love in the time of science - chapter eleven (part 1)
THIS CHAPTER IS A BEAST.
Sooo…this took a little longer than I would’ve liked. (See above. This chapter is a beast. For real. It about tried to kill me.) I was aiming real hard for Friday, but that ended up just not being possible. Turns out it takes a LOOOONG time to edit 9,745 words. (That’s the final tally. A little shy of the 10,000. But hopefully still acceptably longwinded. As I tend to be. Hmm…) And I’ve been editing it pretty much nonstop since I started. Which means I now have to play catch up on about a bajillion and one readings for class tomorrow, but who cares because it’s MerDer! Communicating!
And yeah, this is a relatively happier chapter. Something like the calm before the storm or what have you. And obviously because it's gigantic, it's another annoying two parter. This chapter doesn't have a nice convenient place to break because it's all one big, messy MerDer scene, so I'm just chopping it at the halfway point and sticking the rest in a second post. Sorry about that.
Also? Today’s PSA! HBR was kind enough to let me know about a crazy worm attacking the eljay. So, I thought I’d pass the word along. There’s a very helpful post that explains it here far better than I ever could, but yeah. Avoid the worms! Derek is currently too dark and depressed to de-worm you should they attack. (Ahem… I’ve only slept four hours and have drank too much coffee, so I’m just going to stop talking now. Before I start to sound even less sane. Let’s get to the actual point of this post! The fic!)
Title: Love in the Time of Science
Author: Morgen
Summary: Love. Tragedy. The things we’ve left unsaid. This is their story. Set after episode 5.05.
Disclaimer: I am not famous. I do not own TV shows. I am a poor college student with a laptop and a serious procrastination habit.
Rating: Written for grownups.
Therapy. She had actually told him about therapy. Her throat had seized up around the words, but they had weaseled their way out anyway. Dr. Wyatt was one of those weighty secrets she hadn’t been entirely sure he needed to know because, well…there were connotations to the whole therapy thing. She had no desire to be the one who’d flown over the cuckoo’s nest in this relationship. But in between the murdered dad confession, and Derek making her breakfast for dinner, and the fact that he was sad and worried and alarmingly convinced she was going to rush headlong off the next pier she happened to meet, it had all sort of come tumbling out.
The truth was, it wasn’t as bad as she’d been expecting. Granted, he had spent most of the day giving her a look that said in no uncertain terms, I really think you might be up for killing yourself, so anything was bound to be an improvement. But, he was absolutely not looking at her like one who had flown over any sort of nest, cuckoo or otherwise. He looked…proud. If she had to try and characterize it that would probably be what she’d go with. His eyes were warm, the blue sparkling like water under sunlight, his mouth curving into a gentle, curious smile. All the secret sharing of the night before had freaked her out, but this was actually turning out to be pretty wonderful. It gave her a feeling like chocolate did when she took the time to let it melt in her mouth. Warm and quietly blissful.
Maybe she was just feeling what was left of her buzz now that she’d gotten over the shock of finding him at home and angry with her. It was her fault. She should’ve figured it out. Noticed his car. Something. At the very least, she could’ve come in looking a little bit more like a serious girlfriend ready for a serious conversation. Except two plus two didn’t always end up equaling four after several rounds of tequila shots, a fight with Cristina, and then the rest of the night spent dancing superficial circles around each other. Thank god Izzie had been there too. She’d been happy to say nice things about Derek after Cristina had systematically poked holes in every little thing he’d done since she’d let him read the dead mommy diary.
It felt like a lifetime since she’d pushed it into his hands and fled, but it had barely been a day. She wasn’t sure what he’d done with it afterwards. Maybe it was still waiting for her down there on the basement floor.
She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know.
The kitchen was enough of a reminder on its own. Right there was where her mother had sat, a scalpel in her hand. And under the table, just about where Derek’s feet were, was where she had sat and watched the blood. She could picture it perfectly if she tried, but she stared at Derek instead. His shirt was turning his eyes almost criminally blue, and the whole five o’clock shadow thing he had going on was making her toes curl in her boots. It was just enough stubble to be sexy scratchy. Not enough to make her feel like she was being skinned alive. The diary could be wherever, and she wasn’t going to care. Therapy had cured her. She was just going to sit there and ogle her gorgeous boyfriend and not think about her mother at all.
Derek rubbed his chin and frowned a little as if he was turning over some thought in his mind. Therapy questions, most likely. Perhaps he wanted to look for a loophole that left her still crazy. Whatever it was, she’d humor him; it was surprisingly easy to be an excellent girlfriend when she was feeling tipsy.
“Shoot,” she said lightly, grinning around the fork lingering against her lips.
“Mmm?” said Derek. He hummed it, really. Low in his throat like maybe he was thinking about taking off her shirt. Trailing his fingers all the way down her spine.
She shivered and sat up straighter. “You have questions. Ask them.”
“I have questions?” he parroted back, smirking at her. Was it bad she found him damn near irresistible when he pulled the mister smug and arrogant routine? She should’ve asked Dr. Wyatt about that when she had the chance.
“You do,” she said. “You’re looking at me like you wanna say things. Ask things. About the whole therapy whatever.”
“Oh, the whole therapy whatever?” he said with a slow grin. Smug, very smug. Maybe he’d figured out it turned her on. She wouldn’t put it past him.
“Yeah,” she said. “That.”
But then Derek nodded and shifted forward, growing serious so quickly she swore she’d flipped a switch. Exchanged Flirty Derek for Serious Derek like swapping one purse for another. “Did you…” He cleared his throat, continuing in a quieter voice. Every word was laced with caution and it made the little hairs on the back of her neck rise up as if even they took notice of the change in sound. “Mer, did you talk about your mother?”
Meredith broke away from his gaze, staring down at her plate. He really did have questions then. Hypothetical good girlfriend was a lot easier than the actual good girlfriend thing. “Yes,” she said. The word felt like sandpaper to her vocal chords.
“You talked about how she tried to kill herself?” he pressed in that same steady, cautious voice.
She could feel his eyes on her, and when she looked up it was into an endless sea of concern. She could drown in there. “Yes,” she said again, but she shook her head. “Except, no. I told you already. She didn’t want to die.” Her voice thinned out like water hitting metal, rain against the trailer.
“Meredith…” There was a touch of impatience to the way he said her name but also something sad. Almost pitying. “I don’t think…”
“No,” she snapped. “It’s true. She told me.”
“She told you that?” he said incredulously. “Your therapist?”
“Well, she made me figure it out myself as some sort of insightful journey to…” She waved her hand through the air. “Whatever. She said I was right though. My mother didn’t want to die.” Meredith crossed her arms over her chest and pushed her chair back, scooting away from him. She didn’t want to have this argument anymore. “So, if you have such a problem with that, take it up with my shrink. My ex-shrink.”
Derek shook his head. “She said you were right,” he said, stretching the words out as if he didn’t know what to make of them.
“She did.”
She sat waiting on edge for Derek to push it further, but he just stared at her, his brow drawn down in a heavy frown. Brooding. “Okay,” he said at last.
“Okay,” she whispered back, quiet and uneasy. He wasn’t convinced at all. That much was a given, but what did he know anyway? He operated on brains; he didn’t analyze them. She scowled, but Derek gave her a brief flash of a smile and seemed to at least shrug it off. Let it go. For now.
He cleared his throat. “When did you stop going?” he asked.
“To therapy?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled back at him, grateful for the slight change of subject. At least this was an easier question. “After we got back together,” she said. “It just seemed like a good time, you know? I was happy.” She snorted, adding, “Besides, it’s not like I had to watch you be with Rose anymore.”
Derek stiffened and set down his fork with the sort of precise attention he gave his scalpels. “When did you start?” he asked, his voice a fake calm that tried too hard for casual. She rolled her eyes. Leave it to him to not get her jokes; this was so not about him and Rose.
Which meant she could not tell him about the therapy tools for his tongue.
Absolutely not. No way. Never.
“You know,” she muttered, pushing a soggy piece of French toast around and around her plate. Like it really needed more syrup on it. “After the whole relationship that wasn’t went up in flames.” She frowned at him. “And it wasn’t just because you were with Rose,” she added testily as if he’d accused her of something. “It was my mother too. I couldn’t sleep and it was just a whole bad…thing.”
“You couldn’t sleep?”
The air seemed to tighten and she stared fixedly at her plate, finally pulling the bite of French toast up out of the syrup puddle. Sticky strands of golden brown raced from fork to plate, pulling and pulling as they stretched thin as hairs before finally popping apart. She stuffed the bite into her mouth and chewed like she was working her way through a hunk of dried meat instead of soggy bread.
“Meredith…” he pressed. His voice was anxious, like pinpricks against her skin.
She swallowed slowly and licked her lips. “Not that much, no,” she said at last. She didn’t like thinking back to the black hole that had been the first week after the house plans and Rose and the fight. There’d been a knot in her chest tied out of all the things he’d said that had made it impossible to get any air in. She’d spent nights in an empty bed filled with a loneliness so brutal it had sent her crawling to therapy. “I don’t know,” she said, stalling. “You were with Rose, and it was… It was hard, Derek. I didn’t want to die alone, bitter and miserable.”
“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. It was a voice she couldn’t interpret and she made a face.
“You’re sorry?”
“You think I’d be happy I hurt you enough to need therapy?”
“It wasn’t just you,” she stammered. She could feel her cheeks flush, and she pushed at her hair to fight off the urge to fan her face. “It wasn’t really us as the problem at all. It was everything else that kept messing up…” It was everything that hadn’t wanted to let him love her. All the scared little broken bits inside her. She wondered just what therapy had done with them. Pieced them back together with lots of tape. Purged them from her completely. Stored them far, far away in some hidden Freudian space at the back of her mind she could only get at with a lot of work and a lot more self destruction.
Derek just shook his head. “You couldn’t sleep,” he repeated for the second time, saying the words like a death sentence.
She shrugged and stole a piece of French toast from his plate, trying to get him to smile. He didn’t so much as blink. This was why she hadn’t shared the therapy thing. Well, aside from not wanting to emphasize her journey over the cuckoo’s nest. Things were getting weird.
“I wish you’d told me,” he said when she stayed silent.
Meredith scoffed at that, setting down her fork. “Oh, really? And how would that’ve gone? Hey, Derek. No…wait. You were Dr. Shepherd then,” she corrected. She hadn’t called him Derek to his face for quite awhile there. “Dr. Shepherd, I know we aren’t really speaking and you’ve got this shiny new girlfriend who loves white picket fences, but just thought I’d let you know I haven’t slept in weeks. Uh huh. Because that’s a real conversation.”
“Meredith…”
“No, Derek. What?” She frowned at him and pulled her feet up onto her chair. “Do we really need to discuss this?”
“I would’ve cared,” he insisted. “If I’d known.”
She couldn’t decide whether she’d rather smile or roll her eyes; his savior complex just never died. “Well now you know,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. Now I can.” Last night excluded, of course. She stuck her fork in her mouth, sucking the syrup from the tines and watching as his gaze flicked to her lips. “How was Rose?” she asked. If they were going to talk about back then, she at least deserved to ask some prodding questions too. Although the answers scared her a bit. Rose had probably been really good at the girlfriend thing even when she wasn’t feeling tipsy.
But Derek blanched an unholy shade of pale, something better suited to a bowl of lumpy oatmeal than to his face. He blinked once, twice. A muscle in his jaw ticked. Finally he cleared his throat. “In bed?” he croaked, cringing around the words.
“What?” stammered Meredith, her fork clattering to the table. “No, no. Not…I don’t want to think about you and her together. Ever. Never!” She’d already had to hear about the bad sex with the wife. There was no way she was hearing about sex with the shiny ex-girlfriend. Although hopefully that had been bad as well. She shuddered. “I meant as a girlfriend,” she said. “Were you happy together?”
He let out a long breath, his whole body relaxing in the exhale. “No,” he said slowly, an amused grin chasing away the lingering horror. “Not like I am with you.”
“Well, what did you do then? While I was off getting all whole and healed, what were you doing?”
“I was… I don’t know.” He shook his head and seemed to pull into himself, staring at the tabletop with the sort of staggering intensity he usually reserved just for her. She picked at her food and waited, unsettled by his sudden change in mood. When he finally looked up again, his eyes were unreadable.
“Yeah?” she whispered, prompting him.
He smiled sadly. “I spent a lot of time pretending I didn’t care she wasn’t you.”
Oh.
He would have something perfect to say after she’d managed to trip over her own thoughts and accidentally bring up sex with Rose.
He angled his chair towards her, scooting closer. “Look,” he said. “I thought I wanted all these things.” She nodded. She knew the things. Marriage. Babies. Commitment. Joint tax returns. All those forever things.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know.” She started to look away but forced herself to hold his gaze. They still hadn’t figured out a way to talk about The Things in a way that felt comfortable and natural. The Things, capital letters required. He’d made them into ultimatums outside an elevator. She’d shouted about them in a field full of candles. That was pretty much it as far as discussion of The Things went. They still tiptoed around all of it a little. Well, more than a little, but she wasn’t running and in the back of her mind there was no doubt. She really did want The Things. Even with their big, scary capital letters. “You wanted things,” she agreed.
“Mmm…” hummed Derek. “No. I thought I did. I wanted them so badly with you that there were days where it was all I could think about.”
You know what I talked about with the other Grey? All the things this Grey won't let me say.
She bit her lip and shifted in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable. That had been a bad day. And there had been more of them. Apparently. “I don’t, I…” She had no idea what to say. Not one freaking clue. “I’m sorry,” she offered.
“Meredith,” he said. His voice was soft and reverent as if the sounds of her name were something holy. A long forgotten prayer. It brushed over her skin like velvet. “It’s okay. I had to be with her to realize that I was wrong.”
“What?” She frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“It wasn’t the things I wanted. It was having them with you.” He shook his head, smiling wryly. “Without you, they’re just items on a checklist for a life that looks perfect but feels empty.”
“Oh…” Meredith looked down at the table, her eyes stinging a little. Not enough to make her cry, but enough to make her wish she knew how to say something back. It always went that way though. He’d string together these beautiful thoughts, using words like they were pearls, and now that he’d stopped following them with ultimatums, it left her feeling like she was supposed to reciprocate. But the best she could come up with was a big, fat “me too,” and that wasn’t what was needed here.
“We don’t look perfect,” she heard herself say in a high thin voice that made her cringe. Great. That wasn’t what was needed either. She needed a book. The idiot’s guide to romantic sayings. Anything to make her a little less of a freak at this stuff.
But Derek just shrugged. “Perfect’s overrated anyway,” he said, and she grinned at him in relief, feeling suddenly dizzy. Light as air.
“It is,” she agreed as she swiped another piece of French toast from his plate. Perfect was stupid. They didn’t need perfect. They had just talked about The Things. Sure, it had been almost entirely in past tense, and they hadn’t actually named The Things, but it still totally counted. She hadn’t freaked out once, and he hadn’t so much as alluded to anything even vaguely resembling an ultimatum. “Did you see that?” she asked.
“You stealing my French toast?” said Derek. “Yeah. I saw that. How many pieces are we at now? Five? Six? I should really start keeping a tally.”
“No,” said Meredith with a dismissive wave of her fork. “Food thievery falls under the jurisdiction of the girlfriend, so if you wanna keep getting laid…”
He grinned wickedly, pushing his plate towards her. “Oh, now that means you’ll be giving me sex tonight?”
Meredith bit down on the tines of her fork and smiled. She shrugged. “I’ve heard it says thank you like nothing else,” she said. He chuckled and leaned towards her, sliding a hand up the side of her leg. His fingers gripped her thigh, but she pushed them away. “Finish your dinner first,” she said. “We were talking.”
He frowned but straightened up. “We were…”
“About things,” she elaborated, gesturing wildly with her fork.
He ducked out of the way, smirking at her. “That’s called conversation, Mer,” he said smugly.
Meredith rolled her eyes. “I’m making a point here.” Derek just settled back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and a huge, amused grin spread from ear to ear. “We were talking about things,” she said again, punctuating her words with another swing of her fork. “Big things.”
“Mmhmm,” he agreed.
“We were doing the communicating thing. Us!”
“We were,” he said, and his grin softened into a genuine smile. She smiled back. He did understand then. Even if he had to be all smug and mock her for it first, he understood.
“See?” she said. “Therapy was good for me.”
“Yeah,” said Derek quietly. She swore she heard a hint of something proud in his voice. “Speaking of therapy,” he continued after a moment. “My sister’s a therapist.”
She glanced up from her plate. “Huh?”
“Kathleen. I think I’ve mentioned her before. She’s a therapist.”
“Oh…”
Psych is crap.
She really did tell him that, didn’t she?
Stupid. So stupid. He was probably going to do the whole brotherly thing now and inform her about the very important role psychiatry played in the medical community. Although she had also just credited therapy with turning her into a normal person capable of communication, and if he bothered to think, he’d realize that cancelled out the other. She cleared her throat, her gaze darting back and forth between his face and the table. “That’s nice,” she said lamely.
Derek shrugged. “I always used to give her a hard time about it…”
Oh thank god.
“But seeing as it helped you, I may have to let up on her,” he concluded with a grin.
Something seized up inside of her, cold and panicky as visions of Derek talking to this Kathleen person filled her head. Chatting with her. He was chatty. She was probably chatty too. A whole freaking chatty family for him to chat with about his great new respect for the field of psychiatry. It’d cured his suicidal wreck of a girlfriend, after all. Didn’t they know? Hadn’t they heard about the slutty freak he was dating with the split ends and the tendency to drown herself in large bodies of water? “No,” she croaked, giving a violent shake of her head. “Why would… Don’t. They don’t need to…”
Derek just stared at her, looking bewildered. “What?”
“Don’t tell them,” she snapped. “Nancy’s already convinced I was a slutty intern. I really don’t need to add crazy person to the list.”
He reached over and picked up her hand in his, brushing his thumb gently over her skin. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” he said quietly. She frowned and stared at their hands. Right. Of course. She was the slutty, crazy intern turned resident. You didn’t broadcast that. He probably found it secretly embarrassing. “Not unless you wanted me to,” he continued, squeezing her hand. “I’m glad you went to therapy, but I’m certainly not going to go around sharing it if it’s something you want kept private. I hope you know that.”
“Okay,” she said, letting her breath out in a whoosh of air. When had he gotten so good at reading the varying degrees of freaked out in her facial expressions? “Good, good…” she stammered. “Thank you.” She pulled her hand from his and gripped her fork instead, her fingernails digging thin little crescents into her palm. The thought of his family had set her on edge. “Do you…tell them things?” she asked hesitantly.
“Do I tell my family things?”
Meredith nodded. “About me.”
“About you?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “About me, Derek. Do they know about me?”
He looked at her like she was maybe a little bit crazy again. “Of course they know about you,” he said. “They know we’re together.”
“So they know things,” she said slowly. “About me.”
Derek grinned at her. “They do,” he agreed. “Only secondhand though. We could always fly out there this weekend, and then they could actually know the real you.”
She froze at his words. He was joking. He had to be joking. “Derek,” she stammered. “It’s…” Soon. Crazy. A recipe for disaster. “A lot. And we…we can’t go this weekend. There’s work. You have the trial! It’s just…bad timing. Really bad.”
His grin only widened. “I was kidding, Mer.”
“You were kidding?”
“Well, I want you to meet them someday, but it doesn’t need to be right now,” he said. “They’d like you though,” he added firmly as if this was already a fact instead of some sort of mathematical improbability. “Mom’s always curious about you.”
Meredith pursed her lips and nodded vigorously, trying not to freak out. Again. To re-freak. She and mothers. Not a good track record. Plus they had a habit of dying spontaneously around her. And presumably Derek liked his mother. Alive. “That’s nice,” she squeaked before devolving into a stammering, jittery mess of words. “But we absolutely cannot go this weekend. Even if we’d wanted to. Hypothetically. Even if she’s curious.” She was lucky to get her nouns and verbs in the right order. This was way too much. They’d been doing well with their roundabout discussion of The Things, but by no means did that mean they were ready to graduate to talking about The Mother. Mother Shepherd. She had to have a name, but Meredith couldn’t come up with anything. She was a horrible girlfriend, really. What type of girlfriend didn’t know the name of her boyfriend’s mother? Easy. Newly reformed suicidal freaks who got kicked off of surgery by their boyfriends. They didn’t know names. Too busy dropping kidneys and crying in showers to learn them. “Weekend…busy,” she stammered, her cheeks flushing. “You can’t leave the trial.”
“No,” agreed Derek. “I have to stay.”
She sighed with relief. They weren’t going. Not this weekend and hopefully not for a very long time. She started to unclench, wincing as she looked at the deep grooves her nails had dug into her palms.
“I can’t leave Sarah,” he said firmly. He sounded solemn, and she turned to him, finally pulling herself out of her freak out enough to notice the set of his jaw, tense, like he was clenching it.
“You can’t,” she agreed. Sarah. The little girl who didn’t know she was dying. It left her feeling sad and uneasy and she shivered, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. “When’s the surgery?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
She nodded, not wanting to delve any deeper into the subject. As much as she’d liked Olivia, it hurt to think too long and too hard about the trial. It came hand in hand with a bitter torrent of things better left unexplored. But Derek sat hunched over the table, his shoulders sagging as he stared at his hands. Misery was a cloak and he wore it well.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak. “What is it?” she asked.
“She’s so young,” he said, his voice holding the echo of dried leaves and discarded things. “Six years old. Barely more than a baby.”
“The treatment works,” she said flatly. “Beth’s alive because of it. You’re not stabbing in the dark here.”
Derek sighed and turned to face her. “Do you want to scrub in?”
“What?” She stared at him as the lid she’d clamped down tight over everything that hurt slowly started to untwist. She shook her head. “You kicked me off the case…”
“Clearly not one of my brighter moments,” he said with a weary smile. “Scrub in with me. Please.”
“I can’t,” she said quietly.
“Of course you can,” he countered, sounding almost cross. “I want you there.”
Meredith shook her head again. She felt unsettled, like they moved through a dream. “No,” she said. “You don’t get to take it away, and then change your mind and give it back just like that.”
“But giving it back is a good thing! It was taking it away that was stupid.”
“Derek, it’s too late,” she snapped. “I’m already getting plenty of crap from Cristina about how I get to slide right into the surgeries. I haven’t done anything for this case. I’m not just waltzing into the OR because now you feel guilty for being an ass.”
“Cristina,” he said angrily. “What’s she been saying?”
There’s no way Shepherd would slide anyone else into an entire clinical trial’s worth of surgeries.
It’s only happening because you’re sleeping with him.
“Nothing.” It didn’t matter anyways. It all felt so incredibly hypocritical. Cristina hadn’t minded at all when Burke had turned her into a mini cardio god, but Meredith scrubbing in with Derek was somehow a crime of the highest order. Of course Derek kicking her off the surgery was also somehow wrong according to Cristina’s logic. She was tired of trying to figure it out. “It’s stupid,” she said at last. “Whatever. My point is, have fun at your surgery tomorrow.”
“I’d have more fun if you were in the OR too,” he said, switching tactics and grinning at her. Trying to charm her over. She looked the other way. That smile could get him a lot of things, but it wouldn’t get him this. Her in the OR. That was a bad idea. Sarah was safer without her there. She wasn’t half the surgeon her mother was. He had to have felt it in his gut like something undeniable or he never would have kicked her off in the first place.
“Too bad,” she said lightly. “You’ll just have to suffer without me.”
Part 2
Sooo…this took a little longer than I would’ve liked. (See above. This chapter is a beast. For real. It about tried to kill me.) I was aiming real hard for Friday, but that ended up just not being possible. Turns out it takes a LOOOONG time to edit 9,745 words. (That’s the final tally. A little shy of the 10,000. But hopefully still acceptably longwinded. As I tend to be. Hmm…) And I’ve been editing it pretty much nonstop since I started. Which means I now have to play catch up on about a bajillion and one readings for class tomorrow, but who cares because it’s MerDer! Communicating!
And yeah, this is a relatively happier chapter. Something like the calm before the storm or what have you. And obviously because it's gigantic, it's another annoying two parter. This chapter doesn't have a nice convenient place to break because it's all one big, messy MerDer scene, so I'm just chopping it at the halfway point and sticking the rest in a second post. Sorry about that.
Also? Today’s PSA! HBR was kind enough to let me know about a crazy worm attacking the eljay. So, I thought I’d pass the word along. There’s a very helpful post that explains it here far better than I ever could, but yeah. Avoid the worms! Derek is currently too dark and depressed to de-worm you should they attack. (Ahem… I’ve only slept four hours and have drank too much coffee, so I’m just going to stop talking now. Before I start to sound even less sane. Let’s get to the actual point of this post! The fic!)
Title: Love in the Time of Science
Author: Morgen
Summary: Love. Tragedy. The things we’ve left unsaid. This is their story. Set after episode 5.05.
Disclaimer: I am not famous. I do not own TV shows. I am a poor college student with a laptop and a serious procrastination habit.
Rating: Written for grownups.
Therapy. She had actually told him about therapy. Her throat had seized up around the words, but they had weaseled their way out anyway. Dr. Wyatt was one of those weighty secrets she hadn’t been entirely sure he needed to know because, well…there were connotations to the whole therapy thing. She had no desire to be the one who’d flown over the cuckoo’s nest in this relationship. But in between the murdered dad confession, and Derek making her breakfast for dinner, and the fact that he was sad and worried and alarmingly convinced she was going to rush headlong off the next pier she happened to meet, it had all sort of come tumbling out.
The truth was, it wasn’t as bad as she’d been expecting. Granted, he had spent most of the day giving her a look that said in no uncertain terms, I really think you might be up for killing yourself, so anything was bound to be an improvement. But, he was absolutely not looking at her like one who had flown over any sort of nest, cuckoo or otherwise. He looked…proud. If she had to try and characterize it that would probably be what she’d go with. His eyes were warm, the blue sparkling like water under sunlight, his mouth curving into a gentle, curious smile. All the secret sharing of the night before had freaked her out, but this was actually turning out to be pretty wonderful. It gave her a feeling like chocolate did when she took the time to let it melt in her mouth. Warm and quietly blissful.
Maybe she was just feeling what was left of her buzz now that she’d gotten over the shock of finding him at home and angry with her. It was her fault. She should’ve figured it out. Noticed his car. Something. At the very least, she could’ve come in looking a little bit more like a serious girlfriend ready for a serious conversation. Except two plus two didn’t always end up equaling four after several rounds of tequila shots, a fight with Cristina, and then the rest of the night spent dancing superficial circles around each other. Thank god Izzie had been there too. She’d been happy to say nice things about Derek after Cristina had systematically poked holes in every little thing he’d done since she’d let him read the dead mommy diary.
It felt like a lifetime since she’d pushed it into his hands and fled, but it had barely been a day. She wasn’t sure what he’d done with it afterwards. Maybe it was still waiting for her down there on the basement floor.
She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know.
The kitchen was enough of a reminder on its own. Right there was where her mother had sat, a scalpel in her hand. And under the table, just about where Derek’s feet were, was where she had sat and watched the blood. She could picture it perfectly if she tried, but she stared at Derek instead. His shirt was turning his eyes almost criminally blue, and the whole five o’clock shadow thing he had going on was making her toes curl in her boots. It was just enough stubble to be sexy scratchy. Not enough to make her feel like she was being skinned alive. The diary could be wherever, and she wasn’t going to care. Therapy had cured her. She was just going to sit there and ogle her gorgeous boyfriend and not think about her mother at all.
Derek rubbed his chin and frowned a little as if he was turning over some thought in his mind. Therapy questions, most likely. Perhaps he wanted to look for a loophole that left her still crazy. Whatever it was, she’d humor him; it was surprisingly easy to be an excellent girlfriend when she was feeling tipsy.
“Shoot,” she said lightly, grinning around the fork lingering against her lips.
“Mmm?” said Derek. He hummed it, really. Low in his throat like maybe he was thinking about taking off her shirt. Trailing his fingers all the way down her spine.
She shivered and sat up straighter. “You have questions. Ask them.”
“I have questions?” he parroted back, smirking at her. Was it bad she found him damn near irresistible when he pulled the mister smug and arrogant routine? She should’ve asked Dr. Wyatt about that when she had the chance.
“You do,” she said. “You’re looking at me like you wanna say things. Ask things. About the whole therapy whatever.”
“Oh, the whole therapy whatever?” he said with a slow grin. Smug, very smug. Maybe he’d figured out it turned her on. She wouldn’t put it past him.
“Yeah,” she said. “That.”
But then Derek nodded and shifted forward, growing serious so quickly she swore she’d flipped a switch. Exchanged Flirty Derek for Serious Derek like swapping one purse for another. “Did you…” He cleared his throat, continuing in a quieter voice. Every word was laced with caution and it made the little hairs on the back of her neck rise up as if even they took notice of the change in sound. “Mer, did you talk about your mother?”
Meredith broke away from his gaze, staring down at her plate. He really did have questions then. Hypothetical good girlfriend was a lot easier than the actual good girlfriend thing. “Yes,” she said. The word felt like sandpaper to her vocal chords.
“You talked about how she tried to kill herself?” he pressed in that same steady, cautious voice.
She could feel his eyes on her, and when she looked up it was into an endless sea of concern. She could drown in there. “Yes,” she said again, but she shook her head. “Except, no. I told you already. She didn’t want to die.” Her voice thinned out like water hitting metal, rain against the trailer.
“Meredith…” There was a touch of impatience to the way he said her name but also something sad. Almost pitying. “I don’t think…”
“No,” she snapped. “It’s true. She told me.”
“She told you that?” he said incredulously. “Your therapist?”
“Well, she made me figure it out myself as some sort of insightful journey to…” She waved her hand through the air. “Whatever. She said I was right though. My mother didn’t want to die.” Meredith crossed her arms over her chest and pushed her chair back, scooting away from him. She didn’t want to have this argument anymore. “So, if you have such a problem with that, take it up with my shrink. My ex-shrink.”
Derek shook his head. “She said you were right,” he said, stretching the words out as if he didn’t know what to make of them.
“She did.”
She sat waiting on edge for Derek to push it further, but he just stared at her, his brow drawn down in a heavy frown. Brooding. “Okay,” he said at last.
“Okay,” she whispered back, quiet and uneasy. He wasn’t convinced at all. That much was a given, but what did he know anyway? He operated on brains; he didn’t analyze them. She scowled, but Derek gave her a brief flash of a smile and seemed to at least shrug it off. Let it go. For now.
He cleared his throat. “When did you stop going?” he asked.
“To therapy?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled back at him, grateful for the slight change of subject. At least this was an easier question. “After we got back together,” she said. “It just seemed like a good time, you know? I was happy.” She snorted, adding, “Besides, it’s not like I had to watch you be with Rose anymore.”
Derek stiffened and set down his fork with the sort of precise attention he gave his scalpels. “When did you start?” he asked, his voice a fake calm that tried too hard for casual. She rolled her eyes. Leave it to him to not get her jokes; this was so not about him and Rose.
Which meant she could not tell him about the therapy tools for his tongue.
Absolutely not. No way. Never.
“You know,” she muttered, pushing a soggy piece of French toast around and around her plate. Like it really needed more syrup on it. “After the whole relationship that wasn’t went up in flames.” She frowned at him. “And it wasn’t just because you were with Rose,” she added testily as if he’d accused her of something. “It was my mother too. I couldn’t sleep and it was just a whole bad…thing.”
“You couldn’t sleep?”
The air seemed to tighten and she stared fixedly at her plate, finally pulling the bite of French toast up out of the syrup puddle. Sticky strands of golden brown raced from fork to plate, pulling and pulling as they stretched thin as hairs before finally popping apart. She stuffed the bite into her mouth and chewed like she was working her way through a hunk of dried meat instead of soggy bread.
“Meredith…” he pressed. His voice was anxious, like pinpricks against her skin.
She swallowed slowly and licked her lips. “Not that much, no,” she said at last. She didn’t like thinking back to the black hole that had been the first week after the house plans and Rose and the fight. There’d been a knot in her chest tied out of all the things he’d said that had made it impossible to get any air in. She’d spent nights in an empty bed filled with a loneliness so brutal it had sent her crawling to therapy. “I don’t know,” she said, stalling. “You were with Rose, and it was… It was hard, Derek. I didn’t want to die alone, bitter and miserable.”
“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. It was a voice she couldn’t interpret and she made a face.
“You’re sorry?”
“You think I’d be happy I hurt you enough to need therapy?”
“It wasn’t just you,” she stammered. She could feel her cheeks flush, and she pushed at her hair to fight off the urge to fan her face. “It wasn’t really us as the problem at all. It was everything else that kept messing up…” It was everything that hadn’t wanted to let him love her. All the scared little broken bits inside her. She wondered just what therapy had done with them. Pieced them back together with lots of tape. Purged them from her completely. Stored them far, far away in some hidden Freudian space at the back of her mind she could only get at with a lot of work and a lot more self destruction.
Derek just shook his head. “You couldn’t sleep,” he repeated for the second time, saying the words like a death sentence.
She shrugged and stole a piece of French toast from his plate, trying to get him to smile. He didn’t so much as blink. This was why she hadn’t shared the therapy thing. Well, aside from not wanting to emphasize her journey over the cuckoo’s nest. Things were getting weird.
“I wish you’d told me,” he said when she stayed silent.
Meredith scoffed at that, setting down her fork. “Oh, really? And how would that’ve gone? Hey, Derek. No…wait. You were Dr. Shepherd then,” she corrected. She hadn’t called him Derek to his face for quite awhile there. “Dr. Shepherd, I know we aren’t really speaking and you’ve got this shiny new girlfriend who loves white picket fences, but just thought I’d let you know I haven’t slept in weeks. Uh huh. Because that’s a real conversation.”
“Meredith…”
“No, Derek. What?” She frowned at him and pulled her feet up onto her chair. “Do we really need to discuss this?”
“I would’ve cared,” he insisted. “If I’d known.”
She couldn’t decide whether she’d rather smile or roll her eyes; his savior complex just never died. “Well now you know,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. Now I can.” Last night excluded, of course. She stuck her fork in her mouth, sucking the syrup from the tines and watching as his gaze flicked to her lips. “How was Rose?” she asked. If they were going to talk about back then, she at least deserved to ask some prodding questions too. Although the answers scared her a bit. Rose had probably been really good at the girlfriend thing even when she wasn’t feeling tipsy.
But Derek blanched an unholy shade of pale, something better suited to a bowl of lumpy oatmeal than to his face. He blinked once, twice. A muscle in his jaw ticked. Finally he cleared his throat. “In bed?” he croaked, cringing around the words.
“What?” stammered Meredith, her fork clattering to the table. “No, no. Not…I don’t want to think about you and her together. Ever. Never!” She’d already had to hear about the bad sex with the wife. There was no way she was hearing about sex with the shiny ex-girlfriend. Although hopefully that had been bad as well. She shuddered. “I meant as a girlfriend,” she said. “Were you happy together?”
He let out a long breath, his whole body relaxing in the exhale. “No,” he said slowly, an amused grin chasing away the lingering horror. “Not like I am with you.”
“Well, what did you do then? While I was off getting all whole and healed, what were you doing?”
“I was… I don’t know.” He shook his head and seemed to pull into himself, staring at the tabletop with the sort of staggering intensity he usually reserved just for her. She picked at her food and waited, unsettled by his sudden change in mood. When he finally looked up again, his eyes were unreadable.
“Yeah?” she whispered, prompting him.
He smiled sadly. “I spent a lot of time pretending I didn’t care she wasn’t you.”
Oh.
He would have something perfect to say after she’d managed to trip over her own thoughts and accidentally bring up sex with Rose.
He angled his chair towards her, scooting closer. “Look,” he said. “I thought I wanted all these things.” She nodded. She knew the things. Marriage. Babies. Commitment. Joint tax returns. All those forever things.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know.” She started to look away but forced herself to hold his gaze. They still hadn’t figured out a way to talk about The Things in a way that felt comfortable and natural. The Things, capital letters required. He’d made them into ultimatums outside an elevator. She’d shouted about them in a field full of candles. That was pretty much it as far as discussion of The Things went. They still tiptoed around all of it a little. Well, more than a little, but she wasn’t running and in the back of her mind there was no doubt. She really did want The Things. Even with their big, scary capital letters. “You wanted things,” she agreed.
“Mmm…” hummed Derek. “No. I thought I did. I wanted them so badly with you that there were days where it was all I could think about.”
You know what I talked about with the other Grey? All the things this Grey won't let me say.
She bit her lip and shifted in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable. That had been a bad day. And there had been more of them. Apparently. “I don’t, I…” She had no idea what to say. Not one freaking clue. “I’m sorry,” she offered.
“Meredith,” he said. His voice was soft and reverent as if the sounds of her name were something holy. A long forgotten prayer. It brushed over her skin like velvet. “It’s okay. I had to be with her to realize that I was wrong.”
“What?” She frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“It wasn’t the things I wanted. It was having them with you.” He shook his head, smiling wryly. “Without you, they’re just items on a checklist for a life that looks perfect but feels empty.”
“Oh…” Meredith looked down at the table, her eyes stinging a little. Not enough to make her cry, but enough to make her wish she knew how to say something back. It always went that way though. He’d string together these beautiful thoughts, using words like they were pearls, and now that he’d stopped following them with ultimatums, it left her feeling like she was supposed to reciprocate. But the best she could come up with was a big, fat “me too,” and that wasn’t what was needed here.
“We don’t look perfect,” she heard herself say in a high thin voice that made her cringe. Great. That wasn’t what was needed either. She needed a book. The idiot’s guide to romantic sayings. Anything to make her a little less of a freak at this stuff.
But Derek just shrugged. “Perfect’s overrated anyway,” he said, and she grinned at him in relief, feeling suddenly dizzy. Light as air.
“It is,” she agreed as she swiped another piece of French toast from his plate. Perfect was stupid. They didn’t need perfect. They had just talked about The Things. Sure, it had been almost entirely in past tense, and they hadn’t actually named The Things, but it still totally counted. She hadn’t freaked out once, and he hadn’t so much as alluded to anything even vaguely resembling an ultimatum. “Did you see that?” she asked.
“You stealing my French toast?” said Derek. “Yeah. I saw that. How many pieces are we at now? Five? Six? I should really start keeping a tally.”
“No,” said Meredith with a dismissive wave of her fork. “Food thievery falls under the jurisdiction of the girlfriend, so if you wanna keep getting laid…”
He grinned wickedly, pushing his plate towards her. “Oh, now that means you’ll be giving me sex tonight?”
Meredith bit down on the tines of her fork and smiled. She shrugged. “I’ve heard it says thank you like nothing else,” she said. He chuckled and leaned towards her, sliding a hand up the side of her leg. His fingers gripped her thigh, but she pushed them away. “Finish your dinner first,” she said. “We were talking.”
He frowned but straightened up. “We were…”
“About things,” she elaborated, gesturing wildly with her fork.
He ducked out of the way, smirking at her. “That’s called conversation, Mer,” he said smugly.
Meredith rolled her eyes. “I’m making a point here.” Derek just settled back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and a huge, amused grin spread from ear to ear. “We were talking about things,” she said again, punctuating her words with another swing of her fork. “Big things.”
“Mmhmm,” he agreed.
“We were doing the communicating thing. Us!”
“We were,” he said, and his grin softened into a genuine smile. She smiled back. He did understand then. Even if he had to be all smug and mock her for it first, he understood.
“See?” she said. “Therapy was good for me.”
“Yeah,” said Derek quietly. She swore she heard a hint of something proud in his voice. “Speaking of therapy,” he continued after a moment. “My sister’s a therapist.”
She glanced up from her plate. “Huh?”
“Kathleen. I think I’ve mentioned her before. She’s a therapist.”
“Oh…”
Psych is crap.
She really did tell him that, didn’t she?
Stupid. So stupid. He was probably going to do the whole brotherly thing now and inform her about the very important role psychiatry played in the medical community. Although she had also just credited therapy with turning her into a normal person capable of communication, and if he bothered to think, he’d realize that cancelled out the other. She cleared her throat, her gaze darting back and forth between his face and the table. “That’s nice,” she said lamely.
Derek shrugged. “I always used to give her a hard time about it…”
Oh thank god.
“But seeing as it helped you, I may have to let up on her,” he concluded with a grin.
Something seized up inside of her, cold and panicky as visions of Derek talking to this Kathleen person filled her head. Chatting with her. He was chatty. She was probably chatty too. A whole freaking chatty family for him to chat with about his great new respect for the field of psychiatry. It’d cured his suicidal wreck of a girlfriend, after all. Didn’t they know? Hadn’t they heard about the slutty freak he was dating with the split ends and the tendency to drown herself in large bodies of water? “No,” she croaked, giving a violent shake of her head. “Why would… Don’t. They don’t need to…”
Derek just stared at her, looking bewildered. “What?”
“Don’t tell them,” she snapped. “Nancy’s already convinced I was a slutty intern. I really don’t need to add crazy person to the list.”
He reached over and picked up her hand in his, brushing his thumb gently over her skin. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” he said quietly. She frowned and stared at their hands. Right. Of course. She was the slutty, crazy intern turned resident. You didn’t broadcast that. He probably found it secretly embarrassing. “Not unless you wanted me to,” he continued, squeezing her hand. “I’m glad you went to therapy, but I’m certainly not going to go around sharing it if it’s something you want kept private. I hope you know that.”
“Okay,” she said, letting her breath out in a whoosh of air. When had he gotten so good at reading the varying degrees of freaked out in her facial expressions? “Good, good…” she stammered. “Thank you.” She pulled her hand from his and gripped her fork instead, her fingernails digging thin little crescents into her palm. The thought of his family had set her on edge. “Do you…tell them things?” she asked hesitantly.
“Do I tell my family things?”
Meredith nodded. “About me.”
“About you?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “About me, Derek. Do they know about me?”
He looked at her like she was maybe a little bit crazy again. “Of course they know about you,” he said. “They know we’re together.”
“So they know things,” she said slowly. “About me.”
Derek grinned at her. “They do,” he agreed. “Only secondhand though. We could always fly out there this weekend, and then they could actually know the real you.”
She froze at his words. He was joking. He had to be joking. “Derek,” she stammered. “It’s…” Soon. Crazy. A recipe for disaster. “A lot. And we…we can’t go this weekend. There’s work. You have the trial! It’s just…bad timing. Really bad.”
His grin only widened. “I was kidding, Mer.”
“You were kidding?”
“Well, I want you to meet them someday, but it doesn’t need to be right now,” he said. “They’d like you though,” he added firmly as if this was already a fact instead of some sort of mathematical improbability. “Mom’s always curious about you.”
Meredith pursed her lips and nodded vigorously, trying not to freak out. Again. To re-freak. She and mothers. Not a good track record. Plus they had a habit of dying spontaneously around her. And presumably Derek liked his mother. Alive. “That’s nice,” she squeaked before devolving into a stammering, jittery mess of words. “But we absolutely cannot go this weekend. Even if we’d wanted to. Hypothetically. Even if she’s curious.” She was lucky to get her nouns and verbs in the right order. This was way too much. They’d been doing well with their roundabout discussion of The Things, but by no means did that mean they were ready to graduate to talking about The Mother. Mother Shepherd. She had to have a name, but Meredith couldn’t come up with anything. She was a horrible girlfriend, really. What type of girlfriend didn’t know the name of her boyfriend’s mother? Easy. Newly reformed suicidal freaks who got kicked off of surgery by their boyfriends. They didn’t know names. Too busy dropping kidneys and crying in showers to learn them. “Weekend…busy,” she stammered, her cheeks flushing. “You can’t leave the trial.”
“No,” agreed Derek. “I have to stay.”
She sighed with relief. They weren’t going. Not this weekend and hopefully not for a very long time. She started to unclench, wincing as she looked at the deep grooves her nails had dug into her palms.
“I can’t leave Sarah,” he said firmly. He sounded solemn, and she turned to him, finally pulling herself out of her freak out enough to notice the set of his jaw, tense, like he was clenching it.
“You can’t,” she agreed. Sarah. The little girl who didn’t know she was dying. It left her feeling sad and uneasy and she shivered, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. “When’s the surgery?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
She nodded, not wanting to delve any deeper into the subject. As much as she’d liked Olivia, it hurt to think too long and too hard about the trial. It came hand in hand with a bitter torrent of things better left unexplored. But Derek sat hunched over the table, his shoulders sagging as he stared at his hands. Misery was a cloak and he wore it well.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak. “What is it?” she asked.
“She’s so young,” he said, his voice holding the echo of dried leaves and discarded things. “Six years old. Barely more than a baby.”
“The treatment works,” she said flatly. “Beth’s alive because of it. You’re not stabbing in the dark here.”
Derek sighed and turned to face her. “Do you want to scrub in?”
“What?” She stared at him as the lid she’d clamped down tight over everything that hurt slowly started to untwist. She shook her head. “You kicked me off the case…”
“Clearly not one of my brighter moments,” he said with a weary smile. “Scrub in with me. Please.”
“I can’t,” she said quietly.
“Of course you can,” he countered, sounding almost cross. “I want you there.”
Meredith shook her head again. She felt unsettled, like they moved through a dream. “No,” she said. “You don’t get to take it away, and then change your mind and give it back just like that.”
“But giving it back is a good thing! It was taking it away that was stupid.”
“Derek, it’s too late,” she snapped. “I’m already getting plenty of crap from Cristina about how I get to slide right into the surgeries. I haven’t done anything for this case. I’m not just waltzing into the OR because now you feel guilty for being an ass.”
“Cristina,” he said angrily. “What’s she been saying?”
There’s no way Shepherd would slide anyone else into an entire clinical trial’s worth of surgeries.
It’s only happening because you’re sleeping with him.
“Nothing.” It didn’t matter anyways. It all felt so incredibly hypocritical. Cristina hadn’t minded at all when Burke had turned her into a mini cardio god, but Meredith scrubbing in with Derek was somehow a crime of the highest order. Of course Derek kicking her off the surgery was also somehow wrong according to Cristina’s logic. She was tired of trying to figure it out. “It’s stupid,” she said at last. “Whatever. My point is, have fun at your surgery tomorrow.”
“I’d have more fun if you were in the OR too,” he said, switching tactics and grinning at her. Trying to charm her over. She looked the other way. That smile could get him a lot of things, but it wouldn’t get him this. Her in the OR. That was a bad idea. Sarah was safer without her there. She wasn’t half the surgeon her mother was. He had to have felt it in his gut like something undeniable or he never would have kicked her off in the first place.
“Too bad,” she said lightly. “You’ll just have to suffer without me.”
Part 2