𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙓.
it was only a matter of time

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we usually love a double update but...

maybe you won't love this one ❤️

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ANDREW HAD NEVER been fond of ultimatums.

He'd been painfully sensitive to them as a kid, constantly burdened by little rules and time-sensitive deadlines. 

His nanny had always been the type to place time constraints on everything: do your homework by dinner for dessert, be ready for school by this time or brush your teeth by then. As a kid, he'd hated it, always running on a clock that was too fast or too slow; but as an adult, he recognised that time was a bitch and things needed to be completed. 

Like it or not, most times, ultimatums were the only way things were going to get finished.

That had been Andrew's thinking when it came to Charlie. He'd given him three days and, now, Charlie wasn't picking up his phone.

Andrew paced the length of his hotel room, surrounded by the foundations of what had been a very strenuous packing process. 

Admittedly, the trauma counsellor was used to living out of a suitcase, always moving and living where he was needed, so a hotel checkout day was not something he was a stranger to. He'd grown quite a strategic way of tackling it, always packing logically and giving himself as much time as possible—

Seattle was, in fact, just another mark on his very long ledgers of places that had needed him and passed him onto the next mass tragedy. It was because of that, that Andrew Perkins often felt like an omen of death, forever passed between cities but never allowed to stay.

"C'mon..." 

He muttered it under his breath, his face contorting as he was met with the dial tone yet again.

 The room around him was in disarray and he, himself, seemed to meet that energy. His brow was furrowed and his fist was balled very slightly, and the look he shot at his cell phone as he hung up was nothing less than scathing. 

"C'mon Charlie—"

Andrew's pleas with Charlie's voicemail were set to the backing track of his hotel room's shower playing gently in the distance. 

He, for all intents and purposes, had better things that he could have been doing. This was only a courtesy call. It was a reminder to tell Charlie that his three days had ticked over. It was a hopeful call to see whether he'd kept his end of the agreement, to make sure that Andrew didn't have to enforce the rules he'd set. 

(Please just tell me you've spoken to Beth and then I'll leave Seattle and I'll actually be able to sleep at night.) 

It was an olive branch and Charlie, currently, wasn't taking the damn thing.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. 

Andrew pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, feeling the hope very slowly dwindle at the back of his chest. Full disclaimer, Andrew didn't take joy from being the designated bad cop. 

He was a professional, he'd spent half his life studying human behaviour and subconscious thought, and he'd never thought that he'd ever have to enforce it against his own brother. Education had taught him that, sometimes, people were erratic and hard to anticipate, but experience with Charlie had taught him that nothing was ever a coincidence.

"Hey," Andrew barked into his phone as the voicemail rolled over again. 

He was really trying his best not to get mad, but he could feel his patience slipping slowly. In the distance, he could hear his shower cut off, a light female humming filling the next room. 

"You know what this means, Charlie, you know what I'm going to say... Don't make me do this. I really hope you're talking to her right now otherwise things are going to get messy—"

His message cut short.

Inbox full.

Andrew stared at his cell phone, blood rushing to his ears as his brain processed the wall that he'd just encountered. 

For a moment, he felt as though he was a million miles from civilisation, his whole mind stuck on the automated voice that murmured an apology. He supposed it was nice to hear someone actually apologise, Charlie wouldn't, he knew that much.

"Is everything okay?"

Crashing back to earth, the psychiatrist looked up. 

The woman he'd been seeing during his time in the city gave him an earnest smile, her eyes flickering between him and the cell phone clenched between frustrated fingers. 

Teddy Altman stood in the doorway, hair tousled and damp, gaze wary. There was a pause in which Andrew considered telling her exactly how close everything was from going to shit, but then he cleared his throat and tossed his phone down onto his bed.

The last twenty-four hours had been tense for the two of them, both of them all too aware that, by the end of today, Andrew was going to be gone into the wind leaving her behind. When he looked at her, he could feel her tentativeness, as if there were things she wanted to voice but couldn't. 

Ultimately, they'd both been avoiding it and conversation, as a result, had stumbled to a halt. There was a fragility in every glance between them, a muscle that wouldn't relax in Andrew's chest as he fought for the right things to say. 

Andrew hated that this was the first thing they'd found the energy to talk about on the last day they had together.

"Yeah," He breathed out, nodding and running a hand through his hair. 

Not even his tightly practised professional deadpan could cover the slight tremor in his fingers as he debated how to carry himself. 

"Everything's fine—"

Fine. Fine. Fine.

Andrew didn't feel as though everything was fine. 

The lie felt clunky and painfully dishonest. For the record, things weren't fine, they were actually pretty crappy. He was beginning to feel as though things were the worst they'd been in a very, very long time.

What a shame too, Andrew thought to himself as he let out a long, bone-rattling sigh, I had such high hopes for him. 

He knew that honesty was a big ask in his family, but he'd really wanted better for his little brother.

Teddy watched him, forehead creasing as she watched Andrew turn away. He seemed to resign back to packing, folding clothing a little too haphazardly and tossing them in the direction of his suitcase. 

The aforementioned structure and strategy of his checkout had fallen to dust, set on fire by the chaos of his brother's secrets. 

He found himself running behind, wary of the moment where he was going to get tripped up by the late checkout and the hole his family had dug for him—

It was at that thought that Andrew paused. He listened to Teddy as she lightly picked her way across the messy hotel room, stooping to check her own cell phone on the nightstand. A muscle jumped in Andrew's jaw and his eyes wandered over towards the dark, dormant screen of his own.

"Charlie won't answer," Andrew wondered whether he sounded as stressed as he felt. "I've been trying to call him and he's not answering." A pause and he looked over to see the concern painted across her face. "I told him to wait for my call—"

"Do you think he's..." Teddy seemed to run through a thousand scenarios through her head. "Do you think he's hurt or something?"

No, Andrew didn't think that at all. 

He knew Charlie and he knew that it was more than likely that he was just avoiding his call. 

It was a charming trait of his, to pretend as if nothing was wrong by just avoiding it entirely—Andrew knew his brother better than Charlie would've liked to think, and he knew that he was so far gone into a fantasy that reality wasn't real anymore. These phone calls were a reality check and Andrew had the strongest feeling that Charlie was going to avoid them at all costs.

"Could be," Andrew said instead, not quite having the energy nor resolve to explain things.

 (Meanwhile, Teddy was momentarily caught on how casually Andrew was able to talk about the prospect of his brother being incapacitated.) Just the thought of having to speak to anyone about it made him want to throw his hand through a very nice stretch of drywall. It itched as his brain with a deep sense of betrayal that had been engrained inside of him since his childhood. 

"I just don't know if—"

"Maybe try Beth?"

 Ah, speak of the devil. 

Teddy's suggestion made Andrew sigh, but it was her next words that made his eyebrows raise. 

"Maybe they're already getting ready for the courthouse," She suggested, "He's probably turned his phone off so he can do the—"

"Courthouse?"

It was moments like these, the moments where his eyes met Teddy's and his heart leapt in his chest, where she seemed to pause completely and the world ground to halt—yeah, it was moments like these that Andrew figured he should have seen coming. 

When he looked over at her, bewilderment and confusion streaked across his face and a slow brewing realisation at the back of his head, Andrew could feel the exact moment that things changed. It was the shudder of Seattle, the deep gravitational shift that made the city darken under his feet and Charlie's fantasy tremble. 

If he strained long enough, he could hear it splinter, hear decades of hush money, of favours, of little lies and fake smiles, all come crashing down underneath them.

Teddy, on the other hand, just blinked at him.

There had been a noticeable lack of communication between the nearly-a-couple, a wary dip between the lines that had defined whatever relationship they'd had in the last two months. 

She'd neglected to tell Andrew things, brush on topics that she felt maybe she didn't want to intrude on, just out of the wariness of not knowing where they were. She hadn't mentioned Beth's dinner invitation, simply out of the anxiety that Andrew had already been invited but hadn't mentioned it to her because they were not dating. 

She also hadn't mentioned the last-minute wedding or the hospital gossip that Charlie and Beth were leaving as soon as they'd exchanged their last vow. Now, Teddy could feel the weight of it all as she stared back at him.

"For the wedding..." 

Teddy tested each word as if they were unfamiliar to her, watching Andrew's response. His gaze was heavy, unmoving and unrelenting; he held onto her every word and every syllable, frozen in a posture that looked both uncomfortable and unnatural. 

She frowned very softly, "Beth said that they weren't going until midday but maybe they decided to go earlier—"

"What do you mean the wedding?"

He almost didn't recognise his own voice. 

Over the years, Andrew had developed many different voices for different situations. He had his professional voice, the one which he used to assert control and peace in corporate and therapy situations. He had others, some rarer than others—but this voice, this hushed, half-dipped in weariness and dread, this one was a voice he'd never come across before. Neither had Teddy. 

He could pinpoint the exact moment that she realised exactly why he was looking at her as if she'd just grown a second head.

"You didn't know?" Teddy's voice was pitched slightly, her stomach twisting as she saw the expression on his face. "They're getting married and then they're leaving—"

"Leaving?"

"For their honeymoon," She felt stress rise in her as she watched him turn away. The energy in the room changed completely; where he'd been stuck to the floor, he now seemed incapable of staying still. "Andy, I'm sorry I thought you'd—"

She'd thought he'd known.

He hadn't known. He hadn't been aware of anything. 

Charlie, so it seems, had been keeping a few more skeletons in his closet than usual. 

As far as Andrew was concerned, today was just a normal day in the world of Andrew Perkins, just another routine hotel checkout day with flights booked early. 

The only thing that made it remotely unusual was the deadline, the ultimatum and now, Andrew was starting to piece things together.

The dread was immediate, it came with a rush of adrenalin that was almost familiar to him. It was the same sensation that had filled him when he'd seen Charlie at Christmas. 

It prefaced the anger, the hurt that came hand-in-hand with constantly being subjected to this sort of crap. Andrew had got better with handling it over the years, but holy shit, he was starting to get tired of all of this.

"I thought you knew," Teddy began, her voice following him as he dove for his phone, immediately dialling Beth's cell phone number. There was a panic in her eyes as she realised that something was not right. She watched him resume his pace, phone stuck to his ear and movements just the tiniest bit erratic. "I thought that you knew about it, I'm sorry I would have said—"

"Dammit," Andrew cursed as he was met with the answerphone. By the end of the day he was going to be far more familiar with robotic voices than human, he could feel it in his bones. "She's not picking up either—"

"What's going on?"

She was completely lost, watching him as he threw his phone down onto the mattress, barely even fazed when it bounced clear of the bed and fell onto the floor. 

Every movement was made with purpose, she watched as he quickly stepped over into the restroom and out of sight.

In all honesty, Andrew wasn't sure what was going on, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. 

Could other people hear the alarm bells ringing? Charlie wondered whether he was only the person who could see it. Of course, Charlie hadn't told him he was getting married today.

 Of course he was— How the hell had he convinced Beth to get hitched so soon? 

Andrew wasn't sure whether he was just deeply impressed, the last time he'd checked, Beth wasn't keen on marriage at all. Now, here she was, ready to sprint down the aisle and do it all on a speed run.

Leaving. Andrew didn't agree with that word. Charlie wasn't leaving, he was running.

As Andrew grabbed his shoes and his jacket, he figured that he'd been too generous with his ultimatum.

 He'd given Charlie three days, three days, just out of the assumption that he'd actually make the adult decision. He felt naïve and humiliated to learn that Charlie hadn't looked at it as an opportunity to come clean but do exactly what they'd all been doing for years—he was avoiding, pretending the world was fine and dandy and that marriage was the only thing he had to worry about.

What did he have to worry about? Everything.

Charlie didn't know the position he'd put everyone in, the sort of conversations that they'd had to have behind closed doors. He didn't know that Andrew was serious this time. 

Sure, he'd been light on him in the past, allowed him his sympathy and played nice when maybe he should have been harder, but times had changed. Now, Charlie wasn't just responsible for himself, but Beth too.

He'd given Charlie his chance, now it was his turn to keep his promise.

"Andrew," Teddy appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame as she watched him tie his shoelaces. He did so with bumbling fingers, constantly tripping over himself as his mind raced. "Where are you going?"

Teddy sounded so wary and sad. 

He was in the bedroom now, fishing his phone off of the floor and barely even grimacing when he realised his screen was cracked. 

She was stood in the corner, arms crossed over her chest as she watched him get ready to leave. She was tentative, spooked by the sudden change in ambience. Andrew didn't look over at her, just frowned when he realised, he had a missed call. 

There was a message left, one, notably, not from Charlie.

"Hi... it's Derek Shepherd here..."

Andrew strained to listen to the message as he hauled himself onto his knees, stooping so he could root around underneath the bed. 

He could feel Teddy's eyes on him as he dragged out the hotel safe box, punching an aimless combination of numbers into the pad and unlocking it. His brow furrowed as he heard every single word of what was being said to him, and the storm cloud above them just seemed to grow and grow and—

Just as he had when Charlie hadn't answered, he drew his phone back at the end of the message and stared at it as if it had just burned him. Standing in the centre of the room with a bundle of legal documents in his hand, Andrew felt more confused than he'd expected. 

He'd officially ended his residency at Seattle Grace Mercy West yesterday. 

There was no reason that they would need him to come into a meeting...

"Shepherd needs me to go into the hospital," He spoke quietly, his brow furrowing as he thought it through. Teddy frowned too, not understanding what was going on. "Apparently they're having an emergency meeting and they need me to consult on a patient."

"What do they—" 

She was cut short too, by the sound of her own cell phone. In unison, both of their heads turned to stare at it, the two of them a little overwhelmed by how much had happened in the span of a few minutes. Andrew felt the blood rush to his ears as she read the caller ID. 

Teddy brushed her hair behind her ear and dipped in the direction of the bathroom. 

"Yep, Doctor Altman..."

Andrew didn't like this. It didn't feel right.

When Teddy reappeared a few moments later, she looked as bewildered as he felt.

"That was Derek Shepherd," Teddy held her phone tightly as if it was a weapon. "He wants me to come in too. He wants me at that meeting... apparently, there's been an issue with the medication of one of my patients. He needs me to consult and go over my files. I mentioned that you were on your way in..."

Andrew nodded, despite the fact that he wasn't quite understanding what was going on. A nod felt like an oxymoron for the mood he was in. There were too many questions. Why did they need a trauma counsellor and a cardiothoracic surgeon? What was the common thread here? Andrew couldn't tell.

"Did they mention which patient it is?"

Curiosity led him further down the hole he'd dug for himself. What he was walking into and why did it feel like a minefield? He was supposed to be gone in the wind, he wasn't supposed to be dipping into last-minute meetings—

"Yeah," Teddy said, sounding slightly breathless as she dried her hair with a towel. 

She inclined her chin as if to gesture to their prior conversation, the one which had been interrupted by the call. She spoke without realising the gravity of her words. 

"Beth," She said, "it's a staff conduct hearing. They're assembling the board too."

Andrew felt his blood run cold. 

Admittedly, he hadn't thought that his day could get worse. He thought that, watching the structure of his designated moving day had been the shit. 

He'd thought that being left on the answerphone again and again was shit. But then there were the tiny thoughts that began to string together, prompted by the common unity of Beth's name.

 (Of course, she was the common thread here, why hadn't he seen it before?) 

It's what connected him, connected Teddy and connected the one other person that seemed to be the cause of all of Andrew's sleepless nights.

Before Andrew left the hotel, he phoned his brother again, praying that Charlie would hear the warning bells too. 

How he couldn't he hear them? As far as Andrew was concerned, everything was crumbling to the ground. 

He was filled with the same urgency that he was filled when he'd gotten onto that plane straight to Seattle, out of personal favour to his brother and the life his fiancée had made for herself.

When Charlie didn't answer, Andrew silently asked him whether he knew the cost of silence. It was a pretty penny to pay.

I hope it's worth it.

Andrew's second phone call was to Dominic Fox. He had a feeling that he'd appreciate the heads up when everything went to shit.

"Before," Teddy said quickly, as she shrugged on her jacket and let Andrew pass her her shoes. "When you were leaving... I'm sorry that I didn't—"

"It's not you," Andrew interjected gravely, meeting her eye as he understood her anxiety. She'd been scared that she'd crossed a line and that he was mad at her, angry that she hadn't said something. "It's not you Teddy. We're fine. I promise you, we're okay—"

"Then what... Where were you going? What about your flight? About packing?" She was lost, her brow furrowed as she stared at the panic and urgency that was still flushed in his cheeks. "What was going on—"

He didn't know how to even begin to explain it. 

Andrew had spent years protecting his family just as he'd been raised to. 

In the same way, he'd been taught to respect deadlines and ultimatums, he'd been taught to stand by Charlie too. His parents, although overbearing and absent at times, had always made it very clear to Andrew that Charlie was the sort of kid that required the effort. 

They'd gone to great lengths to protect him, from his personal life to his career and his relationships, and that responsibility, over the years, had fallen to Andrew too. 

His parents were elderly now and he'd tried to lift the stress off of them—but then he'd had to sit down with them at Christmas and discuss what they needed to do next.

The thought of telling someone about it, of something that was so deeply ingrained in his being to keep secret and protect, now that was something that made Andrew's heart twist. 

His family was always in the light of some half-hearted fame; his mother was a B-List celebrity at best, and he knew that Charlie was the sort of news that would end up on some trashy news cycle that was only glanced at. 

He'd sacrificed a lot for his brother, he'd sent him to France, he'd given him a job and he'd taken that job from him too. It hadn't been easy, but he'd done it. 

He wanted the best for him and, with the thought of letting Charlie fall into second-rate news for some snotty-nosed gossip journalist to scrounge off of made running through him and the sickness he felt about it, Charlie deserved better.

The thought of telling Beth about it, after everything, now that was something Andrew wasn't prepared for. 

Charlie would've answered the phone if he'd told her, but he hadn't. How deeply Andrew wished that it was just a mistake, that Charlie was doing exactly what he hoped and just taking a little bit longer to talk things through—but as aforementioned, Andrew knew it wasn't that at all. He knew exactly what this was.

"I was going to do exactly what we're doing now."

Andrew said it as they crossed the threshold, the hotel door clicking behind him as he tossed his Seattle Grace Mercy West lanyard around his neck. 

He watched the confusion cross over Teddy's face and, with a sigh, grabbed her hand. He took no joy in say what came next, on contrary, it filled him with the disappointment that only a Perkins could feel:

"We're going to stop that wedding."