Chapter Text
Fuck.
Kai’s heart hammered in their chest as they steered the rental car back to the hotel. Their hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. Their vision blurred; headlights, tail lights, and traffic lights blended together in a confusing mess.
It was all such a mess. Fuck.
They had panicked. For a brief moment, they considered turning the car around, driving back to Meredith’s house, telling Amelia it was all a misunderstanding. A mistake. But they knew the damage they had done when they left her sitting on that swing, stunned, tears slipping out of her eyes as they walked away from her and quietly let themself out through the side gate.
Kai Bartley had never encountered a problem they couldn’t solve. They would brainstorm ideas. Weigh pros and cons. Consider all angles. Formulate hypotheses. Methodically test out potential solutions until one inevitably emerged as the superior path. In science, this approach - this ability to patiently and systematically drill down to the one right answer, and discard all other possibilities - worked well. But when they tried to apply it to their love life, it broke down.
Broke her down. Broke them down.
They didn’t want kids. That was a fact. It was something they had known since they were young. At best, the idea of being a parent seemed distracting and time-consuming, and they had goals to achieve. At worst, it seemed like an opportunity to let down someone in the way their own parents had let them down. Not in the exact same way, of course - but they knew that parenthood presented countless opportunities to disappoint, to have the wrong reaction, to make the wrong decision - to cause irreparable damage. They didn’t want to be responsible for that.
But meeting Amelia had been nothing short of upending. She was brilliant and beautiful, and she loved so, so fiercely. It was one thing to observe as she applied that love freely and unapologetically to her family and friends, but finding themself in the path of it was blindingly, disorientingly wonderful. Of course, they had known that she had a child. In those early, long days in the lab, Amelia had talked about Scout, the joy he brought her evident in her effusive recounting of his antics. Vaguely, as they began to realize their feelings for her, they had given some thought to the fact that she was a mom. Up until now, Kai had avoided becoming romantically entangled with anyone who didn’t fit neatly into their plans - and parents were near the top of that list. Not that they were dating much these days. They managed to find little scraps of time to write and play music, but their career loomed large over everything else in their life. It was their baby.
Up until the dinner party, it had all seemed so abstract. Scout existed only through Amelia’s stories, and as a bright, bubbly, impossibly blonde toddler pictured on a phone screen. There, he was always quiet and smiling. He was small, two-dimensional, artificially backlit. In contrast, Amelia was right there in front of them, in flesh and blood, lithe and soft, mesmerizing and intoxicating. Breathtaking.
And so when Kai finally felt compelled to throw caution to the wind that day just before Christmas, standing face-to-face with Amelia in the Grey-Sloan ambulance bay, they let that moment - propelled by the inertia of the months that had built up to it - carry them away. Before they knew it, they were kissing her, and any worry they had harbored that they might be reading her wrong - that she didn’t reciprocate their feelings - had not so much dissolved as vaporized explosively as they felt the fervor in the way she returned their kiss - as if she, too, had been longing for this for pretty much the entire time that the two of them had known each other.
The dinner party was overwhelming. The focus was supposed to be on Nick, but Kai knew that Amelia’s sister, friends - and both of her exes - were judging them, too. They had steeled themself for this. What caught them totally off guard were the children. There were just so many of them. They tried to convince themself that it was ok - most of these were Meredith’s kids, and Owen and Teddy’s kids - but clearly, Amelia had near-mom-level familiarity and importance to all of them too, and before Kai knew it, she was tossing them a soccer ball and an empty juice cup, and disappearing upstairs with her own inconsolably moody son.
When the two of them finally got a moment alone, on that swing in the backyard, Kai reeled from the sudden force of it all. Amelia was an integral, central part of this big, messy, decidedly nontraditional family - a dynamic that was unfamiliar to them. They had grown up in a small, strict, and proper nuclear family, where affection was rare, and expectations were high. Their sister had married young, and reproduced often. Of course they loved their niblings, but they lived far away, and with distance and busy lives came space. Kai was in no way used to being in the middle of such swirling, love-infused chaos - and it seemed so easy and natural to everyone else there, especially Amelia. All of this left them feeling vulnerable and exposed, and somehow, at the same time, like a complete outsider.
And so, they had panicked. Seeking solid ground, seeking protection, they had let that sense of discipline, order, and control that had ruled their life - at least, their life before her - rush to the surface, and take over. They didn’t want kids. This was a fact. Amelia had a son, and a bunch of other kids in her life. These were also facts. There seemed to be only one logical thing to do.
They couldn’t quite bring themself to tell her they were breaking up with her, at least not in those exact words. But telling her they didn’t want to lead her on, and then abruptly leaving - these were clear signals, and they had the intended effect.
After pulling into the hotel parking lot and finding their way back to their room, Kai numbly went about getting ready for bed, shedding their clothes and pulling on a t-shirt, brushing their teeth. They sat down on top of the plush comforter, and their mind briefly flashed back a few short hours to when Amelia had laid right there beside them; when she had tried to leave their embrace to get ready, and they just couldn’t let her go, so they had gently convinced her to stay - she had succumbed without resistance. They had gently pinned her with the weight of their body, kissed her breathless. Remembering this, and then flashing back to the present, the magnitude of what they had done began to sink in; the feeling spread over them like a thick, heavy blanket. It wasn’t exactly regret - not yet, at least - but a deep sadness. It had only been minutes, but they missed her already. Kai pulled out their phone, typed a message:
I’m sorry.
They erased it.
As the heaving sob they had been trying to tamp down finally erupted to the surface, Kai flung their phone into the soft chair next to the bed, covered their face with their hands, and gave in.