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The club is dark and honestly kind of seedy and Jo can't help but be fascinated with what is evidently another side of Alex she hadn't known about. Beside her lounges the Derek Shepherd, sipping idly on a beer, as though the pounding music that she can feel in her bones is relaxing him. Across the room are Alex and Meredith, tipsy and hanging all over each other in a way they don't do with their significant others, and Jo's fascination definitely squashes most of the worst parts of her raging jealousy.
Alex swears there's nothing there, hasn't ever been anything there, that Jo can take Mer in a fight easy, but even though she's managed to get used to the huge oddness of going drinking with the Shepherd-Grey dynamic power couple, she can't quite get herself to believe any of the statements. Even the last one, and she's a street kid.
"Always been something about their year," Derek says apropos of nothing, and she thinks he's probably watching her stare openly at them. He sounds resigned and amused and a million other things.
"Hannah died and we made up stories to tell her mother because we didn't have any real ones," she blurts before she can help herself. She glances at him finally and gets caught up in the strange merge of that famous McDreamy hair and the wizened, wised-up eyes of a soldier who's seen the world and finally understands just how intimidating it should be. Jo thinks about the stories she's heard interns whisper to each other, nurses mention in passing, legends that people from other hospitals can't help but bring up when they hear she's from the infamous Hellsmouth that is now Grey-Sloan Memorial. She thinks soldier might be more apt a description than she'd realized.
"I have worked a lot of places," Derek tells her, sipping at his beer like he has all the time in the world. "I have seen infinite cycles of groups of interns come and go through so-called hallowed halls of half a dozen different hospitals."
He trails off here, having seemingly forgotten he was making a point. Jo waits, swirls the melting ice cubes around in her mostly empty glass. Wonders if she's supposed to remind Dr. Shepherd that he has yet to finish his nostalgic reminiscing.
"An unprecedented amount of horrible things happen to this hospital and the people who work in it," Derek finally says, and it shouldn't seem relevant to his last sentence, but she's no stranger to the trance-like state that occurs when Derek Shepherd gives a speech or tells a story. His wife shares that quality--the ability to draw one in with an odd fusion of a gentle voice and an irresistible charisma.
Jo's always figured herself a bit of a feminist, so she figures she can't exactly hate Meredith Grey for something she admires Derek Shepherd for. She really wishes she had another drink, because if she actually starts to like Medusa, what the hell then? Who is she meant to be angry with?
"They got away with far more than they really should have," Derek continues, chuffing out one of his little laughs. "Richard was still chief and I was still dealing with Addy and Bailey's favorite kind of love is the tough kind." Jo is familiar with that kind of love. A lot of the attendings have adopted that kind of love. She thinks it's making her a better surgeon, but she'd never admit it without the handful of drinks she's already put away.
Suddenly, Derek's pretty blue eyes are focused rather unerringly on her. "If you decide to do your fellowship at a different hospital, Wilson, you better be prepared to adjust in a lot of ways." She thinks of the few classmates she'd idly kept in touch with over Facebook and Twitter, brings to mind how shocked she felt when she heard that it isn't in every hospital that everyone knows every goddamn thing about everyone else.
She's heard that there are hospitals where doctors and nurses don't even use the on-call rooms to hook up. The vague sense of uneasiness is almost laughable.
"Grey-Sloan is a hard place to come away from." Derek tells her quietly. She thinks he's imagining the hospital's two namesakes, averts her eyes away from him for a moment, gets her gaze caught, once more, on Meredith and Alex.
They're dancing, still, and Jo is honestly a little surprised Derek is so laid-back about where his wife's ass is grinding up against. Jo herself is trying to breathe in through her nose, slow and steady, because she's pretty sure that Alex would find it totally lame if she went over there and played crazy jealous girlfriend.
But, really, and now even her inner monologue sounds borderline hysterical, is she just supposed to be okay with the fact that his hands are at her hips, spanning along her pelvis and pulling Meredith closer?
"She was the first of the group to get along with Alex," Derek says, and, wow, Jo really doesn't understand the leaps and bounds in between each of this man's conversation points. "Of course, she was also the first one to try and punch him out, but Meredith and Karev understood each other since they met."
"Dark and twisty," Jo says quietly, recalling someone using the phrase way back when she was just starting off. She'd assumed it was Cristina and Meredith being described, because they were the so-called Twisted Sisters, but as fucked up as Cristina Yang was, she was no Meredith Grey categorical Mess. Capital 'M' because the blonde woman brings a new meaning to the word.
"And George died and Izzie left and it was the three of them, and they balanced out person duties pretty evenly after the Twisted Sisters forgave Karev for telling Hunt and the board that Meredith tampered with my Alzheimer's trial."
"Forgave Alex," Jo repeats quietly to herself. Like Alex had been the one in the wrong? Meredith's arm is stretched up and back, her lithe fingers gripped tight in Alex's hair as she swivels her head a little to look at him. They're clearly talking, though about what, Jo has no idea.
"Meredith requires a Person to function," Derek shrugs, like he doesn't quite understand it but he's long since accepted it as common fact.
"Everyone likes having a few good friends," Jo says dismissively. She jumps when Derek sets the bottle down with a sharp noise. He's leaning forward now, the glaze gone from his eyes quick as anything as he watches her closely.
"Striking, aren't they?" He asks, finally acknowledging the vaguely lewd dancing that is going on between his wife and Jo's boyfriend. "They've got the eye of every person in this place."
It's true, Jo notices. She tries not to look like her feathers are well and truly ruffled.
"While I have no doubts that the job description of Person is endlessly complex and intricate," he says, smiling a little fondly, "here is a basic point that should help you out: If Karev snaps and murders someone, he is going to call Meredith. He might think about calling you, or Arizona, or even Avery, but even he knows that in the end, he'll call Meredith. And she will answer, no matter the time, no matter the place, no matter what she's doing, be it surgery or other more personal things." Derek scratches his nose and it takes a second, but Jo's eyes widen in shock before her own nose wrinkles at the sheer yuck-factor. He chuckles again. "And when Karev says 'Mer, I just killed a man', she will never say anything but 'where are you? I'm coming.'"
Jo wants to protest, wants to get indignant and huff out something about how Alex would call her, or maybe that he wouldn't answer during Other More Personal Things, but she thinks about how he drops everything to go yell-at-and-then-hug Meredith when she's panicking about some new ridiculous thing, and she thinks about that time when Meredith broke into their house and kicked her, Jo, Alex's girlfriend out of bed and Alex let her without any kind of protest. Thinks about how that hadn't been the last time it had happened, either.
Watches the pair of them dance like lovers and soulmates all at once, a thousand silent conversations passing whenever they meet each other's gaze.
"There has never and will never be anything between them," Derek says, more quietly now than before. He's looking at her with an odd expression, and she wonders if this offended jealousy ever truly goes away. "But they're each other's first choice, number one priority." He shrugs again, smiles a little more, at her this time.
Jo blinks and then there are two figures stumbling towards the tiny table they're seated around, giggling and babbling, Alex's arm around Meredith's slender shoulders. Meredith falls into Derek's lap and her face lights up like the damn sun and he smiles at her like she hung the moon and Alex boos when they start to kiss like teenagers, but he forgets about them easily enough when he turns glazed eyes on her. And he's staring at her with a sort of unrestrained love before he blinks and grins wolfishly, offering her his hand so they can get some dancing in. She agrees without a second thought, let's him pull her in close and tuck his face in her neck as he giggles out half-formed sentences of the stories she hopes he'll one day tell her whilst sober. And she thinks that, yeah, maybe that shitty feeling she gets when she's reminded that Meredith is on another plane of closeness with Alex that Jo can only hope to glimpse every once in a while--maybe that shitty feeling won't be shitty forever.
Meredith and Alex might be striking, and Meredith and Derek might be enchanting, but Jo and Alex are blinding. And they're gonna make it.