All Along The Watchtower - Part 7B
Title: All Along The Watchtower
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 7B
“Derek?” she said after a long pause.
“Yeah?”
“You haven't said anything about it either.”
He swallowed, trying to remember. It. What was it? He blinked, and he thought, and he came up with nothing but the vague sense that he'd forgotten a large chunk of the conversation again, which made him feel bad. His brain felt like a cloud. Thick but not solid. Retaining nothing.
“About what?” he said.
She rubbed his arm. “The miscarriage,” she said. “Are you okay?”
He turned to her and stared through a half-lidded gaze at her outline. Gray light fell in through the windows, and he sighed. The miscarriage. That it. He settled against her and listened to her blood rush under her skin. The warmth of her skin seeped through her shirt into his skin.
“Derek?”
He blinked, torn from mental wandering. “I'm sorry.”
She scrunched her face in disgust. “Stop saying that. Seriously.”
“I don't know,” he said.
She placed her palms against his and gripped his hand. “You don't know if you're okay?”
“No.”
“About the miscarriage?” she prodded.
“I don't know. About anything.” He turned his face against her neck, and he sighed. “I'm tired,” he said. “All the time. I don't know.”
“Scale of 1 to 10?” she said.
He thought. For a long time. She waited, stroking his hand.
He wrapped his thumb and index finger around her wrist. His fingers met easily. Overlapped, even. She was such a petite woman. Tiny. He could never get used to it. He wasn't a large man. At 5'10”, he was a hair taller than the national average, but he had a small frame. Not like Mark, who bulked into the size of a truck when he really spent time working on it. Despite that, Derek dwarfed her in all but spirit. His thumb brushed the vein in her wrist. A strong pulse fluttered under his touch. He slipped his palm under her shirt. Her skin shivered. His hand almost spanned her stomach. Her abdomen, flat as a board despite her horrible diet, gave a little under the pressure of his touch. She breathed against his ear, relaxed, and he closed his eyes.
He thought of a baby growing there, thought of how she would swell. He imagined listening to the heartbeat for the first time. Thought about arguing over names. Envisioned the moment when she would tug at his sleeve in the middle of the night and tell him she was in labor, and he would fall out of bed and trip all over himself trying to get her and her suitcase and himself out to the car in one piece.
Gary Clark had taken that from him. From them. Derek had made love to Meredith, made another life, and that was all gone. In an eye blink. In a whorl of agony. And he hadn't even been awake to help her through it. She hadn't even had a chance to tell him she was pregnant before Mr. Clark had robbed them all blind.
All of it was gone. His health. His baby. His peace of mind. People had died. People with kids. People with loved ones. Others had gotten hurt. Karev. Him. Meredith had abandonment issues, and he'd almost died on her. She didn't need more dark and twisty in her life. She'd lived through plenty.
“10,” he said softly.
She didn't reply, didn't say a word. She wrapped him in her arms, and she sat with him. Quiet. Tiredness gripped his body. He pressed his nose into her neck and breathed. Lavender. Some unidentifiable spice from her lotion. The cotton behind his eyes made it hard to think, and so he didn't. He rested, almost dozing, but not quite, while she held him.
He didn't know how much time passed, but it seemed like hours.
A horrible, raucous growl hit his ears, and he jumped. He hunched over the arm of the chair, panting, and for an interminable moment, he hovered, lost somewhere in the unmapped back roads of panic. Dulled senses and reflexes and hurting muscles trapped him. His mouth fell open. Fear pushed into his legs, and he flopped in the chair, stuck in the grips of drug and sleep-induced disorientation. Get up. His body twitched. Get up. Get up. Meredith squeezed his shoulder and blurted a startled, “What?”
The cushion shifted as she turned toward the noise. A low hiss followed the growl, and familiarity sunk in. Air brakes. Big vehicle. He looked through the window in the direction of the sound and saw a hulking garbage truck rolling down the street. His body shivered as he tried to get himself to calm down.
“It's just a garbage truck,” Meredith said.
“I know what it is,” he snapped.
He gave into the repeated impulses and stood. She stood with him, and for a minute, all he could do was tremble. He knew what the noise was, but it was loud, and it hovered in the air, full forte and grating. He made himself breathe, made himself walk off the stress.
“Stairs?” she said as he came to an awkward stop at the foot of the stairs.
“Yeah,” he decided. “I want to take a shower.”
He'd learned over the past few days to take the steps as single entities and not as a greater whole. If he knew he would want to go upstairs at some point, he had to give himself a thirty minute lead. Maybe more. He couldn't cut his transition time any closer than that, or the steps morphed from something difficult into something torturous. If he needed to sleep, if he needed it right now, he'd already passed the point of attempting such an arduous journey. With those rules, he'd managed to avoid another painful disaster like the one he'd had the day he'd come home.
He gripped the railing, forced himself to breathe, and fought gravity one step at a time. Just one. He waited after every step. If one step went well, he let himself take another. If it didn't, he rested. Thirty seconds. Sometimes a minute. Meredith echoed his movements, her hand on the small of his back to give him some support. She never spoke to him while he did this, not unless he showed signs of collapse or unless he spoke first.
Somewhere between halfway and two-thirds to his goal, he needed to rest for longer than a minute. Closer to five. Meredith waited by his side. Patient. Silent. As much as he loved her, he tried to imagine her not there. He didn't like needing help with this. He didn't like being stared at while he struggled. He didn't like needing to plan and prepare for stairs like they were long car trips. When he caught his breath, and his heart slowed, he continued.
By the time he made it to the top, he didn't feel like he was dying. That was progress, he supposed, though he had to rest again. He leaned his back against the wall and panted. He held her shoulder for balance with a weak grip, and he sucked down air again, again, and again. Breathing hurt.
“Derek,” she said, breaking her silence. “That was a huge improvement. That was really, really great.”
He looked at her. “Yeah,” he said, panting. “Twelve minutes for a flight of steps. Really, really great.”
The skin around her eyes twitched like he'd struck her, and his sarcastic armor deflated.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry, Meredith.”
“It's okay,” she said.
“It's not okay. I'm being a giant ass.”
She kissed him. “I get it, Derek. I do. You get mad at yourself. You want to run it off and hit things, but you can't, and so you yell. It's okay. And I know it doesn't feel like it, but, Derek, really. You're doing great. More than great.”
“Gold star?” he said.
She laughed. “At least three.”
After he caught his breath, he moved. Slowly.
When he reached the bathroom, he shucked his socks, pajamas, and shirt, and he tried not to feel self conscious. Meredith had removed the bandages last night before they'd gone to bed, and she hadn't replaced them. Nothing covered his wounds from sight but stitches and wretched scabs. At least she didn't stare or smirk or make a comment while she stood there, clothed, and he stood there, naked and covered in gnarly scars.
Actually, her gaze didn't stray below his face at all, which felt... even more weird. She always used to sneak a peek whenever he changed in front of her. Sometimes she'd act coy. Sometimes, she'd meet the grin he flashed at her with a brazen lick of her lips and a sparkly, come hither stare that made it hard for him to dress in the mornings sometimes. Hard for him to leave and go to work.
He lined himself up with the cool porcelain of the tub, and he slid back the shower door. She helped him step over the lip of the tub. Another thing he couldn't do by himself, he'd discovered. He didn't have the balance, and the tub had nothing to grasp, or at least nothing that he could reach without stretching to the point of searing pain.
“Okay?” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied as he turned on the water.
“Okay,” she said. The bathroom door closed, and she left him alone for a while.
For a long moment, he blanked, staring at the shower knobs and the plastic rack under the shower head where Meredith kept her razor and lotion and other things. The air hazed and steamed, and a lightheaded, faraway feeling spun webs in his skull. He placed a palm against the wall for balance as his thoughts drifted, almost out-of-body. Water tumbled onto his body, soaking him, but at least two minutes passed before he realized he should be doing something. Something... What? His hand drifted to the bar of soap, but the action didn't feel right until after he'd clenched his fingers around it. Right. Soap. Shower.
He shook his head, trying to clear some of the fuzziness away. Unsuccessful, his breaths stretched and depressed, and his eyelids dipped. He pressed his skin into the cold tiles against the wall. That woke him up. A bit. With a modicum of analytical thought, he managed to turn the shower knobs. He tamped the temperature to something lukewarm, almost cold, and with the slight discomfort pelting him, he almost felt human.
He stared down at himself as streams of clear water flowed over his body. Examined himself for the first time since the shooting. He'd never seen himself without bandages. When they'd been off in the past, he hadn't looked. He hadn't wanted to.
A long rough line cut him in half. His chest had swollen with a grotesque lump at the tip of the incision near his clavicles, which was normal, and would fade. In months. But... He grimaced. The line? That would be there forever without plastic surgery. That and the pockmark made by the bullet. The bullet wound sat dark red and crusted under his left nipple like a freakish birthmark. He touched it. A little spear jabbed him through the torso from his finger to his spine, and he gasped.
Ugly. It was all... Just... ugly.
You're not the man here.
He couldn't hold his own weight with his arms, which meant she'd be on top. He imagined trying to have an orgasm while looking down at the battlefield on his skin. No wonder she didn't look. His chest constricted, and his sight blurred.
He washed himself. Like an automaton. The shower deadened the sounds of his sniveling with thundering, echoing water. He still couldn't really get his back, but he could do the rest. Barely. With breaks.
The door opened, and every muscle tensed to the point of pain. His arm slammed into the wall as he fought for balance, and his heart throbbed. A torn, frightened choke fell from his lips. Shampoo came down into his eyes. His toes clenched, trying to grab purchase on the smooth tub floor, but really, could fleeing get any more pointless, when he couldn't even step into and out of the tub without help? Hopeless fear tunneled into his body and loitered, spreading shivers everywhere. He cowered in the corner by the spigot. Vulnerable. You're vulnerable and helpless and alone and anybody could--
“It's me,” Meredith said. “Just putting clean clothes on the back of the toilet.”
“Okay,” he managed. He stared at the tiles. His teeth chattered as stress made his muscles move in waves. He breathed, and he counted water droplets as they dribbled down the cold walls. One. Two. He stopped around fifteen.
His body slowed down. He pressed his forehead against the tiles. Water dripped into his eyes. Why? Why couldn't he feel safe? Why did every noise and unexpected thing do this. Vague nausea coiled in his stomach as the adrenaline burst withdrew.
She sat down with a thump next to the bathtub. Through the marbled glass, he saw the shadow of her body. His breaths quivered.
“Remember that trip to wine country?” she said.
He blinked. He was pretty sure they'd never been to wine country. They'd never really been anywhere. They didn't do vacations. He stared at the wall, a vague sense of lost memory tugging at him, but he couldn't break the fog. Blank. He felt blank.
He resumed his scrubbing. “What trip?” he said. He dunked his head under the spray and let the water wash the shampoo away.
“The weekend,” she said. “You wanted me to go with you for forty-eight hours of uninterrupted sex. But we didn't. You called it off, and you made your dreamy-capped-with-threatening-ultimatum 110 speech.”
“I remember,” he said.
“Why didn't we ever do that, Derek? Since we got couple-y again, why didn't we?”
“I thought you said we didn't do that. Go away together.”
“Well, I was a clueless relationship intern back then. Not now. It occurred to me earlier. When we were stumbling all over each other to admit fault or whatever. You almost died, and we've never even left Seattle together. We've never left, Derek. We haven't done anything, and we should.”
He swallowed. “For sex?”
“For anything,” she said. “I want to spend time with my husband. I think I might settle for watching paint dry or counting ceiling tiles. Though, if you wanted nothing but sex, I think I'd be okay with that. It would certainly help with the whole baby-making initiative.” Her voice dropped low. “And I miss you.”
“Meredith, I--”
“It's okay,” she said, interrupting him. He relaxed under the spray, letting the water wash everything away. “I'm not trying to pressure you,” she continued. “I'm not. You don't have to do anything before you're ready. You're steering this truck, and if you ever feel like you're not steering, you need to tell me, and I'll back off. I just... I miss you, Derek. I miss you all the time, even though you're right here, and it has nothing to do with making another baby, though that would be nice.”
A lump formed in his throat. He missed her, too. The flat of his palm roamed to his thigh and then his cock. He rubbed without thinking, and a deep, low moan rumbled through him and got lost in the thunderous echo of the water. He closed his eyes, pressing himself under the lukewarm spray. Water came down over his ears, cloaking the world around him through the low, rushing curtain of his deep breathing.
He missed her body as he cleaved it, the look on her face as he brought her. He missed the way her shivery breaths buffeted his skin. He missed her touch, and the way her hair fell against him in the dark. He missed the way she stared at him, sex-glazed and hooded, like she was in a dream, like he was a dream for her.
Since the shooting, she touched him all the time. All the time, she ran her palms against his body, hugged him, sat in his space and breathed his air and kissed him. But he almost always felt constrained by his injuries, or in pain, or cloudy with drugs. Always felt imprisoned by things out of his control.
He missed it. Missed her touch when nothing else mattered. And he wanted to feel himself sheathed within her, while he forgot about everything else.
His eyes half opened, and the picture of her soft body shattered as a knife of pain slid under his ribs. He panted. Desire made him pant, and panting hurt. A lot. And then he looked down, and saw through the blur what she would have to look at if he did somehow manage. Ugly scars and scabs and cut skin. An emaciated torso ravaged by recent weight loss and trauma. He leaned against the wall, shaky, as all his dreams melted, and reality slammed into him with every heartbeat.
He managed to catch his breath, and he rested against the wall, chastised and sullen. The water thundered down. He glanced at her. She'd leaned back against the marbled glass, soft hair pressed flat. He couldn't see a book or notebook or anything. She sat, unmoving, as if she really didn't care about anything else than spending time with him for the sake of spending time.
His lip quivered. He loved Meredith, and he'd been happy to let her go at her own pace, happy to love her and let her express herself back at him the only ways she knew how, which, typically were very muted unless they were having sex. Except now she kissed him and touched him and told him she loved him all the time, and she sat there with him just to sit there, and she wanted to go away with him on trips. The realization made his chest ache and his throat hurt. He blinked, and he wavered on his feet. A deep, empty emotional void he'd been harboring no longer felt empty, and the sheer force of noticing that fullness made his knees turn to jelly.
“I want to,” he said, his voice quiet. “I mean I want to want to.”
“You do? I thought... I mean you seemed pretty much not interested.”
“I do want to,” he said. “I just... I don't know.”
A long silence spread between them. Water thundered down around his ears. “Please, will you talk with me?” she said, begged.
“I don't know what to say,” he said.
Silence stretched. “Are you embarrassed, Derek?” she said.
“I don't know,” he said. Something snapped in his chest, and the dam broke. His torso jerked, and it hurt. He breathed, and it hurt. Everything hurt as he punished himself, and he stood under the shower head, dripping and naked and ugly. He sniffed, trying to make it stop. She was finally acting like he'd always dreamed about, but had forced himself not to ask for as a sacrifice to keep her, and now he couldn't even--
Meredith's silhouette moved. “Derek, may I come in?” she said. “Please?”
He couldn't do this. He couldn't even breathe hard without hurting, and she wanted to come in for shower sex? His shoulders hunched, and he turned his back to her, but he couldn't say no. He couldn't say a word. She would figure it out anyway. When he couldn't get it up because of... everything.
Water sloshed as she stepped into the tub. “Wow,” she said. “It's a bit cold in here.”
He didn't respond. He closed his eyes, and he let the blackness shiver in his head. For moments, he floated.
The space between them closed to inches. Her palms touched his shoulders. “Please, Derek,” she told his neck. Her lips brushed the skin along his spine. “I love you. Please, don't be embarrassed.” Her fingers slid under his armpits, and she touched him, down the swell of his ribcage, down his hips. “You're healing. I know we're not going to be breaking headboards or hanging from the chandeliers for a while. And that's okay. It really is. I'm okay with that. I just want you in whatever capacity you can manage.”
Which only made him feel worse. Deep, coiling shame gripped him. If he could have curled into the wall and melted away, he would have. “I can't,” he said. “I can't do this right now. I want to, but I can't.”
Her roaming touch paused. “Can't what?”
“Have sex.”
“I didn't come in here for sex,” she said.
He scowled. “Then what did you come in here for?”
“You're upset.”
He clenched his teeth. “I'm not upset!”
She sighed. She rubbed his back, and he swayed. “Derek...”
The lump in his throat grew. He swallowed. “I don't want to have sex when all I can do is lie there,” he said. His fingers clenched.
“Okay,” she said. She pressed her body against his. Her perky nipples touched his back. “Then we won't.” He closed his eyes as she kissed each shoulder blade. One. Two. “I'll wait until you're ready.”
“Meredith,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Please, what?”
“I want to get out.”
She stepped away. “Okay. I'm sorry.”
He turned off the faucet and slid past her, dripping, skin burning. He had to wait. Had to wait for her to help him over the lip of the tub. His stomach churned. He felt sick. He stepped onto the bath mat with her help and reached for the towel. He didn't dry himself off, didn't do anything. He wrapped the terrycloth around his body and he sat, shivering, on the toilet seat.
“Seriously, what's wrong?” Meredith said.
“Nothing. I don't know,” he said.
She stood there. Naked. Breasts perky and round like freshly picked apples. Her wet hair slicked against her head. Water dripped down the swells of her hips and meandered in trails to her bellybutton. She didn't cover anything, and for a moment, he couldn't help but stare. He imagined her big and swollen with their baby. They could get started on that. They could. His lips parted, and he felt his body thrum, deep in his groin, despite everything, despite how upset and wrong he felt. They could, except they couldn't. Discomfort followed the thrum as he inhaled.
He drew the towel closer, and he shivered as arousal faded under the assault of cold, sharp spears of fear. He didn't want to be with her and hurt. It would hurt. It would really hurt. And it wasn't like he was pleasing on the eye.
“The scars are bad,” he said, looking at his lap.
She frowned. “I've seen them, Derek.” She knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees over the towel. He shivered at the touch. “Is that what this is about?” she said. “The scars?”
“No,” he said. “Yes. I don't... ”
Her lip twitched, and she blinked. Confused. He'd confused her, and he closed his eyes. He'd confused himself. He couldn't watch her anymore. Heat clawed at his face. He couldn't think straight. He could barely think at all.
Her hands squeezed his knees. “You're sexy to me,” she said. “You're always sexy to me. Will you look at me?”
He forced himself to open his eyes.
“I just saw you in the shower,” she said. “Do I look like I'm not ready to go, just from looking?”
He swallowed. Blush reddened her skin. Not embarrassment. Not hardly. The way she stared, the way her glassy eyes took in the sight of him with heady, gulping dregs, told him that much.
“Will you drop the towel?” she said. She licked her lips.
His hands shook. He couldn't bring himself to drop it, but he stopped clutching so hard, and it gave way a little. The terrycloth pooled around his upper arms. The thick, long line of his sternal incision poked out at the top, and the awful, swollen bump at the top stood in sharp relief against his pale skin.
She rose up on her knees and peeled the towel away from his upper body, leaving it covering his lap and his legs. Cold air hit his wet skin, and he shivered. She stared into his eyes. Her breathing slowed, and then she swept her gaze to his chest. She hovered, eye level with the worst of it, with the bullet wound and everything else. She leaned. Her wet, soft lips touched him at the crease between his pectorals where the stitches formed a long, ugly line, and she licked beside the cut, upper abdomen to clavicles. She kissed next to the bump, and then she roamed higher.
Her lips pressed into his. Her tongue slid into his mouth, and he moaned, leaning back on the seat as she plundered. She looked at him as she pulled away, lips swollen with desire, panting.
“Do I look any less ready to go?” she asked, her voice low and quivering.
She stood, and she took his hand, guided his fingers against her inner thigh. Slick, wet heat touched his skin as she pushed him against the folds of her sex. “I feel pretty ready to go,” she said. “Don't you think?”
“Meredith,” he said, his voice shaky.
“I don't expect anything, Derek,” she assured him. “I'm just trying to show you who I see.”
“Who do you see?”
“I see the man I married. Scars or not. And he's a very, very sexy man.”
He blinked. His vision shimmered. His lip quivered, and he managed a watery, unsure smile. She winked, and he got lost in the sparkling gray of her soft, peerless eyes. He watched the ghosts of his face reflected in her pupils. She didn't blink. Her creamy, naked skin and her perk nipples stole his attention, and he swallowed. Instinct turned his vague smile into a slanted smirk. He touched her, hands splayed against her breasts, and she placed her palms over top his. Her warm skin soothed his soul. With a quiet, long breath, he stroked her to her navel.
She had scars, too. He touched the puckered, pink, jagged line on her side from where Dr. Bailey had extracted a piece of her liver for Thatcher. Remnants of her laparoscopic appendix removal, she had three faded marks carving dimples in her skin. One over her belly button, one just above her pubic hair, and one over the roll of her ribs on her right side, forming an triangle.
“We make a pretty banged up team,” she said, lip quivering.
“Yeah,” he said.
He pulled her against his body, trying not to feel uncoordinated and sluggish. He kissed the space between her cleavage, and warmth radiated against his face. He groaned, soft and low. She felt so nice, and she tasted so delicate. She giggled as he licked her. The sound relaxed him, and he hovered there. Her fingers wound through his hair.
“You're a very conniving woman,” he said he said with a sigh.
“What?” she said, her voice lost and low and dumb with desire.
He stroked her inner thigh and cupped her. She was hot. And she was wet. And she was ready. She moaned as he put pressure against her pubic bone.
“You know I can't leave you like this,” he said. “It's not in my genetic code.”
Her fingers scrunched in his hair as he stroked again. “Derek, I'm serious. If you don't want to do anything, we don't have to do anything.” She panted, and she moaned, and her muscles quivered. “I mean... I...” Another moan, and he grinned, watching her struggle with coherency.
“You were saying?” he said.
She grunted. “I'll live with a little frustration. I'm fine. I am. This was for you. This wasn't to make you feel obligated to--”
“Sit down,” he commanded.
She didn't look at him with doubt. She didn't ask him if he thought this was a good idea, or if he knew he could manage without hurting himself. He said sit down, and she did.
He let himself collapse to his knees in front of the toilet. His breaths caught in his chest, and he forced himself to slow down before he started hurting. He didn't want to hurt when he did this. He didn't want to hurt at all. Ever. But he would settle for a few minutes, pain free. Please. The room fuzzed with the sudden exertion of moving to the floor. He waited. She waited. When it cleared, he shifted forward, inching close to her, closer. The towel fell away from his groin, but he forgot all about it in the overwhelming need to get to her. To please her. To lose himself and forget why he had a list a mile long of things he didn't want to do because they hurt and not because he didn't want them.
A stronger Derek lunged forward in his mind's eye. He crawled on his hands and his knees, and he pushed her flat against the floor and speared her. He laughed and rumbled and sheathed himself with her wet heat while she quivered and screamed his name. He drove against her, needy, ready, whole, thrusting until he spilled, and she raked her fingers down his back.
In a blink, his mind's eye shattered. He shivered with unresolved tension, but he breathed, long and slow, and let it slough away. He knelt gingerly before her on the floor.
She sat against the back wall, loose and supple and naked, knees bent, legs spread, relaxed. For a long moment, he felt like a painter with an untouched canvas. He stared, blank, but instinct helped him when analysis failed. He touched her inner thigh, and she spread her legs wide for him, giving him a full, glorious view. He felt clumsy, almost laughable as he petted her. Despite his less than masterful attempt, she gasped as he slipped his finger inside her body. He formed a hook, and he pulled back against her personal g-spot, a place he'd spent many long, arduous hours searching for.
“Derek,” she managed, voice trembling. The sheer abandon and need in her voice relaxed his self-consciousness. Derek. His name. Said with the sharp, whining edge of begging. Begging for him. He'd done something right despite the fog.
She pressed against him, panting. “Derek,” she repeated. “Please.”
He swallowed, and he couldn't stop his own, throaty groan as he watched her body twitch. Spread wide and senseless all for him. He stroked her inner thigh with the palm of his free hand. Her hot skin felt slick against his hand. She didn't need much help. She'd already plowed up the hill, already edged to the cusp. She'd made herself good and frustrated in her earlier appraisal of his body.
His lip curled with satisfaction.
He pressed his thumb against her clit, and he pulled with the index finger he held inside her. Her muscles clenched around him, and a sizzling, twisting groan wound from her body and wrapped around him like a feather boa. She bared her teeth at him, and her eyes scrunched in a telltale grimace that screamed pain at him, the pain of the precipice. He had her with barely any effort. Her thighs shook, and her whole body tensed. She had a good grip. He almost couldn't move his finger, but he managed. He stroked her on the inside. Nonsensical moaning tore her throat. She pawed at nothing with her hands. Her breasts quivered as she breathed and breathed and breathed for him.
“Please,” she said, senseless, and the word stroked him like a balm.
He circled her clit. “You sure worked yourself into a mess,” he said. He laughed. Ache broke his chest, but he didn't care. “What would you have done if I hadn't taken the bait?”
She wailed at him as he pulled her from the inside. “Finish me,” she begged. “Finish me, finish me.”
“That wouldn't be very fun,” he said. “I've only had you here for, what, a minute?”
Her nails scrabbled against the floor. He watched, delighted, as she couldn't breathe and couldn't think and couldn't do anything but writhe and grimace and gasp. He kept her there. Stroked her. Not often enough to release, but often enough to hold her dangling on the edge. He slipped his middle finger in beside his index finger and rubbed. Inside. She gripped him. Her muscles contracted.
She couldn't find any purchase with the floor, so her arms stretched up, and she grabbed the towel rack. Her nipples perked, and her breasts heaved, swollen with arousal. For him. She sobbed. Begging him. He liked it.
“Derek, damn it,” she said. Her fingers flexed. The towel rack squeaked.
“What's the magic word?” he said.
“I said please already, you egotistical ass!” she yelled.
He clucked at her. “You're very grumpy today, you know.”
“Shut up and finish me, you evil, evil bastard,” she said.
“Yes, dear,” he said, a bare, velvet whisper.
He clenched his fingers, and he let her go with a single stroke. She slammed against the back wall. Her breathing stopped, and she stiffened as her body contracted all her muscles. She choked. A little. And then a discordant, raking moan bounced into the space between them. Her legs jerked over and over as muscle spasms ran down her body. Her insides squeezed his fingers again and again in rapid, fluttering succession. Then everything relaxed into jelly, and she sighed as she flopped onto the floor like a pile of muscle and flesh and nothing else.
Her hand found his naked thigh. For a moment, all she did was breathe. “You don't want to...” she managed after an eternity. She gestured at him.
He looked down at himself, surprised to find a partial erection staring back. He swallowed. Just watching her had turned him on, but...
Yes. “No,” he said.
“Kay,” she said. She didn't ask him why. Didn't prod him for an explanation or pressure him or do anything that made him feel embarrassed that he was kneeling on the bathroom floor, naked, scarred, sort of aroused, but unwilling. She smiled at him, instead, lazy and hazy and pleased. “That was really good. That... Mmm. Fifty gold stars, at least.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He sat with her on the floor, both of them naked, for minutes after minutes. She relaxed and sort of dozed, eyes half-closed, in a pleasant, post-orgasm cloud. He watched her. His wife.
Until his back pinched his nerves, and he had to move. Had to shift. Had to do something other than just sit there. With trembling, tired muscles, he stood, and he reached for his clothes. He'd dripped all over them when he'd leaned back against the toilet, but they were dry enough to wear.
He managed to pull on his pants while she stumbled to her feet and grabbed her own clothes from their strewn, haphazard pile by the tub. She tripped and leaned against the shower door. “Mmm,” she purred as she pulled up her pants. “I think. I think you might have broke me or something.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “The bathroom floor was new.”
She grinned. “It was. I'm glad I cleaned yesterday. Dirty sex would take on a slightly new meaning if I hadn't, I think, and not a really pleasant one.”
He snickered as he pulled on his shirt. His chest twinged, and he winced, but nothing snapped at him, nothing told him to stop. He moved to the door frame and let himself rest, let the room fuzz up and his mind drift without worrying so much about it. The sheer effort involved in remaining coherent and focused took so much from him. He breathed and spaced.
She slid next to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Your back again?”
He swallowed, opening his eyes. Reality sharpened. His breath hitched. “Yeah.”
“I'm sorry,” she said. She squeezed him. “I'm sorry this sucks so much for you. I hate that I can't do anything.”
“You're here,” he said. “That's something. A lot, actually.”
The trip down the steps didn't take nearly as long as the trip up the steps had. He didn't have to rest as much when gravity helped him instead of fought him tooth and claw. She helped him settle in his favorite chair. She brought him water and a single Percocet.
“Already?” he said as he swallowed the pill. He glanced around for a clock and surprised himself to find it was already noon.
“Yep,” she said. “You slept for a long time after the last batch knocked you out. We're on an 8 12 4 schedule now instead of 6 10 2, which, actually might help you at night, since your Oxycontin won't be fading very early morning when you're still trying to sleep.”
“That would be nice,” he said.
She rubbed his back. “It'll get better,” she said. “Two weeks. You'll wonder why on Earth you were ever so grouchy. Mark my words.”
“Do I need to get you a marker?”
She laughed. “Want anything for lunch? I'm gonna go heat up a hot pocket.”
He scrunched his nose. “Meredith, those things are horrible for you. They're solid blocks of fat and grease.”
She shrugged. “Well, I'm not making you one. I assumed you'd want something like... a salad. Or... Whatever. I bought a few of those lettuce pack thingies and some fresh tomatoes. I can make lettuce pack thingies. You just cut the bag open and you have a nice, professional, crispy salad. Or so I'm told.”
“Not right now,” he said. “I'm just going to rest my eyes for a bit.”
“Okay,” she said.
He watched her as she padded into the kitchen. He listened as she rummaged through the freezer. He heard the vague hum of the microwave. She made odd thumping noises, as if she'd decided to pass the time by skipping around the center island in the kitchen while her hot pocket cooked. His eyelids lowered, heavy. The sound of her voice coiled in his head as she started to sing, off-key, to some ridiculous pop song she liked.
“You can stand under my umbrella,” she wailed. “Ella, ella, ey, ey, ey.”
The microwave beeped, and he lost track after that.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 7B
“Derek?” she said after a long pause.
“Yeah?”
“You haven't said anything about it either.”
He swallowed, trying to remember. It. What was it? He blinked, and he thought, and he came up with nothing but the vague sense that he'd forgotten a large chunk of the conversation again, which made him feel bad. His brain felt like a cloud. Thick but not solid. Retaining nothing.
“About what?” he said.
She rubbed his arm. “The miscarriage,” she said. “Are you okay?”
He turned to her and stared through a half-lidded gaze at her outline. Gray light fell in through the windows, and he sighed. The miscarriage. That it. He settled against her and listened to her blood rush under her skin. The warmth of her skin seeped through her shirt into his skin.
“Derek?”
He blinked, torn from mental wandering. “I'm sorry.”
She scrunched her face in disgust. “Stop saying that. Seriously.”
“I don't know,” he said.
She placed her palms against his and gripped his hand. “You don't know if you're okay?”
“No.”
“About the miscarriage?” she prodded.
“I don't know. About anything.” He turned his face against her neck, and he sighed. “I'm tired,” he said. “All the time. I don't know.”
“Scale of 1 to 10?” she said.
He thought. For a long time. She waited, stroking his hand.
He wrapped his thumb and index finger around her wrist. His fingers met easily. Overlapped, even. She was such a petite woman. Tiny. He could never get used to it. He wasn't a large man. At 5'10”, he was a hair taller than the national average, but he had a small frame. Not like Mark, who bulked into the size of a truck when he really spent time working on it. Despite that, Derek dwarfed her in all but spirit. His thumb brushed the vein in her wrist. A strong pulse fluttered under his touch. He slipped his palm under her shirt. Her skin shivered. His hand almost spanned her stomach. Her abdomen, flat as a board despite her horrible diet, gave a little under the pressure of his touch. She breathed against his ear, relaxed, and he closed his eyes.
He thought of a baby growing there, thought of how she would swell. He imagined listening to the heartbeat for the first time. Thought about arguing over names. Envisioned the moment when she would tug at his sleeve in the middle of the night and tell him she was in labor, and he would fall out of bed and trip all over himself trying to get her and her suitcase and himself out to the car in one piece.
Gary Clark had taken that from him. From them. Derek had made love to Meredith, made another life, and that was all gone. In an eye blink. In a whorl of agony. And he hadn't even been awake to help her through it. She hadn't even had a chance to tell him she was pregnant before Mr. Clark had robbed them all blind.
All of it was gone. His health. His baby. His peace of mind. People had died. People with kids. People with loved ones. Others had gotten hurt. Karev. Him. Meredith had abandonment issues, and he'd almost died on her. She didn't need more dark and twisty in her life. She'd lived through plenty.
“10,” he said softly.
She didn't reply, didn't say a word. She wrapped him in her arms, and she sat with him. Quiet. Tiredness gripped his body. He pressed his nose into her neck and breathed. Lavender. Some unidentifiable spice from her lotion. The cotton behind his eyes made it hard to think, and so he didn't. He rested, almost dozing, but not quite, while she held him.
He didn't know how much time passed, but it seemed like hours.
A horrible, raucous growl hit his ears, and he jumped. He hunched over the arm of the chair, panting, and for an interminable moment, he hovered, lost somewhere in the unmapped back roads of panic. Dulled senses and reflexes and hurting muscles trapped him. His mouth fell open. Fear pushed into his legs, and he flopped in the chair, stuck in the grips of drug and sleep-induced disorientation. Get up. His body twitched. Get up. Get up. Meredith squeezed his shoulder and blurted a startled, “What?”
The cushion shifted as she turned toward the noise. A low hiss followed the growl, and familiarity sunk in. Air brakes. Big vehicle. He looked through the window in the direction of the sound and saw a hulking garbage truck rolling down the street. His body shivered as he tried to get himself to calm down.
“It's just a garbage truck,” Meredith said.
“I know what it is,” he snapped.
He gave into the repeated impulses and stood. She stood with him, and for a minute, all he could do was tremble. He knew what the noise was, but it was loud, and it hovered in the air, full forte and grating. He made himself breathe, made himself walk off the stress.
“Stairs?” she said as he came to an awkward stop at the foot of the stairs.
“Yeah,” he decided. “I want to take a shower.”
He'd learned over the past few days to take the steps as single entities and not as a greater whole. If he knew he would want to go upstairs at some point, he had to give himself a thirty minute lead. Maybe more. He couldn't cut his transition time any closer than that, or the steps morphed from something difficult into something torturous. If he needed to sleep, if he needed it right now, he'd already passed the point of attempting such an arduous journey. With those rules, he'd managed to avoid another painful disaster like the one he'd had the day he'd come home.
He gripped the railing, forced himself to breathe, and fought gravity one step at a time. Just one. He waited after every step. If one step went well, he let himself take another. If it didn't, he rested. Thirty seconds. Sometimes a minute. Meredith echoed his movements, her hand on the small of his back to give him some support. She never spoke to him while he did this, not unless he showed signs of collapse or unless he spoke first.
Somewhere between halfway and two-thirds to his goal, he needed to rest for longer than a minute. Closer to five. Meredith waited by his side. Patient. Silent. As much as he loved her, he tried to imagine her not there. He didn't like needing help with this. He didn't like being stared at while he struggled. He didn't like needing to plan and prepare for stairs like they were long car trips. When he caught his breath, and his heart slowed, he continued.
By the time he made it to the top, he didn't feel like he was dying. That was progress, he supposed, though he had to rest again. He leaned his back against the wall and panted. He held her shoulder for balance with a weak grip, and he sucked down air again, again, and again. Breathing hurt.
“Derek,” she said, breaking her silence. “That was a huge improvement. That was really, really great.”
He looked at her. “Yeah,” he said, panting. “Twelve minutes for a flight of steps. Really, really great.”
The skin around her eyes twitched like he'd struck her, and his sarcastic armor deflated.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry, Meredith.”
“It's okay,” she said.
“It's not okay. I'm being a giant ass.”
She kissed him. “I get it, Derek. I do. You get mad at yourself. You want to run it off and hit things, but you can't, and so you yell. It's okay. And I know it doesn't feel like it, but, Derek, really. You're doing great. More than great.”
“Gold star?” he said.
She laughed. “At least three.”
After he caught his breath, he moved. Slowly.
When he reached the bathroom, he shucked his socks, pajamas, and shirt, and he tried not to feel self conscious. Meredith had removed the bandages last night before they'd gone to bed, and she hadn't replaced them. Nothing covered his wounds from sight but stitches and wretched scabs. At least she didn't stare or smirk or make a comment while she stood there, clothed, and he stood there, naked and covered in gnarly scars.
Actually, her gaze didn't stray below his face at all, which felt... even more weird. She always used to sneak a peek whenever he changed in front of her. Sometimes she'd act coy. Sometimes, she'd meet the grin he flashed at her with a brazen lick of her lips and a sparkly, come hither stare that made it hard for him to dress in the mornings sometimes. Hard for him to leave and go to work.
He lined himself up with the cool porcelain of the tub, and he slid back the shower door. She helped him step over the lip of the tub. Another thing he couldn't do by himself, he'd discovered. He didn't have the balance, and the tub had nothing to grasp, or at least nothing that he could reach without stretching to the point of searing pain.
“Okay?” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied as he turned on the water.
“Okay,” she said. The bathroom door closed, and she left him alone for a while.
For a long moment, he blanked, staring at the shower knobs and the plastic rack under the shower head where Meredith kept her razor and lotion and other things. The air hazed and steamed, and a lightheaded, faraway feeling spun webs in his skull. He placed a palm against the wall for balance as his thoughts drifted, almost out-of-body. Water tumbled onto his body, soaking him, but at least two minutes passed before he realized he should be doing something. Something... What? His hand drifted to the bar of soap, but the action didn't feel right until after he'd clenched his fingers around it. Right. Soap. Shower.
He shook his head, trying to clear some of the fuzziness away. Unsuccessful, his breaths stretched and depressed, and his eyelids dipped. He pressed his skin into the cold tiles against the wall. That woke him up. A bit. With a modicum of analytical thought, he managed to turn the shower knobs. He tamped the temperature to something lukewarm, almost cold, and with the slight discomfort pelting him, he almost felt human.
He stared down at himself as streams of clear water flowed over his body. Examined himself for the first time since the shooting. He'd never seen himself without bandages. When they'd been off in the past, he hadn't looked. He hadn't wanted to.
A long rough line cut him in half. His chest had swollen with a grotesque lump at the tip of the incision near his clavicles, which was normal, and would fade. In months. But... He grimaced. The line? That would be there forever without plastic surgery. That and the pockmark made by the bullet. The bullet wound sat dark red and crusted under his left nipple like a freakish birthmark. He touched it. A little spear jabbed him through the torso from his finger to his spine, and he gasped.
Ugly. It was all... Just... ugly.
You're not the man here.
He couldn't hold his own weight with his arms, which meant she'd be on top. He imagined trying to have an orgasm while looking down at the battlefield on his skin. No wonder she didn't look. His chest constricted, and his sight blurred.
He washed himself. Like an automaton. The shower deadened the sounds of his sniveling with thundering, echoing water. He still couldn't really get his back, but he could do the rest. Barely. With breaks.
The door opened, and every muscle tensed to the point of pain. His arm slammed into the wall as he fought for balance, and his heart throbbed. A torn, frightened choke fell from his lips. Shampoo came down into his eyes. His toes clenched, trying to grab purchase on the smooth tub floor, but really, could fleeing get any more pointless, when he couldn't even step into and out of the tub without help? Hopeless fear tunneled into his body and loitered, spreading shivers everywhere. He cowered in the corner by the spigot. Vulnerable. You're vulnerable and helpless and alone and anybody could--
“It's me,” Meredith said. “Just putting clean clothes on the back of the toilet.”
“Okay,” he managed. He stared at the tiles. His teeth chattered as stress made his muscles move in waves. He breathed, and he counted water droplets as they dribbled down the cold walls. One. Two. He stopped around fifteen.
His body slowed down. He pressed his forehead against the tiles. Water dripped into his eyes. Why? Why couldn't he feel safe? Why did every noise and unexpected thing do this. Vague nausea coiled in his stomach as the adrenaline burst withdrew.
She sat down with a thump next to the bathtub. Through the marbled glass, he saw the shadow of her body. His breaths quivered.
“Remember that trip to wine country?” she said.
He blinked. He was pretty sure they'd never been to wine country. They'd never really been anywhere. They didn't do vacations. He stared at the wall, a vague sense of lost memory tugging at him, but he couldn't break the fog. Blank. He felt blank.
He resumed his scrubbing. “What trip?” he said. He dunked his head under the spray and let the water wash the shampoo away.
“The weekend,” she said. “You wanted me to go with you for forty-eight hours of uninterrupted sex. But we didn't. You called it off, and you made your dreamy-capped-with-threatening-ultimatum 110 speech.”
“I remember,” he said.
“Why didn't we ever do that, Derek? Since we got couple-y again, why didn't we?”
“I thought you said we didn't do that. Go away together.”
“Well, I was a clueless relationship intern back then. Not now. It occurred to me earlier. When we were stumbling all over each other to admit fault or whatever. You almost died, and we've never even left Seattle together. We've never left, Derek. We haven't done anything, and we should.”
He swallowed. “For sex?”
“For anything,” she said. “I want to spend time with my husband. I think I might settle for watching paint dry or counting ceiling tiles. Though, if you wanted nothing but sex, I think I'd be okay with that. It would certainly help with the whole baby-making initiative.” Her voice dropped low. “And I miss you.”
“Meredith, I--”
“It's okay,” she said, interrupting him. He relaxed under the spray, letting the water wash everything away. “I'm not trying to pressure you,” she continued. “I'm not. You don't have to do anything before you're ready. You're steering this truck, and if you ever feel like you're not steering, you need to tell me, and I'll back off. I just... I miss you, Derek. I miss you all the time, even though you're right here, and it has nothing to do with making another baby, though that would be nice.”
A lump formed in his throat. He missed her, too. The flat of his palm roamed to his thigh and then his cock. He rubbed without thinking, and a deep, low moan rumbled through him and got lost in the thunderous echo of the water. He closed his eyes, pressing himself under the lukewarm spray. Water came down over his ears, cloaking the world around him through the low, rushing curtain of his deep breathing.
He missed her body as he cleaved it, the look on her face as he brought her. He missed the way her shivery breaths buffeted his skin. He missed her touch, and the way her hair fell against him in the dark. He missed the way she stared at him, sex-glazed and hooded, like she was in a dream, like he was a dream for her.
Since the shooting, she touched him all the time. All the time, she ran her palms against his body, hugged him, sat in his space and breathed his air and kissed him. But he almost always felt constrained by his injuries, or in pain, or cloudy with drugs. Always felt imprisoned by things out of his control.
He missed it. Missed her touch when nothing else mattered. And he wanted to feel himself sheathed within her, while he forgot about everything else.
His eyes half opened, and the picture of her soft body shattered as a knife of pain slid under his ribs. He panted. Desire made him pant, and panting hurt. A lot. And then he looked down, and saw through the blur what she would have to look at if he did somehow manage. Ugly scars and scabs and cut skin. An emaciated torso ravaged by recent weight loss and trauma. He leaned against the wall, shaky, as all his dreams melted, and reality slammed into him with every heartbeat.
He managed to catch his breath, and he rested against the wall, chastised and sullen. The water thundered down. He glanced at her. She'd leaned back against the marbled glass, soft hair pressed flat. He couldn't see a book or notebook or anything. She sat, unmoving, as if she really didn't care about anything else than spending time with him for the sake of spending time.
His lip quivered. He loved Meredith, and he'd been happy to let her go at her own pace, happy to love her and let her express herself back at him the only ways she knew how, which, typically were very muted unless they were having sex. Except now she kissed him and touched him and told him she loved him all the time, and she sat there with him just to sit there, and she wanted to go away with him on trips. The realization made his chest ache and his throat hurt. He blinked, and he wavered on his feet. A deep, empty emotional void he'd been harboring no longer felt empty, and the sheer force of noticing that fullness made his knees turn to jelly.
“I want to,” he said, his voice quiet. “I mean I want to want to.”
“You do? I thought... I mean you seemed pretty much not interested.”
“I do want to,” he said. “I just... I don't know.”
A long silence spread between them. Water thundered down around his ears. “Please, will you talk with me?” she said, begged.
“I don't know what to say,” he said.
Silence stretched. “Are you embarrassed, Derek?” she said.
“I don't know,” he said. Something snapped in his chest, and the dam broke. His torso jerked, and it hurt. He breathed, and it hurt. Everything hurt as he punished himself, and he stood under the shower head, dripping and naked and ugly. He sniffed, trying to make it stop. She was finally acting like he'd always dreamed about, but had forced himself not to ask for as a sacrifice to keep her, and now he couldn't even--
Meredith's silhouette moved. “Derek, may I come in?” she said. “Please?”
He couldn't do this. He couldn't even breathe hard without hurting, and she wanted to come in for shower sex? His shoulders hunched, and he turned his back to her, but he couldn't say no. He couldn't say a word. She would figure it out anyway. When he couldn't get it up because of... everything.
Water sloshed as she stepped into the tub. “Wow,” she said. “It's a bit cold in here.”
He didn't respond. He closed his eyes, and he let the blackness shiver in his head. For moments, he floated.
The space between them closed to inches. Her palms touched his shoulders. “Please, Derek,” she told his neck. Her lips brushed the skin along his spine. “I love you. Please, don't be embarrassed.” Her fingers slid under his armpits, and she touched him, down the swell of his ribcage, down his hips. “You're healing. I know we're not going to be breaking headboards or hanging from the chandeliers for a while. And that's okay. It really is. I'm okay with that. I just want you in whatever capacity you can manage.”
Which only made him feel worse. Deep, coiling shame gripped him. If he could have curled into the wall and melted away, he would have. “I can't,” he said. “I can't do this right now. I want to, but I can't.”
Her roaming touch paused. “Can't what?”
“Have sex.”
“I didn't come in here for sex,” she said.
He scowled. “Then what did you come in here for?”
“You're upset.”
He clenched his teeth. “I'm not upset!”
She sighed. She rubbed his back, and he swayed. “Derek...”
The lump in his throat grew. He swallowed. “I don't want to have sex when all I can do is lie there,” he said. His fingers clenched.
“Okay,” she said. She pressed her body against his. Her perky nipples touched his back. “Then we won't.” He closed his eyes as she kissed each shoulder blade. One. Two. “I'll wait until you're ready.”
“Meredith,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Please, what?”
“I want to get out.”
She stepped away. “Okay. I'm sorry.”
He turned off the faucet and slid past her, dripping, skin burning. He had to wait. Had to wait for her to help him over the lip of the tub. His stomach churned. He felt sick. He stepped onto the bath mat with her help and reached for the towel. He didn't dry himself off, didn't do anything. He wrapped the terrycloth around his body and he sat, shivering, on the toilet seat.
“Seriously, what's wrong?” Meredith said.
“Nothing. I don't know,” he said.
She stood there. Naked. Breasts perky and round like freshly picked apples. Her wet hair slicked against her head. Water dripped down the swells of her hips and meandered in trails to her bellybutton. She didn't cover anything, and for a moment, he couldn't help but stare. He imagined her big and swollen with their baby. They could get started on that. They could. His lips parted, and he felt his body thrum, deep in his groin, despite everything, despite how upset and wrong he felt. They could, except they couldn't. Discomfort followed the thrum as he inhaled.
He drew the towel closer, and he shivered as arousal faded under the assault of cold, sharp spears of fear. He didn't want to be with her and hurt. It would hurt. It would really hurt. And it wasn't like he was pleasing on the eye.
“The scars are bad,” he said, looking at his lap.
She frowned. “I've seen them, Derek.” She knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees over the towel. He shivered at the touch. “Is that what this is about?” she said. “The scars?”
“No,” he said. “Yes. I don't... ”
Her lip twitched, and she blinked. Confused. He'd confused her, and he closed his eyes. He'd confused himself. He couldn't watch her anymore. Heat clawed at his face. He couldn't think straight. He could barely think at all.
Her hands squeezed his knees. “You're sexy to me,” she said. “You're always sexy to me. Will you look at me?”
He forced himself to open his eyes.
“I just saw you in the shower,” she said. “Do I look like I'm not ready to go, just from looking?”
He swallowed. Blush reddened her skin. Not embarrassment. Not hardly. The way she stared, the way her glassy eyes took in the sight of him with heady, gulping dregs, told him that much.
“Will you drop the towel?” she said. She licked her lips.
His hands shook. He couldn't bring himself to drop it, but he stopped clutching so hard, and it gave way a little. The terrycloth pooled around his upper arms. The thick, long line of his sternal incision poked out at the top, and the awful, swollen bump at the top stood in sharp relief against his pale skin.
She rose up on her knees and peeled the towel away from his upper body, leaving it covering his lap and his legs. Cold air hit his wet skin, and he shivered. She stared into his eyes. Her breathing slowed, and then she swept her gaze to his chest. She hovered, eye level with the worst of it, with the bullet wound and everything else. She leaned. Her wet, soft lips touched him at the crease between his pectorals where the stitches formed a long, ugly line, and she licked beside the cut, upper abdomen to clavicles. She kissed next to the bump, and then she roamed higher.
Her lips pressed into his. Her tongue slid into his mouth, and he moaned, leaning back on the seat as she plundered. She looked at him as she pulled away, lips swollen with desire, panting.
“Do I look any less ready to go?” she asked, her voice low and quivering.
She stood, and she took his hand, guided his fingers against her inner thigh. Slick, wet heat touched his skin as she pushed him against the folds of her sex. “I feel pretty ready to go,” she said. “Don't you think?”
“Meredith,” he said, his voice shaky.
“I don't expect anything, Derek,” she assured him. “I'm just trying to show you who I see.”
“Who do you see?”
“I see the man I married. Scars or not. And he's a very, very sexy man.”
He blinked. His vision shimmered. His lip quivered, and he managed a watery, unsure smile. She winked, and he got lost in the sparkling gray of her soft, peerless eyes. He watched the ghosts of his face reflected in her pupils. She didn't blink. Her creamy, naked skin and her perk nipples stole his attention, and he swallowed. Instinct turned his vague smile into a slanted smirk. He touched her, hands splayed against her breasts, and she placed her palms over top his. Her warm skin soothed his soul. With a quiet, long breath, he stroked her to her navel.
She had scars, too. He touched the puckered, pink, jagged line on her side from where Dr. Bailey had extracted a piece of her liver for Thatcher. Remnants of her laparoscopic appendix removal, she had three faded marks carving dimples in her skin. One over her belly button, one just above her pubic hair, and one over the roll of her ribs on her right side, forming an triangle.
“We make a pretty banged up team,” she said, lip quivering.
“Yeah,” he said.
He pulled her against his body, trying not to feel uncoordinated and sluggish. He kissed the space between her cleavage, and warmth radiated against his face. He groaned, soft and low. She felt so nice, and she tasted so delicate. She giggled as he licked her. The sound relaxed him, and he hovered there. Her fingers wound through his hair.
“You're a very conniving woman,” he said he said with a sigh.
“What?” she said, her voice lost and low and dumb with desire.
He stroked her inner thigh and cupped her. She was hot. And she was wet. And she was ready. She moaned as he put pressure against her pubic bone.
“You know I can't leave you like this,” he said. “It's not in my genetic code.”
Her fingers scrunched in his hair as he stroked again. “Derek, I'm serious. If you don't want to do anything, we don't have to do anything.” She panted, and she moaned, and her muscles quivered. “I mean... I...” Another moan, and he grinned, watching her struggle with coherency.
“You were saying?” he said.
She grunted. “I'll live with a little frustration. I'm fine. I am. This was for you. This wasn't to make you feel obligated to--”
“Sit down,” he commanded.
She didn't look at him with doubt. She didn't ask him if he thought this was a good idea, or if he knew he could manage without hurting himself. He said sit down, and she did.
He let himself collapse to his knees in front of the toilet. His breaths caught in his chest, and he forced himself to slow down before he started hurting. He didn't want to hurt when he did this. He didn't want to hurt at all. Ever. But he would settle for a few minutes, pain free. Please. The room fuzzed with the sudden exertion of moving to the floor. He waited. She waited. When it cleared, he shifted forward, inching close to her, closer. The towel fell away from his groin, but he forgot all about it in the overwhelming need to get to her. To please her. To lose himself and forget why he had a list a mile long of things he didn't want to do because they hurt and not because he didn't want them.
A stronger Derek lunged forward in his mind's eye. He crawled on his hands and his knees, and he pushed her flat against the floor and speared her. He laughed and rumbled and sheathed himself with her wet heat while she quivered and screamed his name. He drove against her, needy, ready, whole, thrusting until he spilled, and she raked her fingers down his back.
In a blink, his mind's eye shattered. He shivered with unresolved tension, but he breathed, long and slow, and let it slough away. He knelt gingerly before her on the floor.
She sat against the back wall, loose and supple and naked, knees bent, legs spread, relaxed. For a long moment, he felt like a painter with an untouched canvas. He stared, blank, but instinct helped him when analysis failed. He touched her inner thigh, and she spread her legs wide for him, giving him a full, glorious view. He felt clumsy, almost laughable as he petted her. Despite his less than masterful attempt, she gasped as he slipped his finger inside her body. He formed a hook, and he pulled back against her personal g-spot, a place he'd spent many long, arduous hours searching for.
“Derek,” she managed, voice trembling. The sheer abandon and need in her voice relaxed his self-consciousness. Derek. His name. Said with the sharp, whining edge of begging. Begging for him. He'd done something right despite the fog.
She pressed against him, panting. “Derek,” she repeated. “Please.”
He swallowed, and he couldn't stop his own, throaty groan as he watched her body twitch. Spread wide and senseless all for him. He stroked her inner thigh with the palm of his free hand. Her hot skin felt slick against his hand. She didn't need much help. She'd already plowed up the hill, already edged to the cusp. She'd made herself good and frustrated in her earlier appraisal of his body.
His lip curled with satisfaction.
He pressed his thumb against her clit, and he pulled with the index finger he held inside her. Her muscles clenched around him, and a sizzling, twisting groan wound from her body and wrapped around him like a feather boa. She bared her teeth at him, and her eyes scrunched in a telltale grimace that screamed pain at him, the pain of the precipice. He had her with barely any effort. Her thighs shook, and her whole body tensed. She had a good grip. He almost couldn't move his finger, but he managed. He stroked her on the inside. Nonsensical moaning tore her throat. She pawed at nothing with her hands. Her breasts quivered as she breathed and breathed and breathed for him.
“Please,” she said, senseless, and the word stroked him like a balm.
He circled her clit. “You sure worked yourself into a mess,” he said. He laughed. Ache broke his chest, but he didn't care. “What would you have done if I hadn't taken the bait?”
She wailed at him as he pulled her from the inside. “Finish me,” she begged. “Finish me, finish me.”
“That wouldn't be very fun,” he said. “I've only had you here for, what, a minute?”
Her nails scrabbled against the floor. He watched, delighted, as she couldn't breathe and couldn't think and couldn't do anything but writhe and grimace and gasp. He kept her there. Stroked her. Not often enough to release, but often enough to hold her dangling on the edge. He slipped his middle finger in beside his index finger and rubbed. Inside. She gripped him. Her muscles contracted.
She couldn't find any purchase with the floor, so her arms stretched up, and she grabbed the towel rack. Her nipples perked, and her breasts heaved, swollen with arousal. For him. She sobbed. Begging him. He liked it.
“Derek, damn it,” she said. Her fingers flexed. The towel rack squeaked.
“What's the magic word?” he said.
“I said please already, you egotistical ass!” she yelled.
He clucked at her. “You're very grumpy today, you know.”
“Shut up and finish me, you evil, evil bastard,” she said.
“Yes, dear,” he said, a bare, velvet whisper.
He clenched his fingers, and he let her go with a single stroke. She slammed against the back wall. Her breathing stopped, and she stiffened as her body contracted all her muscles. She choked. A little. And then a discordant, raking moan bounced into the space between them. Her legs jerked over and over as muscle spasms ran down her body. Her insides squeezed his fingers again and again in rapid, fluttering succession. Then everything relaxed into jelly, and she sighed as she flopped onto the floor like a pile of muscle and flesh and nothing else.
Her hand found his naked thigh. For a moment, all she did was breathe. “You don't want to...” she managed after an eternity. She gestured at him.
He looked down at himself, surprised to find a partial erection staring back. He swallowed. Just watching her had turned him on, but...
Yes. “No,” he said.
“Kay,” she said. She didn't ask him why. Didn't prod him for an explanation or pressure him or do anything that made him feel embarrassed that he was kneeling on the bathroom floor, naked, scarred, sort of aroused, but unwilling. She smiled at him, instead, lazy and hazy and pleased. “That was really good. That... Mmm. Fifty gold stars, at least.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He sat with her on the floor, both of them naked, for minutes after minutes. She relaxed and sort of dozed, eyes half-closed, in a pleasant, post-orgasm cloud. He watched her. His wife.
Until his back pinched his nerves, and he had to move. Had to shift. Had to do something other than just sit there. With trembling, tired muscles, he stood, and he reached for his clothes. He'd dripped all over them when he'd leaned back against the toilet, but they were dry enough to wear.
He managed to pull on his pants while she stumbled to her feet and grabbed her own clothes from their strewn, haphazard pile by the tub. She tripped and leaned against the shower door. “Mmm,” she purred as she pulled up her pants. “I think. I think you might have broke me or something.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “The bathroom floor was new.”
She grinned. “It was. I'm glad I cleaned yesterday. Dirty sex would take on a slightly new meaning if I hadn't, I think, and not a really pleasant one.”
He snickered as he pulled on his shirt. His chest twinged, and he winced, but nothing snapped at him, nothing told him to stop. He moved to the door frame and let himself rest, let the room fuzz up and his mind drift without worrying so much about it. The sheer effort involved in remaining coherent and focused took so much from him. He breathed and spaced.
She slid next to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Your back again?”
He swallowed, opening his eyes. Reality sharpened. His breath hitched. “Yeah.”
“I'm sorry,” she said. She squeezed him. “I'm sorry this sucks so much for you. I hate that I can't do anything.”
“You're here,” he said. “That's something. A lot, actually.”
The trip down the steps didn't take nearly as long as the trip up the steps had. He didn't have to rest as much when gravity helped him instead of fought him tooth and claw. She helped him settle in his favorite chair. She brought him water and a single Percocet.
“Already?” he said as he swallowed the pill. He glanced around for a clock and surprised himself to find it was already noon.
“Yep,” she said. “You slept for a long time after the last batch knocked you out. We're on an 8 12 4 schedule now instead of 6 10 2, which, actually might help you at night, since your Oxycontin won't be fading very early morning when you're still trying to sleep.”
“That would be nice,” he said.
She rubbed his back. “It'll get better,” she said. “Two weeks. You'll wonder why on Earth you were ever so grouchy. Mark my words.”
“Do I need to get you a marker?”
She laughed. “Want anything for lunch? I'm gonna go heat up a hot pocket.”
He scrunched his nose. “Meredith, those things are horrible for you. They're solid blocks of fat and grease.”
She shrugged. “Well, I'm not making you one. I assumed you'd want something like... a salad. Or... Whatever. I bought a few of those lettuce pack thingies and some fresh tomatoes. I can make lettuce pack thingies. You just cut the bag open and you have a nice, professional, crispy salad. Or so I'm told.”
“Not right now,” he said. “I'm just going to rest my eyes for a bit.”
“Okay,” she said.
He watched her as she padded into the kitchen. He listened as she rummaged through the freezer. He heard the vague hum of the microwave. She made odd thumping noises, as if she'd decided to pass the time by skipping around the center island in the kitchen while her hot pocket cooked. His eyelids lowered, heavy. The sound of her voice coiled in his head as she started to sing, off-key, to some ridiculous pop song she liked.
“You can stand under my umbrella,” she wailed. “Ella, ella, ey, ey, ey.”
The microwave beeped, and he lost track after that.