Standing on Solid Ground - Part 21

[ariaadagio]

Title: Standing on Solid Ground (21/?)

Fandom: Grey's Anatomy

Rating: M

Summary:  Post Some Kind of Miracle, Mer/Der.

~~~~~

Cristina sat down on top of the bed and folded her legs underneath her.  She leaned forward, eyes bright and teasing.  The room was dimly lit with bedside lamps, revealing gleaming, spotless floors unmarred by tossed clothing or orphaned shoes.  The bedspread was crisply tucked and folded over the pillows, exactly like they did at hotels.  There was positively no junk anywhere.  And it was so... not Cristina that Meredith found the sight perplexing.

"So, how was all the glad you're not crazy sex?" Cristina asked as she settled completely.

"Plentiful," Meredith said with a purr as she sat on the bedspread about three feet from Cristina.  "And good.  But, Cristina, please, stop joking about it."  Meredith knew Cristina meant well.  She knew it.  But everything regarding Derek felt like a raw, salted wound that she didn't want to poke at.  Watching him eat at dinner, really eat, and enjoy it at the same time, well, the feeling had been like morphine.  Sweet, druggy morphine.  When he'd pulled her into that long, deep kiss at the end of dinner, she'd been riding high, spinning on the bliss, but now that she and Cristina had split off, reality had come back.  It had been wonderful to watch him so happy, but not four days ago, things had been very, very dark.

Cristina's gaze ticked away for a moment.  She worried her fingers at the spot where the seam of her sock ran along her toes.  "Sorry," she muttered.  "I don't really know how else to keep it light.  Are you all right?"

"Better, now, after seeing how well dinner went," Meredith said.  Truthfully, she had been a little worried, especially after the run-in with Mark, which had shown her Derek was still on a fine, paper thin edge, still not quite all together.

"He seemed okay to me," Cristina said.

"He has been since I took him home on Thursday, really, well, not really okay until Friday, but you know what I mean.  He just has... spells."

"Spells?"

Meredith sighed.  "It's like he's got his fear in a chokehold, but every once in a while, it slips out of his grip for a moment.  He goes from happy to seriously upset faster than an eye blink.  It's scary, Cristina."

"It's better than before, though."

"Much.  Much better.  Phenomenally so.  He's talking about things.  He's sleeping again.  And, well, you saw the heinous amount of food he just ate," Meredith replied.  She couldn't stop the sloppy, stupid grin that crossed her face.

"Yeah, I was betting with myself how much he could eat before he puked."

"Cristina..."

"I know, I know.  Sorry."

Meredith regarded Cristina for a moment, regarded her friend staring off into space with a worried look plastered across her face, and she immediately deflated.  God, she was so self-absorbed sometimes.  With the world tumbling around her all the time, it was so easy to forget that others were caught in their own little earthquakes.  Their own little disasters.

"No, I'm sorry," Meredith said.  "How are you doing?  With Burke, and the wedding planning, and all of that?"

Cristina blinked.  Her eyes widened, and Meredith felt the guilt plowing into her.  Surely Cristina wasn't this surprised that Meredith had steered the conversation back to her?  Then again...  She hadn't really talked to Cristina about Burke, not seriously at least, for weeks, not since the day she and Derek had gone to the Space Needle.  And even then, the chat had been brief.

"He's still trying to get me to pick a date," Cristina finally answered, her voice low, and slow, and cautious.

"Well," Meredith said with a chuckle, "When do you think you'd want to get married?  Spring?  Summer?  Fall?  Winter?  There's only so many dates to choose--"

"Can we talk about something else?" Cristina snapped.  And then her expression softened.  "Please?"

Meredith frowned.  "Cristina, if you're this upset, are you sure-"

"Something else, please," Cristina said.

For a moment their eyes met, really met, and Meredith saw the pleading that hung there, the fear.  Meredith took another glance around the room, another glance of the room where Cristina lived but held nothing of Cristina in it.

"Cristina, what happens when you leave junk out on the floor?" Meredith asked.

Cristina's eyes narrowed and she snorted.  "The magical laundry fairy picks it up.  Why?"

"But does Burke ever ask you to stop?"

"Stop?"

"Throwing your dirty clothes on the floor," Meredith clarified.

"No.  He just keeps picking them up.  It's almost annoying sometimes."

"But he's not trying to change you, Cristina.  He's just trying to live with you."

"What's your point?" Cristina snapped.

"Marriage isn't this big life-sucking monster that's going to swallow you whole, Cristina.  You'll still be you.  Just like you are now."

Cristina swallowed, looked at the bedspread, fiddled with the seam in her socks again.  Silence ticked by, and Meredith was suddenly struck with how quiet Derek and Burke were being, but her wandering attention was drawn back to Cristina, who stared at her with a gaze and a slump that said, "Help me with the weight of the world before I break."  Meredith reached across the bed and put her hand on Cristina's shoulder.  Cristina flinched, only slightly, and then she relaxed.  They sat there, quiet for a few moments.

"So, any good surgeries at work while I've been out?" Meredith said, finally breaching the long silence.

Cristina dove right into the switch, her eyes flashing with grateful relief.  "No, it's been pretty quiet," she pouted.  "I actually went in early to try and find something on Friday, but no luck.  And all Burke's been doing the past few days is valve replacements.  Nothing but valve replacements."

"Well, if you're really desperate," Meredith said, "You could come over and live vicariously through my mother's tapes."

Cristina bounced a little, making the whole bed wobble and creak.  Her eyes widened and delight poured from her features.  "I don't need to be desperate to watch those.  Are you serious?  I never asked, because, well--"  Her voice fell away.

Meredith stretched out flat on the bed, and her back sighed with relief.  Cristina followed suit, and they both lay there, staring at the ceiling side by side.

"You even can borrow them if you want," Meredith said.  "They just sit in a box.  Nobody's touched them since Izzie and George routed through them when they moved in."  And Meredith really didn't want to watch them, not now, not with her mother spending time in a flowerpot on the roof of Seattle Grace.  She sighed.

"I could hug you," Cristina said.

Meredith chuckled.  "But hugging would be bad."

"Exactly."

"Maybe you and Burke could watch them together," Meredith teased.  "Could be romantic, you know!"

"Yeah, yeah," Cristina said with a scoff.  She turned and looked at Meredith.  "I bet you and McDreamy have done it.  Come on, admit it."

"No, not really," Meredith said.  "Outside of work, he pretty much drops the whole surgeon thing."

Cristina stared, her mouth hanging open just a fraction.  She swallowed.  And stared some more with a confused, amazed look.  "You don't talk about work at all?"

"Unless we're at work, no, not usually."

"You guys are so weird."

"It's called having hobbies."

"Oh, come on," Cristina said.  "You have sex.  That's not a hobby."

"Sex could totally be a hobby!" Meredith protested.

"Next, you're going to try and convince me that sex comprises your entire exercise routine too."

"Well...  It does burn calories."

For a heartbeat, they both stared at each other, faces flat and expressionless, and then, as if someone had hit a switch, they both broke into peals of unending, hysterical laughter, until they were crying, panting, barely able to breathe.  It hadn't even been all that funny, but it was just one of those moments where hilarity had broken through all the dour seriousness and been the victor.

The conversation degenerated from there.  They talked about stupid stuff.  Amusing stuff.  Sex stuff.  Just stuff.  And it was fun and relaxing and, looking back on it, something she'd really, really needed.  It'd been so long since she'd just talked with Cristina, talked without the subject being loaded with underlying badness, like something about her mother, something about Derek when he'd still been spiraling down, something about their work and their fast-approaching futures or the necessity of picking a specialty.  The stress shucked off her in waves the further and further into inanity the discussion plummeted, and by the end, she felt almost drunk.  Drunk on just being relaxed and happy and not having any other thoughts or worries about anything.  Cristina looked similarly lax.  They sprawled on the bed in the immaculate, too-clean bedroom, staring at the ceiling, until finally Meredith couldn't resist looking at the clock, and was horrified to discover that it was almost midnight.  Her shift started tomorrow at six-thirty.  And she and Derek still had to get home.

"Oh, my god," Meredith said.  She rolled off the bed.  Cristina stumbled to her feet, a haze of sleepy relaxation clouding her gaze.

When she exited the bedroom with Cristina in tow, the change in mood registered like a sharp drop in temperature.  The bedroom where they'd been had been the tropics.  Derek and Burke sat in temperate winter.  Nothing looked wrong, per se, but Derek had definitely lost his luster, lost the lazy smile that had infected him earlier.  An empty crystal glass sat on a coaster on the coffee table by Derek's knee, and he had his hands folded behind his head while he pondered the ceiling.  Burke looked similarly chagrined about the floor, and he held a half-empty wineglass in his hand, which he swirled in slow, slow circles.

"Ready to go?" Meredith asked.  "Time kind of did that crazy flying thing."

Derek blinked and his gaze slid to her.  His skin was rosy, and his eyes were a touch unfocused.  "Yeah," he drawled.

"You want me to drive?  You look a little bit not sober."

Derek rolled to his feet.  "I think I am a little bit not sober.  Just a little.  I'll be fine in a half-hour if you want to wait," he said.  The syllables were drawn and drawling, but not slurred, and he did seem to have his wits.  Most of them.

"No, I'm fine," Meredith replied as the curiosity built.  "I only had two glasses of wine, and that was hours ago."

"Okay," he said.  He slid across the floor to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder in a flowing motion.  "Thanks so much for dinner.  We should do this more often."

Burke stood from the couch and Cristina went over to him.  "Absolutely," Burke said with a real smile.

Meredith couldn't help but frown as Derek helped her with her coat.  Maybe she'd been imagining things.  They walked out of the apartment complex into the chilly, damp air, and she instinctively drew closer to him.  His fingers tightened over her shoulder.  Foggy swirls of air clawed from their mouths as they breathed in the darkness.

"Are you sure you're up for work tomorrow?" Meredith asked as they climbed into the car.

"I'll be fine, Mere," he said.  "It's not like I'll actually be working."

She buckled her seatbelt and turned to him.  He was staring out the window, nonchalant, unaffected.  Where had the smiles gone?  She couldn't help but prod.  "You're sure," she said.  "Absolutely sure?  You shouldn't push yourself too hard."

A whispery sound of fabric rustling slid through the air as he shuffled and turned to look her straight in the eye.  "I'm okay, Mere.  Really," he said.

Meredith frowned.  She reached out and placed her right palm against his cheek.  His skin had grown cold after being outside, and it was slightly rough with the shadow of stubble that had pushed its way up from the surface since he'd shaved in the morning.  His nostrils flared as she rubbed him, and he stared at her with a depthless, hooded gaze that glittered in the darkness of the car.  His eyes narrowed a fraction, like they were sliding shut to blink, but they paused a nanosecond later and hung there, a subtle clue that whispered his pleasure to her at the touch.  She inhaled the sharp scent of his cologne, inhaled it with the cold, biting air, the faint scent of alcohol, and just a hint of whatever made him Derek.  He smiled faintly at her, his expression plainly telling her that he had no idea what she was doing, but that whatever she had in mind was fine with him.

Something was just off.  She couldn't explain it, but she couldn't deny it either.  Something had upset him, and the remnants still lingered all over him in little shredded pieces of...  Wrongness.

She sighed and dropped her hand from his face.  "I would believe you more if I knew why you're suddenly so..."

His smile melted away.  "So..."

"Well," she said as she looked at him, really looked deeply at him.  "It's like someone flipped a light switch.  Before I left to talk with Cristina, you were the happiest I'd seen you in weeks.  And now...  It's like you're unplugged."

He shrugged.  "Burke was worried about Cristina.  We got into a fairly serious discussion, and it shook me a little.  That's all, Mere.  I'm okay now."

"Why's he worried about Cristina?" she asked.

"Something about her not being able to pick a date for their wedding?" he said, his tone trailing up in a question even though it wasn't one, as if he expected her to know exactly what he meant.

She did.  "Oh, that," Meredith said.  "Yeah, Cristina is balking hardcore.  I tried to get her to discuss it, but, well, she's Cristina.  That's what got you upset?  Talking about Cristina?"

The skin around his eyes ticked, so subtly she would have missed it if she weren't already watching him intently.  "Well, no," he said, his gaze dropping to his lap.  "It was more the subject matter."

"What, her getting married?  Oh.  Oh..."  All her thoughts came to a halt as she realized the implications of that, the implications of his sudden unwillingness to discuss this with her.  For once this weekend, it was him who was treating her with conversational kid gloves instead of the other way around.  "So we're not really talking about Cristina anymore," she said, just to clarify, just to make sure.

"No, not really," he mumbled.

So, the M word had come up again.  Marriage.  Burke had asked Derek about marriage.  It was a subject she'd avoided even bringing up.  Derek had asked to get an apartment with her, something far greater in scope than she'd ever expected from him at that point, so soon after he'd... broken.  She'd been grateful for even that, thought it was a small sign that maybe things weren't as bad as they could have been.  But now she saw it, saw in his worried gaze just how much she'd wrecked things for them.

She sighed.  "It's okay, you know."

He looked up.  "What?"

"I'd be gun-shy too if I had to have a relationship with me.  I know I messed up, Derek.  I get it.  There's trust issues," she explained.

His eyes widened with what she could only describe as desperation, desperation that she just not go there right now.  "I'd trust you with my life, Meredith.  That's not--"

"But you don't trust me with my own.  I get it, Derek.  I do," she said, her voice flat and steady, and from the way his face crumpled, she knew immediately that she'd hit a bull's-eye.

She couldn't blame him, couldn't blame him at all.  She'd pulled him down into the water to drown right along with her when she'd given up.  It'd seemed so easy at the time, so easy to just... let go.  She'd come back from it all shiny and new, but he had still been drowning, still been choking.  When he'd been spiraling down, it'd been easy to get lost in the worrying, but now he was breaking the surface, finally taking some breaths.  And so the guilt crept back, took her ankles in its grip and yanked her down to skid along the gravel.

"I'm sorry," Derek said.

"Don't apologize to me," she snapped.  "I'm the one who thought drowning would be the easy way out.  Me.  You don't owe me any apologies when I'm the one that did this to you."

"Mere, you didn't..." he stuttered, and she just couldn't hold it all in anymore.

Prickling tears gave way to a deluge.  "I'm so sorry, Derek, that I did this to you.  You have no idea how much," she said, her voice squeaky and cracking as she ran out of air and was reduced to gasping, choking sobs.  "I... wrecked... everything..."

The door slammed as he darted out of the car, and the tears just came harder, thundering down her cheeks in straight, hot, pulsing trails.  He was going away...  Finally realizing...

But then her own door opened, and he was wrapping himself all around her like a second coat.  "Hey," he whispered.   He reached across the seatbelt and unlatched it.  Then she was being lifted, lifted into his arms, and he hugged her, leaning against the side of the car as he rocked her back and forth.  "Whoa..." he whispered.  "Shhh..."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and cried and cried and cried.  "I didn't mean it, Derek.  I didn't mean to do this.  I didn't know..."

He ran his hands through her hair.  The shushing noises continued, soothing her with a rush of words that wrapped around her like a blanket, until finally, she curled in his arms, silent, and they stood against the car in the cold, breathing, but quiet.  When she looked at him, he looked as lost as she felt, like he wanted to reassure her, wanted to say it was all okay, wanted to say she was wrong, but he just couldn't, and he hated himself because he couldn't.

"I don't want you to ask me to marry you right now anyway, so you can stop stressing about it," she said, her voice hoarse and wrecked.

That broke him from his worried stupor.  "What?  Why?"

"Because.  I'm terrified too.  Knowing I have this much power over you is terrifying, Derek.  I've never had that with anyone before," she said.

A ghost of a chuckle fell from his lips, leaving a trail of puffy vapor in the air behind it like an echo.  "We certainly are a pair, aren't we?" he said, his tone dragged down to the pavement with rue.

She sniffled.  "Yeah."

He sighed after a long silence, a long silence in which he'd done nothing but rock her and hold her and be exactly what she needed.  "Mere?"

"What?" she asked.  She reached up to brush the dampness away from her face.  He set her down, and they wandered over to the curb to sit.  A creeping, damp cold seeped through the back of her pants as she rested on the pavement, but she didn't care.

"Are you really okay about your mother dying?  I'm not going to...  Well, I can handle it if you want to talk to me about it," he said.

She shrugged, leaning over to pick at her shoes.  Her knees jammed into her chest, making it difficult to breathe more than a little sigh at a time.  "Most days, I am.  Okay, I mean."  And she was, mostly.  Mostly okay.  Mostly okay, except...

"How about today?" he prodded.

Meredith closed her eyes, remembering the snippets of dark, blurry imagery that had stayed with her since she'd woken.  "She said she was proud of me."

"What?"

"When I was dead.  It's what she said to me.  That I was anything but ordinary.  But it wasn't real, was it?  My head made it up for me."

He pulled her into his arms and rubbed his hands up and down the length of her coat.  Warmth crept through the fabric.  "You knew she was gone when you woke up," he said.

"I did."

"Look, Mere," he said.  He put his fingers under her chin, pulled her gaze up, up, up from the warmth of his chest to look at his eyes.  "Everything I know about the human brain tells me that you had a classic near death experience, that it can be explained away with neurotransmitters.  And I've never been big on the spiritual stuff..."

"But?" she whispered.  His words had an unspoken but at the end.

He shrugged and looked blankly up at the sky.  "But you knew about your mother.  So, no, Mere, I can't just tell you it wasn't real.  This whole thing... all of it...  The fact that you're here, breathing.  Sometimes I wonder if science really is all there is...  I just don't know anymore."

"I hope it was real," she sighed as she leaned back into him.

He swallowed, his head jerking slightly with the motion of it. "Then it was, Mere," he said.  As though it were simple.  As though it were a mere matter of her wanting it badly enough that fantasy became the truth.

"My mom died, Derek," she said.

His hand ran up and down her back in slow, soothing motions.  "I know.  I'm sorry."

A car drove past, breaking the silence with a jarring, belching roar.  She shuddered as the quiet scuttled back in the growling vehicle's wake.  The streetlamp overhead buzzed.  He breathed next to her.  She watched the vapor unfurl into the space between them.

"Can we make a pact?" she asked.

Derek's hands paused their soothing motions, and he looked at her.  "What did you have in mind?"

"Let's just worry about now, Derek," she said.  "That's enough.  Marriage...  That's icing on the cake.  I just want us to be okay again.  The rest we can deal with later."

"Okay, Mere," he whispered.

"Okay?" she asked.

He nodded.  "Okay," he said again.

When she started to shiver, he picked her up and put her in the passenger seat.  He drove her home in silence, but it was a comfortable silence.  When they climbed into bed, sleep came quickly for both of them.