All Along The Watchtower - Part 6A
Title: All Along The Watchtower
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
I know I say it every time, but it can't be said enough. Thank you to everybody who takes the time to leave feedback. I really appreciate it :)
All Along The Watchtower - Part 6A
The windshield wipers of the hulking Porsche Cayenne skimmed water off the windshield at a pace that made the whole car sway like it sat in the grips of an endless earthquake. Meredith pressed down on the brake, slowing the car's forward momentum to a snail's pace. The engine hummed.
The front left tire rolled over the bump. Meredith tensed as she felt the car rise. The car hit a pinnacle and dipped a centimeter, but then the front right tire hit the bump, too, and the car rose again. Both tires rolled back onto flat pavement with a thump that made the car jiggle. She clenched the steering wheel.
Speed bumps were, quite possibly, the worst thing the modern road could throw at a car's suspension, and whoever had designed the kiss-and-ride lane and the subsequent hourly parking lots at Seattle Grace had been a little bit too in love with them. Bumps rose out of the ground every fifteen to twenty feet, advertised by large yellow signs that said bump in screaming capital letters. A safety measure, no doubt, to prevent maniacs from speeding through the parking lot so close to the hospital entrance where lots of crippled people wandered. Except she wasn't a maniac, and she had her husband in the car with her. Speed bumps were like a big up yours to people in pain. Another twist of an already sharp knife.
Through some trial and error, she'd discovered that if she approached each bump at a diagonal and let each of the SUV's tires peak individually, the ride remained smooth. Well, smoother. Well, at least, not jarring to the point of making her want to vomit. By the time she'd rolled Derek's ridiculous car to a stop by the hospital entrance at the designated curb for quick pickups and drop-offs, she'd decided she'd gotten the hang of it.
Rear left. Rear right. Thump. Accelerator down until the next one.
She breathed and straightened out the vehicle. Next bump. Ten feet ahead. She tilted the wheel to the right and started the agonizing process all over again.
Water splashed against the windshield, blotting out the gray in a giant blur. The wipers slashed at the rain, but the precipitation came down so hard that they didn't make much of a dent. She saw the road and then nothing but splatter in even intervals the length of an eye blink, which gave the world a shuttered feeling, and made the car seem cave-like and claustrophobic.
“Mere, I think I could walk home faster than this,” Derek said.
“Sorry,” she said as they went into the next bump. Brake. Crawl the car up the bump. Thump. “Sorry, I just didn't want to--” Thump. “It doesn't hurt when I go over these?”
“It does a little,” he admitted. The words were stretched. Not quite slurred, but not quite put together, either. “I'll be fine as long as you don't stop on a dime at every light, sign, and stopped car. Really.”
She spared him a glance before returning her eyes to the road and the pouring buckets of rain.
He sat in the seat beside her, his right hand gripping the handle on the ceiling over the window loosely to keep himself stable. His wet, messy hair stuck out in all directions. Dark blotches covered his jeans where rain drops had soaked into the denim. His cross-trainers squeaked on the rubber floor mat as he shifted, and his ratty white t-shirt had become see-through in places from all the water, not that the threadbare rag needed much help in that regard.
She shivered, sure she didn't look much better. Her hair hung around her head in thick strings, and chilly water made her shirt stick to the small of her back. Her shoe soles slipped on the brake and the accelerator, making horrendous shrieks over every speed bump.
He'd waited for her under the awning, dozing in the wheelchair she'd used to liberate him, but he'd come alive as the familiar purr of the Cayenne's big engine had hit his eardrums. She'd bitten her lip as she'd watched him unfold and stand. He'd been slow and ungraceful and more than a bit uncoordinated as he'd left the wheelchair behind, but he'd managed, and she'd forced herself to sit still and not help. He'd walked into the rain, staring at the car like he had no sense of the universe other than his mode of escape from it.
Car. Car. Get to the car. Must get. To the car.
He'd opened the door, and then he'd tried to get into the vehicle. He'd tried. But the Cayenne, a typical SUV, sat high off the ground, and Derek, as much as he'd improved over the last week, had not healed enough for a solo climbing expedition. His face had crumpled with discomfort, and he'd made a small noise unidentifiable as pain or frustration or simple exertion. He hadn't been able to leverage himself into the seat, and so he'd stood there, dripping in the torrential rain. He'd given her a shaky, pleading smile that spoke more of embarrassment and desperation than of happiness or hope.
I'd like to go home, now, please, he'd said.
“I don't stop on dimes,” she said.
He stared out the window. “Yes, you do.”
“I don't stop on dimes, pennies, nickels, or any form of change!”
“You kind of stop on dimes, Meredith,” he said. “You drive like a narcoleptic. Start, stop. Start, stop.”
She eased them over the next speed bump despite his assurances. Thump. She couldn't bring herself to willfully inflict pain, no matter how much he tried to pass it off as negligible. “I do not,” she said as the land boat crested. Thump.
“Do, too.”
“Do not! Well, there was that one time with the kamikaze squirrel, but you can't possibly count that.”
“Do, too,” he said. “And I'm not counting squirrel avoidance maneuvers.”
“Derek, I do not!” she snapped.
A red smear of brake lights bloomed like a glowing flower in front of her, and she slammed her foot down on the brake pedal without thinking. “Crap!” she said. The tires screeched, and her body jerked against the seat belt, cutting her breaths short. In the corner of her eye, she saw Derek's left hand slam against the dashboard. He grunted, a deep, weary sound of pain that made her heart skitter.
A horn behind her blared. Her wet hair fell in a curtain around her face. Licking her lips, she tasted bile, and she couldn't get herself to move for several seconds. He struggled against his seat belt. The belt carved a deep ravine into his shirt, and it took him several wincing pants to fix himself so that he rested against the seat and not the belt.
Nauseating guilt churned in her stomach. She reached across to help him, but he'd already done most of the work. Her fingertips brushed his shoulder. Through his soft shirt, he trembled. He leaned his head back against the seat cushion, breathing noisily, staring at the rainy world through half-closed eyelids.
“I'm so sorry,” she said, but the words croaked and quashed, and she wasn't sure she'd managed understandable syllables. Her heart thumped, and she couldn't stop herself from touching him. Touching his arm. His wet leg. Running her fingers through the hair over his ear. “Derek, I'm so sorry,” she said. Tears blurred her vision. “Are you okay?”
He didn't speak. The car behind them honked. She grabbed the cushion by his head and twisted around. “Go to hell!” she shrieked and flipped them off, and then she wilted. She'd yelled. Right in his ear. That probably didn't help either.
She turned forward again, panting. “Are you okay? Please, are you okay?” she said. They weren't even out of the parking lot, and she'd already nearly killed him. She wiped her face, clawing tears away, and then clutched the steering wheel. The leather squeaked and warped as she twisted her fingers. She hated this freaking car. She hated speed bumps, and rain, and stop signs, and people, and guns, and everything else. “I'm so sorry, Derek. I'm sorry.”
“I'm okay,” he said as he caught his breath, but he sounded odd. Sounded... bad.
“I'm sorry.”
He blinked. “You know, that was worth it,” he said. His syllables rattled in his chest and sounded more than a bit wheezy, but then he looked at her with a shit-eating grin. “That was worth the pain. The timing couldn't have been more perfect.” By the end of the sentence, he'd recovered his voice.
Her clenching grip against the steering wheel loosened, and her distress melted when she saw his smile. A glassy but bright haze clouded his eyes, and no suffering remained in the lines of his face. His skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes. His irises didn't sparkle like they usually did. In fact, they seemed black and opaque in the gray light, but he was drugged, and a bit not all there. The crinkle was enough. A real smile. A really real smile. She hadn't seen one of those in a while.
Her lip quivered, and she couldn't help but offer a sheepish grin in return. “My amazing husband is right. I stop on dimes. Happy?”
His eyelids dipped. “Hmm,” he rumbled, barely audible over the thunderous rainstorm. He wiped his face with his hands and sighed. His body relaxed. The crinkles disappeared, but his lips spread in a wide, close-mouthed, upward curve that spoke of quiet contentment.
“Do you want a sticker that says 'My name is Derek Shepherd, and I'm right'?”
“That's Chief Shepherd, to you,” he said.
She snorted. “Hah. Hah.”
He rolled his head against the seat cushion until his left ear met leather, and he stopped. His gaze caught her. The content grin on his face bled into something sloppy, and he winked. “I can think of other things I want more than a sticker.”
You know what says thank you like nothing else?
She stared at him, caught like a fly in the sticky trap of his stare. She leaned across the hand rest. Something sharp jabbed her ribs, but she didn't care. She forgot he wasn't well, and the last remnants of her earlier stress dissolved.
“Like this?” she whispered, and she kissed him.
Until her lips brushed his, her convenient amnesia lingered. Strands of his wet hair spilled over his forehead and tickled her skin as she pressed against him. He tasted like Crest toothpaste, and the familiar scent of his aftershave wafted against the back of her throat. Perfect. But memory drifted back into place when he didn't respond like he used to, with a moan or with his fingers tearing through her hair. They touched, but it felt chaste, more friendly than anything else.
His libido had taken a massive hit with his injuries. He joked now and then, but he didn't seem to want much more than that, and she imagined his bravado concerning sex was more about keeping some level of normalcy between them than anything else.
Kissing had become something for touch. Something for closeness. Something to remind them they were alive and together and breathing and someday -- but not now -- okay.
She sighed against his skin and pressed her forehead into his. The space between them rustled as she stroked his cheek. He would be all right. Eventually. She would be thrilled the day he let her know he wanted something more. Until then, though, she wouldn't be disappointed, and she wouldn't push him. Even if he wasn't really interested, they both needed him to keep joking. And they both needed her to forget from time to time.
“Here's to being right,” he said, his voice soft and sated, as she pulled away.
The car behind them honked again, and she jerked, startled out of the space where only he and she existed. She glanced in the rear view mirror and saw through the sheets of rain that the car behind her had a stack of about fifteen pairs of headlights bearing down behind it. Fifteen cars containing angry, antsy people who probably wanted to be home just as much as Derek did. Just as much as she did.
She pressed the accelerator. “Is this why you always drive?” she said as she pulled up to a four-way stop, the final hurdle before parking lot became open road. Cars churned through the intersection at a glacial pace. She slowed as the car in front of her halted, careful to let the Cayenne slide to a stop instead of screech to one this time. “Because I'm horrible at it, and you didn't want to hurt my feelings or something? Like with the snoring thing?”
“You said you didn't like it,” he said.
“What?”
“Driving. You said you didn't like driving.”
When on earth?
“Derek, that was...” She stretched her memory and arrived at a dark night, only a week or two into their tryst. They'd gone out to eat. She'd been in a wretched mood, but he hadn't known the area at all yet, and so she'd offered to drive. They hadn't made their reservation on time because they'd gotten stuck in traffic. Instead of waiting an hour for a table, they'd gone into some dive next door and had burnt food and crappy service. “That was years ago. The whole freeway was gridlocked. And I was having a really cramp-y, bloat-y period that sucked.”
She'd barely known him then, and he'd barely known her. Their one lousy date. Well, not lousy. Just not great. The outing had been one of the few times in their history where she'd managed to feel like crap around him without him noticing at least on some level.
She navigated through the intersection and out onto the street. Water sprayed behind the Cayenne in a fan as she accelerated. Exhilaration tugged at her heart. Free of the parking lot. Two blocks, and then the freeway. Five exits, and then home. He tapped his fingers by the door handle in a steady, nervous thrum, and he shifted in his seat.
“You said you didn't like driving, so I drive,” he said as she blew through a probably-should-have-stopped yellow light that shifted red just as her rear tires entered the intersection.
“So, you don't think I'm a bad driver then?” she said. She took the exit onto the highway, forcing herself not to push the SUV too fast. The car lurched anyway, and her body swayed against the door. Stupid, top-heavy SUVs.
“What's a little whiplash between lovers?”
“You're totally avoiding the question,” she said.
“What question?”
She gritted her teeth. “Am I a bad driver, or aren't I?” she said. She cut onto the highway, narrowly avoiding the little Geo chugging along in the middle lane as she pulled in front and then swung into the fast lane. The Geo honked, and she snarled.
He chuckled, the sound of it soft and light and buried by the pounding rain. The laugh ended in a wince and a grunt, and he thumped his head against the window, but he smiled anyway.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing, Mere,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
“Sure,” she said.
The hum of the engine, the roar of the tires as they tore over the concrete pavement, and the heavy downpour drowned everything else out. Five exits left. Four exits. Three. Signs blurred past. Almost home. Almost.
Red. She blinked.
A solid wall of fuzzy red brake lights carpeted the space in front of her, and she slowed the car to a crawl, and then a full stop. Rain pounded on the roof. Horns honked. Nobody moved.
“Damn it,” she said as she pulled up the parking brake and let her feet off the pedals. “Damn it, what is this crap?”
He sighed. “Must be an accident up ahead, I guess.”
“Or just too many idiots,” she said, glaring at the pile of unmoving cars. “This is Seattle. Did you know we made the top ten list for the most congested cities in the country? I mean, when you think of traffic, do you think Seattle? No, you think Los Angeles. And New York. How did Seattle make that list? It's--”
Movement caught the corner of her eye. She turned. Derek's eyes had closed, and he'd leaned back against the headrest at an angle that couldn't have been comfortable. His crooked nose jutted toward the ceiling, and his Adam's apple poked against the skin of his throat. No longer supported by conscious thought, his mouth surrendered to gravity and fell open, revealing a pearly line of teeth. Deep, even breaths made his chest rise and fall. With his windpipe at such a weird angle, his breaths morphed over the moments into grating, heavy snores.
“Sorry,” she whispered, and she ceased her babble.
With no immediate prospect of home, adrenaline must have abandoned him.
She turned off the engine, and the windshield wipers halted at the end of their last swipe. No longer held at bay, rain streamed down over the windshield, and the outside world blotted away behind the flowing curtain. The car stopped shaking, and even with the torrential rain, the cabin would have seemed quiet in the absence of the constant swish, swish, swish, were it not for the raucous noises emanating from Derek.
Derek's right hand rested at the door handle, fingers curled around the lever. His left hand splayed against his thigh. His knees spread in a casual slouch, and he seemed... His lip twitched. He sucked in a whooping breath. The snores creaked to a halt. He breathed twice, soft and almost silent. Then the snoring resumed as his eyes began to pace under his eyelids. He dreamed. But she saw no sign of stress or nightmare.
He seemed at peace, if not peaceful.
Ever since Cristina had fixed the dosages on his pain relievers, he'd been different. Quiet. He'd slept a lot. A whole lot. He'd rarely stayed awake for more than an hour at a time. And when he'd been awake, he'd seemed disoriented and clumsy and reticent. He had a lot of trouble following conversations, and so he tended to space and let the world slide by without his input until he drifted off again. He'd said goodbye to his sisters yesterday, and it seemed like he hadn't quite understood what was going on when so many people crashed into his room for a quick round of noisy hugs all at once. Though, admittedly, she'd been a bit flummoxed by the whole thing, too, particularly when they'd pulled her into the fray and made a giant Meredith and sister-in-law sandwich.
She touched Derek's face, watching the supple trail left by her thumb on his skin. “Mmm,” he purred and leaned against her palm. “More bricks.” His head followed her touch, and his chin tipped into his shoulder, facing her. The snoring stopped, and thick, even breathing resumed. His dark eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks as his eyes moved underneath them.
Rain splashed against the windows and slammed into the roof. Cars didn't move. She thought about turning the radio on to find some traffic information, but she didn't want to wake him, and so she contented herself with ignorance and watched Derek sleep.
The nurse had dragged him awake at 6AM like always, but after he'd finished coughing, the morning had continued like an endurance test. He hadn't gone back to sleep to recover. Instead, he'd forced himself out of bed. She'd sat on the toilet seat, just in case, while he'd showered unassisted for the first time. He'd wrangled his clothes into submission by himself, too, and he'd shaved and brushed his teeth and flossed.
He hadn't needed her once, though the entire grooming operation had taken, perhaps, an hour and a half with frequent breaks. She'd read a book while he did things, well, pretended to read a book and mostly just read the same sentence over and over to try and keep her eyes somewhere not staring at him. She'd made a very big point of not cheering him on or smiling at him or making him feel self-conscious about his difficulties while he stumbled through things that used to be easy. She'd aimed for behaving like oblivious company and not like supervision. He seemed to appreciate it, both her vicinity and, at the same time, her distance.
He moved like a turtle. His muscles had kidnapped his flexibility and wouldn't let him do a lot of things. Anything more strenuous than a slow walk for about ten minutes left him gasping for breath. Even small interruptions in his stability knocked him off balance, and many of the movements that gave him his fluid, graceful, athletic appearance when he was well caused him harrowing pain.
But even then, even with all that sickness still piled up, he'd gotten so much better.
A siren wailed in the distance, and she turned. The leather seat made a squirching sound as her thigh shifted. Red lights flashed, a sparkling mess of color in the gray and the endless rain, but she couldn't see anything else through the sheets of water. The ambulance barreled down the left shoulder of the highway, and when it passed, the Cayenne swayed on its wheels. The pitch of the siren dropped as it left them behind.
Derek snuffled, and he flinched. His fingers clenched, and he made a thick sound of surprise deep in his throat. His eyelids stopped at half-mast, and he panted.
“Just a siren,” she whispered and stroked his hair. “Go back to sleep.”
His eyelids drifted shut, and his muscles relaxed. His panting slowed and stretched and became deep breaths.
Her watch beeped, and he flopped into half-awake again with a twitch that ran from his fingers to his toes. “Mmm,” he moaned at the second interruption.
She glanced at her watch. 10AM. She'd set the alarm to remind herself to give him his pills. They were supposed to be at home right now. She was supposed to be helping him slide into his own bed to rest in his own space. Except they were stuck in a car in the middle of a freeway, not moving, and not able to move for who knew how long.
She'd stuffed all his pill bottles into a plastic grocery store bag in the back seat. She twisted against her seat. She saw the bag behind her seat back in the dark pit formed by the floor and the rear seat. She saw it, but her arm didn't reach. She unclasped her seat belt and contorted until her belly ached and her shoulder sockets screamed. Her fingers brushed the plastic. She squiggled her hand, but she couldn't get a grip. She panted and tried one more time before she gave up.
“Crap,” she said. Not that it would matter if she could reach his pills, she realized. They were big pills. He couldn't take them dry. “Don't move,” she said to him.
He stared blankly. “What?”
“I'm getting out of the car. I'll be right back. Don't move, okay?”
He didn't quite seem to get it, but he didn't move, either. He stared, dark, glazed eyes half open, his hand dangling limply over gearshift and the parking brake. She took a breath, preparing to get soaked again, and then plunged into the cold, wet curtain.
She opened the rear driver side door and dove for the bag. As soon as her fingers found the plastic handles, she yanked, and she used the momentum to dash for the trunk where Derek usually kept water for emergencies. The trunk popped open as she fiddled with the key chain. She wiped rain from her face and blinked. An unopened twenty-four pack of spring water sat behind a first aid kit, an emergency toolbox, and some other junk. Good. She jammed her hand nails first into the unmarred plastic shrink wrap and tore it away. Her wet fingers slipped, but she managed to grab hold of the neck of a water bottle, and she pulled it free from the others. She tossed the bottle in the bag with his pills, slammed the trunk shut, and dashed back to the front driver side door. Her feet slurched and splorked in big puddles of water, sending spray everywhere. Shocking cold seeped into her socks and shoes.
She lunged back into the car and shut the door behind her as she panted. Water dripped into her eyes. Her hair plastered to her head. She pulled the water bottle from the bag, unscrewed the cap, and stuck it in the cup holder. Then she sorted his pill bottles. Antibiotics. Oxycontin. 1 every 12 hours as needed. Percocet. 1-2 every 4 hours as needed. A veritable drugstore sat in her lap. She grabbed the Percocet bottle, pushed down the cap and turned. She removed a pill -- he only took one unless it got bad - and held it out for him. A tiny puddle of white liquid spread across her palm as the pill mixed with rain.
“Here,” she said, jabbing it at him. “It's 10AM. I'm really sorry, Derek. I thought we'd be at home by now.”
At first she thought he might not be sentient enough to take it, but then he shifted. He grabbed the pill and stared.
“Water in the cup holder,” she clarified when he didn't move.
“Oh,” he said.
He took the water bottle, popped the pill into his mouth, and tipped his head back to swallow. He gurgled and swallowed and swallowed again, taking a few more sips. Water dripped out of the sides of his mouth. He took a hearty gulp, and then he put the bottle back in the cup holder. He didn't wipe his chin or the corners of his mouth. He dripped instead.
“Thank you,” he said, and over the course of several minutes, he shut down.
Like a lumbering blob, he shifted into the window and pasted his cheek against the glass. His hands hung limply and at odd angles. His eyelids dropped but didn't close, and he stared at the sheet of water on the glass as his breaths lengthened. Fog chased the glass from his lips, renewing with every exhale.
Car doors thumped, and somebody ran past the window, a blur. “What the fuck is going on? I need to get home,” yelled a distant, feminine voice. Meredith sighed. Good question.
Now that he was awake, she jammed the key in the ignition and gave it a quarter turn to let the radio have some power. She fiddled with the radio dial, but the tuner found nothing for her but hissing static and a mess of half-syllables and stutters of silence between. The half-syllables and stutters may have been words, sentences, and sounds with meaning, but the rain stripped the jabbering mess of it and made it nonsense in a cloud of bad reception. Great. She turned the car all the way off again.
She sighed. Derek communed with the window, silent, unmoving, as though he were fascinated with the way reality hazed beyond the curtain of water. The only sign she could identify that he was actually conscious was that he blinked. Every once in a while.
She reached over his leg and grabbed her purse from the floor by his feet. The strap had gotten wrapped around his ankle, and he sat, passive, while she untangled it. She stuffed the plastic bag with his pills into the depths with her wallet, and then put the purse back on the floor by the ball of his left ankle. He didn't budge or comment.
“Derek,” she said, but he didn't move. “Derek?”
It wasn't until she touched his shoulder that she roused him from his space out session. His deltoid muscle tensed at the unexpected contact, which drove home how out to lunch he was, that she could touch him and he didn't recognize her by the feel of her hand, or even before her skin had brushed against him. He'd always seemed to have sort of a sixth sense about her. But, no, this time, it took him several seconds of firm touch before he relaxed.
“Hmm?” He sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“Where do you go when you space out like that?”
He frowned. “I'm sorry,” he said. “This stuff just makes me feel so out of it.” He blinked like his eyelids had been drenched in tar, and he was trying to overcome it. Then he placed his palms against his face and breathed once, twice, again. When he looked up, he seemed a little more in touch with reality, but still not wide awake. Dazed almost. He had a struck stupid quality to his gaze and a frail air to his presence.
“You don't have to apologize,” she said. “I don't expect you to be the world's greatest conversationalist right now.”
“I feel like an amnesiac guppy or something.”
“Yeah, well, I think I like amnesiac guppy way more than growly bear.”
He smiled, but combined with the distant look in his gaze, his mirth seemed vague and indistinct. “Oh?” he said. “Are you planning to take advantage?”
“Well, you have established that taking advantage is my modus operandi or whatever.”
“Oh, yes.”
He blinked, and she watched his awareness waver. His gaze became glassy and then focused as he found her again in the mire. Odd. It felt so odd, seeing him like this. Derek Shepherd was supposed to be with it. Put together. Cocky. He hadn't been any of those in days.
“Seriously, where do you go?” she said.
“Where do I go when?”
“When you space out,” she said. “Where do you go?”
He shrugged. “Dunno,” he said, the word drawling. “Some place with you, usually.”
“Like what?”
He turned to the window, and she lost him to the glitter of the water. The rain slowed, and the sheet of water became identifiable, meandering streams. He stared. His breaths spaced, and he leaned back against the seat, eyes hooded. He'd been awake for hours that morning, and crashing into sleep earlier seemed to have devastated his capacity for human interaction.
She touched his shoulder. Her palm stuck to his wet sleeve, and when she tried to stroke him, her hand skipped. She slid her hand underneath instead, and rested against warm skin. “Hey,” she said, and she waited until he looked at her. Six seconds. Maybe seven. “Why don't you push the seat back and sleep? It looks like we're going to be here for eternity.”
“I feel better sitting.”
“Is your back still bothering you?”
“A little.”
Leaning against the window the way he was gave her space to slip her hand behind his shoulder blades. She rubbed him, frowning when she felt tense muscles and a peppering of knots under his skin. Sitting in this cramped car for hours wouldn't help him at all.
“Like really a little, or are you being stubborn again?” she said. “You can take another Percocet.”
He sighed. “Really a little, Meredith.”
His body swayed with her touch. She pushed into a knot with her knuckles. He grabbed for the door and made a noise that made her think of pain, but he didn't tell her to stop. He leaned, and she reached lower. Tense muscle fibers rippled under his skin. She chased the curve of his spine to his waistband.
Two more sets of discordant sirens chased down the shoulder as a mini-caravan of ambulances thundered past. Derek flinched at the noise, and his breath caught as the Cayenne swayed in their buffeting wakes.
“Jeez, I wonder what's going on,” she said. The rain had slowed a little, but she still couldn't see more than a few feet. She splayed her hands against him and pushed with all five fingers at once, eliciting a long, low rumble that vibrated against her palm. His muscles relaxed.
“Mmm. No pagers. Can't be that bad,” he said.
She stared at him, but he seemed oblivious. Glazed. Somewhere between half-awake and dreaming, somehow, with his eyes open. She'd taken the two weeks of uncategorized leave the HR department had offered everyone involved in the shootings, and he'd filed for short term disability. Her, the hospital would maybe bother, but him?
They knew full well he wouldn't be performing surgeries, whether it was an emergency or not, for at least another month, maybe two. Maybe more, depending on how fast he recovered once he got home. Derek was healthy, but he wasn't the fountain of youth, either, and it could take some time for him to feel normal again. She had no idea how he paced his recoveries because he'd never had one before. He'd never even been sick. Not even a freaking cold.
“Derek, they're not going to page us today, even if it is bad.”
“Oh,” he said. He blinked. “Right.” He swallowed, stared at the window, and added a softer, whispered, “Right.”
“You really are out of it, aren't you?”
“Really am,” he said. He leaned back, pausing for her to remove her hand before he squashed her, and settled against the seat. He turned to face her. “It's making this waiting a little easier, at least.”
“How?”
“If I stop paying careful attention for more than a nanosecond, I'm off in space somewhere. It feels like my brain is gushing behind my eyeballs.”
“But it doesn't hurt, right? Cristina fixed your pain?”
“Mostly.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Only mostly?”
He stared. “Mostly what?”
“Mostly, it doesn't hurt?”
He shrugged. “Nothing's going to get it all, Meredith, not unless you knock me out. Which this is very nearly doing. I'm okay right now.”
She sighed. She knew that. She did. Nothing short of unconsciousness would take everything away. Nothing. Persistent pain sucked that way. But that knowledge didn't help; it just made her hurt more.
She wanted him to be okay. The idea that he wasn't okay, that he still had discomfort, even after a week, even doped to the point of stupidity, bothered her. She wanted to take it away for him, and there was nothing she could do about it whatsoever. She'd never felt so freaking helpless in her life. Not even after her liver surgery when he'd had to carry her to the bathroom because some mornings it had hurt too much to walk.
She twisted her hands against the steering wheel and stared. The wall of brake lights had long since disappeared as more and more people gave up on ever moving off the freeway and turned their cars off. She'd been an idiot. The universe had proven itself to hate her on more than one occasion, and he'd gotten sucked along for the vengeful ride because of his vicinity to her.
“I'm really sorry, Derek,” she said. “I should have thought to check traffic reports before we left. I'm sorry we're stuck in this stupid car. I know you want to go home.”
She wanted to go home.
He shifted. “Mmm. S'ok, Mere,” he slurred, her internal ranting having been just long enough to let him drift again, apparently. “Just relieved to be out of there.”
“I know,” she said. “But now you're stuck in a car. I nearly killed you in the parking lot, and now you're stuck. It's all my fault.”
He leaned across the parking brake and the hand rest. His body shifted, stuttering as he found his balance. He breathed. Close to her ear. Hot air tickled her skin. And then he touched her, stroked her neck. “S'my fault. I drove this car to work last week. I think. Or...” His words drifted into silence, and he nosed her cheek. Clumsy, but so warm and alive and there. She refused to laugh at his nonsensical reasoning or his coordination, though both were atrocious. He had good intentions.
She turned and found his eyes, dull and opaque, inches from hers. A lazy smile spread across his face, and he scrunched his crow's feet. “I put this shirt on, y'know. I'm better.”
She laughed, unable to stop herself from petting the soft fabric along his clavicle. The thin material had dried, and it rustled against her skin. No design spread across the front. Grease stains and other black streaks marred its age-worn surface. He wore it from time to time when he did housework or stuff with the lawn or things with their cars. She'd watched him change his own oil one day, and he'd come out from underneath the car, covered in new smears.
Why don't you just pay somebody at Jiffy Lube to do that or whatever?
He'd wiped his hands on a grease towel and smiled. Well, this is a great excuse to take a shower, you know.
I'm not dirty, she'd said.
He'd touched his dirty index finger to her nose, leaving a dark smudge. How about now?
He'd waggled his eyebrows at her, she'd laughed, and then he'd chased her into the bathroom as she shrieked and giggled.
She had no idea what had possessed him to pick that shirt to wear, of all the shirts she'd packed for him. Actually, she had no idea what had possessed her to pack it, either. It must have gotten stuck with his normal daily wear t-shirts in the laundry somehow. But he was, indeed, correct. He'd put on his shirt by himself, and that sort of made the rest of the stuff swirling in her head seem a little less bad.
She grabbed a tent of the fabric and pulled him close, mashing her lips against his.
“I'm really glad you're feeling a little better,” she said against his skin. “I'm so glad. Even if we're stuck in a car when we could be at home, and it's my fault.”
He blinked. The sky burst, and a torrent of new rain splattered against the window over what had slackened momentarily into drizzle. The wall of noise evened into a steady pounding. He breathed against her body, soft and searching. “How are you mine?” he said.
“Well, you asked pretty nicely, I thought,” she whispered in his ear.
I'm not going to get down on one knee. I'm not going to ask a question. I love you, Meredith Grey, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
“Didn't ask,” he said.
“Told me your intentions in an irresistible way,” she amended.
He sighed. “I proposed in the elevator.”
“Yeah.”
“I forgot we were going to have sex there. I fell asleep.”
She stroked his face. He'd been dressed and ready to go, and she'd wheeled him into the elevator to go home, expecting him, for some reason, despite his stupor, to make a dirty comment about wheelchair sex, but he hadn't. His face had fallen forward. He'd trusted her to take him home, and he'd slept, recuperating resources for the final surge of his escape. She'd reached over his shoulder and rubbed him, and then guided him into the fresh, wet air to freedom.
“It's okay,” she said. “I'll take you up on your rain check offer later.”
“What rain check offer?”
“Something you said a while ago. Don't worry about it.”
His eyelids dipped. “Okay,” he said. He smiled again, and then he let himself drop back against the seat with a sigh. The leather squeaked. He sat, hands resting on his knees, his body spent and relaxed and his brain not worrying about things he couldn't remember, at least, not worrying that she could tell.
She sighed when she realized this was the most he'd talked to her in days. Liberated from his prison, experiencing true privacy with her for the first time in over a week, he seemed a bit more inclined to fight through his impairments and speak. She rubbed his thigh, wondering if it was an embarrassment thing. Like maybe he didn't mind as much being a bit out of sorts with her, but he hated looking foolish in front other people, particularly coworkers. Or maybe he felt better, and that was the bottom line. When Derek felt yucky, he didn't talk. He bottled things up inside until he burst. He'd never been sick before, but he did have his darker moods, full of grief, guilt, anger, or depression, and she knew at least that much about him. Yucky meant silent.
A smile tugged at her lips as she watched him stare blankly at the windshield. “You know,” she said. “This is prime real estate for silly discussions.”
“Like what?”
“Worst drunk dial. Loss of virginity. First experience with law enforcement.” She thought for a moment. Two guys shot my dad for his watch. She amended quickly, “Well, first time as a suspect.” She shrugged. “You know, things like that.”
“First experience?” he said. He looked at her with amorphous glee. “You've had more than one?”
“Well, yes, but I'm not stoned,” she said. “You're the one who's supposed to babble. Not me.”
He snorted. “All the drugs in the world couldn't make me babble as much as you. You're the Queen of Babblonia. Your subjects worship your skill.”
“Hah. Hah,” she said. “I don't know, you're getting pretty chatty. If you want another sticker, you're going to have to work a bit harder to prove yourself.”
But I like to talk with you, said his gaze, and she melted, only to laugh when he drew his index finger and thumb across his lips in the clumsy pantomime of pulling a zipper. He snickered, but his resolution didn't last more than twenty seconds.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
I know I say it every time, but it can't be said enough. Thank you to everybody who takes the time to leave feedback. I really appreciate it :)
All Along The Watchtower - Part 6A
The windshield wipers of the hulking Porsche Cayenne skimmed water off the windshield at a pace that made the whole car sway like it sat in the grips of an endless earthquake. Meredith pressed down on the brake, slowing the car's forward momentum to a snail's pace. The engine hummed.
The front left tire rolled over the bump. Meredith tensed as she felt the car rise. The car hit a pinnacle and dipped a centimeter, but then the front right tire hit the bump, too, and the car rose again. Both tires rolled back onto flat pavement with a thump that made the car jiggle. She clenched the steering wheel.
Speed bumps were, quite possibly, the worst thing the modern road could throw at a car's suspension, and whoever had designed the kiss-and-ride lane and the subsequent hourly parking lots at Seattle Grace had been a little bit too in love with them. Bumps rose out of the ground every fifteen to twenty feet, advertised by large yellow signs that said bump in screaming capital letters. A safety measure, no doubt, to prevent maniacs from speeding through the parking lot so close to the hospital entrance where lots of crippled people wandered. Except she wasn't a maniac, and she had her husband in the car with her. Speed bumps were like a big up yours to people in pain. Another twist of an already sharp knife.
Through some trial and error, she'd discovered that if she approached each bump at a diagonal and let each of the SUV's tires peak individually, the ride remained smooth. Well, smoother. Well, at least, not jarring to the point of making her want to vomit. By the time she'd rolled Derek's ridiculous car to a stop by the hospital entrance at the designated curb for quick pickups and drop-offs, she'd decided she'd gotten the hang of it.
Rear left. Rear right. Thump. Accelerator down until the next one.
She breathed and straightened out the vehicle. Next bump. Ten feet ahead. She tilted the wheel to the right and started the agonizing process all over again.
Water splashed against the windshield, blotting out the gray in a giant blur. The wipers slashed at the rain, but the precipitation came down so hard that they didn't make much of a dent. She saw the road and then nothing but splatter in even intervals the length of an eye blink, which gave the world a shuttered feeling, and made the car seem cave-like and claustrophobic.
“Mere, I think I could walk home faster than this,” Derek said.
“Sorry,” she said as they went into the next bump. Brake. Crawl the car up the bump. Thump. “Sorry, I just didn't want to--” Thump. “It doesn't hurt when I go over these?”
“It does a little,” he admitted. The words were stretched. Not quite slurred, but not quite put together, either. “I'll be fine as long as you don't stop on a dime at every light, sign, and stopped car. Really.”
She spared him a glance before returning her eyes to the road and the pouring buckets of rain.
He sat in the seat beside her, his right hand gripping the handle on the ceiling over the window loosely to keep himself stable. His wet, messy hair stuck out in all directions. Dark blotches covered his jeans where rain drops had soaked into the denim. His cross-trainers squeaked on the rubber floor mat as he shifted, and his ratty white t-shirt had become see-through in places from all the water, not that the threadbare rag needed much help in that regard.
She shivered, sure she didn't look much better. Her hair hung around her head in thick strings, and chilly water made her shirt stick to the small of her back. Her shoe soles slipped on the brake and the accelerator, making horrendous shrieks over every speed bump.
He'd waited for her under the awning, dozing in the wheelchair she'd used to liberate him, but he'd come alive as the familiar purr of the Cayenne's big engine had hit his eardrums. She'd bitten her lip as she'd watched him unfold and stand. He'd been slow and ungraceful and more than a bit uncoordinated as he'd left the wheelchair behind, but he'd managed, and she'd forced herself to sit still and not help. He'd walked into the rain, staring at the car like he had no sense of the universe other than his mode of escape from it.
Car. Car. Get to the car. Must get. To the car.
He'd opened the door, and then he'd tried to get into the vehicle. He'd tried. But the Cayenne, a typical SUV, sat high off the ground, and Derek, as much as he'd improved over the last week, had not healed enough for a solo climbing expedition. His face had crumpled with discomfort, and he'd made a small noise unidentifiable as pain or frustration or simple exertion. He hadn't been able to leverage himself into the seat, and so he'd stood there, dripping in the torrential rain. He'd given her a shaky, pleading smile that spoke more of embarrassment and desperation than of happiness or hope.
I'd like to go home, now, please, he'd said.
“I don't stop on dimes,” she said.
He stared out the window. “Yes, you do.”
“I don't stop on dimes, pennies, nickels, or any form of change!”
“You kind of stop on dimes, Meredith,” he said. “You drive like a narcoleptic. Start, stop. Start, stop.”
She eased them over the next speed bump despite his assurances. Thump. She couldn't bring herself to willfully inflict pain, no matter how much he tried to pass it off as negligible. “I do not,” she said as the land boat crested. Thump.
“Do, too.”
“Do not! Well, there was that one time with the kamikaze squirrel, but you can't possibly count that.”
“Do, too,” he said. “And I'm not counting squirrel avoidance maneuvers.”
“Derek, I do not!” she snapped.
A red smear of brake lights bloomed like a glowing flower in front of her, and she slammed her foot down on the brake pedal without thinking. “Crap!” she said. The tires screeched, and her body jerked against the seat belt, cutting her breaths short. In the corner of her eye, she saw Derek's left hand slam against the dashboard. He grunted, a deep, weary sound of pain that made her heart skitter.
A horn behind her blared. Her wet hair fell in a curtain around her face. Licking her lips, she tasted bile, and she couldn't get herself to move for several seconds. He struggled against his seat belt. The belt carved a deep ravine into his shirt, and it took him several wincing pants to fix himself so that he rested against the seat and not the belt.
Nauseating guilt churned in her stomach. She reached across to help him, but he'd already done most of the work. Her fingertips brushed his shoulder. Through his soft shirt, he trembled. He leaned his head back against the seat cushion, breathing noisily, staring at the rainy world through half-closed eyelids.
“I'm so sorry,” she said, but the words croaked and quashed, and she wasn't sure she'd managed understandable syllables. Her heart thumped, and she couldn't stop herself from touching him. Touching his arm. His wet leg. Running her fingers through the hair over his ear. “Derek, I'm so sorry,” she said. Tears blurred her vision. “Are you okay?”
He didn't speak. The car behind them honked. She grabbed the cushion by his head and twisted around. “Go to hell!” she shrieked and flipped them off, and then she wilted. She'd yelled. Right in his ear. That probably didn't help either.
She turned forward again, panting. “Are you okay? Please, are you okay?” she said. They weren't even out of the parking lot, and she'd already nearly killed him. She wiped her face, clawing tears away, and then clutched the steering wheel. The leather squeaked and warped as she twisted her fingers. She hated this freaking car. She hated speed bumps, and rain, and stop signs, and people, and guns, and everything else. “I'm so sorry, Derek. I'm sorry.”
“I'm okay,” he said as he caught his breath, but he sounded odd. Sounded... bad.
“I'm sorry.”
He blinked. “You know, that was worth it,” he said. His syllables rattled in his chest and sounded more than a bit wheezy, but then he looked at her with a shit-eating grin. “That was worth the pain. The timing couldn't have been more perfect.” By the end of the sentence, he'd recovered his voice.
Her clenching grip against the steering wheel loosened, and her distress melted when she saw his smile. A glassy but bright haze clouded his eyes, and no suffering remained in the lines of his face. His skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes. His irises didn't sparkle like they usually did. In fact, they seemed black and opaque in the gray light, but he was drugged, and a bit not all there. The crinkle was enough. A real smile. A really real smile. She hadn't seen one of those in a while.
Her lip quivered, and she couldn't help but offer a sheepish grin in return. “My amazing husband is right. I stop on dimes. Happy?”
His eyelids dipped. “Hmm,” he rumbled, barely audible over the thunderous rainstorm. He wiped his face with his hands and sighed. His body relaxed. The crinkles disappeared, but his lips spread in a wide, close-mouthed, upward curve that spoke of quiet contentment.
“Do you want a sticker that says 'My name is Derek Shepherd, and I'm right'?”
“That's Chief Shepherd, to you,” he said.
She snorted. “Hah. Hah.”
He rolled his head against the seat cushion until his left ear met leather, and he stopped. His gaze caught her. The content grin on his face bled into something sloppy, and he winked. “I can think of other things I want more than a sticker.”
You know what says thank you like nothing else?
She stared at him, caught like a fly in the sticky trap of his stare. She leaned across the hand rest. Something sharp jabbed her ribs, but she didn't care. She forgot he wasn't well, and the last remnants of her earlier stress dissolved.
“Like this?” she whispered, and she kissed him.
Until her lips brushed his, her convenient amnesia lingered. Strands of his wet hair spilled over his forehead and tickled her skin as she pressed against him. He tasted like Crest toothpaste, and the familiar scent of his aftershave wafted against the back of her throat. Perfect. But memory drifted back into place when he didn't respond like he used to, with a moan or with his fingers tearing through her hair. They touched, but it felt chaste, more friendly than anything else.
His libido had taken a massive hit with his injuries. He joked now and then, but he didn't seem to want much more than that, and she imagined his bravado concerning sex was more about keeping some level of normalcy between them than anything else.
Kissing had become something for touch. Something for closeness. Something to remind them they were alive and together and breathing and someday -- but not now -- okay.
She sighed against his skin and pressed her forehead into his. The space between them rustled as she stroked his cheek. He would be all right. Eventually. She would be thrilled the day he let her know he wanted something more. Until then, though, she wouldn't be disappointed, and she wouldn't push him. Even if he wasn't really interested, they both needed him to keep joking. And they both needed her to forget from time to time.
“Here's to being right,” he said, his voice soft and sated, as she pulled away.
The car behind them honked again, and she jerked, startled out of the space where only he and she existed. She glanced in the rear view mirror and saw through the sheets of rain that the car behind her had a stack of about fifteen pairs of headlights bearing down behind it. Fifteen cars containing angry, antsy people who probably wanted to be home just as much as Derek did. Just as much as she did.
She pressed the accelerator. “Is this why you always drive?” she said as she pulled up to a four-way stop, the final hurdle before parking lot became open road. Cars churned through the intersection at a glacial pace. She slowed as the car in front of her halted, careful to let the Cayenne slide to a stop instead of screech to one this time. “Because I'm horrible at it, and you didn't want to hurt my feelings or something? Like with the snoring thing?”
“You said you didn't like it,” he said.
“What?”
“Driving. You said you didn't like driving.”
When on earth?
“Derek, that was...” She stretched her memory and arrived at a dark night, only a week or two into their tryst. They'd gone out to eat. She'd been in a wretched mood, but he hadn't known the area at all yet, and so she'd offered to drive. They hadn't made their reservation on time because they'd gotten stuck in traffic. Instead of waiting an hour for a table, they'd gone into some dive next door and had burnt food and crappy service. “That was years ago. The whole freeway was gridlocked. And I was having a really cramp-y, bloat-y period that sucked.”
She'd barely known him then, and he'd barely known her. Their one lousy date. Well, not lousy. Just not great. The outing had been one of the few times in their history where she'd managed to feel like crap around him without him noticing at least on some level.
She navigated through the intersection and out onto the street. Water sprayed behind the Cayenne in a fan as she accelerated. Exhilaration tugged at her heart. Free of the parking lot. Two blocks, and then the freeway. Five exits, and then home. He tapped his fingers by the door handle in a steady, nervous thrum, and he shifted in his seat.
“You said you didn't like driving, so I drive,” he said as she blew through a probably-should-have-stopped yellow light that shifted red just as her rear tires entered the intersection.
“So, you don't think I'm a bad driver then?” she said. She took the exit onto the highway, forcing herself not to push the SUV too fast. The car lurched anyway, and her body swayed against the door. Stupid, top-heavy SUVs.
“What's a little whiplash between lovers?”
“You're totally avoiding the question,” she said.
“What question?”
She gritted her teeth. “Am I a bad driver, or aren't I?” she said. She cut onto the highway, narrowly avoiding the little Geo chugging along in the middle lane as she pulled in front and then swung into the fast lane. The Geo honked, and she snarled.
He chuckled, the sound of it soft and light and buried by the pounding rain. The laugh ended in a wince and a grunt, and he thumped his head against the window, but he smiled anyway.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing, Mere,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
“Sure,” she said.
The hum of the engine, the roar of the tires as they tore over the concrete pavement, and the heavy downpour drowned everything else out. Five exits left. Four exits. Three. Signs blurred past. Almost home. Almost.
Red. She blinked.
A solid wall of fuzzy red brake lights carpeted the space in front of her, and she slowed the car to a crawl, and then a full stop. Rain pounded on the roof. Horns honked. Nobody moved.
“Damn it,” she said as she pulled up the parking brake and let her feet off the pedals. “Damn it, what is this crap?”
He sighed. “Must be an accident up ahead, I guess.”
“Or just too many idiots,” she said, glaring at the pile of unmoving cars. “This is Seattle. Did you know we made the top ten list for the most congested cities in the country? I mean, when you think of traffic, do you think Seattle? No, you think Los Angeles. And New York. How did Seattle make that list? It's--”
Movement caught the corner of her eye. She turned. Derek's eyes had closed, and he'd leaned back against the headrest at an angle that couldn't have been comfortable. His crooked nose jutted toward the ceiling, and his Adam's apple poked against the skin of his throat. No longer supported by conscious thought, his mouth surrendered to gravity and fell open, revealing a pearly line of teeth. Deep, even breaths made his chest rise and fall. With his windpipe at such a weird angle, his breaths morphed over the moments into grating, heavy snores.
“Sorry,” she whispered, and she ceased her babble.
With no immediate prospect of home, adrenaline must have abandoned him.
She turned off the engine, and the windshield wipers halted at the end of their last swipe. No longer held at bay, rain streamed down over the windshield, and the outside world blotted away behind the flowing curtain. The car stopped shaking, and even with the torrential rain, the cabin would have seemed quiet in the absence of the constant swish, swish, swish, were it not for the raucous noises emanating from Derek.
Derek's right hand rested at the door handle, fingers curled around the lever. His left hand splayed against his thigh. His knees spread in a casual slouch, and he seemed... His lip twitched. He sucked in a whooping breath. The snores creaked to a halt. He breathed twice, soft and almost silent. Then the snoring resumed as his eyes began to pace under his eyelids. He dreamed. But she saw no sign of stress or nightmare.
He seemed at peace, if not peaceful.
Ever since Cristina had fixed the dosages on his pain relievers, he'd been different. Quiet. He'd slept a lot. A whole lot. He'd rarely stayed awake for more than an hour at a time. And when he'd been awake, he'd seemed disoriented and clumsy and reticent. He had a lot of trouble following conversations, and so he tended to space and let the world slide by without his input until he drifted off again. He'd said goodbye to his sisters yesterday, and it seemed like he hadn't quite understood what was going on when so many people crashed into his room for a quick round of noisy hugs all at once. Though, admittedly, she'd been a bit flummoxed by the whole thing, too, particularly when they'd pulled her into the fray and made a giant Meredith and sister-in-law sandwich.
She touched Derek's face, watching the supple trail left by her thumb on his skin. “Mmm,” he purred and leaned against her palm. “More bricks.” His head followed her touch, and his chin tipped into his shoulder, facing her. The snoring stopped, and thick, even breathing resumed. His dark eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks as his eyes moved underneath them.
Rain splashed against the windows and slammed into the roof. Cars didn't move. She thought about turning the radio on to find some traffic information, but she didn't want to wake him, and so she contented herself with ignorance and watched Derek sleep.
The nurse had dragged him awake at 6AM like always, but after he'd finished coughing, the morning had continued like an endurance test. He hadn't gone back to sleep to recover. Instead, he'd forced himself out of bed. She'd sat on the toilet seat, just in case, while he'd showered unassisted for the first time. He'd wrangled his clothes into submission by himself, too, and he'd shaved and brushed his teeth and flossed.
He hadn't needed her once, though the entire grooming operation had taken, perhaps, an hour and a half with frequent breaks. She'd read a book while he did things, well, pretended to read a book and mostly just read the same sentence over and over to try and keep her eyes somewhere not staring at him. She'd made a very big point of not cheering him on or smiling at him or making him feel self-conscious about his difficulties while he stumbled through things that used to be easy. She'd aimed for behaving like oblivious company and not like supervision. He seemed to appreciate it, both her vicinity and, at the same time, her distance.
He moved like a turtle. His muscles had kidnapped his flexibility and wouldn't let him do a lot of things. Anything more strenuous than a slow walk for about ten minutes left him gasping for breath. Even small interruptions in his stability knocked him off balance, and many of the movements that gave him his fluid, graceful, athletic appearance when he was well caused him harrowing pain.
But even then, even with all that sickness still piled up, he'd gotten so much better.
A siren wailed in the distance, and she turned. The leather seat made a squirching sound as her thigh shifted. Red lights flashed, a sparkling mess of color in the gray and the endless rain, but she couldn't see anything else through the sheets of water. The ambulance barreled down the left shoulder of the highway, and when it passed, the Cayenne swayed on its wheels. The pitch of the siren dropped as it left them behind.
Derek snuffled, and he flinched. His fingers clenched, and he made a thick sound of surprise deep in his throat. His eyelids stopped at half-mast, and he panted.
“Just a siren,” she whispered and stroked his hair. “Go back to sleep.”
His eyelids drifted shut, and his muscles relaxed. His panting slowed and stretched and became deep breaths.
Her watch beeped, and he flopped into half-awake again with a twitch that ran from his fingers to his toes. “Mmm,” he moaned at the second interruption.
She glanced at her watch. 10AM. She'd set the alarm to remind herself to give him his pills. They were supposed to be at home right now. She was supposed to be helping him slide into his own bed to rest in his own space. Except they were stuck in a car in the middle of a freeway, not moving, and not able to move for who knew how long.
She'd stuffed all his pill bottles into a plastic grocery store bag in the back seat. She twisted against her seat. She saw the bag behind her seat back in the dark pit formed by the floor and the rear seat. She saw it, but her arm didn't reach. She unclasped her seat belt and contorted until her belly ached and her shoulder sockets screamed. Her fingers brushed the plastic. She squiggled her hand, but she couldn't get a grip. She panted and tried one more time before she gave up.
“Crap,” she said. Not that it would matter if she could reach his pills, she realized. They were big pills. He couldn't take them dry. “Don't move,” she said to him.
He stared blankly. “What?”
“I'm getting out of the car. I'll be right back. Don't move, okay?”
He didn't quite seem to get it, but he didn't move, either. He stared, dark, glazed eyes half open, his hand dangling limply over gearshift and the parking brake. She took a breath, preparing to get soaked again, and then plunged into the cold, wet curtain.
She opened the rear driver side door and dove for the bag. As soon as her fingers found the plastic handles, she yanked, and she used the momentum to dash for the trunk where Derek usually kept water for emergencies. The trunk popped open as she fiddled with the key chain. She wiped rain from her face and blinked. An unopened twenty-four pack of spring water sat behind a first aid kit, an emergency toolbox, and some other junk. Good. She jammed her hand nails first into the unmarred plastic shrink wrap and tore it away. Her wet fingers slipped, but she managed to grab hold of the neck of a water bottle, and she pulled it free from the others. She tossed the bottle in the bag with his pills, slammed the trunk shut, and dashed back to the front driver side door. Her feet slurched and splorked in big puddles of water, sending spray everywhere. Shocking cold seeped into her socks and shoes.
She lunged back into the car and shut the door behind her as she panted. Water dripped into her eyes. Her hair plastered to her head. She pulled the water bottle from the bag, unscrewed the cap, and stuck it in the cup holder. Then she sorted his pill bottles. Antibiotics. Oxycontin. 1 every 12 hours as needed. Percocet. 1-2 every 4 hours as needed. A veritable drugstore sat in her lap. She grabbed the Percocet bottle, pushed down the cap and turned. She removed a pill -- he only took one unless it got bad - and held it out for him. A tiny puddle of white liquid spread across her palm as the pill mixed with rain.
“Here,” she said, jabbing it at him. “It's 10AM. I'm really sorry, Derek. I thought we'd be at home by now.”
At first she thought he might not be sentient enough to take it, but then he shifted. He grabbed the pill and stared.
“Water in the cup holder,” she clarified when he didn't move.
“Oh,” he said.
He took the water bottle, popped the pill into his mouth, and tipped his head back to swallow. He gurgled and swallowed and swallowed again, taking a few more sips. Water dripped out of the sides of his mouth. He took a hearty gulp, and then he put the bottle back in the cup holder. He didn't wipe his chin or the corners of his mouth. He dripped instead.
“Thank you,” he said, and over the course of several minutes, he shut down.
Like a lumbering blob, he shifted into the window and pasted his cheek against the glass. His hands hung limply and at odd angles. His eyelids dropped but didn't close, and he stared at the sheet of water on the glass as his breaths lengthened. Fog chased the glass from his lips, renewing with every exhale.
Car doors thumped, and somebody ran past the window, a blur. “What the fuck is going on? I need to get home,” yelled a distant, feminine voice. Meredith sighed. Good question.
Now that he was awake, she jammed the key in the ignition and gave it a quarter turn to let the radio have some power. She fiddled with the radio dial, but the tuner found nothing for her but hissing static and a mess of half-syllables and stutters of silence between. The half-syllables and stutters may have been words, sentences, and sounds with meaning, but the rain stripped the jabbering mess of it and made it nonsense in a cloud of bad reception. Great. She turned the car all the way off again.
She sighed. Derek communed with the window, silent, unmoving, as though he were fascinated with the way reality hazed beyond the curtain of water. The only sign she could identify that he was actually conscious was that he blinked. Every once in a while.
She reached over his leg and grabbed her purse from the floor by his feet. The strap had gotten wrapped around his ankle, and he sat, passive, while she untangled it. She stuffed the plastic bag with his pills into the depths with her wallet, and then put the purse back on the floor by the ball of his left ankle. He didn't budge or comment.
“Derek,” she said, but he didn't move. “Derek?”
It wasn't until she touched his shoulder that she roused him from his space out session. His deltoid muscle tensed at the unexpected contact, which drove home how out to lunch he was, that she could touch him and he didn't recognize her by the feel of her hand, or even before her skin had brushed against him. He'd always seemed to have sort of a sixth sense about her. But, no, this time, it took him several seconds of firm touch before he relaxed.
“Hmm?” He sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“Where do you go when you space out like that?”
He frowned. “I'm sorry,” he said. “This stuff just makes me feel so out of it.” He blinked like his eyelids had been drenched in tar, and he was trying to overcome it. Then he placed his palms against his face and breathed once, twice, again. When he looked up, he seemed a little more in touch with reality, but still not wide awake. Dazed almost. He had a struck stupid quality to his gaze and a frail air to his presence.
“You don't have to apologize,” she said. “I don't expect you to be the world's greatest conversationalist right now.”
“I feel like an amnesiac guppy or something.”
“Yeah, well, I think I like amnesiac guppy way more than growly bear.”
He smiled, but combined with the distant look in his gaze, his mirth seemed vague and indistinct. “Oh?” he said. “Are you planning to take advantage?”
“Well, you have established that taking advantage is my modus operandi or whatever.”
“Oh, yes.”
He blinked, and she watched his awareness waver. His gaze became glassy and then focused as he found her again in the mire. Odd. It felt so odd, seeing him like this. Derek Shepherd was supposed to be with it. Put together. Cocky. He hadn't been any of those in days.
“Seriously, where do you go?” she said.
“Where do I go when?”
“When you space out,” she said. “Where do you go?”
He shrugged. “Dunno,” he said, the word drawling. “Some place with you, usually.”
“Like what?”
He turned to the window, and she lost him to the glitter of the water. The rain slowed, and the sheet of water became identifiable, meandering streams. He stared. His breaths spaced, and he leaned back against the seat, eyes hooded. He'd been awake for hours that morning, and crashing into sleep earlier seemed to have devastated his capacity for human interaction.
She touched his shoulder. Her palm stuck to his wet sleeve, and when she tried to stroke him, her hand skipped. She slid her hand underneath instead, and rested against warm skin. “Hey,” she said, and she waited until he looked at her. Six seconds. Maybe seven. “Why don't you push the seat back and sleep? It looks like we're going to be here for eternity.”
“I feel better sitting.”
“Is your back still bothering you?”
“A little.”
Leaning against the window the way he was gave her space to slip her hand behind his shoulder blades. She rubbed him, frowning when she felt tense muscles and a peppering of knots under his skin. Sitting in this cramped car for hours wouldn't help him at all.
“Like really a little, or are you being stubborn again?” she said. “You can take another Percocet.”
He sighed. “Really a little, Meredith.”
His body swayed with her touch. She pushed into a knot with her knuckles. He grabbed for the door and made a noise that made her think of pain, but he didn't tell her to stop. He leaned, and she reached lower. Tense muscle fibers rippled under his skin. She chased the curve of his spine to his waistband.
Two more sets of discordant sirens chased down the shoulder as a mini-caravan of ambulances thundered past. Derek flinched at the noise, and his breath caught as the Cayenne swayed in their buffeting wakes.
“Jeez, I wonder what's going on,” she said. The rain had slowed a little, but she still couldn't see more than a few feet. She splayed her hands against him and pushed with all five fingers at once, eliciting a long, low rumble that vibrated against her palm. His muscles relaxed.
“Mmm. No pagers. Can't be that bad,” he said.
She stared at him, but he seemed oblivious. Glazed. Somewhere between half-awake and dreaming, somehow, with his eyes open. She'd taken the two weeks of uncategorized leave the HR department had offered everyone involved in the shootings, and he'd filed for short term disability. Her, the hospital would maybe bother, but him?
They knew full well he wouldn't be performing surgeries, whether it was an emergency or not, for at least another month, maybe two. Maybe more, depending on how fast he recovered once he got home. Derek was healthy, but he wasn't the fountain of youth, either, and it could take some time for him to feel normal again. She had no idea how he paced his recoveries because he'd never had one before. He'd never even been sick. Not even a freaking cold.
“Derek, they're not going to page us today, even if it is bad.”
“Oh,” he said. He blinked. “Right.” He swallowed, stared at the window, and added a softer, whispered, “Right.”
“You really are out of it, aren't you?”
“Really am,” he said. He leaned back, pausing for her to remove her hand before he squashed her, and settled against the seat. He turned to face her. “It's making this waiting a little easier, at least.”
“How?”
“If I stop paying careful attention for more than a nanosecond, I'm off in space somewhere. It feels like my brain is gushing behind my eyeballs.”
“But it doesn't hurt, right? Cristina fixed your pain?”
“Mostly.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Only mostly?”
He stared. “Mostly what?”
“Mostly, it doesn't hurt?”
He shrugged. “Nothing's going to get it all, Meredith, not unless you knock me out. Which this is very nearly doing. I'm okay right now.”
She sighed. She knew that. She did. Nothing short of unconsciousness would take everything away. Nothing. Persistent pain sucked that way. But that knowledge didn't help; it just made her hurt more.
She wanted him to be okay. The idea that he wasn't okay, that he still had discomfort, even after a week, even doped to the point of stupidity, bothered her. She wanted to take it away for him, and there was nothing she could do about it whatsoever. She'd never felt so freaking helpless in her life. Not even after her liver surgery when he'd had to carry her to the bathroom because some mornings it had hurt too much to walk.
She twisted her hands against the steering wheel and stared. The wall of brake lights had long since disappeared as more and more people gave up on ever moving off the freeway and turned their cars off. She'd been an idiot. The universe had proven itself to hate her on more than one occasion, and he'd gotten sucked along for the vengeful ride because of his vicinity to her.
“I'm really sorry, Derek,” she said. “I should have thought to check traffic reports before we left. I'm sorry we're stuck in this stupid car. I know you want to go home.”
She wanted to go home.
He shifted. “Mmm. S'ok, Mere,” he slurred, her internal ranting having been just long enough to let him drift again, apparently. “Just relieved to be out of there.”
“I know,” she said. “But now you're stuck in a car. I nearly killed you in the parking lot, and now you're stuck. It's all my fault.”
He leaned across the parking brake and the hand rest. His body shifted, stuttering as he found his balance. He breathed. Close to her ear. Hot air tickled her skin. And then he touched her, stroked her neck. “S'my fault. I drove this car to work last week. I think. Or...” His words drifted into silence, and he nosed her cheek. Clumsy, but so warm and alive and there. She refused to laugh at his nonsensical reasoning or his coordination, though both were atrocious. He had good intentions.
She turned and found his eyes, dull and opaque, inches from hers. A lazy smile spread across his face, and he scrunched his crow's feet. “I put this shirt on, y'know. I'm better.”
She laughed, unable to stop herself from petting the soft fabric along his clavicle. The thin material had dried, and it rustled against her skin. No design spread across the front. Grease stains and other black streaks marred its age-worn surface. He wore it from time to time when he did housework or stuff with the lawn or things with their cars. She'd watched him change his own oil one day, and he'd come out from underneath the car, covered in new smears.
Why don't you just pay somebody at Jiffy Lube to do that or whatever?
He'd wiped his hands on a grease towel and smiled. Well, this is a great excuse to take a shower, you know.
I'm not dirty, she'd said.
He'd touched his dirty index finger to her nose, leaving a dark smudge. How about now?
He'd waggled his eyebrows at her, she'd laughed, and then he'd chased her into the bathroom as she shrieked and giggled.
She had no idea what had possessed him to pick that shirt to wear, of all the shirts she'd packed for him. Actually, she had no idea what had possessed her to pack it, either. It must have gotten stuck with his normal daily wear t-shirts in the laundry somehow. But he was, indeed, correct. He'd put on his shirt by himself, and that sort of made the rest of the stuff swirling in her head seem a little less bad.
She grabbed a tent of the fabric and pulled him close, mashing her lips against his.
“I'm really glad you're feeling a little better,” she said against his skin. “I'm so glad. Even if we're stuck in a car when we could be at home, and it's my fault.”
He blinked. The sky burst, and a torrent of new rain splattered against the window over what had slackened momentarily into drizzle. The wall of noise evened into a steady pounding. He breathed against her body, soft and searching. “How are you mine?” he said.
“Well, you asked pretty nicely, I thought,” she whispered in his ear.
I'm not going to get down on one knee. I'm not going to ask a question. I love you, Meredith Grey, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
“Didn't ask,” he said.
“Told me your intentions in an irresistible way,” she amended.
He sighed. “I proposed in the elevator.”
“Yeah.”
“I forgot we were going to have sex there. I fell asleep.”
She stroked his face. He'd been dressed and ready to go, and she'd wheeled him into the elevator to go home, expecting him, for some reason, despite his stupor, to make a dirty comment about wheelchair sex, but he hadn't. His face had fallen forward. He'd trusted her to take him home, and he'd slept, recuperating resources for the final surge of his escape. She'd reached over his shoulder and rubbed him, and then guided him into the fresh, wet air to freedom.
“It's okay,” she said. “I'll take you up on your rain check offer later.”
“What rain check offer?”
“Something you said a while ago. Don't worry about it.”
His eyelids dipped. “Okay,” he said. He smiled again, and then he let himself drop back against the seat with a sigh. The leather squeaked. He sat, hands resting on his knees, his body spent and relaxed and his brain not worrying about things he couldn't remember, at least, not worrying that she could tell.
She sighed when she realized this was the most he'd talked to her in days. Liberated from his prison, experiencing true privacy with her for the first time in over a week, he seemed a bit more inclined to fight through his impairments and speak. She rubbed his thigh, wondering if it was an embarrassment thing. Like maybe he didn't mind as much being a bit out of sorts with her, but he hated looking foolish in front other people, particularly coworkers. Or maybe he felt better, and that was the bottom line. When Derek felt yucky, he didn't talk. He bottled things up inside until he burst. He'd never been sick before, but he did have his darker moods, full of grief, guilt, anger, or depression, and she knew at least that much about him. Yucky meant silent.
A smile tugged at her lips as she watched him stare blankly at the windshield. “You know,” she said. “This is prime real estate for silly discussions.”
“Like what?”
“Worst drunk dial. Loss of virginity. First experience with law enforcement.” She thought for a moment. Two guys shot my dad for his watch. She amended quickly, “Well, first time as a suspect.” She shrugged. “You know, things like that.”
“First experience?” he said. He looked at her with amorphous glee. “You've had more than one?”
“Well, yes, but I'm not stoned,” she said. “You're the one who's supposed to babble. Not me.”
He snorted. “All the drugs in the world couldn't make me babble as much as you. You're the Queen of Babblonia. Your subjects worship your skill.”
“Hah. Hah,” she said. “I don't know, you're getting pretty chatty. If you want another sticker, you're going to have to work a bit harder to prove yourself.”
But I like to talk with you, said his gaze, and she melted, only to laugh when he drew his index finger and thumb across his lips in the clumsy pantomime of pulling a zipper. He snickered, but his resolution didn't last more than twenty seconds.