Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 40A
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Author: AriaAdagio
Rating: M
Pairing: Mer/Der
Summary: Post Time After Time. Derek takes Meredith to visit his family in Connecticut, but nothing goes as planned.
~~~~~
"Oh, Der," a hoarse, bitten whisper curled in the space to his right. He recognized it. Five more minutes, Mom, he wanted to mumble. I won't be late. He was so tired. The thoughts didn't connect with his mouth.
"He's okay, Ellen," Meredith replied softly. Something warm stroked his arm. "He's just sleeping right now."
"Let him, then," his mother said. "I don't want to wake him just to make myself feel better."
Just five more minutes...
There was a vague swell of chatter, hushed. Mark. Others. The rumble of voices fell into the roar as deep sleep pulled him under. He surfaced later. Once. Clink, clink, clink. Knitting. Mom? And then he was gone again.
When true awareness crept into the folds and twists of his mind, the mistiness of dreams dispersed, leaving only a dark, muzzy blur that told him his body was waiting. Waiting for him to open his eyes. But he was, for the first time in a while, comfortable. Mostly. A dull hum held his pain hostage, leaving him with a rushing feeling behind his eyes as its replacement, but it was just that. Dull. Enough to tell he was still high, but not enough to make him doubt reality. His limbs, sprawled, relaxed, attached but almost seeming like other continents rather than states of his own nation, languished still in sleep. His body was warm, but not too hot.
A weight rested on his left side. Weights. Something lay flat against his breastbone, curved over the edge, and ran along his side, pressing warmth and life up against his skin through the soft cotton of his shirt. Something thin and cool and hard poked him closer to his waist. A book? The warmth along his side was Meredith, from the scent and feel and just... sense. Lavender. Soft cinnamon. A light, squeaky noise warbled in his ear, and her body jerked in a minute way that wouldn't have been noticeable were he not hyperaware of himself at that moment. Highlighter. Definitely a book, then. Studying. Her quiet breathing relaxed him, and he lingered there, for once not startled awake by an invasion or the nerve-wracking fear of one. For once able to open his eyes on his own terms.
The thrum and cadence of voices gradually sharpened into the bark-bark-bark of conversation. English was a harsh collection of words. Less flowing. Less rolling than some of the languages often categorized as romance. When listening to the sounds more than the meaning, it became a sort of rapid-fire twitter of definitive beats rather than the crush and roll of waves.
"Should he really be sleeping this long? He's... I thought you said he was fine," Ellen whispered.
"Ellen," a man - familiar, deep tone, who? -- said, "He's probably off on the planet Neptune somewhere with the amount of stuff they're giving him. Don't worry. I was totally gone for days when I had my knee surgery. You know that."
"He's on painkillers and anti-epileptics, among other things," Meredith agreed. "Plus he's worn out from this morning. And anesthesia can really wreck you."
"All right," his mother said, though she didn't sound entirely convinced.
Fine. He was fine.
Mom, I'm fine.
He cracked his eyelids open, unwilling to move the rest of himself yet. The blur of the room resolved into dim sharpness. The ceiling was wide and flat and white, made up of some sort of tile that hugged the overhead fluorescent lights. The overheads were off. A strip of fluorescent light buzzed over his head, tacked on the wall a foot or two over the head of the bed. A warmer, friendlier yellow light glowed from... That way. He rolled his gaze toward the noises.
A tall, lanky man stood with his back to Derek as he conversed softly with Derek's mother. She sat against the wall on a fluffy red loveseat under the cheerful glow of a table lamp, her knitting project sprawled across her lap and beside her hip as her fingers worked deftly at stitch after stitch. The thing in her lap was a blur of dark color, moving with the flicks and tucks of her hands too quickly for him to focus on in the poor light.
The man's profile was long and pointy and angular. His black, wispy hair stopped at his shoulders. A small, blue-eyed, black-haired girl was draped against him. She sucked her thumb, her cheek resting against his shoulder, her legs gripping his waist as he skillfully supported her in a one-handed grip. Stewart. And Annie, the younger of his two girls. Recognition sank in as Derek slowly processed things.
Annie's eyes met Derek's, and her wide, innocent stare sharpened into a smile that slowly sprawled across her face. He lay there, staring back at her, almost as if his brain just hadn't connected up with his body yet. The sharpness of waking up still hadn't quite hit him. Annie giggled around her thumb. Stewart reached up absently with his free hand to rub her back as he laughed softly at something Ellen had said.
Meredith looked up at the sound of Annie's laughter, followed her gaze to the bed, and her whole veneer softened.
"Hey," she said, inches from him. She leaned in to kiss him. When she tilted his face toward her, the world spun over and re-settled again, and he saw a sprawl of notes and books. The cold, thin thing poking him was the edge of a hardback book. Meredith's hand clasped a highlighter, but she forgot about it as she greeted him. The pen dropped onto the book from her slack fingertips, leaving a dot of yellow where the felt of the marker landed on the page, and then rolled into the dip of the spine. Papers crinkled as she shifted.
He didn't need to think to kiss her back. It was an instinct more than anything else. Their lips brushed, and even through the haze of everything else, the warmth, smell, and taste was like coming home. When she let him breathe again, he was definitely awake, though his thought processes were still scattered like remnants of paper that'd been through a shredder.
"So, it's alive!" Stewart said, smiling as he walked over to the bed. Ellen threw her yarn and needles to the side almost negligently and stood, leaving the pile behind her, forgotten.
"I knew you couldn't lose gracefully, man," Stewart said. "Just had to pass the capture the flag thing off as brain damage. I get it."
"Stewart," Ellen scolded gently. "Derek, how are you, sweetheart?"
He blinked and inhaled. He brought up his wrist and stared, squinting. 7PM. He'd slept. He'd slept seven hours? He'd... Nobody had woken him up or interrupted him, and it was... Better.
His mother. And Stewart. And Annie. Stewart and Annie? There. "What?" he managed as his limbs, latecomers to the party, started checking in, and then the rest of him woke. Discomfort. Not pain. Almost pain. Almost pain that meant... Seven hours. Diuretics. He reached out to grasp the railing on the bed. A pulse of sound fell from his lips. Sort of a slurred word. Sort of just... Urgh. Awake. He had to get up. Really had to. Stewart backed away from the bed, giving him a place to actually get up to, but his mother hovered, her spindly fingers clutching at the railing.
"Der, Der, what are you doing?" Ellen said.
"I have to get up," he rasped. Really.
A light brush of fingers against his face reminded him Meredith was there, in the bed with him. She was fiddling with something, touching his face, his hand... What? Removing his finger clip and the nasal cannula. He'd forgotten about those.
"Thank you," he said.
"Sure," she said as she bit her lip. She had dark circles under her eyes, and she looked tired, tired like him, not just needing a nap. But he had to get up.
He gripped the railing and pushed himself to the side of the bed. He shoved himself into a sitting position, limbs shaking with the effort. But he had to get up. And so he would. He would make himself.
Standing up was a shock. Just like it had been in the morning. For a moment, two breaths and the heartbeats between, everything seemed fine, like he wasn't sick with remnants of anesthesia and trauma and too many drugs with sedatives in them, and he was just getting out of bed in the morning. Standing was standing. And then gravity and tiredness and reality seeped into him like a creeping infection. His legs started to feel heavy, and the weight crept up into his torso, sinking claws into every vertebra and joint, unfurling into his arms, gripping his shoulders, until everything seemed like it was trying to drag him down, yank him under the surface of the floor like the shark in that stupid movie. Jaws. His head swam.
Annie smiled and pointed with thin little fingers that shifted and blurred as Derek tried to focus on them. "Pick me up, Uncle Derek?"
Stewart shushed her. "Remember what Mommy said about making noise?"
Annie's eyes grew wide. "Oh, yeah," she whispered. Stewart ran a large hand over her hair, smoothing it, and glanced at Derek apologetically.
"I'll take her outside for a few minutes," he said, and then he strode out without further word.
Derek reached for the IV pole and grabbed it, trying to stifle the whine of discomfort that attempted to escape on the coattails of his breaths as they shortened with the exertion of just... Remaining. Remaining without falling.
Everyone was watching. Everyone was... He swallowed, and he forced his foot to move, taking a hesitant, wobbling step. It was only his family. Stewart would never comment, never, and he'd left, anyway. Meredith was... She wouldn't help unless he asked.
She'd actually gone back to studying, rolling out flat into the center of the bed, books sprawled everywhere now that he was no longer in the bed to prop them up, and, though her gaze darted toward him every time her highlighter dotted a sentence, she didn't make him feel scrutinized or uncomfortable. She was just Meredith, staring at Derek, the sexy man whom she loved. It almost made him feel normal. Like him getting up wasn't an event that had to be catalogued and critiqued.
He didn't want to look at his mother, but she was suddenly in his space anyway, hugging him. Her perfume wafted around him like a soothing cloud, and he felt his eyelids droop against its thrall. The pull of sleep called him like a siren back to the bed. Just standing had been enough to beat him down. Tired. He sighed and hugged her back.
"I'm okay, Mom," he muttered, wishing he didn't feel so disconnected from thinking, wishing he wasn't worried so much about staying upright, wishing he didn't have to move. But he did have to move, or he would embarrass himself. The normalcy Meredith had gifted him with slowly bled away, and he swallowed against the roil of upset. He didn't want comfort or pity or help or anything. He just wanted to walk to the bathroom.
"Oh, Der, sweetheart," his mother whispered, the syllables warbling with stunted, reined, almost crying. Almost crying. And that disturbed him, too, because he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her so upset. When... When was? Dad. She'd cried after Dad had died. And that was it.
That definitely didn't make him feel normal.
"I'm really okay, Mom," he said, swallowing, imprisoned, wishing he could just... Move. But her fierce grip kept him still.
"Derek Shepherd," she replied in her quiet, scolding voice, "You're a very bad liar."
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I need to..." He closed his eyes. He needed to be at home. Where he could have five minutes to wake up without being stared at or worried over.
His mother released him, finally, at least not insistent on helping him stumble to the bathroom. Without any further words, he took another step. The bathroom was so far away, it made his eyes burn, but it was... Better. He felt better than he had in the morning. There was a definitive difference. Before, he'd looked at the door to his room and it had seemed like something distant, something across an ocean of floor space, and in a bitter moment, the thought of walking that far had lain waste to him. He'd known. He'd known he wouldn't be able to force his body to do the distance on his own. At least not in both directions.
This moment was different. He stared at the bathroom door, but the floor wasn't an ocean to cross. Just a lake, perhaps. A Great Lake, but a lake. And he knew. He knew that if he pushed himself, he could do it. At great expense to himself, but he could. He could, he could, he could. He carried that thought into the will that drove his next step to its stuttering completion. And the next. And the next. And the next.
He was breathing like he'd run four laps around the hospital on frantic 911 pages by the time he closed the bathroom door behind him. But he'd walked. He'd walked to the bathroom. And, for the first time in what seemed like a small eternity, he was alone. No Meredith. No family. No nurses. No doctors. No Mark. Nobody. A blur of tears blotted things out for a moment. Three sobs. Quiet ones. He allowed them, and then he put the grief away. He put the upset away, straightened the unwanted mess of himself, and it stayed there. Put away. Straightened. That was an improvement.
His fingers wound around the IV pole, and he hobbled to the toilet to relieve himself. When he moved back to the sink to wash his hands, he stared into the little over the sink mirror. He looked rather how he felt. Thrashed. Tired. Weak. Pale. His eyes were dull, and the bandages crowned him as unwell. Not a thing like he was supposed to look, even when he tried to test a fake smile. Forcing himself not to dwell on it, he dabbed his face with some cool water, which laved his skin almost like one of Meredith's kisses, except cold replaced her endless heat. The quick motions made his head spin, and he had to stop for a moment. He leaned into the lip of the sink to support himself, happy at the feel of flannel smashed between his skin and the porcelain. His flannel. His stuff.
By the time he'd finished in the bathroom, despite the buzzing interference behind his eyes, despite the fact that he wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep forever, despite the substantial delay between thoughts and results, he felt almost human again. Because he was clean and in his own clothes, he'd actually slept, and he'd been able to get to the damned bathroom by himself. A pitiful list, really, but...
When he opened the door, his mother looked up and gave him a watery smile. Stewart had come back into the room and was bouncing Annie on his knee as she giggled. He'd been asleep for seven hours, and the world had left him behind again. How many of his family were there? Who. When. The five W's bumped and clanked around in his head like a bad journalism project from college, but as Derek slowly made his way back to the bed, he lost the tangle of thoughts in the brambles of moving. One foot after the other. One step. One step. One step. He could, he could, he could.
Meredith looked up from the sprawl of her books and notes and pens and studiousness. She stared at him as he approached and smiled brightly when he paused at the railing. He shakily leaned on it, brushing the pads of his fingers against the metal as small breaths ripped his ability to speak from him. He'd run forty miles in the space of twenty-four feet, twelve each way.
"Good morning," she said, her voice soft and warm as she capped her highlighter and started pulling all her stuff into a pile. She slid off the other side of the bed, yanking her things with her in a fluid motion, and collapsed into a chair right next to the bed.
He blinked, his gaze crawling slowly to the window. Inky, deep blue hovered in the sky like hues of night in a watercolor painting. Deep evening, but not yet black. "It's night..." he managed as he collapsed back into the bed, trying to catch his breath. Right? But he didn't ask that, didn't want to indicate how unsettled he was that he genuinely didn't know for sure.
"Well, yeah," she said. "But I think we should throw this morning out and count this." She leaned in, grabbed his hand, and squeezed.
"I'm better," he agreed quietly as his body sank further into the bed and just stopped working. Better. Just not good. Her fingers brushed his face as she hooked the cannula back over his ears.
He closed his eyes, relaxing at the warmth of her touch. Sleep. Sleep would return to him so easily. But he didn't... He'd been awake for all of twenty minutes. He wasn't ready to be exhausted yet. He wasn't... He still had no idea what was going on, and he wanted... His family was there. He hadn't even said hello. What kind of... He was supposed to remember those things.
He lay there, spaced, dimly aware that she was picking up his other hand and re-clipping the heart monitor to his finger. His shirt rustled in the quiet space between them as she ran her palms across his chest, soothing. It was night. He'd been awake for twenty minutes. Twenty. He hadn't said hello. His mother was upset. He should talk to Meredith. But...
His head tilted sideways. He snapped himself awake, but in the startled panic of forcing himself back out of the vague carpet of black, he discovered that another twenty minutes had disappeared when he glanced at his watch, and everyone had gone back to not watching him expectantly. What. At least the drowning tiredness had eased to a buzz. He needed a catnap just to walk?
He blinked, trying to catch up with things again. Better. He felt better. He didn't have to get up, and waking up hadn't seemed like an ordeal that time. It'd just sort of happened. There were drugs clotting up his thoughts, but not nearly as harshly as he'd remembered from the blur of the morning. No pain, either. No residual ache. It was all gone.
He sighed, swallowing. "How's studying going?" he rasped, suddenly at a loss. What was he supposed to say? He wanted to be awake and absorbing the world again. But he hadn't. He hadn't been awake and absorbing the world for hours, and now everything seemed awkward. He didn't want the subject to be him. He didn't want... He wasn't an event. Except he was why his family had flown across the country. Why Meredith was there all the time instead of going home to rest and take a break. Derek, how are you, would surely come up. It already had.
Meredith looked up from her book, her eyes widening with startled surprise before she relaxed. "Going well," she said. "I've finished reviewing plastics. Mark helped. Thanks for making him review with me. And I got through about fifty billion chapters while you were out today. I think I've now committed to memory every freaking symptom you could possibly ever have about anything. Now, I just need to remember which combos make what. I was going to review surgery techniques and stuff later in the week. You're a good book rest, by the way."
He couldn't stop a breathy chuckle as he latched on to the last bit of the jumble she'd said. "I noticed."
She frowned. "I didn't wake you up, did I?"
"No," he replied, sighing. "Not such a light sleeper, now, am I?"
"Just means you're saved from my endless snoring."
"Maybe I like your snoring," he said, unable to stop the lump from forming at the back of his throat. He didn't like it. But he missed it anyway. Because it meant he was in his own bed. Home. With her.
"You hate my snoring," she said, leaning in to kiss him. "But I love you anyway."
"I love you, too," he whispered. As she pulled away, he caught the flicker of the diamond ring in the dim light, and he sighed. He definitely wanted to rejoin the world. It was a pretty good place to be, all things considered. He raised his hand, reaching for her, and she took it, not needing any sort of hint or prodding. Her warm skin slid against his own. He felt for the little band of platinum and sighed again.
Tiredness crept, but he stamped it down as he fumbled for the bed controls and raised himself up to sit. Sitting would help. If he was sitting, maybe he wouldn't drift so easily.
He turned to his mother and Stewart as the bed hummed and pushed him up. The room tilted until his eyes caught up. "Did she tell you we made it official?" he asked, flashing them a weak grin.
Ellen smiled. "Yes. It will be a lovely story to tell your..." She glanced at Meredith and swallowed. It wasn't a look of condemnation or anything of the sort. Just consideration. "Friends."
Stewart laughed as Annie climbed down off his lap. "Ah, our feisty Meredith, saving you from the embarrassment of botching a third attempt at being romantic and debonair. Congratulations, though."
Meredith snorted. "I wasn't saving him from anything. I was just throwing a tantrum. An I want to be engaged, and I want it now, now, now, sort of thing."
The mattress dipped and shuddered as Annie grabbed the railing and climbed up onto the bed. Derek lost track of the conversation, but the words kept flowing back and forth. The soft feminine cadences of his mother and Meredith, and the more guttural deepness of Stewart mingled into a background hum.
"Hey there," he said, smiling as Annie wormed her way up toward the pillows. He grunted when she collapsed heavily onto his lap. She'd dragged a little pink backpack with her and left it sitting by his hip. He wrapped his arms around her tiny, warm body. She was almost six, and she combined the best features of Sarah and Stewart together in a striking combination that he was sure would break a lot of hearts when she got older. And, as her tiny hands clawed at him, grabbing tufts of his shirt, and she jerked and moved, trying to get settled in a way only a small, bubbly child could, he noted she didn't seem to be treating him like he was breakable. Which was nice. He grunted as her elbow jammed into his side, and she finally figured out exactly what position she wanted to be resting in. Her quick breaths slowed as she settled.
She peered up at him with wide, blue, unblinking eyes. "Why were you walkin' funny, Uncle Derek?" she whispered.
"Annie!" Stewart said, interrupting the slow crawl of Derek's thoughts. Stewart stood up and moved toward the bed, reaching for her with a long, lanky arm. "We talked about this," he said, his voice lowering in warning. Stewart made an imposing figure at six foot five, even when Derek was on his feet. "What do we need to be?"
Annie frowned, her lower lip quivering. "Quiet," she said.
"No, it's okay," Derek said, closing his eyes for a minute, letting the tiredness thrum. "She's fine." He didn't want to be the sick guy. And he didn't want his damned family to have rules about speaking to him. He didn't want... He just wanted to be awake and part of things again. And Annie was...
Comforting. Despite her directness.
"You sure?" Stewart asked.
"Yeah," Derek said. "I'll tell you if she's bothering me."
Stewart, appeased, went back to sit by Ellen, and the chatter resumed. Meredith had such beautiful laughter. Derek rubbed Annie's back absently. Maybe kids. Meredith had said maybe kids. Maybe this would be for real someday. He wondered what they'd look like.
He looked down at his small charge. Why was he walking funny? "I don't feel very well, that's all," he explained, surprised at how easy it was to admit to her, probably because of the way she looked at him after he'd admitted it. No pity. No reply about how he should be taking more morphine, or how he should be sleeping, or telling him to get up when he didn't think he could, or staring at him with knowledge that this was Derek Shepherd and he'd been cut down by a little physical hardship when so many people out there were worse off, or knowing him from before, when he'd been that cheerful, sarcastic surgeon who thought he was a gift to whomever received him. Nothing of the sort. Just more curiosity.
"Like when I get sick and get to stay home from school?" Annie asked.
"Yes, like that," Derek said. "Except I have to stay at the hospital for a few days before I get to stay at home."
"Aren't you a surgeoner like Mommy? Mommy says you're the bestest in your field. What's a field?"
"Surgeon, yes," he said, laughing softly as he corrected her. "A field is like... What I do all day. Your mom is a heart surgeon. She fixes hearts. I'm a brain surgeon. I fix brains." He'd oversimplified it, he knew, but he didn't think he could figure out how to explain nerves right then.
"That's gross," Annie replied, glancing around at the room. "I'm gonna be the President. You don't even get to miss work then? That sucks."
"I'm missing work. I think you'd make a great President. You have the taking charge thing down pat already."
She smiled at his compliment. "But you work in the hopspital!" she said, gesturing wildly, votes and vetoes forgotten as she realized what she thought was the true horror of his situation. "You're at work!"
"Well," he said. "I'm not working right now."
"That's good," she decided with a nod. "They'd probably be mad at you for sleeping. I get yelled at for sleeping when I'm at school sometimes," she whispered conspiratorially. She leaned forward, twisting against him, one of her hands grasping at his shoulder while she sort of stood, sort of didn't. Derek reached up instinctively to steady her, splaying his palm against her torso, grunting as she jabbed at him some more, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter because she was jabbing him and she didn't care. He was Uncle Derek. He could take it. She giggled, reaching for the nasal cannula. She ended up tweaking his nose a little.
"Watch out," he commented, clicking his teeth together as he nipped at the air and made a light growling noise. She shrieked with a surprised giggle and fell back against him.
"Annie," Stewart said, his voice low in warning.
Annie clapped her hands over her mouth. "Sorry, Daddy, I'm being quiet," she said between the cracks of her fingers, muffled. "I'm not bugging Uncle Derek." She stared at him with wide eyes, silent, but her apparent resolve crumbled when her gaze stopped on the thing that had originally caught her attention. "What's that thing for?"
"It's really okay," Derek said to Stewart, laughing. He turned back to Annie. "It makes sure I get enough air."
"Oh, okay," she said. And then her attention wandered elsewhere. "Is your head cold?" she asked as she stared at the bandages with implacable curiosity. "Gramma can make you a hat. She made me a hat for Christmas. I wear it when it snows."
"My head's not cold," Derek said. "It's just where I'm sick."
"Oh. I brought crayons. Wanna color? It makes me feel better when I'm sick."
He grinned at her. "Sure."
"Okay!" she said excitedly as she shifted again, stabbing him with elbows and knees in a few places. She grabbed her little backpack and started routing through it. He closed his eyes during the brief period of rest, inhaling and exhaling softly as if it would somehow replenish his depleting reserves. He was tired, but it wasn't... He was okay. He didn't want to sleep. Not yet.
"So," he said, looking over to his mother as he dragged himself back into the room before his tired mind could shut down long enough for sleep. "Welcome to Seattle. You should ride the ferryboats for a good view. That thing last month was a total fluke."
"Oh, Der," his mother said. A look of worry crumbled her features.
"I'm fine, Mom," he assured her. "Was your flight okay? Where is everyone staying?" he closed his eyes. "Who... When..." His voice trailed away as his thoughts spun their wheels.
"Here!" Annie said as she broke into the sudden onslaught of confusion. She waved something at him too quickly for him to follow, his eyes widened, and a small sliver of fear slammed through the clouded blanket hovering over his senses. His short, surprised gasp brought with it the scent of wax, which, in turn, sent him tumbling back through the years to a box of crayons, back when he'd been young enough that drawing was still an acceptably cool activity and not just one relegated to school projects. Calm re-settled as Annie lectured on the object's proper use, oblivious to the sudden flash of upset. "You gotta use all the sides evenly so you don't wreck the points," she said.
"All right," he said as he reached to take the crayon from her grip. Her warm fingers met his, and he couldn't stop from smiling. She was so tiny. And unassuming. And bossy. Very bossy. Just like Meredith. "What are we drawing?"
Stewart, apparently seeing a disaster in the making, stood and rolled the tray table over. Annie scooted back and knelt against the opposite side. Annie's weight sank the tent of his thermal blankets into the canyon between his knees. Derek rested his wrists against the edge of the table, waiting as she gripped his knees fiercely and settled. He was trapped, but he smiled anyway. It was a good sort of trapped, he decided as Annie pondered his question very seriously.
"Ponies?" she said. "Or horses. Horses are bigger than ponies. I like horses."
"She's in a horse phase," Stewart explained as he pulled some paper out of her backpack for them and set it against the tray table. "She's been begging for riding lessons."
"Ah," Derek said, and then he turned to Annie. "Well, I'm fairly awful at horses." Or really anything artistic. He was definitely left-brained. "Mind if I draw something else?"
She giggled. "Sure."
"Derek..." his mother tried again as he stared at the blank page for a moment.
"I'm fine," he insisted. Annie was already scribbling a torrent of color down upon her paper like a storm cloud spattering rain on the world below. He had no idea where to even begin. He focused on the paper, trying to think of something, anything, but forcing thoughts through the haze made him realize how difficult it was, and he blinked, frustration building when his mental rifling supplied him with nothing but a hint of aching.
"Butterflies," Meredith whispered so quietly he almost wondered if he'd imagined it. "I liked butterflies when I was six." He realized she'd been watching him the whole time. Her gaze was warm and loving, and she stared at him and Annie with a vagueness behind her sparkling eyes, almost like she was lost in some distant daydream, like she was imagining someone entirely different than Annie sitting there, coloring.
A small someone. With light eyes. They both had light eyes, though he hoped they would be her gray and not his blue. Her gorgeous smile and maybe her light freckling. The hair was a mystery. Dirty blond, but thick and curly, he decided. And she would have to have Meredith's nose. Because his was just... Crooked. Which he liked to blame on the broken nose Mark had given him, but he couldn't remember back far enough to be sure it wasn't genetics. Unless it was a boy, his nose was absolutely no good. If it was a boy, then the crooked would be handsome. Rugged. A bit of poor symmetry meant rugged. And that would work for him in the long run, because rugged was the first rung on the ladder to sexy. Or so Meredith would say.
He smiled. "Butterflies it is," he said in a quiet voice before turning back to Stewart and his mother. He drew a long, flattened oval and began attaching curvy wings to it.
Author: AriaAdagio
Rating: M
Pairing: Mer/Der
Summary: Post Time After Time. Derek takes Meredith to visit his family in Connecticut, but nothing goes as planned.
~~~~~
"Oh, Der," a hoarse, bitten whisper curled in the space to his right. He recognized it. Five more minutes, Mom, he wanted to mumble. I won't be late. He was so tired. The thoughts didn't connect with his mouth.
"He's okay, Ellen," Meredith replied softly. Something warm stroked his arm. "He's just sleeping right now."
"Let him, then," his mother said. "I don't want to wake him just to make myself feel better."
Just five more minutes...
There was a vague swell of chatter, hushed. Mark. Others. The rumble of voices fell into the roar as deep sleep pulled him under. He surfaced later. Once. Clink, clink, clink. Knitting. Mom? And then he was gone again.
When true awareness crept into the folds and twists of his mind, the mistiness of dreams dispersed, leaving only a dark, muzzy blur that told him his body was waiting. Waiting for him to open his eyes. But he was, for the first time in a while, comfortable. Mostly. A dull hum held his pain hostage, leaving him with a rushing feeling behind his eyes as its replacement, but it was just that. Dull. Enough to tell he was still high, but not enough to make him doubt reality. His limbs, sprawled, relaxed, attached but almost seeming like other continents rather than states of his own nation, languished still in sleep. His body was warm, but not too hot.
A weight rested on his left side. Weights. Something lay flat against his breastbone, curved over the edge, and ran along his side, pressing warmth and life up against his skin through the soft cotton of his shirt. Something thin and cool and hard poked him closer to his waist. A book? The warmth along his side was Meredith, from the scent and feel and just... sense. Lavender. Soft cinnamon. A light, squeaky noise warbled in his ear, and her body jerked in a minute way that wouldn't have been noticeable were he not hyperaware of himself at that moment. Highlighter. Definitely a book, then. Studying. Her quiet breathing relaxed him, and he lingered there, for once not startled awake by an invasion or the nerve-wracking fear of one. For once able to open his eyes on his own terms.
The thrum and cadence of voices gradually sharpened into the bark-bark-bark of conversation. English was a harsh collection of words. Less flowing. Less rolling than some of the languages often categorized as romance. When listening to the sounds more than the meaning, it became a sort of rapid-fire twitter of definitive beats rather than the crush and roll of waves.
"Should he really be sleeping this long? He's... I thought you said he was fine," Ellen whispered.
"Ellen," a man - familiar, deep tone, who? -- said, "He's probably off on the planet Neptune somewhere with the amount of stuff they're giving him. Don't worry. I was totally gone for days when I had my knee surgery. You know that."
"He's on painkillers and anti-epileptics, among other things," Meredith agreed. "Plus he's worn out from this morning. And anesthesia can really wreck you."
"All right," his mother said, though she didn't sound entirely convinced.
Fine. He was fine.
Mom, I'm fine.
He cracked his eyelids open, unwilling to move the rest of himself yet. The blur of the room resolved into dim sharpness. The ceiling was wide and flat and white, made up of some sort of tile that hugged the overhead fluorescent lights. The overheads were off. A strip of fluorescent light buzzed over his head, tacked on the wall a foot or two over the head of the bed. A warmer, friendlier yellow light glowed from... That way. He rolled his gaze toward the noises.
A tall, lanky man stood with his back to Derek as he conversed softly with Derek's mother. She sat against the wall on a fluffy red loveseat under the cheerful glow of a table lamp, her knitting project sprawled across her lap and beside her hip as her fingers worked deftly at stitch after stitch. The thing in her lap was a blur of dark color, moving with the flicks and tucks of her hands too quickly for him to focus on in the poor light.
The man's profile was long and pointy and angular. His black, wispy hair stopped at his shoulders. A small, blue-eyed, black-haired girl was draped against him. She sucked her thumb, her cheek resting against his shoulder, her legs gripping his waist as he skillfully supported her in a one-handed grip. Stewart. And Annie, the younger of his two girls. Recognition sank in as Derek slowly processed things.
Annie's eyes met Derek's, and her wide, innocent stare sharpened into a smile that slowly sprawled across her face. He lay there, staring back at her, almost as if his brain just hadn't connected up with his body yet. The sharpness of waking up still hadn't quite hit him. Annie giggled around her thumb. Stewart reached up absently with his free hand to rub her back as he laughed softly at something Ellen had said.
Meredith looked up at the sound of Annie's laughter, followed her gaze to the bed, and her whole veneer softened.
"Hey," she said, inches from him. She leaned in to kiss him. When she tilted his face toward her, the world spun over and re-settled again, and he saw a sprawl of notes and books. The cold, thin thing poking him was the edge of a hardback book. Meredith's hand clasped a highlighter, but she forgot about it as she greeted him. The pen dropped onto the book from her slack fingertips, leaving a dot of yellow where the felt of the marker landed on the page, and then rolled into the dip of the spine. Papers crinkled as she shifted.
He didn't need to think to kiss her back. It was an instinct more than anything else. Their lips brushed, and even through the haze of everything else, the warmth, smell, and taste was like coming home. When she let him breathe again, he was definitely awake, though his thought processes were still scattered like remnants of paper that'd been through a shredder.
"So, it's alive!" Stewart said, smiling as he walked over to the bed. Ellen threw her yarn and needles to the side almost negligently and stood, leaving the pile behind her, forgotten.
"I knew you couldn't lose gracefully, man," Stewart said. "Just had to pass the capture the flag thing off as brain damage. I get it."
"Stewart," Ellen scolded gently. "Derek, how are you, sweetheart?"
He blinked and inhaled. He brought up his wrist and stared, squinting. 7PM. He'd slept. He'd slept seven hours? He'd... Nobody had woken him up or interrupted him, and it was... Better.
His mother. And Stewart. And Annie. Stewart and Annie? There. "What?" he managed as his limbs, latecomers to the party, started checking in, and then the rest of him woke. Discomfort. Not pain. Almost pain. Almost pain that meant... Seven hours. Diuretics. He reached out to grasp the railing on the bed. A pulse of sound fell from his lips. Sort of a slurred word. Sort of just... Urgh. Awake. He had to get up. Really had to. Stewart backed away from the bed, giving him a place to actually get up to, but his mother hovered, her spindly fingers clutching at the railing.
"Der, Der, what are you doing?" Ellen said.
"I have to get up," he rasped. Really.
A light brush of fingers against his face reminded him Meredith was there, in the bed with him. She was fiddling with something, touching his face, his hand... What? Removing his finger clip and the nasal cannula. He'd forgotten about those.
"Thank you," he said.
"Sure," she said as she bit her lip. She had dark circles under her eyes, and she looked tired, tired like him, not just needing a nap. But he had to get up.
He gripped the railing and pushed himself to the side of the bed. He shoved himself into a sitting position, limbs shaking with the effort. But he had to get up. And so he would. He would make himself.
Standing up was a shock. Just like it had been in the morning. For a moment, two breaths and the heartbeats between, everything seemed fine, like he wasn't sick with remnants of anesthesia and trauma and too many drugs with sedatives in them, and he was just getting out of bed in the morning. Standing was standing. And then gravity and tiredness and reality seeped into him like a creeping infection. His legs started to feel heavy, and the weight crept up into his torso, sinking claws into every vertebra and joint, unfurling into his arms, gripping his shoulders, until everything seemed like it was trying to drag him down, yank him under the surface of the floor like the shark in that stupid movie. Jaws. His head swam.
Annie smiled and pointed with thin little fingers that shifted and blurred as Derek tried to focus on them. "Pick me up, Uncle Derek?"
Stewart shushed her. "Remember what Mommy said about making noise?"
Annie's eyes grew wide. "Oh, yeah," she whispered. Stewart ran a large hand over her hair, smoothing it, and glanced at Derek apologetically.
"I'll take her outside for a few minutes," he said, and then he strode out without further word.
Derek reached for the IV pole and grabbed it, trying to stifle the whine of discomfort that attempted to escape on the coattails of his breaths as they shortened with the exertion of just... Remaining. Remaining without falling.
Everyone was watching. Everyone was... He swallowed, and he forced his foot to move, taking a hesitant, wobbling step. It was only his family. Stewart would never comment, never, and he'd left, anyway. Meredith was... She wouldn't help unless he asked.
She'd actually gone back to studying, rolling out flat into the center of the bed, books sprawled everywhere now that he was no longer in the bed to prop them up, and, though her gaze darted toward him every time her highlighter dotted a sentence, she didn't make him feel scrutinized or uncomfortable. She was just Meredith, staring at Derek, the sexy man whom she loved. It almost made him feel normal. Like him getting up wasn't an event that had to be catalogued and critiqued.
He didn't want to look at his mother, but she was suddenly in his space anyway, hugging him. Her perfume wafted around him like a soothing cloud, and he felt his eyelids droop against its thrall. The pull of sleep called him like a siren back to the bed. Just standing had been enough to beat him down. Tired. He sighed and hugged her back.
"I'm okay, Mom," he muttered, wishing he didn't feel so disconnected from thinking, wishing he wasn't worried so much about staying upright, wishing he didn't have to move. But he did have to move, or he would embarrass himself. The normalcy Meredith had gifted him with slowly bled away, and he swallowed against the roil of upset. He didn't want comfort or pity or help or anything. He just wanted to walk to the bathroom.
"Oh, Der, sweetheart," his mother whispered, the syllables warbling with stunted, reined, almost crying. Almost crying. And that disturbed him, too, because he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her so upset. When... When was? Dad. She'd cried after Dad had died. And that was it.
That definitely didn't make him feel normal.
"I'm really okay, Mom," he said, swallowing, imprisoned, wishing he could just... Move. But her fierce grip kept him still.
"Derek Shepherd," she replied in her quiet, scolding voice, "You're a very bad liar."
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I need to..." He closed his eyes. He needed to be at home. Where he could have five minutes to wake up without being stared at or worried over.
His mother released him, finally, at least not insistent on helping him stumble to the bathroom. Without any further words, he took another step. The bathroom was so far away, it made his eyes burn, but it was... Better. He felt better than he had in the morning. There was a definitive difference. Before, he'd looked at the door to his room and it had seemed like something distant, something across an ocean of floor space, and in a bitter moment, the thought of walking that far had lain waste to him. He'd known. He'd known he wouldn't be able to force his body to do the distance on his own. At least not in both directions.
This moment was different. He stared at the bathroom door, but the floor wasn't an ocean to cross. Just a lake, perhaps. A Great Lake, but a lake. And he knew. He knew that if he pushed himself, he could do it. At great expense to himself, but he could. He could, he could, he could. He carried that thought into the will that drove his next step to its stuttering completion. And the next. And the next. And the next.
He was breathing like he'd run four laps around the hospital on frantic 911 pages by the time he closed the bathroom door behind him. But he'd walked. He'd walked to the bathroom. And, for the first time in what seemed like a small eternity, he was alone. No Meredith. No family. No nurses. No doctors. No Mark. Nobody. A blur of tears blotted things out for a moment. Three sobs. Quiet ones. He allowed them, and then he put the grief away. He put the upset away, straightened the unwanted mess of himself, and it stayed there. Put away. Straightened. That was an improvement.
His fingers wound around the IV pole, and he hobbled to the toilet to relieve himself. When he moved back to the sink to wash his hands, he stared into the little over the sink mirror. He looked rather how he felt. Thrashed. Tired. Weak. Pale. His eyes were dull, and the bandages crowned him as unwell. Not a thing like he was supposed to look, even when he tried to test a fake smile. Forcing himself not to dwell on it, he dabbed his face with some cool water, which laved his skin almost like one of Meredith's kisses, except cold replaced her endless heat. The quick motions made his head spin, and he had to stop for a moment. He leaned into the lip of the sink to support himself, happy at the feel of flannel smashed between his skin and the porcelain. His flannel. His stuff.
By the time he'd finished in the bathroom, despite the buzzing interference behind his eyes, despite the fact that he wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep forever, despite the substantial delay between thoughts and results, he felt almost human again. Because he was clean and in his own clothes, he'd actually slept, and he'd been able to get to the damned bathroom by himself. A pitiful list, really, but...
When he opened the door, his mother looked up and gave him a watery smile. Stewart had come back into the room and was bouncing Annie on his knee as she giggled. He'd been asleep for seven hours, and the world had left him behind again. How many of his family were there? Who. When. The five W's bumped and clanked around in his head like a bad journalism project from college, but as Derek slowly made his way back to the bed, he lost the tangle of thoughts in the brambles of moving. One foot after the other. One step. One step. One step. He could, he could, he could.
Meredith looked up from the sprawl of her books and notes and pens and studiousness. She stared at him as he approached and smiled brightly when he paused at the railing. He shakily leaned on it, brushing the pads of his fingers against the metal as small breaths ripped his ability to speak from him. He'd run forty miles in the space of twenty-four feet, twelve each way.
"Good morning," she said, her voice soft and warm as she capped her highlighter and started pulling all her stuff into a pile. She slid off the other side of the bed, yanking her things with her in a fluid motion, and collapsed into a chair right next to the bed.
He blinked, his gaze crawling slowly to the window. Inky, deep blue hovered in the sky like hues of night in a watercolor painting. Deep evening, but not yet black. "It's night..." he managed as he collapsed back into the bed, trying to catch his breath. Right? But he didn't ask that, didn't want to indicate how unsettled he was that he genuinely didn't know for sure.
"Well, yeah," she said. "But I think we should throw this morning out and count this." She leaned in, grabbed his hand, and squeezed.
"I'm better," he agreed quietly as his body sank further into the bed and just stopped working. Better. Just not good. Her fingers brushed his face as she hooked the cannula back over his ears.
He closed his eyes, relaxing at the warmth of her touch. Sleep. Sleep would return to him so easily. But he didn't... He'd been awake for all of twenty minutes. He wasn't ready to be exhausted yet. He wasn't... He still had no idea what was going on, and he wanted... His family was there. He hadn't even said hello. What kind of... He was supposed to remember those things.
He lay there, spaced, dimly aware that she was picking up his other hand and re-clipping the heart monitor to his finger. His shirt rustled in the quiet space between them as she ran her palms across his chest, soothing. It was night. He'd been awake for twenty minutes. Twenty. He hadn't said hello. His mother was upset. He should talk to Meredith. But...
His head tilted sideways. He snapped himself awake, but in the startled panic of forcing himself back out of the vague carpet of black, he discovered that another twenty minutes had disappeared when he glanced at his watch, and everyone had gone back to not watching him expectantly. What. At least the drowning tiredness had eased to a buzz. He needed a catnap just to walk?
He blinked, trying to catch up with things again. Better. He felt better. He didn't have to get up, and waking up hadn't seemed like an ordeal that time. It'd just sort of happened. There were drugs clotting up his thoughts, but not nearly as harshly as he'd remembered from the blur of the morning. No pain, either. No residual ache. It was all gone.
He sighed, swallowing. "How's studying going?" he rasped, suddenly at a loss. What was he supposed to say? He wanted to be awake and absorbing the world again. But he hadn't. He hadn't been awake and absorbing the world for hours, and now everything seemed awkward. He didn't want the subject to be him. He didn't want... He wasn't an event. Except he was why his family had flown across the country. Why Meredith was there all the time instead of going home to rest and take a break. Derek, how are you, would surely come up. It already had.
Meredith looked up from her book, her eyes widening with startled surprise before she relaxed. "Going well," she said. "I've finished reviewing plastics. Mark helped. Thanks for making him review with me. And I got through about fifty billion chapters while you were out today. I think I've now committed to memory every freaking symptom you could possibly ever have about anything. Now, I just need to remember which combos make what. I was going to review surgery techniques and stuff later in the week. You're a good book rest, by the way."
He couldn't stop a breathy chuckle as he latched on to the last bit of the jumble she'd said. "I noticed."
She frowned. "I didn't wake you up, did I?"
"No," he replied, sighing. "Not such a light sleeper, now, am I?"
"Just means you're saved from my endless snoring."
"Maybe I like your snoring," he said, unable to stop the lump from forming at the back of his throat. He didn't like it. But he missed it anyway. Because it meant he was in his own bed. Home. With her.
"You hate my snoring," she said, leaning in to kiss him. "But I love you anyway."
"I love you, too," he whispered. As she pulled away, he caught the flicker of the diamond ring in the dim light, and he sighed. He definitely wanted to rejoin the world. It was a pretty good place to be, all things considered. He raised his hand, reaching for her, and she took it, not needing any sort of hint or prodding. Her warm skin slid against his own. He felt for the little band of platinum and sighed again.
Tiredness crept, but he stamped it down as he fumbled for the bed controls and raised himself up to sit. Sitting would help. If he was sitting, maybe he wouldn't drift so easily.
He turned to his mother and Stewart as the bed hummed and pushed him up. The room tilted until his eyes caught up. "Did she tell you we made it official?" he asked, flashing them a weak grin.
Ellen smiled. "Yes. It will be a lovely story to tell your..." She glanced at Meredith and swallowed. It wasn't a look of condemnation or anything of the sort. Just consideration. "Friends."
Stewart laughed as Annie climbed down off his lap. "Ah, our feisty Meredith, saving you from the embarrassment of botching a third attempt at being romantic and debonair. Congratulations, though."
Meredith snorted. "I wasn't saving him from anything. I was just throwing a tantrum. An I want to be engaged, and I want it now, now, now, sort of thing."
The mattress dipped and shuddered as Annie grabbed the railing and climbed up onto the bed. Derek lost track of the conversation, but the words kept flowing back and forth. The soft feminine cadences of his mother and Meredith, and the more guttural deepness of Stewart mingled into a background hum.
"Hey there," he said, smiling as Annie wormed her way up toward the pillows. He grunted when she collapsed heavily onto his lap. She'd dragged a little pink backpack with her and left it sitting by his hip. He wrapped his arms around her tiny, warm body. She was almost six, and she combined the best features of Sarah and Stewart together in a striking combination that he was sure would break a lot of hearts when she got older. And, as her tiny hands clawed at him, grabbing tufts of his shirt, and she jerked and moved, trying to get settled in a way only a small, bubbly child could, he noted she didn't seem to be treating him like he was breakable. Which was nice. He grunted as her elbow jammed into his side, and she finally figured out exactly what position she wanted to be resting in. Her quick breaths slowed as she settled.
She peered up at him with wide, blue, unblinking eyes. "Why were you walkin' funny, Uncle Derek?" she whispered.
"Annie!" Stewart said, interrupting the slow crawl of Derek's thoughts. Stewart stood up and moved toward the bed, reaching for her with a long, lanky arm. "We talked about this," he said, his voice lowering in warning. Stewart made an imposing figure at six foot five, even when Derek was on his feet. "What do we need to be?"
Annie frowned, her lower lip quivering. "Quiet," she said.
"No, it's okay," Derek said, closing his eyes for a minute, letting the tiredness thrum. "She's fine." He didn't want to be the sick guy. And he didn't want his damned family to have rules about speaking to him. He didn't want... He just wanted to be awake and part of things again. And Annie was...
Comforting. Despite her directness.
"You sure?" Stewart asked.
"Yeah," Derek said. "I'll tell you if she's bothering me."
Stewart, appeased, went back to sit by Ellen, and the chatter resumed. Meredith had such beautiful laughter. Derek rubbed Annie's back absently. Maybe kids. Meredith had said maybe kids. Maybe this would be for real someday. He wondered what they'd look like.
He looked down at his small charge. Why was he walking funny? "I don't feel very well, that's all," he explained, surprised at how easy it was to admit to her, probably because of the way she looked at him after he'd admitted it. No pity. No reply about how he should be taking more morphine, or how he should be sleeping, or telling him to get up when he didn't think he could, or staring at him with knowledge that this was Derek Shepherd and he'd been cut down by a little physical hardship when so many people out there were worse off, or knowing him from before, when he'd been that cheerful, sarcastic surgeon who thought he was a gift to whomever received him. Nothing of the sort. Just more curiosity.
"Like when I get sick and get to stay home from school?" Annie asked.
"Yes, like that," Derek said. "Except I have to stay at the hospital for a few days before I get to stay at home."
"Aren't you a surgeoner like Mommy? Mommy says you're the bestest in your field. What's a field?"
"Surgeon, yes," he said, laughing softly as he corrected her. "A field is like... What I do all day. Your mom is a heart surgeon. She fixes hearts. I'm a brain surgeon. I fix brains." He'd oversimplified it, he knew, but he didn't think he could figure out how to explain nerves right then.
"That's gross," Annie replied, glancing around at the room. "I'm gonna be the President. You don't even get to miss work then? That sucks."
"I'm missing work. I think you'd make a great President. You have the taking charge thing down pat already."
She smiled at his compliment. "But you work in the hopspital!" she said, gesturing wildly, votes and vetoes forgotten as she realized what she thought was the true horror of his situation. "You're at work!"
"Well," he said. "I'm not working right now."
"That's good," she decided with a nod. "They'd probably be mad at you for sleeping. I get yelled at for sleeping when I'm at school sometimes," she whispered conspiratorially. She leaned forward, twisting against him, one of her hands grasping at his shoulder while she sort of stood, sort of didn't. Derek reached up instinctively to steady her, splaying his palm against her torso, grunting as she jabbed at him some more, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter because she was jabbing him and she didn't care. He was Uncle Derek. He could take it. She giggled, reaching for the nasal cannula. She ended up tweaking his nose a little.
"Watch out," he commented, clicking his teeth together as he nipped at the air and made a light growling noise. She shrieked with a surprised giggle and fell back against him.
"Annie," Stewart said, his voice low in warning.
Annie clapped her hands over her mouth. "Sorry, Daddy, I'm being quiet," she said between the cracks of her fingers, muffled. "I'm not bugging Uncle Derek." She stared at him with wide eyes, silent, but her apparent resolve crumbled when her gaze stopped on the thing that had originally caught her attention. "What's that thing for?"
"It's really okay," Derek said to Stewart, laughing. He turned back to Annie. "It makes sure I get enough air."
"Oh, okay," she said. And then her attention wandered elsewhere. "Is your head cold?" she asked as she stared at the bandages with implacable curiosity. "Gramma can make you a hat. She made me a hat for Christmas. I wear it when it snows."
"My head's not cold," Derek said. "It's just where I'm sick."
"Oh. I brought crayons. Wanna color? It makes me feel better when I'm sick."
He grinned at her. "Sure."
"Okay!" she said excitedly as she shifted again, stabbing him with elbows and knees in a few places. She grabbed her little backpack and started routing through it. He closed his eyes during the brief period of rest, inhaling and exhaling softly as if it would somehow replenish his depleting reserves. He was tired, but it wasn't... He was okay. He didn't want to sleep. Not yet.
"So," he said, looking over to his mother as he dragged himself back into the room before his tired mind could shut down long enough for sleep. "Welcome to Seattle. You should ride the ferryboats for a good view. That thing last month was a total fluke."
"Oh, Der," his mother said. A look of worry crumbled her features.
"I'm fine, Mom," he assured her. "Was your flight okay? Where is everyone staying?" he closed his eyes. "Who... When..." His voice trailed away as his thoughts spun their wheels.
"Here!" Annie said as she broke into the sudden onslaught of confusion. She waved something at him too quickly for him to follow, his eyes widened, and a small sliver of fear slammed through the clouded blanket hovering over his senses. His short, surprised gasp brought with it the scent of wax, which, in turn, sent him tumbling back through the years to a box of crayons, back when he'd been young enough that drawing was still an acceptably cool activity and not just one relegated to school projects. Calm re-settled as Annie lectured on the object's proper use, oblivious to the sudden flash of upset. "You gotta use all the sides evenly so you don't wreck the points," she said.
"All right," he said as he reached to take the crayon from her grip. Her warm fingers met his, and he couldn't stop from smiling. She was so tiny. And unassuming. And bossy. Very bossy. Just like Meredith. "What are we drawing?"
Stewart, apparently seeing a disaster in the making, stood and rolled the tray table over. Annie scooted back and knelt against the opposite side. Annie's weight sank the tent of his thermal blankets into the canyon between his knees. Derek rested his wrists against the edge of the table, waiting as she gripped his knees fiercely and settled. He was trapped, but he smiled anyway. It was a good sort of trapped, he decided as Annie pondered his question very seriously.
"Ponies?" she said. "Or horses. Horses are bigger than ponies. I like horses."
"She's in a horse phase," Stewart explained as he pulled some paper out of her backpack for them and set it against the tray table. "She's been begging for riding lessons."
"Ah," Derek said, and then he turned to Annie. "Well, I'm fairly awful at horses." Or really anything artistic. He was definitely left-brained. "Mind if I draw something else?"
She giggled. "Sure."
"Derek..." his mother tried again as he stared at the blank page for a moment.
"I'm fine," he insisted. Annie was already scribbling a torrent of color down upon her paper like a storm cloud spattering rain on the world below. He had no idea where to even begin. He focused on the paper, trying to think of something, anything, but forcing thoughts through the haze made him realize how difficult it was, and he blinked, frustration building when his mental rifling supplied him with nothing but a hint of aching.
"Butterflies," Meredith whispered so quietly he almost wondered if he'd imagined it. "I liked butterflies when I was six." He realized she'd been watching him the whole time. Her gaze was warm and loving, and she stared at him and Annie with a vagueness behind her sparkling eyes, almost like she was lost in some distant daydream, like she was imagining someone entirely different than Annie sitting there, coloring.
A small someone. With light eyes. They both had light eyes, though he hoped they would be her gray and not his blue. Her gorgeous smile and maybe her light freckling. The hair was a mystery. Dirty blond, but thick and curly, he decided. And she would have to have Meredith's nose. Because his was just... Crooked. Which he liked to blame on the broken nose Mark had given him, but he couldn't remember back far enough to be sure it wasn't genetics. Unless it was a boy, his nose was absolutely no good. If it was a boy, then the crooked would be handsome. Rugged. A bit of poor symmetry meant rugged. And that would work for him in the long run, because rugged was the first rung on the ladder to sexy. Or so Meredith would say.
He smiled. "Butterflies it is," he said in a quiet voice before turning back to Stewart and his mother. He drew a long, flattened oval and began attaching curvy wings to it.