grey's anatomy fanfiction, mark - small things and a sunrise [11/12].
Flaws In Science
Author’s Notes: In which I indulge my not-so-secret Mark/Derek friendship fetish. Because they are BFFs damnit and I dig it. The penultimate chapter, in which the boys find their feet in life without Addison and various and sundry interns make an appearance. This still sits as an alternative timeline post-Six Days in Season 3, but loosely follows the canon in terms of events, just with different justifications. Have the soundtrack, Explosions In The Sky - Our Last Days As Children..
Now that you’ve stopped drinking cough medicine like it holds the secret to youth your thoughts wander less, you find it easier to slip back into restlessness and ideas that can’t be expressed in words. This is how your mind usually works. You’re not really one for long rambling paragraphs in your head. Voiceover in movies has always intrigued you because of that.
Your thoughts are, in their natural state, unaffected by sickness and strong medication, more like the smear of a paintbrush than careful cursive from a pen.
Monday comes, inevitably. The temporary truce drawn up between you and Karev at Joe’s holds, but only briefly. He gives you his decision without apology, straight in the eyes, proud of himself, “I think I’d prefer shiny and pink.” You think he’s more a man because of it. If he can resign himself to watching unborn children die for no reason then you begrudgingly respect him for it. You never could; plastics was almost a choice of necessity for you- you couldn’t stand watching people die, no matter how many you kept alive.
You aren’t fatalistic. You know the future exists (it stands to reason, given the concept of time) and it is dynamic, changing. But some things are certain: everything dies. As a doctor, most are constantly battling with death. You know when to pick your battles. The ceaseless struggle to keep dying people living, which ultimately is always lost, didn’t hold your interest for long. There’s no fun in playing an intellectual game you can't win.
But that’s an excuse really.
The reason you can’t stand watching people (especially children) die is simple. It reminds you that one day, it will happen to you. You’re a miracle of evolution, an intricate set of cells arranged into tissues, organs, body systems, a homo sapiens, a closed system which converts oxygen to carbon dioxide, constantly metabolising, constantly producing waste. The cell membrane forms spontaneously in solution, hydrophobic interactions between molecules are all that’s keeping you together. So you know one day, parts are going to stop working, something will go wrong. And no one will be able to do anything for you, the system will stop working, you’ll die. Pathology scared you shitless at medical school: the science that held everything together the way it was meant to seemed so tenuous. And yet, while others look at the world under a microscope and see God, you see a blood test suggesting acute myeloid leukaemia and see the cruelty of the Bell curve from a journal of epidemiology.
You don’t see Addison much, only a glimpse here and there around corners at the hospital. Derek also slips back into his silence and because you don’t really know what you’re doing here anymore, if not to repair the bridges you burned, the days start to slip past you.
There are things you notice of course: you’ve always had an accidental ear for gossip. Idly, you consider the conversation going on behind you without much interest.
“Did you hear about Montogomery’s ovarian torsion yesterday night?”
“I heard Karev scrubbed in.”
As though that implies something, you think to yourself, irritably. But because you have noticed that ‘shiny and pink’ seems to suit Alex Karev far too much, you stalk off to find someone to annoy, considering making that someone an intern. (You’re really hoping to cross the path of Doctor Stevens because you’re in the mood for cracking a few blonde jokes and watching as her hackles rise, slowly, as you redistribute body fat during an afternoon facelift.)
Unfortunately (you study the board) the only available targets are Grey and Karev. Given that you feel a strong desire to redistribute his facial features without your scalpel when you see his name next to Addison’s you take the only-slightly-safer option of Derek’s girlfriend. She’s also a lot more convenient, being presently ambling towards you looking tiny in scrubs that swallow her.
“Grey,” you bark.
She looks up, surprised, “Doctor Sloan?”
“You busy?” your tone softens in spite of yourself, but it still comes off gruff, as intended.
She shrugs, “They do keep us busy around here. Nothing I’m not keen to beg off.”
“If you’re feeling lacking in emotional perception and a great deal of apathy I might have a procedure for you to eyeball.”
Meredith Grey is like the younger, female version of you complete with mommy issues, daddy issues, too much alcohol, too much pointless sex and a difficult relationship. She disarms you without trying, makes you feel better. It’s nice to think that someone else views the world through the same haze of indifference and attempted self-destruction. Sure, things might be going ok between her and Derek this week, so maybe she’s smiles for the moment. But you get the feeling that the kind of feelings that weigh someone so small down so much aren’t the kind you can be rescued from, even by a knight in shining armour wannabe like Derek.
“I won’t ask if you don’t tell,” she assures you; then adds, trying to stay on the right side of professional even though you consider it vaguely ridiculous given how entangled your personal lives are, “Doctor Sloan.”
You scoff.
She looks at you sideways, but true to her word, makes no comment.
It’s one of the rare afternoons that you appreciate Seattle Grace’s teaching program. Describing a routine procedure and giving a running commentary on why your own technique is superior gives you a chance to insult some famous plastic surgeons you don’t think very highly of (which always makes you feel better, doubly so if you have an audience) and distracts you from a bout of dangerous introspection about Addison, Derek, Seattle and what the hell you’re doing with your life.
No one particularly appreciates your unique blend of humour and arrogance, but you don’t particularly care for their opinions (pre-conceived and often ill-conceived misconceptions so let them be wrong). To your own credit, you do give credit where credit is due, acknowledging the procedures patented by teachers you admired, doctors you studied under who knew what they were talking about. You’re just not above cutting through some bullshit for the next generation.
Not that Meredith Grey will want a future in plastics. But it’s a teaching hospital and so teach you will, even if it is under threats of legal suits for breech of contract or, more and less seriously at the same time, Addison’s critiques of your lunch plans.
It’s over soon enough and without a pretty little word from your intern, who is quickly becoming one of your favourites, something which you will never be able to tell Derek. Begrudgingly you will acknowledge that it’s your fault, in this instance. You’re letting the water run over your hands when it happens, unexpectedly.
“I made him go,” she confesses suddenly, and here you were thinking you might almost make it out of a scrub room without a heart-to-heart with an intern.
You offer her a displeased sigh in response.
She lifts an eyebrow at you, “Seriously?”
Now that, you admit, is a curious reaction to your utter indifference. Interest piqued, you dry your hands and turn to face her trying not to sound to derisive when you counter with a monotone, “What?”
“I should make some observation about your mother and manners,” she smiles, taking your dismissive attitude in stride, which you do always like about Grey. Not annoyingly persistent, just unaffected. “But that might strike a nerve in both of us.”
“Yeah,” you agree.
She takes that as her cue to elaborate on her earlier statement and you also like that about her; she always takes your hints the way you intend them, “I made him go. That night when Addison called... I made him go.”
You make light, “Dirty Mistresses Club membership benefits?”
She laughs quietly, “No.”
And then she’s sighing, leaning against the sink in the scrub room and staring into the empty theatre. It’s almost a cliché among surgeons, to have deep, meaningful conversations up to your elbows in disinfectant after some major procedure. But this isn’t life or death, just a truth she wants you to understand, “No I made him go because you’re his person.”
You’re silent so she goes on, “You are, for better or worse and whether he likes it or not, the person who understands him the most. And I know things are different now, because all-in-all you weren’t a very good friend to him. But you get him. And sooner or later he’s going to have to realise that. You’re his person.”
You shrug, “Maybe.”
“Well,” she turns her palm to the ceiling as she clasps it in a paper towel, “Whatever. I just thought you should know. You’re not half as bad as people think.”
“It’s a shame you’re taken Grey,” you sigh, “You may be the only person in this hospital who’s figured that out.”
She fixes you with a disapproving stare then, “Well, you take painstaking lengths to conceal it, usually involving a nurse.”
“Jealous Grey?” you tease, shifting gears seamlessly into the ‘arrogant ass’ territory that’s so familiar.
She lifts that eyebrow at you again, and it reminds you of Addison so much you’re torn between indulging that pang of something inside your chest and putting your fist through a wall.
“Hardly,” she retorts fluidly, breaking your preoccupation with a light, “I thought we’d put that issue to bed.”
“Not literally,” you smirk.
“Walked into that one,” she admits, pushing through the door and into the corridor, looking back over her shoulder to add, “Should I take care of the post-op?”
You nod, “He shouldn’t need much. The nurses can do almost everything.”
“I’ll keep an eye on it until he leaves tomorrow,” she offers, disappearing.
You’re paged to the pit, but on the way down you find yourself caught in the elevator with Addison. She smiles at you, her warm and inviting smile that usually, would give you the go ahead for some playful banter, teasing, a joke about OBGYN and a similarly biting slight on your chosen field of medicine. Today though, you’re feeling her absence in your life outside the hospital a little too acutely, especially because you keep overhearing Alex Karev making her laugh. You can’t find it in you to smile back.
She narrows her eyes, “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering, you just reach out and play with the sleeve of her lab coat where it folds around her elbow, “I don’t know.”
It’s a lie, but it’s easier than the truth.
She sighs as the elevator stops, “This is my floor.”
You release her sleeve; let her go.
Then you spend the next fifteen minutes giving a particularly snotty rich woman (who reminds you of Addison’s mother, who nearly always features on your list of reasons why you dodged a bullet there) the best sutures she’ll ever receive (if you do say so yourself) and then fifteen minutes more flat out refusing to do anymore work on her because judging by the quality of the first three jobs, they were done by trained gorillas in wherever the hell kind of jungles gorillas hail from and you don’t want to be sued when it caves in.
It heralds the end of your day so you unceremoniously sign your name (illegibly) on your charts and go in search of a drink, in part because you want to find something to make you forget about Addison and in part because you just need one.
You’re nursing your first when you hear your own order in a familiar voice and then he slumps beside you in an identical pose but with a slightly fuller glass.
“Derek,” you don’t bother to hide the note of surprise in your greeting.
“Hey,” he offers, taking a long gulp of amber liquid and swallowing.
You mirror the gesture.
“One of those days?” he asks, hand curling into a fist beside his glass on the bar.
“You could say that,” you’re ambivalent; nothing about today was particularly bad, it’s just that nothing was particularly good either. “You look worse than me though.”
“It’s,” he waves a hand, non-committal, searching for a way to explain and finally settles on, “Women.”
“Amen,” you raise your tumbler in a toast and he clinks his glass against yours.
“Happily ever after round two not going as planned then?” you say, when you’ve both emptied your glasses and are in the process of having them re-filled.
“She’s frustrating,” he answers, “I’m sure it’ll... you know, it’s just that at some point I want to be let in, I want to be trusted again. I regret it, not telling her about Addison from the start but,” he runs his hand over his face, “God Mark, you have no idea how that timing screwed me over. I was going to tell her, that night, I’d planned exactly what I was going to say. But then Addison showed up here and well, by then, as you might imagine, Meredith was angry.”
“Well,” you shrug, “Can’t blame her.”
“No,” he agrees with you, “But after all this, I leave Addison for her and she still doesn’t... she still shuts me out,” he pauses, “And I don’t think there’s any more I can do, except come here and bitch to my ex-best friend like a girl.”
You smirk at that, “You’ve always been good at bitching like a girl.”
He makes a rude gesture at you and downs another generous mouthful of scotch, “And you’ve always had the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“I’ve got no excuses,” you tell him, “It’s probably best you don’t ask.”
“Addison,” he surmises.
You nod, barely, and add, “That about summarises the situation. I’ll get over it.”
“Yeah,” he echoes your sentiment softly.
You settle into a somehow comfortable silence then, not really needing to fill the silence with conversation about things you’ve already talked about, or worse, the weather.
“Come on,” he says impulsively, throwing down a generous wad of bills on the bar top, “I want to show you something.”
You down the rest of your scotch and echo his gesture, hiding your surprise and agreeing with a small shrug, “Ok.”
And an hour later, you’re admiring the lights of Seattle twinkling in the distance from a property in the middle of nowhere as he stakes out his future house and you slowly work your way through a bottle of his favourite single malt.
“This is my view,” he announces.
You take a breath of the air. It smells like pines and wilderness.
“It’s great,” you say honestly.
“Yeah,” he chuckles a little at your response, “Not really something you appreciate though.”
You shrug, “It’s the kind of place I’d visit, not choose to live. But it is a great view.”
“Better at sunrise,” he says, then flops down on the dewy grass with the bottle.
You sit beside him, “Is this one of your gestures of goodwill?”
He shrugs, “I’m never going to get rid of you completely. May as well grin and bear it and enjoy your uncouth ways of expressing yourself.”
You grab the bottle from his hands and take a swig, “You give as good as I do.”
He falls backwards and lies, looking up at the stars, “It’s so clear out here. I mean, on a cloudless night.”
“Yeah,” you recognise several constellations, “I haven’t seen this many stars in years.”
“You taught me once,” he recalls, “Which one was Orion’s Belt. It must have been a school camping trip in junior high,” he points it out, “And ever since, whenever I’ve been able to see stars, I’ve picked it out.”
“Hope you used it to pick up at some point,” you smile, “I think that’s why I learnt all of those in the first place, to impress girls.”
“Yeah,” he laughs, “I tried that on Addison. Mistake, her knowledge of the subject vastly outstripped my own.”
“As it did on most subjects,” you jibe good-naturedly.
“Too true,” he laments.
You talk for a long time then, pausing to drink every now and then and it reminds you of the conversations you used to have in college, when you climbed up onto the roof of your dorm building and lay there for hours, stomaching cheap liquor and debating the meaning of life. Of course you don’t talk about that now, but you both share stories, your recollections of your extensive shared past. You tease him about his first kiss and he teases you about taking his sister to Prom.
You watch the sky change colour as the time passes, but you never seem to run out of things to say, even avoiding subjects like Addison and marriage. You missed this; you complement each other in many ways, Derek’s always had a romantic philosophical way of viewing the world and you’ve always been more of a scientist; as a kid you had a wild imagination of course, but you were always about hows and whys. Your individual perspectives enrich the other’s.
“How much of this land do you own?” you ask after a lull in the conversation.
“Several acres,” he admits, “After New York, being out here, it was such a change. I decided I liked it the way it was.”
“You know, it’d be great to race the bike through here.”
He sighs, but it’s not as resigned as you’ve come to expect sighs to be, “I haven’t done that in years. Ever since,” he pauses because you interject with, “That time. Back home at your mother's at Christmas.”
“And Addison,” he laughs genuinely at the memory, “Woah boy. She was pissed.”
“Addison never was good with personal emergencies,” you remark.
“You just say that because she was so worked up about the scratch on my cheek that she basically left you for dead.”
“I still called shotgun on the sutures,” you smirk, “Besides that time I came out here, last year? You gave me a matching one.”
“You’re telling me your sutures haven’t improved since medical school?” he teases, “Lord, what are these patients of yours paying for?”
You reach out and slap his arm, “Well, you can barely see mine of course. And it’s a much more recent scar. Still, you should be glad I didn’t let Addison do it. You never want someone that mad to be stitching you up.”
“I suppose I could get a bike again,” he muses, “Since apparently Addison and I have no legal right to interfere in each other’s lives anymore.”
“And the idle threats of divorce are without weight at this point,” you add.
He sighs, but moves on quickly, “I don’t think Meredith would mind. Provided we let her and Cristina join in.”
“Strikes me as that kind of girl too,” you tell him, “She’s not half-bad.”
He turns sideways and looks at you, accusingly, “Does this mean I should be worried?”
“No,” you answer defensively, “And besides I think that ship has sailed, not for want of trying,” you see his reaction in the corner of your eye and add hastily, “A long time ago. Pre-divorce. Casual flirting. You ploughed through my face with wedding rings, she was at a bar nursing her daddy issues over a tequila?”
“Yeah well,” he huffs, “Given our history with women.”
“Have a little faith,” you tell him, “I think she’s pretty much Miss Iron Panties except for you.”
“You’re practically the panties whisperer,” he says dryly, “Chastity belt or no, you seem to find ways.”
“I told you ages ago that there’s no secret,” you complain, “You think I wouldn’t have shared it?”
“Probably not,” he retorts lightly, “You never did tell me how you read that fast as a kid.”
“Practice,” you smirk, “It’s my secret. About books and women.”
He changes the subject, “So, what do you think?”
“Of the land?” you begin, “Great view, lots of it. Of the trailer? Very you Derek, idealistic and impractical and without lasting hot water.”
“I get plenty of mileage out of the hot water,” he counters.
You just look sideways and resist the urge but he follows your train of thought and calls you on it, “Immature.”
You shrug, “I cling to the little vestiges of youth.”
The sun starts to rise then.
“Mom will be so happy,” Derek says quietly, as you watch the sky change colour and the full extent of his view becomes obvious, “That we’re speaking again.”
“I can’t imagine she’d have many favourable things to say about Addison or I,” you admit, ashamed, because Mrs Shepherd wasn’t your mother but she still raised you for the most part, and not to be the kind of person that would sleep with his childhood best friend’s wife. Then again, she probably didn’t expect you to date her two oldest daughters either and if you managed to get through those relationships unscathed in her eyes, surely her affection is fairly resilient.
“No,” he agrees, “But you know mom, always used to say it took two to fight, even when one of the girls clearly started it.”
“She’s proud of you, you know,” you tell him, because he says it in a resigned sort of way that makes you think he might have forgotten.
“Oh I know,” he shrugs it off, “She’s proud of all of us, even you. But mom never looks for the faults in anyone. Besides, I think you’re generally considered the family’s prodigal son by proxy.”
You smile at that, “Your mom Derek, she’s a saint.”
“Yeah,” he nods, “I know. And Nance is always on me about getting you to call too. Said something about you when she was here, how sleeping with you was a rite of passage,” he narrows his eyes, “You both told me you never did.”
You shrug sheepishly, “She didn’t want me to tell you. Besides, with her, the rite of passage was non-specific to me; could’ve been any other sweaty-palmed teenager.”
He groans at the image, “I liked it better when we didn’t talk about you sleeping with my sisters.”
“Sister,” you correct.
“Kathleen?”
“As pure as undriven snow when we broke up, if you favour Clinton’s position on the issue.”
“You and your way with words,” he stands and brushes himself off, “Come on, I’ll drive you into the hospital, we can stop on the way for a change of clothes.”
You pick up the empty bottle from where it lies beside you, “Thanks.”
He claps you on the shoulder and you both turn into the sunrise, shielding your eyes from the light.
Chapter 12: City Lights On A Cold Night.
Author’s Notes: In which I indulge my not-so-secret Mark/Derek friendship fetish. Because they are BFFs damnit and I dig it. The penultimate chapter, in which the boys find their feet in life without Addison and various and sundry interns make an appearance. This still sits as an alternative timeline post-Six Days in Season 3, but loosely follows the canon in terms of events, just with different justifications. Have the soundtrack, Explosions In The Sky - Our Last Days As Children..
Now that you’ve stopped drinking cough medicine like it holds the secret to youth your thoughts wander less, you find it easier to slip back into restlessness and ideas that can’t be expressed in words. This is how your mind usually works. You’re not really one for long rambling paragraphs in your head. Voiceover in movies has always intrigued you because of that.
Your thoughts are, in their natural state, unaffected by sickness and strong medication, more like the smear of a paintbrush than careful cursive from a pen.
Monday comes, inevitably. The temporary truce drawn up between you and Karev at Joe’s holds, but only briefly. He gives you his decision without apology, straight in the eyes, proud of himself, “I think I’d prefer shiny and pink.” You think he’s more a man because of it. If he can resign himself to watching unborn children die for no reason then you begrudgingly respect him for it. You never could; plastics was almost a choice of necessity for you- you couldn’t stand watching people die, no matter how many you kept alive.
You aren’t fatalistic. You know the future exists (it stands to reason, given the concept of time) and it is dynamic, changing. But some things are certain: everything dies. As a doctor, most are constantly battling with death. You know when to pick your battles. The ceaseless struggle to keep dying people living, which ultimately is always lost, didn’t hold your interest for long. There’s no fun in playing an intellectual game you can't win.
But that’s an excuse really.
The reason you can’t stand watching people (especially children) die is simple. It reminds you that one day, it will happen to you. You’re a miracle of evolution, an intricate set of cells arranged into tissues, organs, body systems, a homo sapiens, a closed system which converts oxygen to carbon dioxide, constantly metabolising, constantly producing waste. The cell membrane forms spontaneously in solution, hydrophobic interactions between molecules are all that’s keeping you together. So you know one day, parts are going to stop working, something will go wrong. And no one will be able to do anything for you, the system will stop working, you’ll die. Pathology scared you shitless at medical school: the science that held everything together the way it was meant to seemed so tenuous. And yet, while others look at the world under a microscope and see God, you see a blood test suggesting acute myeloid leukaemia and see the cruelty of the Bell curve from a journal of epidemiology.
You don’t see Addison much, only a glimpse here and there around corners at the hospital. Derek also slips back into his silence and because you don’t really know what you’re doing here anymore, if not to repair the bridges you burned, the days start to slip past you.
There are things you notice of course: you’ve always had an accidental ear for gossip. Idly, you consider the conversation going on behind you without much interest.
“Did you hear about Montogomery’s ovarian torsion yesterday night?”
“I heard Karev scrubbed in.”
As though that implies something, you think to yourself, irritably. But because you have noticed that ‘shiny and pink’ seems to suit Alex Karev far too much, you stalk off to find someone to annoy, considering making that someone an intern. (You’re really hoping to cross the path of Doctor Stevens because you’re in the mood for cracking a few blonde jokes and watching as her hackles rise, slowly, as you redistribute body fat during an afternoon facelift.)
Unfortunately (you study the board) the only available targets are Grey and Karev. Given that you feel a strong desire to redistribute his facial features without your scalpel when you see his name next to Addison’s you take the only-slightly-safer option of Derek’s girlfriend. She’s also a lot more convenient, being presently ambling towards you looking tiny in scrubs that swallow her.
“Grey,” you bark.
She looks up, surprised, “Doctor Sloan?”
“You busy?” your tone softens in spite of yourself, but it still comes off gruff, as intended.
She shrugs, “They do keep us busy around here. Nothing I’m not keen to beg off.”
“If you’re feeling lacking in emotional perception and a great deal of apathy I might have a procedure for you to eyeball.”
Meredith Grey is like the younger, female version of you complete with mommy issues, daddy issues, too much alcohol, too much pointless sex and a difficult relationship. She disarms you without trying, makes you feel better. It’s nice to think that someone else views the world through the same haze of indifference and attempted self-destruction. Sure, things might be going ok between her and Derek this week, so maybe she’s smiles for the moment. But you get the feeling that the kind of feelings that weigh someone so small down so much aren’t the kind you can be rescued from, even by a knight in shining armour wannabe like Derek.
“I won’t ask if you don’t tell,” she assures you; then adds, trying to stay on the right side of professional even though you consider it vaguely ridiculous given how entangled your personal lives are, “Doctor Sloan.”
You scoff.
She looks at you sideways, but true to her word, makes no comment.
It’s one of the rare afternoons that you appreciate Seattle Grace’s teaching program. Describing a routine procedure and giving a running commentary on why your own technique is superior gives you a chance to insult some famous plastic surgeons you don’t think very highly of (which always makes you feel better, doubly so if you have an audience) and distracts you from a bout of dangerous introspection about Addison, Derek, Seattle and what the hell you’re doing with your life.
No one particularly appreciates your unique blend of humour and arrogance, but you don’t particularly care for their opinions (pre-conceived and often ill-conceived misconceptions so let them be wrong). To your own credit, you do give credit where credit is due, acknowledging the procedures patented by teachers you admired, doctors you studied under who knew what they were talking about. You’re just not above cutting through some bullshit for the next generation.
Not that Meredith Grey will want a future in plastics. But it’s a teaching hospital and so teach you will, even if it is under threats of legal suits for breech of contract or, more and less seriously at the same time, Addison’s critiques of your lunch plans.
It’s over soon enough and without a pretty little word from your intern, who is quickly becoming one of your favourites, something which you will never be able to tell Derek. Begrudgingly you will acknowledge that it’s your fault, in this instance. You’re letting the water run over your hands when it happens, unexpectedly.
“I made him go,” she confesses suddenly, and here you were thinking you might almost make it out of a scrub room without a heart-to-heart with an intern.
You offer her a displeased sigh in response.
She lifts an eyebrow at you, “Seriously?”
Now that, you admit, is a curious reaction to your utter indifference. Interest piqued, you dry your hands and turn to face her trying not to sound to derisive when you counter with a monotone, “What?”
“I should make some observation about your mother and manners,” she smiles, taking your dismissive attitude in stride, which you do always like about Grey. Not annoyingly persistent, just unaffected. “But that might strike a nerve in both of us.”
“Yeah,” you agree.
She takes that as her cue to elaborate on her earlier statement and you also like that about her; she always takes your hints the way you intend them, “I made him go. That night when Addison called... I made him go.”
You make light, “Dirty Mistresses Club membership benefits?”
She laughs quietly, “No.”
And then she’s sighing, leaning against the sink in the scrub room and staring into the empty theatre. It’s almost a cliché among surgeons, to have deep, meaningful conversations up to your elbows in disinfectant after some major procedure. But this isn’t life or death, just a truth she wants you to understand, “No I made him go because you’re his person.”
You’re silent so she goes on, “You are, for better or worse and whether he likes it or not, the person who understands him the most. And I know things are different now, because all-in-all you weren’t a very good friend to him. But you get him. And sooner or later he’s going to have to realise that. You’re his person.”
You shrug, “Maybe.”
“Well,” she turns her palm to the ceiling as she clasps it in a paper towel, “Whatever. I just thought you should know. You’re not half as bad as people think.”
“It’s a shame you’re taken Grey,” you sigh, “You may be the only person in this hospital who’s figured that out.”
She fixes you with a disapproving stare then, “Well, you take painstaking lengths to conceal it, usually involving a nurse.”
“Jealous Grey?” you tease, shifting gears seamlessly into the ‘arrogant ass’ territory that’s so familiar.
She lifts that eyebrow at you again, and it reminds you of Addison so much you’re torn between indulging that pang of something inside your chest and putting your fist through a wall.
“Hardly,” she retorts fluidly, breaking your preoccupation with a light, “I thought we’d put that issue to bed.”
“Not literally,” you smirk.
“Walked into that one,” she admits, pushing through the door and into the corridor, looking back over her shoulder to add, “Should I take care of the post-op?”
You nod, “He shouldn’t need much. The nurses can do almost everything.”
“I’ll keep an eye on it until he leaves tomorrow,” she offers, disappearing.
You’re paged to the pit, but on the way down you find yourself caught in the elevator with Addison. She smiles at you, her warm and inviting smile that usually, would give you the go ahead for some playful banter, teasing, a joke about OBGYN and a similarly biting slight on your chosen field of medicine. Today though, you’re feeling her absence in your life outside the hospital a little too acutely, especially because you keep overhearing Alex Karev making her laugh. You can’t find it in you to smile back.
She narrows her eyes, “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering, you just reach out and play with the sleeve of her lab coat where it folds around her elbow, “I don’t know.”
It’s a lie, but it’s easier than the truth.
She sighs as the elevator stops, “This is my floor.”
You release her sleeve; let her go.
Then you spend the next fifteen minutes giving a particularly snotty rich woman (who reminds you of Addison’s mother, who nearly always features on your list of reasons why you dodged a bullet there) the best sutures she’ll ever receive (if you do say so yourself) and then fifteen minutes more flat out refusing to do anymore work on her because judging by the quality of the first three jobs, they were done by trained gorillas in wherever the hell kind of jungles gorillas hail from and you don’t want to be sued when it caves in.
It heralds the end of your day so you unceremoniously sign your name (illegibly) on your charts and go in search of a drink, in part because you want to find something to make you forget about Addison and in part because you just need one.
You’re nursing your first when you hear your own order in a familiar voice and then he slumps beside you in an identical pose but with a slightly fuller glass.
“Derek,” you don’t bother to hide the note of surprise in your greeting.
“Hey,” he offers, taking a long gulp of amber liquid and swallowing.
You mirror the gesture.
“One of those days?” he asks, hand curling into a fist beside his glass on the bar.
“You could say that,” you’re ambivalent; nothing about today was particularly bad, it’s just that nothing was particularly good either. “You look worse than me though.”
“It’s,” he waves a hand, non-committal, searching for a way to explain and finally settles on, “Women.”
“Amen,” you raise your tumbler in a toast and he clinks his glass against yours.
“Happily ever after round two not going as planned then?” you say, when you’ve both emptied your glasses and are in the process of having them re-filled.
“She’s frustrating,” he answers, “I’m sure it’ll... you know, it’s just that at some point I want to be let in, I want to be trusted again. I regret it, not telling her about Addison from the start but,” he runs his hand over his face, “God Mark, you have no idea how that timing screwed me over. I was going to tell her, that night, I’d planned exactly what I was going to say. But then Addison showed up here and well, by then, as you might imagine, Meredith was angry.”
“Well,” you shrug, “Can’t blame her.”
“No,” he agrees with you, “But after all this, I leave Addison for her and she still doesn’t... she still shuts me out,” he pauses, “And I don’t think there’s any more I can do, except come here and bitch to my ex-best friend like a girl.”
You smirk at that, “You’ve always been good at bitching like a girl.”
He makes a rude gesture at you and downs another generous mouthful of scotch, “And you’ve always had the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“I’ve got no excuses,” you tell him, “It’s probably best you don’t ask.”
“Addison,” he surmises.
You nod, barely, and add, “That about summarises the situation. I’ll get over it.”
“Yeah,” he echoes your sentiment softly.
You settle into a somehow comfortable silence then, not really needing to fill the silence with conversation about things you’ve already talked about, or worse, the weather.
“Come on,” he says impulsively, throwing down a generous wad of bills on the bar top, “I want to show you something.”
You down the rest of your scotch and echo his gesture, hiding your surprise and agreeing with a small shrug, “Ok.”
And an hour later, you’re admiring the lights of Seattle twinkling in the distance from a property in the middle of nowhere as he stakes out his future house and you slowly work your way through a bottle of his favourite single malt.
“This is my view,” he announces.
You take a breath of the air. It smells like pines and wilderness.
“It’s great,” you say honestly.
“Yeah,” he chuckles a little at your response, “Not really something you appreciate though.”
You shrug, “It’s the kind of place I’d visit, not choose to live. But it is a great view.”
“Better at sunrise,” he says, then flops down on the dewy grass with the bottle.
You sit beside him, “Is this one of your gestures of goodwill?”
He shrugs, “I’m never going to get rid of you completely. May as well grin and bear it and enjoy your uncouth ways of expressing yourself.”
You grab the bottle from his hands and take a swig, “You give as good as I do.”
He falls backwards and lies, looking up at the stars, “It’s so clear out here. I mean, on a cloudless night.”
“Yeah,” you recognise several constellations, “I haven’t seen this many stars in years.”
“You taught me once,” he recalls, “Which one was Orion’s Belt. It must have been a school camping trip in junior high,” he points it out, “And ever since, whenever I’ve been able to see stars, I’ve picked it out.”
“Hope you used it to pick up at some point,” you smile, “I think that’s why I learnt all of those in the first place, to impress girls.”
“Yeah,” he laughs, “I tried that on Addison. Mistake, her knowledge of the subject vastly outstripped my own.”
“As it did on most subjects,” you jibe good-naturedly.
“Too true,” he laments.
You talk for a long time then, pausing to drink every now and then and it reminds you of the conversations you used to have in college, when you climbed up onto the roof of your dorm building and lay there for hours, stomaching cheap liquor and debating the meaning of life. Of course you don’t talk about that now, but you both share stories, your recollections of your extensive shared past. You tease him about his first kiss and he teases you about taking his sister to Prom.
You watch the sky change colour as the time passes, but you never seem to run out of things to say, even avoiding subjects like Addison and marriage. You missed this; you complement each other in many ways, Derek’s always had a romantic philosophical way of viewing the world and you’ve always been more of a scientist; as a kid you had a wild imagination of course, but you were always about hows and whys. Your individual perspectives enrich the other’s.
“How much of this land do you own?” you ask after a lull in the conversation.
“Several acres,” he admits, “After New York, being out here, it was such a change. I decided I liked it the way it was.”
“You know, it’d be great to race the bike through here.”
He sighs, but it’s not as resigned as you’ve come to expect sighs to be, “I haven’t done that in years. Ever since,” he pauses because you interject with, “That time. Back home at your mother's at Christmas.”
“And Addison,” he laughs genuinely at the memory, “Woah boy. She was pissed.”
“Addison never was good with personal emergencies,” you remark.
“You just say that because she was so worked up about the scratch on my cheek that she basically left you for dead.”
“I still called shotgun on the sutures,” you smirk, “Besides that time I came out here, last year? You gave me a matching one.”
“You’re telling me your sutures haven’t improved since medical school?” he teases, “Lord, what are these patients of yours paying for?”
You reach out and slap his arm, “Well, you can barely see mine of course. And it’s a much more recent scar. Still, you should be glad I didn’t let Addison do it. You never want someone that mad to be stitching you up.”
“I suppose I could get a bike again,” he muses, “Since apparently Addison and I have no legal right to interfere in each other’s lives anymore.”
“And the idle threats of divorce are without weight at this point,” you add.
He sighs, but moves on quickly, “I don’t think Meredith would mind. Provided we let her and Cristina join in.”
“Strikes me as that kind of girl too,” you tell him, “She’s not half-bad.”
He turns sideways and looks at you, accusingly, “Does this mean I should be worried?”
“No,” you answer defensively, “And besides I think that ship has sailed, not for want of trying,” you see his reaction in the corner of your eye and add hastily, “A long time ago. Pre-divorce. Casual flirting. You ploughed through my face with wedding rings, she was at a bar nursing her daddy issues over a tequila?”
“Yeah well,” he huffs, “Given our history with women.”
“Have a little faith,” you tell him, “I think she’s pretty much Miss Iron Panties except for you.”
“You’re practically the panties whisperer,” he says dryly, “Chastity belt or no, you seem to find ways.”
“I told you ages ago that there’s no secret,” you complain, “You think I wouldn’t have shared it?”
“Probably not,” he retorts lightly, “You never did tell me how you read that fast as a kid.”
“Practice,” you smirk, “It’s my secret. About books and women.”
He changes the subject, “So, what do you think?”
“Of the land?” you begin, “Great view, lots of it. Of the trailer? Very you Derek, idealistic and impractical and without lasting hot water.”
“I get plenty of mileage out of the hot water,” he counters.
You just look sideways and resist the urge but he follows your train of thought and calls you on it, “Immature.”
You shrug, “I cling to the little vestiges of youth.”
The sun starts to rise then.
“Mom will be so happy,” Derek says quietly, as you watch the sky change colour and the full extent of his view becomes obvious, “That we’re speaking again.”
“I can’t imagine she’d have many favourable things to say about Addison or I,” you admit, ashamed, because Mrs Shepherd wasn’t your mother but she still raised you for the most part, and not to be the kind of person that would sleep with his childhood best friend’s wife. Then again, she probably didn’t expect you to date her two oldest daughters either and if you managed to get through those relationships unscathed in her eyes, surely her affection is fairly resilient.
“No,” he agrees, “But you know mom, always used to say it took two to fight, even when one of the girls clearly started it.”
“She’s proud of you, you know,” you tell him, because he says it in a resigned sort of way that makes you think he might have forgotten.
“Oh I know,” he shrugs it off, “She’s proud of all of us, even you. But mom never looks for the faults in anyone. Besides, I think you’re generally considered the family’s prodigal son by proxy.”
You smile at that, “Your mom Derek, she’s a saint.”
“Yeah,” he nods, “I know. And Nance is always on me about getting you to call too. Said something about you when she was here, how sleeping with you was a rite of passage,” he narrows his eyes, “You both told me you never did.”
You shrug sheepishly, “She didn’t want me to tell you. Besides, with her, the rite of passage was non-specific to me; could’ve been any other sweaty-palmed teenager.”
He groans at the image, “I liked it better when we didn’t talk about you sleeping with my sisters.”
“Sister,” you correct.
“Kathleen?”
“As pure as undriven snow when we broke up, if you favour Clinton’s position on the issue.”
“You and your way with words,” he stands and brushes himself off, “Come on, I’ll drive you into the hospital, we can stop on the way for a change of clothes.”
You pick up the empty bottle from where it lies beside you, “Thanks.”
He claps you on the shoulder and you both turn into the sunrise, shielding your eyes from the light.
Chapter 12: City Lights On A Cold Night.