All Along The Watchtower - Part 29B
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.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 29B
3:28 PM
The gray water spread out beyond the big boat in a choppy, frothing sheet below a gray glass sky. The wind broke the surface, making small waves that sloshed and slurped. A one-pitch, moaning whistle filled the air around their ears as the boat sliced the air. The hum of the motor filled what would have been silence on the bay. The air smelled of salt.
Derek inhaled deeply. The breeze ruffled his hair. When he exhaled, all his stress sloughed away, leaving only the beautiful bay, and his beautiful wife, and his awesome dog to keep him company. Samantha rolled onto her back at their feet, exposing her belly, and he reached down to give her a rub.
“This was a good idea,” Derek said.
He scooted closer to Meredith on the bench and wrapped his free arm over her shoulder. He held Samantha's leash with the other. Pets were allowed on leash on the ferry as long as they stuck to the sundeck or the vehicle deck. The sky was gray, but the clouds were thin enough that he could see a bright ball of light behind them, hanging low on the west horizon over Bainbridge's approaching sheet of green. Bainbridge grew and the Seattle skyline behind them shrunk.
Meredith grinned at him. The wind had nipped at her cheeks and nose, turning them bright and rosy. “Wasn't it?” she said. “I think, in this moment, I might be awesome.”
He laughed. “More than only in this moment.”
She stretched up her arms and breathed in the cool air and made the cracking, sated noise she often made after sex. He leaned close and kissed her, brushing his cold nose against her temple. She giggled.
“Ferryboats and Bainbridge for stress relief,” she said with a sigh. “I think we should make this a weekly date.”
“Deal,” he said without hesitation.
He looked forward to stepping off the boat almost as much as he liked being on it. The island had a small area near the ferry landing where there were quaint shops and little restaurants. There were also places to walk along the water, and the land was green and lush and refreshing. Sometimes, it amazed him that one could find the country so close to the city. While it took him an hour to drive to his land from the hospital, Bainbridge was only twenty minutes via ferry. It was a rapid change in setting when one needed to unwind, and, at this moment, he needed to unwind, because he'd been kinked more than a slinky with stress.
Samantha yawned, flashing her big teeth and her powerful jaws. Her eyelids drooped, and her tongue lolled, pitting the deck with slippery bits of drool as she relaxed, too.
“All right, so,” Meredith said, her body warm against him as she resumed their earlier discussion. He pressed his chin against her head, listening. “I think I know what will help you.”
“Oh?” he said.
“When you get stuck because you're upset, you need to use your sexy voice.”
“My sexy voice,” he said.
“Yeah, you know.” She turned to him. Her voice dropped low and soft and soothing, and each syllable dripped like honey from her mouth. “Like this. You talk all soothing. It's impossible to fly off the handle when you do it.”
“My...” He blinked. “Really, I talk like that?”
She punched him in the shoulder. Not hard. She met his eyes, and she gaped at him when he didn't react with feigned hurt or a laugh. “You so know you talk like that. Particularly when you want me to stop freaking out.” Confusion bit into her expression, and her nose scrunched as she peered at him. “Don't you?”
“I...” He blinked. “Well, I'm not sure I did it consciously.”
“You can't tell me that's not at least a little bit on purpose. You know women drop like flies around it.”
“They do?” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “You can keep your fake-innocence about it if you must, but seriously, use it when you get all stuck in grr mode.”
He snorted. “I have a grr mode and a sexy voice?”
“Okay, now you're just teasing me,” she said.
He kissed her, and he laughed. “Maybe, a little. But, Mere, when I'm in grr mode,” he said, holding up his fingers as though they were quotation marks, “it's really hard to...”
“To what?” she prodded.
He looked at his lap. “To not bite people's heads off,” he said. “It's usually all I can do not to snap.” He sighed with frustration. “I hate this job.”
“So, pretend you're talking to me,” she said. “Maybe, you hate the job, but you love me.”
“You seriously want me mentally pasting your face onto everybody I talk to that I don't want to be talking to?” he said. It felt more than a little wrong to use her like that.
She shrugged. “If it helps, why not? It's kind of a compliment to me. Just... use the sexy voice. You officially have my permission.”
He leaned against her. Sighed. Nuzzled her temple. “Not that I'm complaining,” he said against her skin, “but when did you get to be so secure?”
“Well,” she said, “so far, I've survived secret wives, and bombs, and Alzheimer's moms, and drowning, and George dying, and drunk dads, and you getting shot, and, well, pretty much everything falling apart.”
He swallowed and pulled her close. Kissed her once. Twice.
“All that bad stuff happened,” she said. “You're still here.” She looked at him, reddening. “So...”
“I'm not going anywhere,” he said in a low murmur.
“That's it!” she said triumphantly. “That's the voice you need to use.” She grinned. “Whenever you're upset and trying not to snap at people or whatever, you just have to find what you're feeling right now, and use it.”
“I wanted you to know that I'm here,” he said, words thick with a swell of emotion. “And that it's okay. And that I love you.”
“That's great,” she said. “Use that. Think of that. And, actually, it'd really be best if you used my face for it, because holy crap that'd be weird if you didn't.”
He chuckled. “I'll try.”
He pulled her close, and she rested against him. Their coats smooshed together. The boat slowed as it entered the docking area on Bainbridge Island. Mist loitered in the air, and the smell of wet leaves and bark made him inhale. Samantha's dog tags jingled as she stood up and looked at the shore with a bemused expression. She'd never been to Bainbridge.
“I believe you, by the way,” Meredith said.
“Hmm?” Derek replied.
She gazed at him through her eyelashes. “That's how I got so secure. It took me a while, but I do. Believe you, I mean. About everything.”
“Oh,” he said. A lump formed in his throat. It was the first time since she'd found him naked on the floor in a mess of empty pill bottles that she'd ever said anything like that. He swallowed. “I won't mess it up again.”
She stared at him for a long, silent moment. “I believe that, too,” she said.
“I love you,” he said.
She stole a page from his book and winked at him. “I know,” she said. She put her head back on his shoulder and watched the scenery slide by.
“Sir, are you listening, or am I wasting my time?” Pamela Springer said. Pamela sat across from him in the conference room. She wore a black pantsuit. She'd pulled back her hair into an austere, auburn ponytail. Her makeup made her features look severe, almost intimidating, which belied her high-pitched, grating voice and her small stature.
Derek blinked as the familiar jolt of adrenaline punched through him. The surprise receded as quickly as it had arrived. He gave his head a little shake, forcing himself to snap out of his encroaching thoughts. I wish I wasn't, he wanted to say. I don't fucking want to be here. But instead, he put Meredith in front of him, and he smiled for all he was worth. “Of course, I'm listening,” he said, offering her a smooth, soothing tone, the one Meredith had told him to use.
The trick worked, because Pamela relaxed and smiled back at him. Derek made a mental note to thank Meredith for the advice. He'd found he couldn't manage his “sexy voice” when he was too upset, but with some effort, he could find the soothing demeanor he was looking for anytime before he fell over the cliff. He stood, pushing his chair back with his thighs, and reached across the table to shake Pamela's hand. Stretching made everything ache, but he didn't let himself wince. Friendly and collected, he told himself. Stay friendly and collected. And smile.
“I think it's a good idea,” he said. She'd suggested an amendment to Seattle Grace's pet ambassadors program that would allow people to have their own dogs visit. “But I'd like to see some numbers about cost, first, and I want to see some hard rules about when a visit would and wouldn't be acceptable.”
Pamela nodded enthusiastically. “I'll write up a proposal for you. Thank you!”
Derek's insides tightened at the thought of more paperwork, but he refused to let it show. He forced that smile to stay stuck to to his face. Meredith, Meredith, Meredith, he thought. “You're welcome, Ms. Springer. Just meet with my secretary to make another appointment.”
She grinned. “Will do,” she said as she gathered up her purse.
After she left, he slumped with relief. He'd fallen into a routine where friendly and collected was getting much easier to fake, but... He missed the days when he'd genuinely felt friendly and collected, when he could be soothing to a stranger he wanted nothing to do with without it being much of an act. He pulled his fingers through his hair and sighed. This just wasn't him anymore. He didn't want to meet with people to talk about policy or money. He didn't want to manage.
He wanted to slip back into what he'd been before. A surgeon. Making personal connections on a smaller, more intimate level. Helping very sick people see another tomorrow. Saving lives. He wanted that back. He missed feeling fulfilled. He missed loving his work. Beyond Gary Clark, Derek's own ambition had really shot him in the foot.
He flexed his fingers.
Too bad the idea of cutting into a living, breathing person, a person he could easily kill if he fucked up, still scared the shit out of him. On top of that, surgeons were widely recognized as holding one of the most stressful professions available. Sure, it was immensely rewarding when things went right, but things went wrong a lot, too, and there was enormous pressure to make decisions on the fly, something Derek wasn't sure he was even capable of, anymore.
With a sigh, he followed the path Pamela had taken out of the conference room, and he walked down the bright, immaculate hallways. He smiled. He said hello to everybody he passed. Inquired about their families and their days and talked about their holiday plans. But he felt like a ghost.
When he found Mark loitering by the coffee pot in the attendings' lounge near oncology, Derek shuffled to a stop. Mark bounced as he prepared himself a cup of coffee with the added help of some Coffee-Mate Irish Créme. Mark hummed an off-tune version of... something that seemed like a cross between Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls.
Derek leaned against the wall by the pot and grinned, happy, finally, to have a distraction bound by the real world, instead of one conjured in his head. “You look too chipper, considering you're slumming for free, bad coffee.”
Mark took a sip of his steaming coffee, winced, blew on it a bit, and turned to Derek with a smile that would have put the Cheshire Cat to shame. “Lexie is open,” he said.
Derek tilted his head to the side. “Open to what?”
Mark shrugged. And then he bounced again. Actually bounced. “She's open. She's free. Tyler told Marcia told Sandy told Bob told Debbie. No Karev. She dumped him in the middle of the cafeteria over breakfast!”
Derek snickered. “I had no idea you were such a gossip.”
“Hey, I paid good money for this intel.”
“Gossip,” Derek countered.
Mark shook his head. “Intel.”
“Gossip.”
“Intel!” Mark insisted.
“Hmm,” Derek said. “So, you paid Nurse Debbie for gossip?”
“Intel,” Mark corrected. “And that's beside the point.”
“The point, which is...?”
Mark sighed. He took a cautious sip of his coffee, and then a gulp when he found the temperature to his liking. “If you were Lexie, and I asked you out, what would make you say yes?”
Derek blinked at the unexpected request for role play, and he laughed.
“No, seriously,” Mark added.
Derek shifted and grabbed a paper cup from the shelf. Meredith had taken his good mug hostage, and his backup mug was sitting on his desk in his office. He poured himself some black coffee from the pot, and then went trawling through the sugar packets and creamers next to the pot. There was nothing he liked. It all screamed fat and cholesterol and other arterial badness. He'd take his coffee black.
“Nothing would make me say yes, Mark,” Derek said after some thought. He blew on his cup. “I'm not going out with you.”
A snort of derision caught his attention, and he looked up to find Cristina standing by the doorway to the lounge, caught mid-stride in the hall. She stared at her clipboard. Her face held no expression. She looked up and met his eyes, and only then did he identify a small, ticking twitch of her lip that could have been laughter in a normal human being. “You know, you guys seriously invite it,” she said. “You invite it! It's like... you're toast, and we're the butter... or something.”
“Yeah, keep walking, Yang,” Derek said.
“Or, maybe you're the crap, and we're the flies?” Cristina said.
“Keep. Walking,” Derek said.
“Just saying,” she said. And then she continued her surge down the hall on her original course, her black ponytail bobbing behind her.
Derek sighed. “It's like she has radar.”
“You mean faulty gaydar,” Mark grumbled.
“Meredith calls it a bromance,” Derek said matter-of-factly.
“That's not much better,” Mark said.
Derek laughed. “Oh, come on. You have got to work on your security issues.”
Mark made a face as he reddened. “Have you ever considered my issue isn't that I'm being perceived as gay, but that I'm being perceived as loving you?”
Derek smirked. “Hey, now, I'm a lovable guy!”
Mark rolled his eyes. “Shut up, and pretend you're Lexie, jackass.”
“I'm not going to pretend I'm Lexie,” Derek replied. He took a sip of his coffee.
“I need to get on this, man,” Mark said. “Somebody else could swoop in.”
Derek sighed. “Mark, she was really upset this morning.”
“Wait,” Mark said. “You knew she and Karev broke up, and you didn't tell me?”
“I haven't seen you!” Derek said. “I've been stuck in meetings and doing paperwork all day, and I'm sorry to tell you this, but I'm not Debbie.”
“It's valuable intel, man; that's all.”
Derek shook his head. “Gossip. And why don't you leave Lexie alone for a while?”
“Intel,” Mark said. “You think she won't say yes if I ask her, now?”
Are you freaking kidding me? Derek imagined her saying. Seriously? “Women like patience,” Derek said with a definitive nod.
Mark frowned, his expression concerned. He took a swig of his coffee. “So, give her time.”
“I guess so,” Derek said, shrugging. “Yeah.”
“How much time?”
“Do I look like a dating manual to you?” Derek replied. “Doesn't your how-to-woo book explain this stuff?”
“You and Meredith worked out,” Mark said. “You must know something.”
“Yeah,” Derek said with a snort. “I know miracles happen.”
Mark sighed. “Man, c'mon, I really need h--” His speech stopped short when his beeper went off. He looked like he wanted to smash the thing, but he pulled it from his waistband and looked at it despite his clenching jaw. “Fuck,” he said. “Gotta go.” He gave Derek a suspicious look. “Don't think you're getting out of this.” He tossed his coffee into the trashcan and trotted off as Derek watched.
“Call me later?” Derek yelled after him.
“Shut up, man,” Mark yelled back.
Derek laughed. Some things, it seemed, had returned to an exquisite sort of normal.
6:54 PM
He woke in a bath of gray light with his nose pressed into her hair, and his body flush with hers. His arm draped over her hip. Her feet rested at the base of his shins. She smelled like lavender, and she'd left the scent on the sheets. On his skin. Rain pattered on the roof and plinked against the windows.
“Mmm,” he rumbled against her neck, and then he whispered, “Good morning.” Just in case she was still asleep.
He kept his eyes closed despite the light, and he didn't move, not wanting to disturb her. The bed was warm, and for once, neither the dog, nor an alarm had woken them. He'd managed to coordinate their day off that week, an ability he counted as one of the few things he loved about being Chief. He didn't abuse the privilege, but he used it now and then. Neither of them had anywhere to be or anything to do or anyone to meet that day. It was a true holiday. An island of calm in a giant, stressful mess.
Her body shifted, and she reached for the arm he'd rested on her hip. She squeezed his hand. “Mornin',” she mumbled. “S'warm in here. I like it.”
He grinned. “Well, we don't have to move.” He kissed her neck. Her skin was soft. “We have all day.”
“Nuh uh,” she said. “You gotta move.”
He frowned. “Did you want me to make breakfast or something?”
She shook her head. “No.” She paused. “Well, yes, later, but...”
“But what?”
“You're poking me in the back, and your breath smells.”
He laughed, long and loud, and it felt nice. “Sorry,” he said cheerfully, “I do tend to wake up that way, particularly when you're in my arms.”
She shifted, and he thought if she hadn't been pregnant, she would have rolled onto her stomach to curl under the covers. As it was, she hadn't been sleeping on her stomach for weeks. “Halitosis and a boner,” she groused affectionately. “Yay me.”
He laughed as he crawled out from the covers and padded across the rug to the master bathroom. “I'll fix it,” he called over his shoulder.
“Just the halitosis,” she said. “Leave the boner. I want that part for me.”
He chuckled as he stepped into the bathroom. “Yes, dear,” he said.
He brushed his teeth, used the bathroom, and splashed water on his face. In three minutes, he slid back under the covers and against her warm body. He sighed as he resettled. The sheets rustled. She grabbed his hand and pulled it to her mouth. Her lips pressed against his skin.
“Mmm,” she said, her tone more awake and hazed with sex. “Interested?”
He kissed her. A few months ago, he wouldn't have been comfortable enough to make a joke, because the Paxil made him self-conscious. This morning, the words, “When am I not interested?” slipped easily from his lips, and it didn't matter that more often than not, she had to help him get into the mood. He had the mood right now. Courtesy of waking up in a whorl of lavender-scented hair. They'd discovered the best time for him was in the morning, riding on the coattails of his last nighttime erection.
He sheathed himself like a key in a lock with the small gap between her thighs, just where they met her torso. The contact set him pleasantly askew. Her skin there was slick, and warm, and he relished the feel of her, so close, and yet so far. “Not poking, now?” he murmured.
“Better,” she said with a gasp. She ground her hips against him. “But I'm not ready yet.”
“I'll fix that,” he purred against her ear.
He squeezed her and slid his palm up the curve of her hip to her breast. Her soft skin passed like silk beneath his fingertips. She gratified him with her relaxed sigh. Her nipple perked under his thumb. Her breaths shortened. He pushed his other arm underneath her waist. His hand came to rest under her navel. He dipped low, pushing his fingers through her course hair, down between her legs, and he cupped her. Touched her. Stroked her. Her breath popped out in a long, slow moan, and her hand came to rest over his. He used the sound of her inhalations and exhalations to tell him what was right, and what was perfect. When she quivered, and when she gasped, he'd hit a jackpot.
“Good?” he said, just to be sure.
“Yes,” she whispered, and her body twitched. “Oh.”
They made a quiet, sensual dance of it. The salt of her skin mingled with his. The rain beat on the roof like a collection of heartbeats.
He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes, imagining her body as he knew it by heart from the front. She was slender. Thin-boned. Her skin was a milky peach color, smooth, but dusted by more freckles than he could count. Her hips had a subtle curve before sloping into her long, long legs. Her belly and breasts had swollen as she grew their baby in her body. She worried sometimes about her waistline, but he tried to kiss the worries away whenever he caught them propagating. To him, she was a goddess, and he told her that with love and with words as often as he could.
The covers rustled as he shifted behind her. This position, spooning with him in the back, was perfect for letting him do all the work, and letting them both have fun at his direction. It wasn't about control for him anymore, but finding things that were comfortable for her. In an amusing role-reversal after he'd been shot, it'd been him trying to find what worked for her, instead of her trying to find what worked for him.
He kissed her throat. A tinge of salt tickled his taste buds. Her heartbeat fluttered underneath her skin, and she turned her head to try and catch a glimpse of him as they rode a wave together. Her face had flushed with sexual heat, and her gaze had a dusky, desirous quality. Sweat dotted her brow. He kissed along her jaw, and he played her body like his harp.
When the hand he pressed between her legs felt slick with her desire, he shifted, angled himself, and he pushed into her to the hilt in one thrust. She gasped, and a choked noise fell from her lips. Her heat blitzed his senses. He'd come home.
“Okay?” he asked breathlessly.
“Yesssss,” she said in a long sigh as she squeezed around him. He couldn't suppress a moan, and their shivering exhalations mingled in a long chorus of desire.
Her body relaxed against him on the bed. He wrapped both arms around her waist, burying his fingers between her legs, adding pressure from the front as he pushed from the back, and a deep, twisting moan shuddered from her throat. She bucked against his hand, and they rocked together in a jagged rhythm of push and pull and push and pull.
The dog yapped at them, bringing him up short as he saw mocha-colored eyes beyond Meredith's shoulder staring at them mournfully.
“I told you she always watches,” Meredith said, and he laughed against her skin. She tasted of salt and sweat and lust. She was an elixir that set his world on fire.
“Sam,” he barked. “Crate.”
The dog's ears twitched. She licked her lips once. Flashed her sharp teeth in large yawn. And then she plodded out of the room, cowed by his command.
“You're getting better at that,” Meredith said.
“Mmm,” he purred, beginning to rock against her. He kissed her. Nipped her ear as he found his rhythm again in the drumbeats of the rain. “Well, I'm not getting a blow job right now.”
She clutched the pillow and gasped. “I guess it's harder to think with my mouth around your-- ooohhhhhhhhh.”
He laughed as she quivered in his arms. “Harder to think, you were saying?”
With her body so close to him, slickly squeezing around him, he felt dizzy with desire, and he struggled to keep this about her. He drove to the patter on the roof, meandering between relaxing and frenetic, creating a wax and wane of needing. She urged him on with a staccato beat of, “Yes, yes, yes,” for minute after minute until nothing drove either of them but a frenzy of want.
When she fell to glorious pieces in his arms, he chased after her. Her belly twitched as her body pulsed around his length. He sucked in a breath as he found his peak not long after hers. For the torturous moment before he fell from the cliff, he found euphoria. Heat. Love. He saw spots. He thought, for that moment, he might die there, and then everything released into freefall. He collapsed beside her, panting as his lower body pumped against her, well out of his control, and then all was still.
They lay together breathing, spent, slumped, and silent, body to body, skin to skin.
He rested with his nose pressed into her hair, exactly as he'd woken. His palms rested over her belly. He basked in her warmth, never wanted to move again. The rain picked up, and the patter on the roof became a steady, clamorous thunder.
He kissed her. “I love you,” he murmured.
Her body shifted, and her palms pressed against his hands. “Love you, too,” she said, her voice a wrecked whisper that told him he'd done everything right.
His eyes drifted closed. He let the warmth, the feeling of home, and her love relax him, wrap him in a cocoon he didn't think he ever wanted to crawl out of, unless perhaps she asked for pancakes. He drifted to the liminal space between slumber and sentience, but then she moved underneath his hands. His eyes snapped open, and his encroaching dreams dissolved.
“Oh,” she gasped, like she'd been startled, too.
“What's the matter?” he said.
Her silence was filled by the falling rain. “You felt that?” she said.
“Felt what?” he said.
“Derek,” she said in a low voice, “that wasn't me.”
For a moment, he had no idea what she meant because the afterglow seemed to have zapped his synapses. And then he felt it again. Something small, perhaps a tiny elbow or a foot, drifted underneath her skin in a curve that almost followed his bottom palm line. Almost like it sensed his hand resting there.
He swallowed. “That's...”
She nodded. “Baby, yeah.” He could feel her smile, though he couldn't see it. The covers rustled as she snuggled closer to him. “Shh. Let's see if it happens again.”
They waited quietly, her hands clasped over his. They rested, joined just over her navel. The falling rain marked passing seconds. Less than a minute later, he felt it, whatever appendage it was, move back the other way.
“Oh, my god,” he said, barely able to find words.
“Yeah,” she said. “That was my reaction the first time, too. Remember?”
“I do,” he said, a faint, shocked whisper.
The world was dropping out beneath him. “Hi,” he said, swallowing. He thought his heart might flutter out of his chest. He sucked in a breath. “Hi, Baby.”
Meredith squeezed his fingers. “That's your daddy,” she said, looking down at the swell of her belly.
The baby moved again, and he laughed as his view of the world became a hot, messy blur. “Oh, my god,” he said again. And then he couldn't stop laughing. “That's our baby.” The euphoria he'd found earlier felt like nothing compared to this, felt like a drop in the massive bucket of happy. “Baby is moving, and I can feel it.” He couldn't catch his breath.
“I guess we woke her up,” Meredith said.
He nodded. “I guess so.” His fingers curled against her body as he felt their baby move another time.
“She gets like this sometimes,” Meredith said. “Where she won't freaking hold still.”
He laughed. God it felt good to laugh like that. “Meredith, she could dance a ballet. I don't want her to stop unless it's bugging you.”
“It's not,” Meredith said. She chuckled. “So, you agree, now?”
“About what?”
“That it's a girl?” she prodded.
“Well, I can't call something that dances that well an it,” he replied. “I'll go with your gut for now.”
She grunted, rolling to face him. He helped her shift. He stared into her eyes. They were fathomless gray today. Like the billowing rainclouds outside. Or a stormy sea. She grinned, touching her palms to his face, and she kissed him, scruffy stubble and all.
He pressed his nose against her forehead and breathed. In and out. In and out. The world had the heady scent of lavender. He closed his eyes, and he pressed his hands against her belly, waiting for Baby's next exuberant greeting.
He spent his morning that way, naked, warm, curled up with his wife on a rainy day in their bed. Some of the best spent hours of his life.
“Hey,” said a weak, cracking voice. “Anybody home?” A hand with a plastic wristband waved in front of his face in the dark. Adam Peabody, said the wristband in new courier type. The wrist it gripped was sharp and boney and sickly pale.
Derek flinched, but he didn't know if Adam had noticed. Adam was flying high at the moment. Derek glanced at the cloudy morphine drip by the Adam's hospital bed, gaze lingering for a long second. A twinge of wanting swept through Derek as his heart hammered from the surprise. The morphine would fix it. All the jumping. All the times his heart skipped beats. All the fear. But as he pulled air in and out of his chest, as his heart stopped slamming, as he calmed, the wanting faded, and he managed to tear his gaze away from the siren song in the intravenous line and look back at the man.
“Sorry,” Derek said, shaking his head. Adam had been asleep when Derek had sat down, and Derek had drifted. He leaned back in his chair. The thin strip of light over Adam's bed lit the room by itself, lengthening the shadows. The sun sank below the horizon early in the winter, and the cloudy sky outside the window had already darkened to the dull, misty purple of light pollution. “I'm having trouble focusing today.”
“You seemed pretty focused just now,” Adam said wheezily. His heart monitor bleeped a quiet, steady rhythm. “Just not on me.”
Derek felt his face heating before he could stop it.
“Oh-ho,” Adam said with a weak laugh. “One of those thoughts, huh.”
Derek gave the man a sheepish grin. “Truth be told, I'd much rather be with my wife than at work today.”
“So, I'm your hairy substitute wife right now?” Adam said.
Derek took a long look at Adam and laughed. The tattoo on Adam's arm, what Derek had mistaken for a snake, was actually a dragon, according to Adam. Either way, the brilliant red serpent covered the man's entire bicep and wrapped all the way down his arm to his wrist.
“What's funny?” Adam said.
“Just trying to picture Meredith with that kind of ink. I think that dragon is as big as her entire arm.” Derek rubbed his chin with his fingers as he thought about it. She did have a little cursive sprawl in black on her ankle. Carpe noctem, it said. Seize the night. She'd gotten it when she'd been in Europe with Sadie, though he couldn't pull specifics from her, not because she didn't want to tell him, but because she'd apparently been hammered and couldn't remember.
“Meredith,” Adam said, snapping Derek loose from his musing. Adam smiled weakly. “That's a pretty name.”
Derek frowned. “I've never told you her name?”
“Nope,” Adam said.
“I could have sworn I told you...” Derek said.
“I'm sure you've told me a lot of stuff,” Adam said. “But I've been out of commission for a while. Remember?” He winced and bit his lip as if to prove his point.
The man lay flat in his hospital bed, barely mobile, bundled in a sea of thermal blankets and wires. A nasal cannula hugged his pale, angular face. A forest swath of black stubble covered his face, and the only reason the fuzz wasn't a full blown beard was because Derek had been helping him shave every few days. Adam had long, stringy black hair that would probably look better once the man could get into the shower, but at the moment, he couldn't even sit up, and the long hair combined with Adam's gaunt face to ghastly effect.
He'd been awake for only a few weeks, and off his ventilator for less time than that. Derek had been the one to find him. Adam had been blinking at the ceiling in a confused, drugged haze one night when Derek had stopped by to say his usual hello. Derek couldn't imagine how he himself would have felt if he'd woken up under the same circumstances, hurt and scared and alone, unable to speak. Derek had been all of those except alone when he'd first opened his eyes, and that had been bad enough. The mere thought of it made him feel sick to his stomach.
I know this is very scary, Dr. Shepherd, a distant voice swirled in his head. Do you want to see Dr. Grey?
“Are you in pain?” Derek asked, pushing the past away. The man's wincing concerned him.
“Just the usual,” Adam said with a smile that showed clenched teeth, and looked more like a grimace. “Nothing much helps with it. I feel like crap. Blah, blah.”
Derek leaned forward. “I'm sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Adam said. “Tell me about... your wife.”
Derek grinned. “She's a surgeon here, too. She wants to specialize in neurosurgery. She says she's dark and twisty, but I disagree,” he said easily. She perhaps wasn't bright and shiny, but she was a light to him all the same. “She's got the best smile in the world,” he continued. “She's my best friend. She's my hero. And I really love her.”
“How'd you meet?”
“I picked her up at a bar across the street from here,” Derek said. “It was supposed to be a one night stand. And it was, until I found out we worked at the same hospital, and that I was her boss.”
Adam laughed, only to cringe as his face screwed up. “Oh, that's classic,” he said breathily. “So, why are you thinking about Meredith instead of work?”
“I'm just... frustrated,” Derek said.
Adam's eyebrows rose. “About?”
“I've been on a reduced schedule,” Derek said. “I only started working full time again last week.”
“That sounds like cause for celebration, not frustration,” Adam said.
Derek gripped the bed railing by Adam's head and squeezed. Tension lanced up his arm. “I don't want to be Chief of Surgery anymore.”
“Then why are you?” Adam said.
Derek tilted his head. “I... can't quit,” he said. “Not right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to fix some things before I step down,” Derek replied.
“So, fix them.”
“I don't know how,” Derek said. “I'm not even sure where to start.”
Adam snorted. “Sounds like you have a dilemma, then. And a hairy substitute wife with tats.”
Derek rolled his eyes, a breathy almost laugh pushing from his lips. “Look, can I get you anything? Magazines? A movie to watch? Ice chips? Anything?”
“The company's nice,” Adam said. “Keeps my mind off things.”
“I know the feeling. I was...” Derek said before his voice trailed away. Shot. I was shot. For some reason, he wasn't ready to say it when Adam was awake. The relative anonymity was like a drug, Derek thought. Heady. Hard to let go.
I was shot, and I was so afraid.
“Yeah?” Adam prodded.
Derek swallowed. He pressed his hand against his chest. Though he couldn't feel any of his scars through his lab coat and his shirt, he could still feel the awful, ugly bump near his clavicles at the top of what had been his sternal incision.
I was shot.
Visiting you reminds me that victims can win.
I was...
A man came into my hospital and tried to murder me.
I...
“Nothing,” Derek said, shaking his head. “Never mind.” His beeper went off shrilly in the quiet, and he reached down to look at it. WRU?-M. He couldn't stop the smile that slipped across his face as he interpreted the message. Where are you? -Meredith “That's my wife,” he said for Adam's benefit. “We have a dinner date in Bainbridge. It's a thing we've started doing.”
“Go,” Adam said, making a weak shooing motion with his hand. The end of his pulse-ox meter flapped in the air. “The real thing is definitely better than daydreaming and hairy substitutes.”
“Hey,” Derek said congenially, “the daydreaming was about the real thing.”
“Yeah,” Adam said, “a repeat. Go get your new episode.”
Derek gathered his briefcase and stood. He stretched. His body was full of aching kinks, but just knowing Meredith was waiting for him in the lobby made most of the latent stress funnel away. He almost skipped toward the door. Almost. But he caught himself. When he reached the threshold, he gripped the doorframe and looked back into the room.
Adam lay in the dim light, eyes closed already. From the doorway, he looked even more pale and gaunt than he had looked close up. He would be spending Christmas alone in the hospital, unable to get out of bed, which made Derek's heart squeeze. Nobody deserved that.
You look small like I did...
“Hey, Adam?” Derek called softly.
Adam snuffled and squinted at him. “Yeah?” he said, the word more asleep than awake.
Derek's lips moved, but nothing came out until he tried a second time. “Are you scared?”
“Of?” Adam said.
Derek swallowed. “Guns? Being... attacked?”
Silence stretched. Adam's heart monitor bleeped softly in the dark room. “No,” Adam replied after some consideration. “Just pissed that they got away, and that I'm stuck eating out of a sippy cup.”
Derek gazed at Adam. I know it sucks. “It'll get better,” he said. “Slowly, but it will.”
It took me six months to feel half normal.
“I know,” Adam said. “Thanks.”
“I'll see you later,” Derek said.
“Later, husband,” Adam muttered, and then his breaths evened as he fell into a needed healing sleep.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 29B
3:28 PM
The gray water spread out beyond the big boat in a choppy, frothing sheet below a gray glass sky. The wind broke the surface, making small waves that sloshed and slurped. A one-pitch, moaning whistle filled the air around their ears as the boat sliced the air. The hum of the motor filled what would have been silence on the bay. The air smelled of salt.
Derek inhaled deeply. The breeze ruffled his hair. When he exhaled, all his stress sloughed away, leaving only the beautiful bay, and his beautiful wife, and his awesome dog to keep him company. Samantha rolled onto her back at their feet, exposing her belly, and he reached down to give her a rub.
“This was a good idea,” Derek said.
He scooted closer to Meredith on the bench and wrapped his free arm over her shoulder. He held Samantha's leash with the other. Pets were allowed on leash on the ferry as long as they stuck to the sundeck or the vehicle deck. The sky was gray, but the clouds were thin enough that he could see a bright ball of light behind them, hanging low on the west horizon over Bainbridge's approaching sheet of green. Bainbridge grew and the Seattle skyline behind them shrunk.
Meredith grinned at him. The wind had nipped at her cheeks and nose, turning them bright and rosy. “Wasn't it?” she said. “I think, in this moment, I might be awesome.”
He laughed. “More than only in this moment.”
She stretched up her arms and breathed in the cool air and made the cracking, sated noise she often made after sex. He leaned close and kissed her, brushing his cold nose against her temple. She giggled.
“Ferryboats and Bainbridge for stress relief,” she said with a sigh. “I think we should make this a weekly date.”
“Deal,” he said without hesitation.
He looked forward to stepping off the boat almost as much as he liked being on it. The island had a small area near the ferry landing where there were quaint shops and little restaurants. There were also places to walk along the water, and the land was green and lush and refreshing. Sometimes, it amazed him that one could find the country so close to the city. While it took him an hour to drive to his land from the hospital, Bainbridge was only twenty minutes via ferry. It was a rapid change in setting when one needed to unwind, and, at this moment, he needed to unwind, because he'd been kinked more than a slinky with stress.
Samantha yawned, flashing her big teeth and her powerful jaws. Her eyelids drooped, and her tongue lolled, pitting the deck with slippery bits of drool as she relaxed, too.
“All right, so,” Meredith said, her body warm against him as she resumed their earlier discussion. He pressed his chin against her head, listening. “I think I know what will help you.”
“Oh?” he said.
“When you get stuck because you're upset, you need to use your sexy voice.”
“My sexy voice,” he said.
“Yeah, you know.” She turned to him. Her voice dropped low and soft and soothing, and each syllable dripped like honey from her mouth. “Like this. You talk all soothing. It's impossible to fly off the handle when you do it.”
“My...” He blinked. “Really, I talk like that?”
She punched him in the shoulder. Not hard. She met his eyes, and she gaped at him when he didn't react with feigned hurt or a laugh. “You so know you talk like that. Particularly when you want me to stop freaking out.” Confusion bit into her expression, and her nose scrunched as she peered at him. “Don't you?”
“I...” He blinked. “Well, I'm not sure I did it consciously.”
“You can't tell me that's not at least a little bit on purpose. You know women drop like flies around it.”
“They do?” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “You can keep your fake-innocence about it if you must, but seriously, use it when you get all stuck in grr mode.”
He snorted. “I have a grr mode and a sexy voice?”
“Okay, now you're just teasing me,” she said.
He kissed her, and he laughed. “Maybe, a little. But, Mere, when I'm in grr mode,” he said, holding up his fingers as though they were quotation marks, “it's really hard to...”
“To what?” she prodded.
He looked at his lap. “To not bite people's heads off,” he said. “It's usually all I can do not to snap.” He sighed with frustration. “I hate this job.”
“So, pretend you're talking to me,” she said. “Maybe, you hate the job, but you love me.”
“You seriously want me mentally pasting your face onto everybody I talk to that I don't want to be talking to?” he said. It felt more than a little wrong to use her like that.
She shrugged. “If it helps, why not? It's kind of a compliment to me. Just... use the sexy voice. You officially have my permission.”
He leaned against her. Sighed. Nuzzled her temple. “Not that I'm complaining,” he said against her skin, “but when did you get to be so secure?”
“Well,” she said, “so far, I've survived secret wives, and bombs, and Alzheimer's moms, and drowning, and George dying, and drunk dads, and you getting shot, and, well, pretty much everything falling apart.”
He swallowed and pulled her close. Kissed her once. Twice.
“All that bad stuff happened,” she said. “You're still here.” She looked at him, reddening. “So...”
“I'm not going anywhere,” he said in a low murmur.
“That's it!” she said triumphantly. “That's the voice you need to use.” She grinned. “Whenever you're upset and trying not to snap at people or whatever, you just have to find what you're feeling right now, and use it.”
“I wanted you to know that I'm here,” he said, words thick with a swell of emotion. “And that it's okay. And that I love you.”
“That's great,” she said. “Use that. Think of that. And, actually, it'd really be best if you used my face for it, because holy crap that'd be weird if you didn't.”
He chuckled. “I'll try.”
He pulled her close, and she rested against him. Their coats smooshed together. The boat slowed as it entered the docking area on Bainbridge Island. Mist loitered in the air, and the smell of wet leaves and bark made him inhale. Samantha's dog tags jingled as she stood up and looked at the shore with a bemused expression. She'd never been to Bainbridge.
“I believe you, by the way,” Meredith said.
“Hmm?” Derek replied.
She gazed at him through her eyelashes. “That's how I got so secure. It took me a while, but I do. Believe you, I mean. About everything.”
“Oh,” he said. A lump formed in his throat. It was the first time since she'd found him naked on the floor in a mess of empty pill bottles that she'd ever said anything like that. He swallowed. “I won't mess it up again.”
She stared at him for a long, silent moment. “I believe that, too,” she said.
“I love you,” he said.
She stole a page from his book and winked at him. “I know,” she said. She put her head back on his shoulder and watched the scenery slide by.
“Sir, are you listening, or am I wasting my time?” Pamela Springer said. Pamela sat across from him in the conference room. She wore a black pantsuit. She'd pulled back her hair into an austere, auburn ponytail. Her makeup made her features look severe, almost intimidating, which belied her high-pitched, grating voice and her small stature.
Derek blinked as the familiar jolt of adrenaline punched through him. The surprise receded as quickly as it had arrived. He gave his head a little shake, forcing himself to snap out of his encroaching thoughts. I wish I wasn't, he wanted to say. I don't fucking want to be here. But instead, he put Meredith in front of him, and he smiled for all he was worth. “Of course, I'm listening,” he said, offering her a smooth, soothing tone, the one Meredith had told him to use.
The trick worked, because Pamela relaxed and smiled back at him. Derek made a mental note to thank Meredith for the advice. He'd found he couldn't manage his “sexy voice” when he was too upset, but with some effort, he could find the soothing demeanor he was looking for anytime before he fell over the cliff. He stood, pushing his chair back with his thighs, and reached across the table to shake Pamela's hand. Stretching made everything ache, but he didn't let himself wince. Friendly and collected, he told himself. Stay friendly and collected. And smile.
“I think it's a good idea,” he said. She'd suggested an amendment to Seattle Grace's pet ambassadors program that would allow people to have their own dogs visit. “But I'd like to see some numbers about cost, first, and I want to see some hard rules about when a visit would and wouldn't be acceptable.”
Pamela nodded enthusiastically. “I'll write up a proposal for you. Thank you!”
Derek's insides tightened at the thought of more paperwork, but he refused to let it show. He forced that smile to stay stuck to to his face. Meredith, Meredith, Meredith, he thought. “You're welcome, Ms. Springer. Just meet with my secretary to make another appointment.”
She grinned. “Will do,” she said as she gathered up her purse.
After she left, he slumped with relief. He'd fallen into a routine where friendly and collected was getting much easier to fake, but... He missed the days when he'd genuinely felt friendly and collected, when he could be soothing to a stranger he wanted nothing to do with without it being much of an act. He pulled his fingers through his hair and sighed. This just wasn't him anymore. He didn't want to meet with people to talk about policy or money. He didn't want to manage.
He wanted to slip back into what he'd been before. A surgeon. Making personal connections on a smaller, more intimate level. Helping very sick people see another tomorrow. Saving lives. He wanted that back. He missed feeling fulfilled. He missed loving his work. Beyond Gary Clark, Derek's own ambition had really shot him in the foot.
He flexed his fingers.
Too bad the idea of cutting into a living, breathing person, a person he could easily kill if he fucked up, still scared the shit out of him. On top of that, surgeons were widely recognized as holding one of the most stressful professions available. Sure, it was immensely rewarding when things went right, but things went wrong a lot, too, and there was enormous pressure to make decisions on the fly, something Derek wasn't sure he was even capable of, anymore.
With a sigh, he followed the path Pamela had taken out of the conference room, and he walked down the bright, immaculate hallways. He smiled. He said hello to everybody he passed. Inquired about their families and their days and talked about their holiday plans. But he felt like a ghost.
When he found Mark loitering by the coffee pot in the attendings' lounge near oncology, Derek shuffled to a stop. Mark bounced as he prepared himself a cup of coffee with the added help of some Coffee-Mate Irish Créme. Mark hummed an off-tune version of... something that seemed like a cross between Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls.
Derek leaned against the wall by the pot and grinned, happy, finally, to have a distraction bound by the real world, instead of one conjured in his head. “You look too chipper, considering you're slumming for free, bad coffee.”
Mark took a sip of his steaming coffee, winced, blew on it a bit, and turned to Derek with a smile that would have put the Cheshire Cat to shame. “Lexie is open,” he said.
Derek tilted his head to the side. “Open to what?”
Mark shrugged. And then he bounced again. Actually bounced. “She's open. She's free. Tyler told Marcia told Sandy told Bob told Debbie. No Karev. She dumped him in the middle of the cafeteria over breakfast!”
Derek snickered. “I had no idea you were such a gossip.”
“Hey, I paid good money for this intel.”
“Gossip,” Derek countered.
Mark shook his head. “Intel.”
“Gossip.”
“Intel!” Mark insisted.
“Hmm,” Derek said. “So, you paid Nurse Debbie for gossip?”
“Intel,” Mark corrected. “And that's beside the point.”
“The point, which is...?”
Mark sighed. He took a cautious sip of his coffee, and then a gulp when he found the temperature to his liking. “If you were Lexie, and I asked you out, what would make you say yes?”
Derek blinked at the unexpected request for role play, and he laughed.
“No, seriously,” Mark added.
Derek shifted and grabbed a paper cup from the shelf. Meredith had taken his good mug hostage, and his backup mug was sitting on his desk in his office. He poured himself some black coffee from the pot, and then went trawling through the sugar packets and creamers next to the pot. There was nothing he liked. It all screamed fat and cholesterol and other arterial badness. He'd take his coffee black.
“Nothing would make me say yes, Mark,” Derek said after some thought. He blew on his cup. “I'm not going out with you.”
A snort of derision caught his attention, and he looked up to find Cristina standing by the doorway to the lounge, caught mid-stride in the hall. She stared at her clipboard. Her face held no expression. She looked up and met his eyes, and only then did he identify a small, ticking twitch of her lip that could have been laughter in a normal human being. “You know, you guys seriously invite it,” she said. “You invite it! It's like... you're toast, and we're the butter... or something.”
“Yeah, keep walking, Yang,” Derek said.
“Or, maybe you're the crap, and we're the flies?” Cristina said.
“Keep. Walking,” Derek said.
“Just saying,” she said. And then she continued her surge down the hall on her original course, her black ponytail bobbing behind her.
Derek sighed. “It's like she has radar.”
“You mean faulty gaydar,” Mark grumbled.
“Meredith calls it a bromance,” Derek said matter-of-factly.
“That's not much better,” Mark said.
Derek laughed. “Oh, come on. You have got to work on your security issues.”
Mark made a face as he reddened. “Have you ever considered my issue isn't that I'm being perceived as gay, but that I'm being perceived as loving you?”
Derek smirked. “Hey, now, I'm a lovable guy!”
Mark rolled his eyes. “Shut up, and pretend you're Lexie, jackass.”
“I'm not going to pretend I'm Lexie,” Derek replied. He took a sip of his coffee.
“I need to get on this, man,” Mark said. “Somebody else could swoop in.”
Derek sighed. “Mark, she was really upset this morning.”
“Wait,” Mark said. “You knew she and Karev broke up, and you didn't tell me?”
“I haven't seen you!” Derek said. “I've been stuck in meetings and doing paperwork all day, and I'm sorry to tell you this, but I'm not Debbie.”
“It's valuable intel, man; that's all.”
Derek shook his head. “Gossip. And why don't you leave Lexie alone for a while?”
“Intel,” Mark said. “You think she won't say yes if I ask her, now?”
Are you freaking kidding me? Derek imagined her saying. Seriously? “Women like patience,” Derek said with a definitive nod.
Mark frowned, his expression concerned. He took a swig of his coffee. “So, give her time.”
“I guess so,” Derek said, shrugging. “Yeah.”
“How much time?”
“Do I look like a dating manual to you?” Derek replied. “Doesn't your how-to-woo book explain this stuff?”
“You and Meredith worked out,” Mark said. “You must know something.”
“Yeah,” Derek said with a snort. “I know miracles happen.”
Mark sighed. “Man, c'mon, I really need h--” His speech stopped short when his beeper went off. He looked like he wanted to smash the thing, but he pulled it from his waistband and looked at it despite his clenching jaw. “Fuck,” he said. “Gotta go.” He gave Derek a suspicious look. “Don't think you're getting out of this.” He tossed his coffee into the trashcan and trotted off as Derek watched.
“Call me later?” Derek yelled after him.
“Shut up, man,” Mark yelled back.
Derek laughed. Some things, it seemed, had returned to an exquisite sort of normal.
6:54 PM
He woke in a bath of gray light with his nose pressed into her hair, and his body flush with hers. His arm draped over her hip. Her feet rested at the base of his shins. She smelled like lavender, and she'd left the scent on the sheets. On his skin. Rain pattered on the roof and plinked against the windows.
“Mmm,” he rumbled against her neck, and then he whispered, “Good morning.” Just in case she was still asleep.
He kept his eyes closed despite the light, and he didn't move, not wanting to disturb her. The bed was warm, and for once, neither the dog, nor an alarm had woken them. He'd managed to coordinate their day off that week, an ability he counted as one of the few things he loved about being Chief. He didn't abuse the privilege, but he used it now and then. Neither of them had anywhere to be or anything to do or anyone to meet that day. It was a true holiday. An island of calm in a giant, stressful mess.
Her body shifted, and she reached for the arm he'd rested on her hip. She squeezed his hand. “Mornin',” she mumbled. “S'warm in here. I like it.”
He grinned. “Well, we don't have to move.” He kissed her neck. Her skin was soft. “We have all day.”
“Nuh uh,” she said. “You gotta move.”
He frowned. “Did you want me to make breakfast or something?”
She shook her head. “No.” She paused. “Well, yes, later, but...”
“But what?”
“You're poking me in the back, and your breath smells.”
He laughed, long and loud, and it felt nice. “Sorry,” he said cheerfully, “I do tend to wake up that way, particularly when you're in my arms.”
She shifted, and he thought if she hadn't been pregnant, she would have rolled onto her stomach to curl under the covers. As it was, she hadn't been sleeping on her stomach for weeks. “Halitosis and a boner,” she groused affectionately. “Yay me.”
He laughed as he crawled out from the covers and padded across the rug to the master bathroom. “I'll fix it,” he called over his shoulder.
“Just the halitosis,” she said. “Leave the boner. I want that part for me.”
He chuckled as he stepped into the bathroom. “Yes, dear,” he said.
He brushed his teeth, used the bathroom, and splashed water on his face. In three minutes, he slid back under the covers and against her warm body. He sighed as he resettled. The sheets rustled. She grabbed his hand and pulled it to her mouth. Her lips pressed against his skin.
“Mmm,” she said, her tone more awake and hazed with sex. “Interested?”
He kissed her. A few months ago, he wouldn't have been comfortable enough to make a joke, because the Paxil made him self-conscious. This morning, the words, “When am I not interested?” slipped easily from his lips, and it didn't matter that more often than not, she had to help him get into the mood. He had the mood right now. Courtesy of waking up in a whorl of lavender-scented hair. They'd discovered the best time for him was in the morning, riding on the coattails of his last nighttime erection.
He sheathed himself like a key in a lock with the small gap between her thighs, just where they met her torso. The contact set him pleasantly askew. Her skin there was slick, and warm, and he relished the feel of her, so close, and yet so far. “Not poking, now?” he murmured.
“Better,” she said with a gasp. She ground her hips against him. “But I'm not ready yet.”
“I'll fix that,” he purred against her ear.
He squeezed her and slid his palm up the curve of her hip to her breast. Her soft skin passed like silk beneath his fingertips. She gratified him with her relaxed sigh. Her nipple perked under his thumb. Her breaths shortened. He pushed his other arm underneath her waist. His hand came to rest under her navel. He dipped low, pushing his fingers through her course hair, down between her legs, and he cupped her. Touched her. Stroked her. Her breath popped out in a long, slow moan, and her hand came to rest over his. He used the sound of her inhalations and exhalations to tell him what was right, and what was perfect. When she quivered, and when she gasped, he'd hit a jackpot.
“Good?” he said, just to be sure.
“Yes,” she whispered, and her body twitched. “Oh.”
They made a quiet, sensual dance of it. The salt of her skin mingled with his. The rain beat on the roof like a collection of heartbeats.
He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes, imagining her body as he knew it by heart from the front. She was slender. Thin-boned. Her skin was a milky peach color, smooth, but dusted by more freckles than he could count. Her hips had a subtle curve before sloping into her long, long legs. Her belly and breasts had swollen as she grew their baby in her body. She worried sometimes about her waistline, but he tried to kiss the worries away whenever he caught them propagating. To him, she was a goddess, and he told her that with love and with words as often as he could.
The covers rustled as he shifted behind her. This position, spooning with him in the back, was perfect for letting him do all the work, and letting them both have fun at his direction. It wasn't about control for him anymore, but finding things that were comfortable for her. In an amusing role-reversal after he'd been shot, it'd been him trying to find what worked for her, instead of her trying to find what worked for him.
He kissed her throat. A tinge of salt tickled his taste buds. Her heartbeat fluttered underneath her skin, and she turned her head to try and catch a glimpse of him as they rode a wave together. Her face had flushed with sexual heat, and her gaze had a dusky, desirous quality. Sweat dotted her brow. He kissed along her jaw, and he played her body like his harp.
When the hand he pressed between her legs felt slick with her desire, he shifted, angled himself, and he pushed into her to the hilt in one thrust. She gasped, and a choked noise fell from her lips. Her heat blitzed his senses. He'd come home.
“Okay?” he asked breathlessly.
“Yesssss,” she said in a long sigh as she squeezed around him. He couldn't suppress a moan, and their shivering exhalations mingled in a long chorus of desire.
Her body relaxed against him on the bed. He wrapped both arms around her waist, burying his fingers between her legs, adding pressure from the front as he pushed from the back, and a deep, twisting moan shuddered from her throat. She bucked against his hand, and they rocked together in a jagged rhythm of push and pull and push and pull.
The dog yapped at them, bringing him up short as he saw mocha-colored eyes beyond Meredith's shoulder staring at them mournfully.
“I told you she always watches,” Meredith said, and he laughed against her skin. She tasted of salt and sweat and lust. She was an elixir that set his world on fire.
“Sam,” he barked. “Crate.”
The dog's ears twitched. She licked her lips once. Flashed her sharp teeth in large yawn. And then she plodded out of the room, cowed by his command.
“You're getting better at that,” Meredith said.
“Mmm,” he purred, beginning to rock against her. He kissed her. Nipped her ear as he found his rhythm again in the drumbeats of the rain. “Well, I'm not getting a blow job right now.”
She clutched the pillow and gasped. “I guess it's harder to think with my mouth around your-- ooohhhhhhhhh.”
He laughed as she quivered in his arms. “Harder to think, you were saying?”
With her body so close to him, slickly squeezing around him, he felt dizzy with desire, and he struggled to keep this about her. He drove to the patter on the roof, meandering between relaxing and frenetic, creating a wax and wane of needing. She urged him on with a staccato beat of, “Yes, yes, yes,” for minute after minute until nothing drove either of them but a frenzy of want.
When she fell to glorious pieces in his arms, he chased after her. Her belly twitched as her body pulsed around his length. He sucked in a breath as he found his peak not long after hers. For the torturous moment before he fell from the cliff, he found euphoria. Heat. Love. He saw spots. He thought, for that moment, he might die there, and then everything released into freefall. He collapsed beside her, panting as his lower body pumped against her, well out of his control, and then all was still.
They lay together breathing, spent, slumped, and silent, body to body, skin to skin.
He rested with his nose pressed into her hair, exactly as he'd woken. His palms rested over her belly. He basked in her warmth, never wanted to move again. The rain picked up, and the patter on the roof became a steady, clamorous thunder.
He kissed her. “I love you,” he murmured.
Her body shifted, and her palms pressed against his hands. “Love you, too,” she said, her voice a wrecked whisper that told him he'd done everything right.
His eyes drifted closed. He let the warmth, the feeling of home, and her love relax him, wrap him in a cocoon he didn't think he ever wanted to crawl out of, unless perhaps she asked for pancakes. He drifted to the liminal space between slumber and sentience, but then she moved underneath his hands. His eyes snapped open, and his encroaching dreams dissolved.
“Oh,” she gasped, like she'd been startled, too.
“What's the matter?” he said.
Her silence was filled by the falling rain. “You felt that?” she said.
“Felt what?” he said.
“Derek,” she said in a low voice, “that wasn't me.”
For a moment, he had no idea what she meant because the afterglow seemed to have zapped his synapses. And then he felt it again. Something small, perhaps a tiny elbow or a foot, drifted underneath her skin in a curve that almost followed his bottom palm line. Almost like it sensed his hand resting there.
He swallowed. “That's...”
She nodded. “Baby, yeah.” He could feel her smile, though he couldn't see it. The covers rustled as she snuggled closer to him. “Shh. Let's see if it happens again.”
They waited quietly, her hands clasped over his. They rested, joined just over her navel. The falling rain marked passing seconds. Less than a minute later, he felt it, whatever appendage it was, move back the other way.
“Oh, my god,” he said, barely able to find words.
“Yeah,” she said. “That was my reaction the first time, too. Remember?”
“I do,” he said, a faint, shocked whisper.
The world was dropping out beneath him. “Hi,” he said, swallowing. He thought his heart might flutter out of his chest. He sucked in a breath. “Hi, Baby.”
Meredith squeezed his fingers. “That's your daddy,” she said, looking down at the swell of her belly.
The baby moved again, and he laughed as his view of the world became a hot, messy blur. “Oh, my god,” he said again. And then he couldn't stop laughing. “That's our baby.” The euphoria he'd found earlier felt like nothing compared to this, felt like a drop in the massive bucket of happy. “Baby is moving, and I can feel it.” He couldn't catch his breath.
“I guess we woke her up,” Meredith said.
He nodded. “I guess so.” His fingers curled against her body as he felt their baby move another time.
“She gets like this sometimes,” Meredith said. “Where she won't freaking hold still.”
He laughed. God it felt good to laugh like that. “Meredith, she could dance a ballet. I don't want her to stop unless it's bugging you.”
“It's not,” Meredith said. She chuckled. “So, you agree, now?”
“About what?”
“That it's a girl?” she prodded.
“Well, I can't call something that dances that well an it,” he replied. “I'll go with your gut for now.”
She grunted, rolling to face him. He helped her shift. He stared into her eyes. They were fathomless gray today. Like the billowing rainclouds outside. Or a stormy sea. She grinned, touching her palms to his face, and she kissed him, scruffy stubble and all.
He pressed his nose against her forehead and breathed. In and out. In and out. The world had the heady scent of lavender. He closed his eyes, and he pressed his hands against her belly, waiting for Baby's next exuberant greeting.
He spent his morning that way, naked, warm, curled up with his wife on a rainy day in their bed. Some of the best spent hours of his life.
“Hey,” said a weak, cracking voice. “Anybody home?” A hand with a plastic wristband waved in front of his face in the dark. Adam Peabody, said the wristband in new courier type. The wrist it gripped was sharp and boney and sickly pale.
Derek flinched, but he didn't know if Adam had noticed. Adam was flying high at the moment. Derek glanced at the cloudy morphine drip by the Adam's hospital bed, gaze lingering for a long second. A twinge of wanting swept through Derek as his heart hammered from the surprise. The morphine would fix it. All the jumping. All the times his heart skipped beats. All the fear. But as he pulled air in and out of his chest, as his heart stopped slamming, as he calmed, the wanting faded, and he managed to tear his gaze away from the siren song in the intravenous line and look back at the man.
“Sorry,” Derek said, shaking his head. Adam had been asleep when Derek had sat down, and Derek had drifted. He leaned back in his chair. The thin strip of light over Adam's bed lit the room by itself, lengthening the shadows. The sun sank below the horizon early in the winter, and the cloudy sky outside the window had already darkened to the dull, misty purple of light pollution. “I'm having trouble focusing today.”
“You seemed pretty focused just now,” Adam said wheezily. His heart monitor bleeped a quiet, steady rhythm. “Just not on me.”
Derek felt his face heating before he could stop it.
“Oh-ho,” Adam said with a weak laugh. “One of those thoughts, huh.”
Derek gave the man a sheepish grin. “Truth be told, I'd much rather be with my wife than at work today.”
“So, I'm your hairy substitute wife right now?” Adam said.
Derek took a long look at Adam and laughed. The tattoo on Adam's arm, what Derek had mistaken for a snake, was actually a dragon, according to Adam. Either way, the brilliant red serpent covered the man's entire bicep and wrapped all the way down his arm to his wrist.
“What's funny?” Adam said.
“Just trying to picture Meredith with that kind of ink. I think that dragon is as big as her entire arm.” Derek rubbed his chin with his fingers as he thought about it. She did have a little cursive sprawl in black on her ankle. Carpe noctem, it said. Seize the night. She'd gotten it when she'd been in Europe with Sadie, though he couldn't pull specifics from her, not because she didn't want to tell him, but because she'd apparently been hammered and couldn't remember.
“Meredith,” Adam said, snapping Derek loose from his musing. Adam smiled weakly. “That's a pretty name.”
Derek frowned. “I've never told you her name?”
“Nope,” Adam said.
“I could have sworn I told you...” Derek said.
“I'm sure you've told me a lot of stuff,” Adam said. “But I've been out of commission for a while. Remember?” He winced and bit his lip as if to prove his point.
The man lay flat in his hospital bed, barely mobile, bundled in a sea of thermal blankets and wires. A nasal cannula hugged his pale, angular face. A forest swath of black stubble covered his face, and the only reason the fuzz wasn't a full blown beard was because Derek had been helping him shave every few days. Adam had long, stringy black hair that would probably look better once the man could get into the shower, but at the moment, he couldn't even sit up, and the long hair combined with Adam's gaunt face to ghastly effect.
He'd been awake for only a few weeks, and off his ventilator for less time than that. Derek had been the one to find him. Adam had been blinking at the ceiling in a confused, drugged haze one night when Derek had stopped by to say his usual hello. Derek couldn't imagine how he himself would have felt if he'd woken up under the same circumstances, hurt and scared and alone, unable to speak. Derek had been all of those except alone when he'd first opened his eyes, and that had been bad enough. The mere thought of it made him feel sick to his stomach.
I know this is very scary, Dr. Shepherd, a distant voice swirled in his head. Do you want to see Dr. Grey?
“Are you in pain?” Derek asked, pushing the past away. The man's wincing concerned him.
“Just the usual,” Adam said with a smile that showed clenched teeth, and looked more like a grimace. “Nothing much helps with it. I feel like crap. Blah, blah.”
Derek leaned forward. “I'm sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Adam said. “Tell me about... your wife.”
Derek grinned. “She's a surgeon here, too. She wants to specialize in neurosurgery. She says she's dark and twisty, but I disagree,” he said easily. She perhaps wasn't bright and shiny, but she was a light to him all the same. “She's got the best smile in the world,” he continued. “She's my best friend. She's my hero. And I really love her.”
“How'd you meet?”
“I picked her up at a bar across the street from here,” Derek said. “It was supposed to be a one night stand. And it was, until I found out we worked at the same hospital, and that I was her boss.”
Adam laughed, only to cringe as his face screwed up. “Oh, that's classic,” he said breathily. “So, why are you thinking about Meredith instead of work?”
“I'm just... frustrated,” Derek said.
Adam's eyebrows rose. “About?”
“I've been on a reduced schedule,” Derek said. “I only started working full time again last week.”
“That sounds like cause for celebration, not frustration,” Adam said.
Derek gripped the bed railing by Adam's head and squeezed. Tension lanced up his arm. “I don't want to be Chief of Surgery anymore.”
“Then why are you?” Adam said.
Derek tilted his head. “I... can't quit,” he said. “Not right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to fix some things before I step down,” Derek replied.
“So, fix them.”
“I don't know how,” Derek said. “I'm not even sure where to start.”
Adam snorted. “Sounds like you have a dilemma, then. And a hairy substitute wife with tats.”
Derek rolled his eyes, a breathy almost laugh pushing from his lips. “Look, can I get you anything? Magazines? A movie to watch? Ice chips? Anything?”
“The company's nice,” Adam said. “Keeps my mind off things.”
“I know the feeling. I was...” Derek said before his voice trailed away. Shot. I was shot. For some reason, he wasn't ready to say it when Adam was awake. The relative anonymity was like a drug, Derek thought. Heady. Hard to let go.
I was shot, and I was so afraid.
“Yeah?” Adam prodded.
Derek swallowed. He pressed his hand against his chest. Though he couldn't feel any of his scars through his lab coat and his shirt, he could still feel the awful, ugly bump near his clavicles at the top of what had been his sternal incision.
I was shot.
Visiting you reminds me that victims can win.
I was...
A man came into my hospital and tried to murder me.
I...
“Nothing,” Derek said, shaking his head. “Never mind.” His beeper went off shrilly in the quiet, and he reached down to look at it. WRU?-M. He couldn't stop the smile that slipped across his face as he interpreted the message. Where are you? -Meredith “That's my wife,” he said for Adam's benefit. “We have a dinner date in Bainbridge. It's a thing we've started doing.”
“Go,” Adam said, making a weak shooing motion with his hand. The end of his pulse-ox meter flapped in the air. “The real thing is definitely better than daydreaming and hairy substitutes.”
“Hey,” Derek said congenially, “the daydreaming was about the real thing.”
“Yeah,” Adam said, “a repeat. Go get your new episode.”
Derek gathered his briefcase and stood. He stretched. His body was full of aching kinks, but just knowing Meredith was waiting for him in the lobby made most of the latent stress funnel away. He almost skipped toward the door. Almost. But he caught himself. When he reached the threshold, he gripped the doorframe and looked back into the room.
Adam lay in the dim light, eyes closed already. From the doorway, he looked even more pale and gaunt than he had looked close up. He would be spending Christmas alone in the hospital, unable to get out of bed, which made Derek's heart squeeze. Nobody deserved that.
You look small like I did...
“Hey, Adam?” Derek called softly.
Adam snuffled and squinted at him. “Yeah?” he said, the word more asleep than awake.
Derek's lips moved, but nothing came out until he tried a second time. “Are you scared?”
“Of?” Adam said.
Derek swallowed. “Guns? Being... attacked?”
Silence stretched. Adam's heart monitor bleeped softly in the dark room. “No,” Adam replied after some consideration. “Just pissed that they got away, and that I'm stuck eating out of a sippy cup.”
Derek gazed at Adam. I know it sucks. “It'll get better,” he said. “Slowly, but it will.”
It took me six months to feel half normal.
“I know,” Adam said. “Thanks.”
“I'll see you later,” Derek said.
“Later, husband,” Adam muttered, and then his breaths evened as he fell into a needed healing sleep.