor Swift’s music.
……………………………………………………………………
Jo was dancing with her daughter when she saw him. In the middle of the wonderful fairy tale wedding that Maggie had, Jo tried to keep a smile on her face as she spoke to the happy couple with Luna in her arms. Yet, she couldn't help but remember her own wedding. The way that Zola threw flowers at her wedding or the way the light sparkled off the water of the sound at her wedding, or when Alex said his vows to hers at her wedding. Then she saw him.
Alex was sitting next to Meredith, and he looked good in his dark suit with his blue checkered tie. If she didn't know better, she would have thought that it was the same one he had worn at their wedding, but that one was buried in a box in the back of her closet along with her wedding dress.
He caught her staring because, of course, he did. He had always been able to feel her eyes on him. She looked over at him and froze. He just stared at her with his lips parted as he just stared at her. He didn't look happy or sad to see her, he just stared at her.
Jo took in a quick breath as she turned away and focused on Luna. Her perfect little girl who looked so beautiful in her dress. It was their first real event together, and the first time Jo put Lina in a fancy dress, and from the second she did, she was determined to savor the moment because of how adorable Luna was.
She avoided Alex for the rest of the ceremony and the reception. However, she was watching Scout anyway, so Link could propose. Although she had already warned him that it would be disastrous, she thought that maybe Amelia would say yes, and she hoped she did.
Yet, Jo couldn’t stop staring at him. She looked up to where Alex was standing across the tent at the bar, his head was a downcast, and his hands were in his pocket as he glanced up at her. Meredith came over and blocked her view of him as she sat next to her. She talked to Scout and cooed at Luna, talking about how cute she looked in her dress as they made small talk for a moment.
Jo glanced back at Alex and Meredith caught her staring. “I could take Luna and Scout for a little while if you want to talk to him?”
Jo knew that she shouldn't, she just got Luna home, and she felt like any new mom in that she was reluctant to let go of her baby. She’d so little time with Luna so far, but somehow she found herself kissing Luna’s head and passing her over to Meredith, letting her sticky fingers slip out of Jo's hand. Scout waved to her as she got up, and she smiled as she waved goodbye to them too.
She took a deep breath as she walked over to him and their eyes locked. As she crossed the party, the crowd parted for her as if by divine intervention until she was standing in front of him. For the first time in over a year, he was close enough to touch. He looked so much the same and yet so different. He had more gray hairs, and his wrinkles were deeper, but he had those same brown eyes that she loved, and he was her Alex, hers, but not anymore.
She had a million things to say to him, questions she wanted answered, anger she needed to express, heartbreak and tears, but somehow she let him speak first.
“Let's get out of here?” Alex said as he held out his hand for her to take.
She acknowledged him with a single nod as she took his hand and let him whisk her away. Jo thought that heaven couldn’t help her now and that this couldn’t last forever, but in this moment, as they walked into the hotel, it was just them. This was going to ruin her, she knew it, but she would still let it happen. Because if that was all she got of him for the rest of her life, she would take it.
He said, "Let's get out of this town, drive out of the city, away from the crowds." I thought heaven can’t help me now. Nothing lasts forever, but this is gonna take me down.
……………………………………………………………………
They went up to his room and Jo let go of his hand as she went over the balcony. She opened up the door and put her hands on the railing as she stared down at the wedding party. She could handle music from all the way up there, and she caught sight of Meredith with Luna as they swayed and danced to the music. Her sweet little girl smiled as she waved her arms in excitement as they danced.
She turned back to Alex. He looked so handsome in his suit, standing so tall before her despite how he seemed to shrink in her presence. He stood there, his hands in his pockets and his head tilted down. As she stared at him, it was then that her body took over her desire. She longed for him, for his touch, his kiss, his hands on her body. She could see how this would end before they even started, but she knew that this was what she wanted.
Jo came back to the moment as she just looked at him. She wanted to ask all of the questions that had been on her tongue from the moment he left. Why did he leave? Why was he back? Why did he tell her in a letter? Why did he lie to her? Why did he betray her? Why did he leave her? Why did he leave without her?
But she decided that she didn't care about his excuses for the reasons why he left. She didn't think that there was anything more that he could say to her, that he didn't already say in the letter. However, there was one question that she wanted answered.
So she asked. “Was it worth it? Why was leaving me to be a father to your kids in Kansas worth it?”
She could see the pain across his face as he looked down at his hand. He twisted his fingers over the empty space where his wedding ring used to rest on his finger. The weight of the metal was gone from his hands, but he clearly missed it. Jo looked at him, and she knew that he regretted it. As the tears swelled up in both of their eyes and she could tell that he wasn’t as happy as she was. Ever since she decided to be Luna's mom, she understood more so than before why Alex left, but she also understood that he didn't have to leave.
He looked up at her again, her body cast in the shadow as the sunlight streamed in behind her, yet he still looked up at her, clear as day. “Leaving you with the worst mistake of my life. I've been miserable ever since, and every second of the day, I miss you.”
As she looked at him as the word slipped out of her. “I miss you too.”
The music from the party changed to something soft and bittersweet. Jo turned and looked back at the party. Standing there, in the hotel room, he was close enough for her to touch, yet they were so far apart.
“I should get going,” Alex said, standing up and shuffling as he put his hand in his pockets again. “I just came for Maggie's wedding to see her, and Meredith, and the kids, and stuff, and my flight leaves early tomorrow. I'm just here for the night.”
“We just have tonight?”
“Yep, just tonight.”
Jo bit her lips as she considered doing something she knew she shouldn't do, but she wanted him again, if only for the night.
Jo looked down at the wedding again and spotted Luna in the crowd with Meredith. She could hear his footsteps come up behind her. She felt him press up against her back and felt his breath, hot in her ear.
“You look like a dream,” Alex whispered, his lips brushing up against her ear.
“I want you to remember me like this, here in this moment, just the two of us together,” Jo said as she looked out at the sun setting on the water.
“I will, Jo. I’ll always remember you like this. Standing here in this dress, your red lipstick, and your rosy cheeks, you've never looked more beautiful, even in my wildest dreams.”
“Do you still dream of me?” Jo asked, thinking of all of the dreams she had of him. The most recurring one was of him knocking on her door and walking back into her life again.
“I only dream of you,” Alex said as he put his hand around her waist and pulled her into him.
My one condition is, say you'll remember me standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset, babe. Red lips and rosy cheeks, say you'll see me again, even if it's just in your Wildest Dreams.
……………………………………………………………………
She could feel him up against her, so familiar and yet so foreign because it was something he had done a million times, but not in the past year. She loved his hands on her waist, his chest against her back, and his head on her shoulder, but she wanted more of him.
She turned around and looked into his brown eyes, forgetting for a moment that this was a bad idea. It wouldn't change anything, but if she could have him, then that could be enough. It was her last request in this world just to have him again, if only for tonight. Her eyes trail down to his lips as her fingers trail up his white pressed shirt. Somehow it was still wrinkled, just like all of his white shirts always were. Her fingers went to his tie as she pulled at it, pulling them closer. She didn't kiss him just yet, as her hand went up to his shoulder, and she pushed his jacket off.
He caught on pretty quickly as his hand went up to her waist to the edge of her strapless gown. His fingers found the zipper at the side of her dress before his eyes caught hers.
“Jo?” Alex asked, his voice soft and sweet, and her name was familiar on his tongue, but the question lingered on his lips still unasked.
“I want you,” Jo said, making her intentions clear as her fingers went to the buttons on his dress shirt, delicately undoing each one.
“I'm with Izzie. We’re married,” Alex said, looking down and away from her.
“I don't fucken care,” Jo said, and she didn't. The knowledge that they were married hurt, but not as bad as her letter had, besides Alex was here alone with no ring on his finger, his hands were on her skin, and she could tell that he wanted her. “No one has to know what we do tonight.”
Jo never thought of herself as one to have an affair, to cheat with a married man, but here she was, and she doesn't care. Alex and Izzie cheated on her, before he even served her with divorce papers, before she knew anything was amiss, he was in her bed. Jo didn't care that she was stealing him back.
She finally kissed him. They melted together, and his lips felt so familiar. His lips felt so familiar, and they fit perfectly against hers. She tore off his shirt and moved to push him back to the bed, but Alex paused. His fingers dug at the zipper of her dress as he pulled it down. Jo didn't bother to hold it against her body. Instead, she just let the dress fall into a pile on the floor as she stepped out of it.
She stood there, half-naked before him, in only her heels and white cotton panties. Her panties had a small hole in the front of them because she was too busy getting Luna ready this morning to bother with anything fancy. Yet, Alex still looked at her like she took his breath away. He inhaled and took a step back, his hands leaving her waist. The back of his knees found the bed, and he fell back to sit on the bed. Alex just stared at her, giving her a look of red hot lust that felt hotter than the sun on her back that streamed in through the open balcony doors.
Jo couldn't help but smirk as she knew she looked like a vision standing before him. She carefully made her way over to him, taking her time as she enjoyed the look on his face. His hands reached out to hold her waist again, and his thumb hooks into the hem of her panties like he always did before he dragged them down her thighs.
His thick and nimble fingers trailed up her thighs again and brushed over the lips of her vulva between her legs as he teases her with his fingers. Jo spread her legs apart, and his fingers went in between her folds, feeling how dripping wet she was. The moment he touched her clit, she moaned for him. With his fingers on her clit, she couldn’t help but cry out because no one touched her like Alex did.
He seemed content to relearn her body as his fingers trailed over her labia and moved in circles around the entrance to her vagina. Before he moved up and circled around her clit. Her hips moved with his fingers, and she hated that she was this desperate for his touch. She thought she should make him work for her body, but she just wanted him so badly.
Alex's fingers continued to tease her folds, never truly entering her or focusing on her clit as Jo let out a moan. He moved forward to kiss her belly, his lips gently nipped at her skin, and his eyes glanced up at her. It was so automatic, the way that her hands went and tangled in his hair. His spare hand held onto her waist and he pulled her down to sit in his lap. Once they were face to face and he pulled her in for a kiss as Jo's hips rocked against his fingers.
He still teased her folds, and his fingers brushed over her skin, collecting her wetness and teasing her clit and just dipping into her. Jo let out a frustrated groan and rubbed against his fingers. It wasn’t fair that he got to tease her. Finally, she reached between them and grabbed his wrist as she forced him where she wanted him. Alex smirked and let out a chuckle before he picked her up as her eyes flew open.
She expected him to be a little rough with her in the way they sometimes were when they were teasing each other, but instead, he gently held her and made sure she was secure before he turned around and laid her down on the bed. Alex moved back to stand before her at the end of the bed as Jo laid there and stared up at him. Now she was the one who stared at him as he was a vision before her as the sun glittered around his shadow. He made quick work of getting out of his suit. When he finally pulled down his boxers, Jo’s lips parted for a second as she stared at him.
Alex's body had always been something she had lusted over, but his body had changed in the past couple of years. To be fair, so had her body. They both held a little more weight, and he carried his in his abdomen, but she didn't care about his beer belly. She still looked as strong and as handsome as the day that she first met him. She could see the hair on his chest, and she wanted to tango her fingers in it. The muscles in his arms that he had so he could let the kids he worked with hang off his arms, and at night he held her safe in his arms. His long leg lifted her up and carried her to bed when she fell asleep on the car ride home. But most of all, she loved his handsome face, the little wrinkle around his cheeks, his eyes that lit up just for her, and his lips that did wonderful nasty things to her.
Then there's his cock, long and thick like his fingers and oh god, did she remember taking him for the first time and how full she felt. She remembered the way his hips danced against her, causing her to cry out and enter a world of pure pleasure she didn't know was possible. The day she finally let him take her to bed, she understood why all the women of the hospital were obsessed with him because his talents were unmatched. Back then, he was hers and hers alone. He had been hers ever since that day, and she wanted to claim him once again.
Jo sat up and reached out to him, putting a hand on his hips as she pulled him forward, and he stepped up to her. She looked up at him through her eyelashes and could tell the way his breath quickened as his heartbeat. She smiled, knowing that she could still get that reaction out of him again before she looked down at her target. His cock stood at attention, pointing out at her, and Jo reached out to grab his hips and hold him steady. As she reached out, Jo leaned forward to take his cock in her hands. She wrapped her fingers around him, giving him a little tug before she continued to trail her fingers around him.
Alex instantly melted like putty in her hands as he closed his eyes and let out a moan. She teased him, just like he teased her, with short strokes up and down his cock, pausing just a moment to run her thumb over his head before she moved her hand back down, never fully taking him. Then her hands became more determined and she wrapped her hand around him and pumped him into her hands. His hand moved to her, held her head, and tangled in her hair as he pulled her forward, so the head of his cock brushed against her breasts. She loved the way that he reacted to her, so needy and desperate as he became a morning mess. Jo smiled as she continued to tease him more. She held the head of his cock against her breast and rubbed his precum over her nipples as he groaned.
As much as she knew he enjoyed this handjob, she wanted him inside of her. She wanted him to make love to her like they were still married, like he was still hers, she wanted to claim his body, his mind, his soul as hers. Alex caught on to her train of thought, always so in sync with her body, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down on top of her. Jo laid down on the bed and instantly pulled her knees open and spread her legs wide as he crawled in between her.
He hesitated for a moment as he looked down and her spread open before him. His eyes meet her for a moment as they get lost just for a second. Jo reached up and brushed her fingers along his cheek before tangling in the hairs at the back of his neck as she pulled him down into a kiss. Alex relaxed then kissed her like he used to before putting his hand on her body to hold her close as his other hand held his cock at her opening. Finally, he pushed into her, it was slow and sweet, and the second he was fully inside of her, Jo squeezed her walls around him, holding him in.
They both took a moment to appreciate the feeling of being one again. Alex pulled back his lips, leaving hers as his eyes fluttered open, and he stared at her. Jo gazed into his Honey brown eyes, her lips partying. Here he was, with his cock inside of her again, his body on top of her, and his eyes staring into hers. Alex held himself up with one arm as he wrapped one arm around her, pulling her into his body as she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him as close to her as possible. She wanted to hold him in her arms forever.
After a moment, he pulled out of her, all the way until the head of his cock was teasing her clit again. She didn't want to beg or cry out for him, but if he didn't start moving soon, she was going to roll over and take him for herself. Finally, he gave her a slow and long thrust as he moved in and out of her. His stamina seemed to be wearing thin as he picked up speed like he always did when he made love to her. As he pulled back and looked at her, she could tell that he wanted to fuck her as badly as she wanted him to.
Alex looked down at her with that stupid look before he started pounding into her. Jo threw her head back and let out a whine. She could hear how his lips clicked as he smirked. Not to be outdone, she moved her hips up to meet him as they slammed into each other. His smirk disappeared as he got lost in the pleasure just as much as she did as he finally fucked her. They both got lost in the pleasure as Alex had always been a man of many talents and his sexual abilities always left her breathless. He went fast and hard, and she was crying out around him as she chased her high. Alex kept moving faster and going harder, he didn’t slow down, and he didn’t let up as he fucked her harder. He had fucked her like this before, on days when they had fun. She used to tease him, and he would slam into her until she saw stars and came around him. Hard and fast and fun. Though this wasn't what she wanted, she wanted to hold him and have him lay with her like he used to. She wanted the intimacy of holding him in her arms and kissing him as she made him hers again. She didn't want him to just fuck her, she wanted him to make love to her.
“Slow down,” Jo breathed out as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She looked into his eyes as he stared at her again. “Make love to me, make love to me like we're still married, like you’re still mine, and I'm still yours. Love me, Alex, just for tonight.”
He did as she asked, slowing down to a pleasurable pace for both of them. She held his head and tangled her hands in his hair as he leaned down and kissed her like he used to do.
“I do love you, Jo,” Alex said as he leaned down and kissed her before he trailed his lips across her cheek and down her neck. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Each kiss was said with soft lips on her skin as his love filled her up again. His kisses were so familiar and his lips had been on hers a thousand times. Jo would never get used to the feeling of getting lost in him as he kissed his way down her neck, soft and gentle, claiming her in a way she only let him do. She looked at him again. Alex's head was on her chest as he kissed over her heart. He still moved inside her, but it was more of a roll of his hips. Jo trailed her hand down his back and across the familiar plane of his back. She moved her hand over his chest moving up and pushing him back just a little so she could stare at him. Those familiar blissed out honey golden eyes greeted her with his lips parted as his hips moved, and she let out a moan. Looking into his eyes again, she knew he was his, and she knew that he loved her.
She wasn’t surprised that they both didn’t last very long. They never did when they made love to each other like this. His body was as familiar to her as her own, and she could tell that he was close by the way his hips become a little less intent and more erotic and the way he closed his eyes. His breath was high as it caught in his throat. She moved her hips up to meet him, and he reached between their bodies as his fingers fumbled with her clit for a second before two fingers dance circles around the swollen bud in a familiar way. It was exactly how she liked it as she took in a breath that caught in her throat.
They were both so close, and she squeezed her legs against his hips and rolled her hips against his fingers for an extra bit of friction. Jo was never one to be quiet, and her moans turned into high-pitched whines as she cried out his name. They were both so lost in their own pleasure, but not enough to forget the other person as he opened his eyes and stared at her. This time instead of a smark, he smiled just a little bit. It was a happy and love filled smile. She couldn't help but smile back at him as he leaned down and kissed her just as he pushed her over the edge, and she came with a cry against his lips.
She nearly screamed and cried out as she came. Her toes curled, and she withered underneath him, her back arched as she pushed her chest against him as the pleasure overtook her body. She let out a cry of his name as his lips danced all over her cheek, and he whispers her name against her skin. She was overcome with pleasure and clawed at his back as her pussy fluttered around his cock. Alex pulled his arm around her shoulder and let her bury her face in his shoulder like he knew she liked to do after she came. He sat up and pulled her body into his as she came. He still thrust inside of her, and she tried to remember to bouch in his lap as she wanted him to come to.
She knew the moment he came as his hips picked up speed just for a few minutes before he buried himself instead of her as his thighs shook. He cried out her name in her ear and wrapped her arms around him, and held him close. His hips became erratic as he came before he buried himself inside of her and held her as close as he could, resting his forehead on her shoulder. They both became too heavy, and Jo fell back against the bed, pulling Alex with her. As they came down from there high, her legs fell apart, one stretching out onto the bed, and he rested his hand on her chest.
Jo took in a breath, slowly letting it out as she opened her and was greeted with the sight of the dark curls of his hair. She reached up and ran her fingers through her hair, twirling astray and as she massaged his scalp. He pulled back from where he had buried his face in her breasts. His eyes were soft as he smiled, and she smiled too, happy and in love with him. He kissed her again before he rolled them over, so she was the one on top. His cock never left her cunt, and she could still feel him twitch as he still filled her up with his cum.
Jo laid her head on his chest, and he ran his fingers through her hair, pulling it out and away from her back as he ran his hand up and down her spine. They just laid there together, and he let out a breath as she looked up to see his eyes were closed. His short eyelashes fluttered against his cheek. She missed this too. Both of them in the afterglow completely wrapped around each other. His cock was still buried inside of her, and his arms around her waist as he held her close. She felt so wanted and loved in moments like this, but more so because of the man who held her.
Alex was the one man who truly loved her. In his arms, she took safety and he protected her against the harsh world. She closed her eyes, wishing she could fall asleep in his arms just one last time. From a moment she did, from the moment they relaxed around each other. She played with his chest hair massaging her fingers into his chest and giving it gentle tugs. His fingers running up and down her spine up and down, up and down, and his lips found the top of her head as he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
She remembered the days when he pulled her back into bed as her alarm went off, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her back into his embrace. She remembered how she melted against him, never wanting to leave his warm embrace where she was safe and loved. She would give anything to go back to that, but as she opened her eyes, she realized that she truly wouldn't want to go back in time. Doing so would mean giving up the best part of her life, her daughter, Luna, and Jo could never give her up.
What she truly wanted was to have both of them. Alex and Luna. Maybe if he had chosen to stay with her, maybe if this wasn’t just an affair, she could have them both. For a moment, Jo closed her eyes. She let out a sigh as she let herself be comforted by his arms around her. She imagined the life where Alex had never left her, where they had adopted Luna together. Instead of having an affair, they had sat together at Maggie's wedding and danced together at the reception, and Meredith had offered to take Luna for the night to give them a night alone. The two of them had gone up to their hotel room together and made love to each other because they were in love, maybe because they were trying for another baby so that Luna could have a sibling. Maybe she would already be pregnant, as they had planned to have a baby once he got back. But he never came back, and this wasn't her hotel room, Luna wasn't his daughter, and Jo wasn't his wife.
A few minutes Jo would get up and collect her things. Alex would help her zip up the side of her dress, and she would redo his tie, so it was perfectly straight. They would go back to the party, and his hand would leave her waist. Jo would find Meredith and hold her daughter close and dance with her instead. Their eyes would still meet across the party, but then they would look away because every good thing ends. But for now, she listened to Alex's heartbeat under her ear, and she felt his breath on the top of her head as his lips kissed her again and his fingers trail down her spine. She pressed herself against him and ran her hands across his chest, just a little longer. She kissed him again because she could. For now, in this moment, Alex was hers, and if all she ever had was this. If all she had was him in this bed tonight, then she was going to savor it because soon all she would have was him in her wildest dreams. She always saw him again in her dreams.
I said, "No one has to know what we do." His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room. And his voice is a familiar sound, nothing lasts forever, but this is getting good now. He's so tall and handsome as hell. He's so bad, but he does it so well. And when we've had our very last kiss. My last request is, say you'll remember me standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset, babe. Red lips and rosy cheeks say you'll see me again, even if it's just in your Wildest Dreams.
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Alex settled into the window seat of the airplane on his way back to Kansas. He glanced out the window to get one last look at Seattle, but all he could think about was the vision of Jo tangled up in sheets in the bed next to him. He remembered it so vividly and he clung to those memories. The feel of the soft cotton sheets around them. The soft feel of her body, still sticky with sweat, as he ran his fingers over every inch of her. The feel of her hair through his fingers, long and beautiful and as dark as he remembered. Her eyes, the way her brown eyes sparkled with happiness. Her smile, the one she gave him, was so genuine and soft as if none of the hurt and pain exited between them.
However, most of all, he remembered her standing at the balcony. Her dark silhouette against the setting sun in her beautiful dress. He remembered the way her cheeks flushed to match her red lipstick. She was a vision of beauty that he always knew her to be. He always said that if he had one last night with her, he would take the time and worship her, and he did.
The flight attendants made the announcement over the speakers, and he checked his seat belt before they took off and left Seattle. Back to Kansas and his wonderful kids, but the boring life that he had when they weren't around, but this was the life that he chose, he chose to burn it all down with Jo. To be left with only fond memories that followed him around like ghosts.
He would hold onto the memories the sound of her laughter, the feel of her in his arms, the sight of her naked body standing before him, the way her smile lit up his whole world, she made him the happiest he had ever been, and now that she was gone all the sunshine that she brought to his love had ended too. Of course, he loved his kids, and they brought a light into his life, but they weren’t his other half, Jo was.
Alex sighed as he accepted his fate. This was the life he had chosen. He reached into his bag and pulled out his wedding ring from the pocket where he had stored it on the flight out to Seattle. He didn't want anybody to know that he and Izzie got remarried. He was still so deeply ashamed of what he had done by leaving Jo, and he didn't want to hurt her further by shoving the ring in her face. No one, not even Meredith, knew they were married again, and he figured he would keep it that way for a little while longer.
Izzy had only gotten married a few months before, in a civil ceremony. He did it to prove that he was all in with her and the kids, but also for practicality’s sake. It was easier legally for him to be with the kids, although he was on their birth certificates, he hadn't been in their lives until now. It was easier for the courts to see that he intended to be in their lives now and forever if he made that commitment to their mother. Their marriage was one of convenience and duty, but they tried to love each other. Izzie tried more than he did, but he did it so that his kids could have a happy family.
He settled the ring on his finger. The band was engraved with Izzie, Alexis, and Eli's names as they were his family now. The golden band was heavier than the light silver ring that Jo had given him when they got married. Alex missed how easy it was to be married to Jo when every day it was a heavy responsibility to be married to Izzie. Yet, it was a responsibility he took on when he left to be with his kids. Alex took one last look out the window and watched Seattle get smaller and smaller underneath him before the city disappeared in the clouds.
You'll see me in hindsight tangled up with you all night, burnin' it down. Someday when you leave me, I bet these memories follow you around.
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Jo sat on the floor of the bathroom as Luna crawled around her, grabbing the bathtub toys she had pulled out and scattered around the floor. Jo was envious of her childlike innocence and ignorance, she was completely oblivious to the turmoil her mother was going through, but that was the way it should be.
Jo thought about the night she spent with Alex at Maggie's wedding. She remembered the way the sheets tangled around his body like they always did when they had sex in the sheets. She remembered that way her fingers trailed over his body, so familiar and comforting to her as she remembered him and relearned his body.
She remembered the way he slept so peacefully as she slipped out of bed. She hated to leave him like that, slipping out of his arms as he slept next to her. She hated that she couldn't get to sleep next to him for one last night, but she couldn't leave her daughter. Despite how Meredith texted and assured her that she could take Luna for the night and that she would be fine, Jo couldn't bear to spend the night without her.
She remembered the way she leaned down to kiss him one last time, and he woke up and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back in. He was trying to keep her, but he was the one who left, and she wasn't his to keep. She remembered that last goodbye as she slipped out of the room, sparing him one last glance as he sat up in the bed and stared at her. Unlike the pain and sadness that had been between them for so long, she smiled as she left, and so did he as he watched her go. For both of them, it was a cherished memory.
Even though she knew the memories of Alex followed her around. His voice in her head, as she made a bottle for Luna just the way he taught her how to do it on the Ped’s floor. His old Iowa Hawkeye t-shirt that was her favorite comfy outfit, although his scent had long since faded from the fabric. The couch that was theirs, that still held all the memories of him and the nights they spent on the couch.
The memory that haunted her was the smile that he gave her as she closed the door to his hotel room. It lingered in her mind, accompanied by his voice as he had jokingly asked if he would see her again? She said that he would see her in his wildest dreams. Jo always saw Alex in her dreams, but now she knew she would see him again.
She knew that before she started throwing up in the morning, she knew that before she missed her period. She knew that before the timer on her phone went off and before the pregnancy test turned positive. She knew she would see Alex again, and now that she was carrying his baby, she would have to see him again.
Despite everything, she couldn't help but smile because this baby was someone of their wildest dreams. Alex had always wanted a baby with her, and before he left, she had wanted a baby with him. It had been something they dreamed of together, and now, despite everything, somehow, it had become a reality. She was pregnant with Alex's baby.
Jo reached out to Luna as she stood up against the edge of the tub and made little raspberry noises as she played with her ducky. She picked her up and smiled as she squealed in delight and set her on her lap, leaning in to kiss her and blow raspberries against her cheek as Luna's wonderful laughter filled the room.
“Hey Luna, do you want to be a big sister?” Jo asked, looking into the blue eyes of her little girl.
“Sissy,” Luna babbled, Jo wasn't sure what kind of response she expected from her one-year-old, but Luna looked up at her and giggled, reaching out to place our hand on Jo’s cheeks.
“That's right, you're going to be a sister,” Jo said as Luna's blue eyes met her own. “There's a baby in Mama's belly. What do you think about that?”
“Baba,” Luna bobbled using the words she used for her little baby doll.
“Yeah, a baby,” Jo said with a nod as she smiled. “You are going to be a good big sister, aren't you, my Little Moon? Let's just hope that your baby’s other siblings are good to them too.”
Jo put her arm around Luna and held her close as she put another hand over her belly, she wasn't showing yet, but she was pregnant. Despite how she had no idea how they were going to work it out, she knew they would because of the love they still held for each other. She always knew that she would see Alex again, but never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that it would lead to this.
You'll see me in hindsight, tangled up with you all night, burnin' it down. Someday when you leave me, I bet these memories follow you around. Say you'll remember me standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset, babe. Red lips and rosy cheeks, say you'll see me again, even if it's just in your wildest dreams.
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AN: Surprise! I couldn't resist adding a baby.
#jo wilson#alex karev#grey's anatomy#jolex#TSJolexWeek21#otp: home and heart#grey's anatomy fanfic#my work#my writing#my fanfiction#my photos#my edits
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Happiness (Part 2)
Evermore
Here’s part two of three from this little fix-it fic. Hope you like it. Enjoy!
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It's been a few months now since Jo's call and since Alex debated whether he should visit Seattle or not. He doesn't know if he should. There’s something telling him he lost his right to go back there. To just wiggle himself back into the life’s he left so abruptly. There’s something holding him back.
He ended up with a very big Peds case that kept him busy at work for like a month. When he then finally decided to man up and get over his stupid feelings, the twins got sick with the flu for two weeks. And as soon as they were well again he got it himself and was down for another two weeks. He waited another week to not infect Jo but when he finally got a ticket and was waiting to go to Seattle his flight got canceled. The next flight he wanted to take got canceled too due to bad weather conditions and then there was a lot of work again at the hospital.
Maybe this was the universe telling him to just stay in Kansas and let Jo live the happy life she deserves. Maybe she was better off without him in her life. But the second they got a call from Izzie's mom, that she was admitted to the hospital and it wasn’t looking good Alex took the opportunity to not chicken out again. They also took the twins visit their grandma possibly a last time and to show them where their parents once lived and maybe meet Mer and the kids.
A week later they landed in Seattle. After they left the plane and got their suitcases, they are now on their way to the exit. Mer offered to pick them up from the airport so they wouldn’t have to take a cap. They start looking for Mer as soon as they leave the airport but neither her nor her car was waiting for them. Alex is just about to get his phone out, to call Meredith when he hears a voice calling his name from behind.
Before he even turns he already knows who to look for. He would recognize her voice through everything. It has always been and still is one of his absolute favorite sound. Finding her leaning against her car door, greeting him with a toothless smile, his glance immediately goes to her expanding bump, which looks so good on her. It's so perfect that he would like to capture this view in his brain forever. It’s also so big, but what was he expecting from a seven months twins bump - he doesn't really know.
One of her hands is holding onto the car, the other one is in the pocket of her jacket, tightening the rim of the shirt she's wearing around her stomach. He knows women hate it when you say they have the pregnancy glow but Jo really has it and it fits her so incredibly well.
With a quick call he guides Izzie into Jo's direction, while he's already on his way towards his ex-wife, with his daughter and their suitcase.
"Hi." He greets Jo as he gets closer, not knowing if he should hug her or just do nothing. It's quite awkward. The last time they saw each other they were still husband and wife. He rememberes every second of their last morning together - they are burned into his brain forever.
They woke up, enjoyed the morning in each others arms, took a shower together, packed Alexs stuff in Jos car, he took her out for breakfast, they drove to the airport, they kissed each other goodbye and then he left for his flight.
Now standing here next to her again makes him feel like their goodbye has only been a week ago and she's here to pick him up to go home. But it's not, it's been almost seven month since their goodbye - he's bringing his family with him, she's carrying their babies and they act like they are total strangers.
"Hi." His thoughts get interrupt by his daughter excitingly greeting Jo, freeing her hand from her dad's to tightly hug Jo's leg.
"Oh- ahm hi." Jo greets the little girl a little surprised but immediately stroking her hair lovingly.
"And hello babies." Alexis greets Jo's bump as she carefully strokes it with one hand.
"Did you feel that? They’re saying hi too." Jo smiles as she looks down at the little girl, taking her hand to put it where one of the babies is kicking.
"Like a little alien." Alexis giggles happily, looking from Jo to her dad with a cheeky smile on her face.
"I'm sorry." Alex apologizes, grapping his daughters hands. "Ok, enough Alexis, give Jo some space-"
"There you are. We lost you back there, suddenly you two were gone." Izzie finally reaches the group with Eli on her hand. "Oh I thought Mer wanted to pick us up." Izzie notes as she spots the woman next to Alex.
"Yeah, she got pulled into an emergency surgery and asked me to pick you up, since she won’t let me stand in an OR longer than two hours." Jo jokes, trying to loosen the slightly tense atmosphere. "Oh right- I'm sorry, I'm Jo." She introduces herself, sticking her hand out towards Izzie with the best smile she can put on right now.
"Oh Jo like in Jo Jo." Izzie asks surprised pointing from Jo to Alex and Jo nods.
The whole situation is tense and rather awkward but thanks to the two smallest of the group the awkward silence gets interrupt as Alexis fights her dads hands off once again to start stroking Jos stomach again.
"Eli, come and feel. There are two babies inside." She calls her brother over, who's not so sure about it. He's always the more careful one and also rather shy. Other than his sister who's very outgoing and not afraid of strangers.
"Alexis! Stop that! It's not nice to touch people you don't know." Izzie disciplines her daughter, who's still stroking Jo's stomach.
"But mommy that's my friend Jo and she allowed me to say hello to the babies." Alexis explaines to her mother looking up to Jo, who smiles at her.
"It's fine. You would be surprised how many people touch my bumb every day out of nowhere." Jo assures Izzie, not missing Alex's face immediately turning sad.
"Mommy you know, I love babies." Alexis pleads.
"Yeah I know-"
"Ok. I think we should get going. We can keep talking in the car." Alex interrupts, starting to put the suitcases into the truck of Jo's Audi.
After convincing Jo to let him drive, so she could relax, they are now in the car. Alex in the driver's seat, Jo in the passenger seat, Izzie and the twins in the back.
"Jojo you know what?" Alexis continues her conversation with her new declared best friend Jo. "I wanna be a Peds doctor like my daddy when I'm big." She proudly announces, finally unwrapping her sucker all by herself, that Jo gave her and Eli.
"Wow. Really? That's so cool. Did he already teach you some cool stuff?" Jo asks, looking at Alexis while they talk.
The little girl nodds and puts the sucker in her mouth. Jo holds her hand out for Alexis to pass her the wrapping and puts it in the little trash bag in the center console. Alex's eyes watch her as she does so before Jo turns back to continue her conversation with Alexis. Alex's eyes stay at the little trash bag he put there almost a year ago for Jo to put her gum wrappers and tissues in.
It gives him this weird warm feeling inside to see that she didn't get rid of it yet.
#jolex#fanfic#fanfiction#jo x alex#alex#alex karev#grey's#grey's fanfic#grey's anatomy#jo karev#fan.4196#tsjolexweek21
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Breathe
T.S. x Jolex Week 2021 hosted by @thejolexgroupchat
Chapter One of One
Words: 2760
Summary: “He left me. And now I can't, I can't, I can't breathe.” Alex left and Jo felt like she couldn't breathe without him, but she had to learn how to breathe on her own, especially when he leaves a little part of himself with her.
Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy.
Relationship: Alex Karev/Jo Wilson.
Characters: Jo Wilson, Alex Karev, Atticus Lincoln, and Meredith Grey.
Rating: General Audiences.
Additional Tags: Angst, Taylor Swift, Breathe, The Letter, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Tests.
Read at AO3
Read at FFN
AN: This song just fit so perfectly with this scene and I do not own any of Taylor Swift's music or the lyrics to Mine.
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Jo sat alone in the loft. Her hands wrapped around the glass of wine she hadn't taken a sip of yet. She stared at the kitchen sink, but not really as her mind drifted off. She thought of the snow as she drove home. The heavy flakes lingered on her windshield like puffs of cotton falling from the sky. Jo loved the snow. Growing up in Boston, her memories of playing in the winter snow were some of the better memories from her childhood. She smiled when she walked out of the hospital to see the cold frosty night and the quiet that came with a blanket of white across the city.
Alex loved the snow too. She remembered the conversation they had on their honeymoon. The one that she half listened to as she thought over her cancer research idea. Alex had talked about building forts in the snow with their two kids and how they would have a snowball fight with one of each on their team. The idea of Alex and their two children playing in the snow slipped through her fingers like the sand on the beach. In contrast, the snow stuck to her gloves as she wiped it off her car that night.
When she got home, she had poured herself a glass of wine to try and relax, but Jo just kept thinking of her and Alex and their children playing in the snow. They were in a good place, she was doing better since her depressive episode. Alex had settled into his role as chief and they were home more as they had a set schedule. They decided that now would be a good time to start trying for a baby. They had thrown out her birth control and the condoms and placed a box of pregnancy tests next to the box of tampons under the sink. As the smell of the wine turned her stomach and her period approached, she wondered which box she should grab.
She remembered the conversation she had with Helen. They had kept in touch a little bit since she had come to visit, a few texts and photos, but mostly just phone calls here and there. They had a good mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship. Jo loved their little talks and how Helen treated her like her own daughter. Ever since she married Alex and took his name, Jo felt like she was one of the Karev’s. She finally had a family, a name that meant something to her.
Jo heard someone on the stairs. Heavy footsteps shook the snow off their boots in the entryway to the Loft. She got up and rushed over to the door, eager to open it before he could turn his key in the lock. He was back. Alex was home. A little smile appeared on her face. However, it disappeared when she saw that it was not Alex, but Link on her doorstep.
“Misery loves company,” Link said as he came in and shut the door behind him and she just stared at him. “So I brought donuts and despair.”
Link brushed past her and went over to the kitchen, setting the donuts on the island table and unzipping his jacket as Jo just stared at him. It took him a while to realize that she hadn't followed him. “Jo?”
“I, I thought you were him,” Jo said, looking around the empty Loft.
Link didn't say anything at first, he of all people, knew how much she missed Alex. He just looked down at the donuts and shrugged off his jacket. “I'm sorry.”
“He left me.”
Looking around, the absence of her husband was abundant. His shoes weren’t in the entryway, his clothes weren't on their shelves, she had looked for his favorite Iowa State Hawkeye t-shirt only to find that it was missing. His pillow was gone, and so was his toothbrush, his shampoo, and his body wash. Every little thing that was his and not theirs was missing. At first, she didn't think too much of it, just him taking the things he would need for a visit to his mom’s that didn't have a set return date. Yet as the days grew into weeks, Jo realized that he had taken all of his things and left.
“No, he didn't,” Link said, he was quick to assure her, just like everybody else had done over the past week. No one seriously thought that Alex would leave her, Jo certainly didn't, but she couldn't shake this feeling.
“I think he did.” Jo’s words came out in a breath and she just nodded and looked back at Link. “I think he woke up one day and felt the need to escape his life and me.”
Jo closed her eyes as she took a step forward. “I called his mom. He wasn't there. He'd never been there.”
She tried to keep her voice from breaking as she held back the tears. When she asked Helen about Alex, she tried to seem light, asking to talk to him and saying that she couldn't reach him on his phone. Helen was confused, she said she didn't even know Alex was planning to visit. Jo just smiled behind the phone and brushed it off. She just said that she was tired from a long day at work and must have forgotten that Alex was at a conference in Iowa instead. Helen was smart, and Jo knew she saw through her lies, but she let Jo pacify her with an easy excuse.
Helen promised to call Alex herself to tell him to call his wife, and Jo had laughed. They ended things on a happy note. Jo mentioned the snow and how cold it was and Helen said she was knitting some mittens for Amber’s family. She said she would start making ones for Jo and Alex and throw in an extra little pair for their future baby. Jo had loved the idea of a little pair of yellow mittens that her mother-in-law was knitting, but the worry about Alex leaving her overtook her joy. Jo had ended the phone call quickly after that as she felt the lump rise in her throat and it became harder to talk without her voice breaking.
Even now, she couldn't seem to take a deep breath and ease the tension that filled her. All she could feel was the weight on her chest as her heart ached for Alex. Jo shook her head as she looked around in disbelief. Never did she think he would do this to her.
“He left me. And now I can't, I can't, I can't breathe.”
Each word came out as a whisper, and after she broke down into sobs. Jo tried to breathe through the shaking sobs that wrecked her ribs, but she was so heartbroken. It was like she was holding her breath as she waited for him to come back, but she was beginning to drown. Link rushed over and wrapped his arms around her as Jo finally let herself fall apart in his arms. He gently swayed from side to side, rocking her like a child. She sobbed into Link’s shoulder as her knees gave out, and he took her weight. His big strong arms were usually a comfort to her, but the only person she wanted to hold her right now was Alex. Yet, he was the reason for her tears and the reason she couldn't breathe.
Her loud sobs filled the room as she cried out. Jo was in hysterics at this point, wailing into Link’s shoulder. She had kept it all in for so long, trying to keep it together. She had been desperate just to make it one more night, holding out hope that he would come home. That he would come back to her, but after everything that had happened today, she knew deep down that he had left her.
Getting left by your husband was never simple or easy. The way he did it, she could tell he wanted it to be a clean break, but she needed him to be there with her. To save her from this pain, pain that he caused.
Because she couldn't breathe without him.
They stay like that in the entryway with Jo sobbing into Link’s arms as he held her and their knees dug into the carpet. She felt like she was drowning in tears that stung in her eyes as they cascaded down her face. They were never ending and left harsh tracks on her cheeks. Her breathing came out in long sobs, just taking in enough air to cry out again. Jo didn't bother wiping away her tears or catching her breath. She just cried and wailed because that was all she could do. Jo cried herself until she fell asleep in Link’s arms.
Jo woke up from a dreamless sleep in her bed with the blankets gently tucked over her. There was an arm around her and for a second, she thought it was Alex. She rolled over to bury her face in his chest and breathe in his familiar scent, but instead, Jo was faced with Link’s sleeping face. He slept on Alex's pillow or Alex's second pillow because he took his main one with him. For a second, Jo just stared at him, she gasped as her lungs froze up, and she forgot to breathe again because Alex wasn’t home. He wasn’t sleeping in the bed beside her.
She rolled back over and glanced at her nightstand, her clock said that it was 2 a.m., and Jo stared into the empty kitchen. It shouldn't be Link beside her, comforting her. It should be, Alex. Link was her person, her best friend in the whole world, but Alex was her husband. He was the only one who had been with her through everything. He knew her better than she knew the back of her hand. She knew him just as well, but she lost him. She lost her husband and her soulmate.
Jo tried to take a deep breath in and out, but it was shaky and she couldn't seem to get enough air in. She squeezed her eyes shut as the tears filled her eyes again. She grabbed the blanket at the end of their bed and pulled it up to her nose, inhaling the sweet scent of him. It wasn’t easy trying to fall asleep in their bed without him, but she had to. Taking a deep breath again, Jo counted the seconds as she inhaled, and then counting again, she exhaled, trying to get to a higher number as she breathed in, taking in more air. It was a trick her therapist taught her, to focus on counting and breathing and not how lonely the bed felt because it wasn’t Alex next to her. She tried to breathe again on her own. Each inhale was hard because all she wanted to do was break down and cry again, but she held back the tears. She had to learn to breathe on her own. She had to learn to do it all on her own.
Alex had been there for her since the beginning, since her first year as an intern. Since then, they had only been apart for a few months, and even then, she still saw him every day in the hallways of the hospital. Jo thought that the most they had ever been apart was the month she was in the inpatient treatment for her depression. Now, as the days bleed into weeks, it was another day she hadn't seen him, hadn't talked to him, hadn't even heard from him at all. She just wanted to know that he was okay. She would settle for a voicemail, or a text, or a freaking letter.
……………………………………………………………………
She regretted that thought a few days later when she was holding his letter in her hands. Alex’s letter to her was written in his sloppy cursive handwriting. Jo used to scold him for it because she couldn’t read his writing, but now she could make out every word. She knew what the letter was going to say before she even opened it, but that didn't make reading his words any easier. Because nothing he could say was going to save them from this fallout. His voice in her head read it to her, and his words cut deep right down to the bone of her ribs, straight to her heart. When she finished it, she just sat there. It had been a week since the night she broke down, knowing that he left her, and despite how she tried, Jo still felt like she couldn't breathe without him.
She was holding her breath again and there was a tightness in her chest that wouldn't release. Jo got up and drifted through the hospital. She told Link she was going to work, but instead, Jo found herself hiding out in the supply closet, hyperventilating once again as she paced back and forth. She knew what a panic attack looked like as her lungs contracted in quick breaths with air that never quite seemed to reach her lungs. Somehow she was able to calm herself down and go through all of her techniques. Jo took off her shoes and put both feet on the floor as she went through the steps for a chest tube. She had to calm down, she had to breathe again, even if it was without him because there was someone else she might need to breathe for.
Jo waited until her panic attack was truly over and gave herself time to recover before she reached for the pregnancy test. She slipped out of the supply closet and went to the nearest bathroom. After taking the test, Jo didn't look at it, she knew what the results would be. Regardless, she couldn't be at work today. She went back to the attending’s lounge and quickly texted Bailey. Bailey offered her the whole week with the sympathetic, I'm sorry, but Jo just took the day. She didn't know how Bailey knew Alex quit his job and left her, but considering that he told his wife in a letter, she assumed he told Bailey the same way. Jo took a deep breath in as she texted back a simple reply.
She tried to keep her breathing even, steady, and deep as she drove over to Meredith's house. Her heart beat faster as she parked on the street and in front of the house she once called her home. Jo took a deep breath, looking down at the pregnancy test before putting a hand on her belly. She took another deep breath and walked up to the house. With each step, Jo took a breath in and out until she got to the door and knocked.
She didn't have to wait long before Meredith opened the door and gave Jo the same sad, sympathetic look as she held a letter at her side. “I just got a letter from Alex. I’m guessing you got one too. I'm so sorry, Jo. I have half a mind to go to Kansas and beat his ass. You don't deserve this.”
Jo just stared at her, slowly processing everything she said. She knew that Alex left her, but she would never have imagined that he would leave Meredith too. The realization that he was truly gone was slowly sinking in, and she took a deep breath. She had to breathe without him, or at least she tried.
“Meredith, I'm pregnant,” Jo said, her words coming out in a breath.
Meredith’s lips slowly parted in shock as she dropped the letter in her hand, the papers slowly falling to lay on the ground. Taking a step forward, Meredith wrapped her arms around her and pulled Jo in for a hug. She let out a breath as she melted into Meredith's arms. Jo could feel the tears spring up in her eyes again, and she let them fall, but she breathed because she had to.
She had to hold it together for the sake of her unborn child. She didn't know what she would do now that she was all alone, without him, but she would try. Even without him, she would be a damn good mother, the kind of mother their child deserved. Jo would learn how to breathe without him and somehow, she managed to take a deep breath in when all she wanted to do was stop breathing because of Alex.
#jo wilson#alex karev#grey's anatomy#jolex#TSJolexWeek21#meredith grey#atticus lincoln#otp: home and heart#grey's anatomy fanfic#my work#my writing#my fanfiction#my photos#my edits
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