All Along The Watchtower - part 28.3A

[ariaadagio]

Title: All Along The Watchtower
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.

In which Meredith discovers Derek's family isn't that horrible, there's like fifty-seven different instances of the word porny, and something surprising happens.  I'm so sorry this took so long.  I had the dialog for this section completed within a week of finishing 28.2, but my life sort of fell apart in November before I could flesh it out.  I'm finally starting to climb out from under!  Thanks to my lovely betas, and thank you if you choose to leave feedback.  I dearly love hearing from my readers, so please, do say hello -- if you can find the LST throwback, you get a cookie!

All Along The Watchtower - Part 28.3A

Sometimes, being pregnant involved Meredith thinking she was a fat blimp whale.  Sometimes, being pregnant made her want to cry at random intervals about things Normal Meredith wouldn't have been caught dead shedding a freaking tear over.  Sometimes, being pregnant made her think porny pornstar things in what should have been sexless situations.  She hadn't run into a moment where all three sometimes things happened concurrently.  Until now, when the cornucopia of pregnancy-related what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-my-brain coalesced, she'd been blessed with singular bouts of weirdness.

In fact, Meredith decided, today, her head felt like a mix tape made by a drunk guy, and she kind of wanted to strangle whoever had invented hormones.

Kathy deposited a white box - a board game of some sort - in the center of the long oak table, which shone under the glow of the chandelier.  She sat down with a gleam in her eye.  Nobody at the table looked surprised by this development.  In fact, everybody but Carolyn, who'd begged off this affair and retreated into the library for some post-dinner Grandma time with the younger kids, was sitting in a ring around the dining room table, and everybody at the table except for Derek sat with salivary looks on their faces.  Kind of like a football team getting ready to go out on the field or something.

Taboo, the box said in bright gold lettering, and there was a smirking stick-figure face on the front, but that didn't help Meredith determine what sort of twisted Shepherd family ritual she was getting sucked into.  She glanced at Derek, hoping for a clue, but he gave her nothing.  Derek stared at the box with a singular intensity that told her he was exhausted and running on fumes, like if he didn't stare at the box, he might collapse.  Pickles, pickles, pickles, she could almost hear him reciting to himself.

“What's Taboo?” Meredith said.

She'd made it through the afternoon.  Through a drama free, almost pleasant dinner.  Derek was still in one piece, she hadn't made a horrible faux pas that she was aware of, because with immense effort, her porny pornstar/blimp whale/sentimental mush thoughts had all stayed in her head, and the only wrong thing that had happened since Rachel and Derek had made nice was that the turkey, or whatever, wasn't sitting well in her already too full stomach.  Of course now would be the look-dumb-learning-a-game-you-haven't-played-before curve ball.  After all, why not now?

“You haven't played it before?” Rachel, who sat on Meredith's left, said gently.

Meredith clenched her fists.  “Nope.”

Only child.  Neglectful mom.  Surely, Derek had given them the freaky-Meredith rundown?

But Rachel didn't go in a piteous I'm-sorry-for-your-pathetic-family direction, nor did she snark about it, instead.  “No party games in college?” Rachel said, her tone only curious, not demeaning.  “We played strip Taboo at mine.”

“Strip Taboo?” Mark said.  “How does that even work?”  And then he grinned lecherously.  “I'd like to know more.”

“I'm pretty sure you can make any game into a stripping game,” Derek, who sat to her right, interjected.

Meredith glanced at him.  “Seriously?” she said.

“Oh, yes,” Derek said.  He dipped his head low and kissed her temple.  There was a heaviness and a sluggishness to his demeanor despite his playfulness.  Even so, he added with a throaty purr against her ear, “Why, is that a challenge?”

An eight letter word for sex? phantom Derek asked huskily from the dinner table in her head.  A crossword puzzle lay beside him on a rumpled place mat.

Oh!  Oh, she said, excited.  How about copulate?

Wow, he said with a sly smile.  You got that fast.

He slipped off his shirt.

Wait, so we strip for correct answers in this game? she said.

His eyelids dipped as he nodded.  Mmm.  Wrong ones, too.

We're going to be naked really fast.

He grinned That's the idea.

Meredith couldn't stop the laugh that breached her careful wall, but she managed to choke it back into silence before it became more than a weird cough.  She glanced at everybody.  Having inappropriate discussions about stripping games at the Thanksgiving dinner table was probably not a sound plan for making good impressions.  Imagining Derek getting naked on the Thanksgiving dinner table probably wasn't much better.  Except nobody seemed fazed in the slightest, not the husbands, not Kathy, not Rachel.  Like naughty speech was normal, and nobody had even noticed her naughty thoughts.

Well, nobody but Derek.  Meredith glanced at Derek, who stared back at her through his thick eyelashes with a sly smile.  He'd followed her naughty thought train all the way to hoo-hoo station.  He was tired.  A sliver away from hitting his limits.  But, while not necessarily relaxed, not stressed, either.  His visible jitters had waned.  He seemed happy.  Like he was enjoying himself.  Being himself.

And being himself meant porny, flirty, smirky, and reading her freaking mind.

She supposed between him and the even more blatant lechery of Mark, Derek's family, or at least his siblings, given that his mother wasn't in the room, had gotten used to the liberal use of innuendo.

“Strip punch-buggies?” Derek suggested, and she laughed again, unfettered, guiltless.

“We'd get pulled over for public indecency again,” she countered.

Rachel snickered.  “Again?  Do we want to know?”

“Probably not,” Derek said, and everybody laughed.

Meredith leaned against Derek, and his warm arms wrapped around her.  The protective bubble he offered was addictive, and yet, feeling less and less necessary as she let the last bits of Paranoid Meredith flutter away.  She came from a crappy family, she didn't know how to play Taboo, and her husband was a porny, porny letch.  His family didn't seem to care about any of that very much.  They were actually sort of nice.

“My knowledge ends at beer pong,” she said, emboldened.

“We should totally do that one year,” Mark said.

“Shepherd family beer pong,” Derek said, his tone faux-nostalgic.  He smirked, though he paused to rub his eyes.  He was getting tired, and post-Thanksgiving meal coma probably wasn't helping.  “I'm sure the kids would love it.”

“Oh, can we?” one of Derek's nieces said, perking up.  “Can we?”  Teenager.  Slender.  Short like Kathy.  Dirty-blonde hair like John's and Abby's.  Chloe, Meredith thought.  Maybe.  Meredith's mind blanked on the name, though, and all the pretty flashcards Derek had made for her slipped out of her memory.  Worry clenched her heart in a flash and then released just as fast.  His family was sort of nice, and she'd started believing Derek's repeated assertions that they wouldn't bite, even if she did get a name wrong here and there.

“Chloe...” John said, and Meredith resisted the urge to pump her fist.  Chloe.  She'd remembered.  Point for Meredith, the potentially non-sucky aunt.

“Party-hearty girl, huh?” Rachel said.

For a moment, Meredith was too focused on her victory to realize she'd been asked a question.  “Used to be,” she said.  Then she glanced at Derek.  Rubbed her rebelling stomach.  Smiled.  “But I grew out of it.”

Rachel fluffed her green hair and smiled.  “Maybe, you can give me pointers.  I'm still stuck in the party.”

Not an unfair assessment, Meredith decided wryly.  Rachel was brash.  Hot-tempered.  Judgmental.  Like Nancy, though a lot quicker to tame.  Meredith had no idea how the woman even practiced medicine, since most patients would take one look at green hair, cry about professionalism, and walk out to find somebody who at least gave the appearance of not treating the hospital like it was a frat party.  But Meredith kept her mouth shut.  Family politics.  She was learning.  Learning, and... not completely sucking at this whole family thing.

“It's true,” Derek said, smirking like a cat still toying with the canary.  “We keep hoping she'll grow up, but we've had no luck.”

“Hey,” Rachel protested.

“She is socially degenerate” Mark interjected, eyes glinting.

“Hey!” Rachel said, blushing, but she smiled.  “Pot meet kettle, Mark!”

“I think that makes me more qualified to judge,” Mark countered.  “Don't you?”

“Touché,” Rachel admitted.  Her tone slipped into something more serious.  “And I am sorry.  For earlier.”  She tilted her head and glanced affectionately at Derek.  “You're visiting home for the first time in years.  You've brought Meredith to really, finally meet us.  And somehow, I made it all about me, me, me, and that's not fair to you.”  She looked at Meredith.  “Or to you.”  She sighed, and she pulled her fingers through her curly hair in a motion reminiscent of Derek when he was upset.  “I'm not good with people.”

Derek smirked.  “She's really not.”

“Not even remotely,” Amelia added.

Kathy grinned.  “I like to call her my case study in narcissism.”

Which, again, made Meredith wonder how in the hell the woman functioned as any kind of doctor.  Doctors had to talk to people all the time.  People they didn't like.  People they didn't agree with.  People with big problems.  People with little problems.  All freaking sorts of people.  Maybe, she'd gone into medical research or something, instead of clinical work?

Derek leaned close to Meredith and murmured, “Think Cristina on the people-inept scale, but a lot lower on the human cactus scale.”

Meredith snorted at the comparison.

Rachel blushed to the shade of a poinsettia.  “Okay, you guys.  You've gotten your licks in.  I won't even retort.”

Maybe it was harsh to wonder how the woman functioned as a doctor, Meredith decided.  Cristina functioned well as one, even if she didn't do the people side of things that well.

Steve stood, breaking the congenial silence that followed with the squawk of his chair sliding across the hard wood flooring.  He smiled brightly at everybody, and said, “Anybody want a beer before we start the game?”  Silence stretched for a moment, as if it took everyone a moment to readjust to the old trajectory of the evening.   Taboo.  Getting ready to play.

“I'll pass,” Derek said nonchalantly.

“Sure,” Mark said.

“You know none for me,” Amelia said.

John nodded.  “One here.”

“Pregnant,” Meredith said.

“Could I?” Chloe said hopefully.

“If she gets some, I should get some,” Abby countered.

“You two can have a sip of mine,” Kathy said reasonably, “and if you don't choke in disgust, then we'll talk.” To which Abby and Chloe gave each other a high five.

“I'll take one,” said Rachel.

“This game is always better with beer,” Kathy said, and Rachel nodded in agreement.  They shared a giggle in tandem and looked to Derek.  “Remember last time?”

All the divided attention at the table came to bear on Derek, who grinned.  Nervously.  Why nervously?  Meredith bit her lip, unsure where this was going.

Rachel hooted with laughter, and Meredith felt Derek tense.  “I still can't believe how many dirty word associations he can come up with.”

“It's a talent,” Derek quipped, smiling weakly.

“A dirty talent,” Meredith grumbled.

Steve's gaze fell on Derek.  “I got your favorite blonde, Der.  Bought a case from the local brewery for you.  Are you sure?”

“Meredith's my favorite blonde,” Derek joked in response, but the joke was half-hearted at best.

“Cute,” said Steve with a snort.

And then Meredith realized what all Derek's subtle broadcasting meant.  From the cornered, helpless, tired expression on his face, he had been hoping to slip under the radar instead of having to come up with an actual excuse to beg off of a drink.  Derek was - had been - a very social drinker.  He was a bit of a whisky connoisseur, but he loved beer, too.  That, combined with the fact that his family really seemed to want to make him comfortable for this visit, created a problem.

“I'm sure,” Derek managed to add.  “No, thanks.”

“You know,” Kathy said.  “I think Mom has some Glenlivet in the liquor cabinet if you'd rather have that.”

Derek shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  “I don't want scotch, either.”

Meredith still had no idea whether he planned to tell them about his drug problem this weekend.  She thought he might have decided to leave it off the table for now, to let his sisters digest the PTSD first.  Either way, he clearly didn't intend to make it a conversational topic right now.

“He won't drink anything.” Meredith said.  “It's for me.  Solidarity or whatever.”

Derek glanced at her, his expression momentarily flummoxed by her sudden lifeline.  And then his gaze slipped into something warmer as his whole body relaxed Thank you, his eyes seemed to say with relief, and he sighed like he'd just dodged an inquisition.  Maybe, he had.

She kissed him.  You're welcome.

“Wow,” Kathy said.  “How many points does Derek get for that?”

“Lots,” Meredith said.  She winked at Derek.  “Mountains.  It's a point-palooza.”

“Gold stars?” he murmured against her ear.

“Mmm,” she said, imitating his familiar purr, “Yes.  A bunch.”

“Man, I wish I'd thought of that when Kathy was pregnant,” John said.

Companionable, quiet conversation filled the dining room as Steve left to grab the libations.  The giggles and shrieks coming from the library to expanded in the air, and Meredith thought she heard, “My turn, my turn!” from one of the littler kids.  Derek didn't seem to be doing so badly with all the random noise anymore.  His family had gotten conscientious about moving quickly in his vicinity or shoving things in his face or touching him unexpectedly, once they'd gotten a crash course in what he needed to feel comfortable.  It was nice not to see him jumping at every little thing.  And the shrieking barely seemed to faze him.  He was just... running out of steam.

She relaxed against him and looked up at the slope of his jaw, at the crook where his jaw became his neck.  “Doing okay?” she said.

“Mmm,” he said quietly.  “I'll need a break soon, but not now.  I'm...”  He swallowed.  “I've really missed this.  How about you?”

The turkey did weird things in Meredith's stomach again, and she shifted uncomfortably.  She scrunched her nose.  “Too much turkey.  I don't think I have room for a bowling ball and a turkey in here.”  And she had no idea how, even after the family had taken a break for games, she was going to manage consuming any pie later.

Derek gave her a concerned look.  “You're not feeling nauseous, though?” he said, and then he splayed his palm against her belly and rubbed her in a slow, soothing circle.

She sighed.  “No.  Just really, really full.”

Which she thought might be worse.  At least when she puked, she puked, and then it was over.  She moved uncomfortably.  Bubbles.  That was the only way she could describe it.  She was overly full, and there were bubbles moving around somewhere in the overly full, which she knew she could have avoided if she'd exercised some freaking dietary restraint, but... she'd never had the home-cooked-by-Mom Thanksgiving experience before, and it'd been delicious.  And... really nice.

At which point Sentimental Meredith reared her head, and Meredith's eyes watered.  Just a little.  Not enough for anyone to notice.  Well, except for Derek.  Derek frowned at her, but she shook her head at him.  She drew the line at naked phantom-Derek lying on the table.  She was not going to cry over tasty Mom-turkey and having a sort of nice family.  That was ridiculous.  She wiped her eyes.

“I'm fine.  It's just... everything was so good!” she whined.

He snickered tiredly.  “Mon petit trou noir found her limits.”

She frowned.  “What's that mean?”

“Oh,” he said, eyes gleaming, “nothing.”

“He called you a black hole,” Rachel interjected.

Meredith glowered.  “Hey!”

“Just a little black hole,” he said cheerfully.

Steve returned with a clinking bundle of unopened beer bottles.  He set them all on the table next to the Taboo box, and everybody reached for theirs.  Looking at beer bottles just made her think of more bubbles, though, and she bit her lip.  This was such a crap night to have stomach issues.

“I am not a black hole,” she asserted.

“You're a very cute black hole, at least,” Derek amended, and she glowered, which only seemed to delight him.  She elbowed him in the ribs, and he feigned hurt with a cheerful, “Ow.”

“So...” Derek said as he rubbed his side, smirking.  “Taboo before I get the stuffing knocked out of me?”

Everyone groaned at his joke.

“Right, well, don't worry; it's very easy,” Rachel said, turning to Meredith.  “Do you know charades?”

“Sort of,” Meredith said.

“It's like that, but without gestures, just words,” Rachel explained.  “We ignore some of the rules for the sake of simplicity.  Essentially, we divide into two teams.  Whoever's up gets a stack of cards.  They need to get their team to guess the words on the cards without saying any part or variation or rhyme of the words, or any of the other five taboo words listed on each card.  You get more points the more cards you can get your team to guess.  You get a total of sixty seconds each round.”

Meredith frowned.  She should have known when she'd fallen for a serial crossword puzzle cheater that she would be marrying into a family of competitive word gamers.

“Okay...” Meredith said.  Maybe, she could sit this one out and just watch.

“It'll make total sense once you've seen it,” Rachel said.  “So, how are we divvying the teams?”

“Captains pick?” John said.

“Names out of a hat?” Kathy said.

Derek flashed everybody a brilliant grin.  “How about Team Neuro versus?”

“Am I included on Team Neuro?” Meredith said, worried.

“No,” Mark said to Derek, ignoring Meredith.  “No way.”

Derek frowned.  “Why not?”

“Yeah,” Amelia said, folding her arms over her chest.  “What's wrong with Team Neuro?”  Her chair creaked as she leaned forward.

“Because Meredith is neuro, so you'd have her, and you guys are weirdly psychic,” Mark said.  “Being weirdly psychic is an unfair advantage.”

“I could just sit this one out,” Meredith offered.

“You can't,” Derek said.  “Who else knows a six letter word for pinnacle without cheating?”

“Oh, come on, they can't be that good,” Rachel said with a dismissive wave of her hand.  “And Steve and I on the same team would balance them out.”

“You and Steve are not weirdly psychic,” Mark said.

“We're married!” Rachel countered.

“There's married psychic, and then there's weirdly psychic,” Mark said.  “Trust me.  You're not like them.”

“That sounds like a bet,” Steve said, eyes gleaming.

Mark shook his head.  “It's not a bet,” he said.  “It's self-preservation.”  Mark jabbed his thumb at Derek.  “I have to work with him.”

“I won't rub it in when we win,” Derek offered.

Mark snorted.  “Yes, you will.”

“I promise not to rub it in!” Derek said.

John raised his eyebrows.  “Confident, aren't you?”

“Of course,” Derek said.  He kissed Meredith's temple.  “We're weirdly psychic.”

Meredith glanced wildly at the table.  Everybody was looking at her like she was a flopping, bloody, busted fish wriggling around in the dirt, just waiting to be killed.  Another thing she'd never grown up with was sibling rivalry, and the fleetness of feet on which it arrived.  In her and Derek's ongoing game of truth, where they traded stories about their earlier lives, Derek had told her lots of stories about his childhood.  Stories that seemed fantastical to her, the family dynamics were so foreign to her, including one particular instance where he'd somehow, at the tender age of eight, ended up in a dress, high heels, and a sunhat, egged on by a triplet of jeering older sisters.

She glanced at her husband.  This argument about teams seemed to have lit a spark.  He didn't look so tired anymore.  More determined.  A competitive gleam had burgeoned in his gaze, flaring bright where before, there'd been only dying embers that spoke of weariness.  She liked to see him happy again, but...

“Derek...” Meredith said.

He gave her an innocent look.  “What?”

“Hi, pressure,” she said.  “I'm Meredith.  I don't even know how to play.”

“Hi, Meredith,” he said.  He took her hand and shook it heartily.  “Very nice to meet you.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Oh, shut up.”

Which only made him snicker.  “You love me.”

She nodded.  “I do,” she said, “but you're suddenly being a competitive jerk.”

A flash of worry hit her as soon as the words had left her mouth that his family might not take very kindly to her insulting him in front of them.  A brief glance around the room declared her in the clear.  Rachel appeared to be just shy of buying pom poms for the occasion, and Kathy had an indescribable look of glee on her face.

“I prefer to think of it as encouraging jerk,” he said, either oblivious to or in defiance of his sisters' mirth.

She frowned at him.

“Charming jerk?” he tried.

“Not exactly charming,” she said.

“I think you might be lying,” he said.  “I'm very charming and very encouraging.”

“And kind of a jerk,” she said.

“But a lovable one, yes?” he said.

She kept her mouth clamped shut.  She refused to let him win.

He leaned in close.  Inhaled the scent of her hair.  His warm breath touched her skin.  He kissed her.  “You'll be a champ.  Trust me, okay?” he said against her ear, in that soft, definitive, everything-is-fine tone that made him almost impossible not to believe.

“But what if I'm toxic, like a Typhoid Mary or something, and my team goes down in flames because I don't know the rules, yet?” she protested weakly.

“Weirdly psychic, remember?” he said in return.  He gave her a playful, confident fist bump that made her heart flutter.  “And as sweet as it is that you want to sabotage the team I'm not on... we've got this in the bag.”  He leaned forward and pulled the Taboo box toward himself.  As his final sell, he gave her one of his dreamy please looks that was hard, if not impossible, to say no to, regardless, and then he said, “We'll do a practice round; just you and me.  It's easy.  You'll pick it up really fast.”  And you'll rock it, he added wordlessly.

She stared back at him.  He'd been beyond supportive today.  He'd let her hide behind him whenever she'd needed it.  She'd spent most of the night observing more than participating, staying in her comfort zone.  He knew how much she didn't want to make an idiot of herself.  Why was he doing this to her, now?

“Oh, play, Meredith,” Kathy said with a welcoming grin.  She took a sip from her beer.  “You won't be any worse at it than Mark.”

“Yeah,” Mark said.  “I suck, and they always let me play.  Though, I still protest Team Neuro, unless I can be on it to ride your coattails to success.”

“You can't be on Team Neuro,” said Derek.  “You're not neuro.”

“I don't know,” Rachel said.  “Are you sure you guys don't want him?”

“Yes,” said Derek, Amelia, and Kathy in tandem.

“You guys should get a handicap,” Steve said.

“Why?” Amelia said.

Steve shrugged.  “I think taking Mark should start us with five points.”

“Hey!” said Mark.

“Two points,” Derek countered.

“Four,” Steve said.

“Three,” Derek said, “and that's my final offer.”

“Done!” Steve replied.

“We're still going to win,” Derek said, and then he looked at Meredith with a pouting pleasepleaseplease expression that made her roll her eyes.  “Right?”

Meredith sighed.  She wasn't going to win.  Everybody was staring.  “Fine.”

Derek winked.  The cardboard box moaned as its sides slid against each other when Derek opened it.  He rummaged through the contents and pulled out a large stack of cards, which he then shuffled.  From the larger stack, he pulled off a small set of cards, and from that small set, he grabbed the top card.  He ignored the sand timer and everything else.

“Dr. Bailey is this type of surgeon,” he said.