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The world ends on a Saturday and the first George hears about it is when a nurse comes out of the cafeteria and she walks right into him without saying anything. He's all set to get indignant when he sees that she's crying and then he just feels bad, so he apologizes for getting in her way and then gets out of it.
It's quiet in the cafeteria and everyone is watching the tv up in the corner. Meredith and Cristina and the others are right up in front and George will bet anything that Cristina's the one who got them there. She's scary when she wants to be (often) and she's Lola-esque in her ability to get what she wants. He abandons the quest for food and the loud noises his stomach is making and squeezes through until he gets next to them. CNN is on and it looks bad, fire and smoke and just...badness.
Meredith's face is white and her eyes are red and George almost takes a step towards her when McDreamy beats him to the punch and then she's crying into his shoulder and wow, it's really, really bad if she's crying and he's holding her and his wife is letting it happen.
"Reports are coming in from all over--" says the grim faced newsguy.
He'll remember it later, all of them standing there watching the end of everything, and the thing that will stand out the most is Cristina, hands on her hips and scowling at the tv like it's personally offended her.
"This sucks," she says.
It gets a lot worse after that.
*
They're better off than most people, but it's still not fun. And it turns out that life after the end of days is a lot like life as a surgical intern only with more scavenging and less suturing. Except when there is suturing and then they scavenge for supplies and drugs, digging through what's left at SGH and sometimes Bailey will send Alex over to one of the other hospitals to steal whatever they've got. George feels guilty about this mostly 'cause Alex is their default guy; Burke won't let Cristina or George go, Addison won't let Izzie, and McDreamy (not so dreamy now, thinks George sometimes, and then he feels terrible) holds on to Meredith like she's a lifeline. So Alex goes and sometimes -- a lot of the time -- George will sit on the roof and keep an eye out.
Sometimes Izzie comes with him and they perch up there, funny colored sky overhead and probably deadly rays of some kind hitting their skin. It's almost comforting to think that there always have been deadly space rays and that there always will be. The one constant in the world.
Izzie doesn't say anything this one time and George doesn't so much ask because...well, because he's George. Generalities are key for him; he hopes for good things to happen in general because the odds of specific things being good for him -- things like being naked with someone or things like chocolate -- are getting slimmer and slimmer. If he asks, Izzie will tell him and he's not entirely sure he wants to hear it.
Addison comes for her eventually, dropping down to sit next to Izzie and curling around her. Meredith still doesn't like her. George is too tired to care, except when Izzie reaches up and holds onto Addison's hand.
George looks out toward the street that Alex should be coming back on. It's the street where he almost died and now, sometimes,
George wonders if the bird crapping on his bagel was a good thing or if it's just another in the long series of jokes that is George's life.
There's someone coming.
*
"It’s a puppy!" shouts George.
"And it's very cute," says Cristina in her reasonable, George-you're-being-a-dumbass voice. "I still don't see what the problem is."
"The problem is that it's a puppy! A really adorable, helpless, never done anything to anybody except bring cute fucking joy puppy!"
It's the fucking that gets everyone.
"George?" says Meredith. She has a George voice too. Everyone does.
He hates everyone. But mostly right now he hates Cristina because God, he's hungry and it was her idea and now it's totally stuck in his head. The problem with Cristina is that the universe has never said no to her. She's never had to deal with not getting something she wants or something she needs or something she might want but doesn't know it yet. No one has a Cristina voice because everything she does -- every fucking thing -- turns out to be okay because she's either perfect or she's dead.
"Fuck," says George again. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." It makes him feel better, a little bit, right up until Bailey gives him the look of George-you're-being-a-dumbass-and-don't-make-me-come-over-there-and-snatch-you-bald.
"In some parts of the world, dog is considered a delicacy," says Cristina, irony heavy in her voice, and George chokes on what he was going to say.
"Ow!" howls Alex and George looks over to see Izzie rubbing her hand and Alex rubbing the back of his head. "I didn't say anything!"
"You were thinking it," says Izzie.
Now everyone's looking at them and George slips out. Up to the roof again and he's alone for a good maybe six minutes before the access door behind him creaks open. It's Izzie, he can tell, because no one else comes up here for him.
"Bailey says we're not going to eat a puppy," Izzie offers. "And she told Cristina she should be ashamed of herself."
"She did not," says George.
"Seriously!" says Izzie, and she shifts a little, sways so that her shoulder bumps his and she smiles at him. She's right there and George has a second of temptation because hi, she's right there, except Addison's scarier than Cristina and George isn't that guy.
The door creaks open again and then:
"Addison's looking for you," says Alex.
And pfft, just like that, there's no moment and she's not there anymore. There's just Alex who swings himself up onto the ledge and smirks down at him.
"If you're not man enough--"
"Look, okay, I don't think manliness has anything to do with not wanting to kill a puppy," says George as nastily as he can. It doesn't even register. Probably this is because George when he's being nasty sounds an awful lot like George when he's...everything else.
"Right," says Alex. "The puppy."
*
Postapocalyptic economies, a lot like postapocalyptic lives, turn out to function along the same lines as preapocalyptic whatevers. They're doctors and they get paid well for what they do. People bring food and supplies, fresh water, blankets, repairs for whatever needs repairing, and the doctors, nurses, and interns at Seattle Grace fix their broken bones, sew them up, or make them comfortable as they're dying.
Burke watches him with an older lady. She's not going to make it because there's not enough food and there aren't enough drugs and they're not the right drugs anyway and George is pretty sure he's not going to take anything from her family, except that it all goes into the common pile and it's not fair, none of it is fair, but he has obligations so maybe he will take what they can give.
Later, Burke squeezes his shoulder and says, "You're a good man, O'Malley."
The lady dies that night.
George takes about half of what he should.
*
"You don't want to go in there," says Alex. He doesn't look up from the really outdated magazine he's flipping through. Britney Spears is on the cover with her sleazebag husband. The gossip is that she's holed up in Malibu and that the husband is missing.
"I really, really do," says George. He's been wearing the same clothes for days now and washing up in the OR sinks isn't gonna cut it, not when he feels like he could tear off his own skin if it means he'll feel less gross. The fifth floor belongs to Bailey's interns and George just saw Izzie in the neonatal unit with Addison and Cristina's with Burke finishing up in the OR with Mr. Ratenapeanchi and dammit, he wants a shower.
Alex doesn't look any better off. "No," he says clearly, "you don't." He tosses the magazine down and his thumb leaves a smear of something across the Spears spawn's cheek.
"Why?"
"Come back in ten," is all Alex says.
George comes back in fifteen and the door to the shower locked and then he swears at Alex through the door and flings himself down on the floor outside to wait. When Alex comes out, he's damp and pulling on a fresh set of scrubs and he crouches down next to George who flips him off.
"You're too nice," says Alex.
"Fuck off," says George. There's not gonna be *any* hot water left.
Alex looks at him a long, long time. "You still hot for Meredith?"
The nicest word for it is panic. George panics because if Alex knows then everyone has to and that means he's been obvious and maybe Meredith laughs at him and "No. I. I don't know what you're talking about. Meredith? Hah." He smiles and it feels sickly and Alex's expression is totally dubious. George scrambles to his feet and points at the door. "I um. I need a shower." He smiles again and darts inside, shutting the door behind him.
When he comes out, Alex is gone. He sees Meredith at dinner and she grins at him, her eyes squinting shut with the force of it, and he sort of flails helplessly back at her. She smells like industrial strength antibacterial soap.
So does McDreamy.
*
Maybe he's been moping a little. Like whatever, it's not bad enough that Meredith is in love with McDreamy and they flaunt their happy shiny love all over the hospital. But she has to bring him into their territory, into *their* lives, and George wouldn't give her up for the world because she's his friend and he loves her a lot, but he sort of wishes she'd do that thing where the friends sort of fall by the wayside and get ignored in favor of coupledom because that would probably hurt less and wouldn't involve, say, having to wait for them to use all the hot water. The doctors have their own floors. Why can't Meredith use those for her shower sex romps?
But anyway, he's been moping a little because of the flaunting and it's like everywhere he looks there Meredith and McDreamy or Izzie and Addison or Cristina and Burke and he hates it because the last time he got any involved Alex and it involved syphilis and it didn't involve things like saving food if he gets stuck with the patient from hell or anything and he's so, so hungry and all that's left is the mutant peas that Addison got in exchange for the c-section she did on some old guy's daughter.
"Hey," says Alex. George grunts and does his best to look menacing and angry instead of just cranky and in need of a hamburger. "I got you this."
It's...George doesn't know what it is, but it isn't peas and he's pretty sure that's what everyone else had for dinner and he thinks maybe he might cry. He clears his throat. "Um. Thank you."
"No problem," says Alex. He watches George eat which is kind of creepy. But whatever it is tastes fantastic and so George (mostly) ignores him and focuses on the food.
*
These twins show up at the hospital and they don't need medical attention and they haven't come for trade, but Bailey takes them in anyway and makes them do the laundry and scrub tools and stuff. One of them smiles at him whenever he comes by and she ducks her head and giggles and he thinks she's flirting with him but he doesn't know because she could also be flirting with Alex who has apparently decided he's George's new (stalker) best friend.
Alex smiles back at her. And at her sister. And at every woman with a pulse. It's just that every woman at Seattle Grace has known Alex for years and the twins are new and they fall for his line pretty fast. George knows this because Alex grabs him one day, slinging an arm across George's shoulders, and steers him toward the basement.
And then they're there and it's cool and dark and there are naked women waiting and Alex's voice low in George's ear. "No syphilis," he says.
Creepy, creepy, creepy. Also wow, hot.
Sarah-or-Cindy walks up to him and tugs at the hem of his shirt. He's going to be naked. He's going to be naked with a girl. George looks over at Alex who apparently isn't wasting any time and he looks over at George and says, "Come on, O'Malley, live a little."
Creepy. Hot. Sex!
It's like the best day ever.
*
"That was kind of gay," says George.
Alex snickers.
"I mean, it really, really was. Gay."
"O'Malley?"
"Yeah?"
"That wasn't gay."
"I think it was."
Alex sighs heavily and George can hear him moving around and then he's right there, blocking out the light, and George thinks, yeah okay, the sex with twins in the same room thing, that wasn't gay because *this* is gay. It is gay a lot.
"Gay," says Alex in a tone like Burke uses when he's explaining how to do surgery, "would be if I put my hands, mouth, or any part of my naked body in contact with yours."
"Right," says George. "I get it. Not gay."
"Gay," says Alex. He sounds way too amused at George's expense. And then there's a *hand on his dick* and George just about dies of a heart attack and Alex is flat out laughing at him.
*
"Gay," says George.
"Yeah," says Alex. "Pretty much."