All Along The Watchtower - Part 7C
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 7C
Gary Clark stared at him, the space between them separated by a sleek, black gun.
Words. Derek said words. He tried.
Adrenaline made his body quiver. Fight or flight? His body chose flight, but fear and logic made strange bedfellows, and they paralyzed him in a shivery, trembling pile. He swallowed. Flight just meant he'd get shot in the back.
His legs turned to jelly. Sweat dripped down the curve of his spine. His voice wavered, and he tried not to take a submissive stance. Tried. But he'd seen what guns did. Killed people. Killed his dad. He tried to convince the jabbering fear to shut up, but his thoughts kept coming back to that. To soft, wheezy, final words. To, “Derek, listen to me. This is very important.”
His hands moved in front of him. Please, they said for him when real words failed in his throat. Please, don't.
Given dominance, Gary Clark advanced. Anger burbled in his tone. “No talking!” he said.
Derek's legs drew him back one step. Two.
He tried. He tried to talk. He tried to break through and reach the man behind Gary Clark's hating gaze, but fear burbled in Derek's gut. He couldn't even keep track of what he said. Couldn't make it sound strong and commanding at all. The man who cheerfully announced that it was a beautiful day to save lives became submissive. Shivery. He couldn't keep his breaths steady. He knew he looked terrified, and he knew that was probably a mistake. He radiated easy pickings like a tripping, sick gazelle for a lion.
Gary Clark's gun shook. He stared at Derek with sharp, furious, hating eyes.
Derek tried to talk. The gun wavered, until it pointed at Derek's feet. He made the mistake of thinking he'd made progress.
He didn't remember the impact of the bullet. He didn't remember falling. He stared at the ceiling, breaths twisting in his torso while April panicked somewhere behind him. Sucking down air sent knives into his gut, but he needed air. He needed. The struggle became a war. Needing air versus not wanting it. Eternity stretched into something longer and more torturous.
April abandoned him. Gary Clark pointed the gun, and Derek waited to die. “No, Mr. Clark,” Derek managed in a feeble attempt at... what? To save his own life? To flee?
Something drew Gary Clark's attention to his right. Derek looked, too, but he didn't see anything. Didn't see anything but a blur, and then he was alone, cast away like a cheap, expendable thing. He lay on his back, confused, unable to breathe or move or think. He didn't know why Mr. Clark had disappeared, or when he would come back.
Somebody was in the room with him. Somebody not Meredith. He knew it before he opened his eyes. The steps as the body moved were too heavy. The breaths as the body breathed were too low and rasping. The general presence was too large. A man.
Derek's eyelids pushed up, and through blurry eyelashes he saw the outline of a large, looming person. Big. Male. Leaning near Derek's chair. Close. Closer.
No talking!
The impulse to flee grabbed his muscles and squeezed. His breaths sped into panting, and he lurched to his feet faster than he should have. Faster than his injured body could handle. A weird, twisting noise caught in his throat. “No,” he croaked. Fire snapped under his sternum. Things that had been healing stretched and twanged and broke inside.
The man dropped his gun to the floor where it shattered and made a wet splash. Something cold soaked into Derek's socks. Gasping, Derek tried to move. He did. One shaky step. More of a stumble, really. The Percocet didn't make him dizzy all the time anymore, but it still made elevation changes an invitation to faint if they weren't approached with enough caution.
The room blotted out at the edges and tilted.
Gary Clark pulled Derek into a tight bear hug before he fell. Pressure constricted Derek's chest. Pain. Trapped. Derek's heart plunged, every throbbing beat squeezing like a fist. His body shook. He made a whining, inhuman, keening sound as his lungs pushed and pulled, frantic for air. Something hot and wet seeped down his legs. He couldn't speak, and terror sucked him down into a black hole of panic.
“Jesus,” said Gary Clark as he adjusted his grip. The pain lessened, but didn't abate. “What's... Jesus Christ.”
Derek gulped for air, trembling. Run, run, run, run, run. Indomitable, his brain said run. His legs twitched with the need to obey. He clawed at Gary Clark's shirt, desperate, violent, but his murderer wouldn't let go.
“Stop it,” Mr. Clark said. “Stop it, Derek, you'll fucking hurt yourself. It's Mark. It's Mark. Stop!”
Heavy footsteps. “What the hell happened?” Meredith said.
“Please,” Derek said. The single desperate word of entreaty was all he could manage.
“I don't fucking know what happened,” Mr. Clark said. “Don't move, Derek. Jesus. There's glass on the floor by your feet.”
“Mark,” said Derek as spoken word began to register. The name skipped on his tongue and came out broken. He couldn't breathe, couldn't get his body to relax. The room spun. Mark, he thought. But Gary Clark wouldn't let go, and so Derek shivered, heart hammering like a gong, over and over. “Mark.”
Derek heard the whoosh of a broom scraping pieces of glass from the floor.
“The chair is two steps back,” Mark said, his voice low and cautious. “It's clear of glass.”
Mark let him go, and Derek fled in the opposite direction Mark had instructed him to go. He fled all the way to the foyer before he could make himself stop and assess. Unmitigated panic slowed into something less frenetic, less all-consuming, when he realized nobody chased him. Nobody yelled. Meredith was there, and she wasn't screaming or crying or distressed about a madman in their house. Daylight streamed in through the glass pane of the front door. He swallowed, looking back over his shoulder.
The scraping stopped. Meredith pushed shimmery, sparkling, broken bits into a dustpan and stood with a groan. Gary Clark? No. Mark. And the gun had been a glass. A fucking glass of water.
“Are you okay?” Meredith said.
“I'm fine,” Derek snapped. He moved deeper into the foyer, out of sight. One wobbling step. Two. “I'm fine.”
He hadn't just survived a murder attempt. Mark had been putting down a glass of water for him on the side table by the chair. Heat flamed across his face and his throat and his ears. He clawed at his neck, trying to hide it. He felt them staring at him through the wall as he moved, felt their eyes on him.
He shuffled into the windowless downstairs bathroom. Gunfire flared in the mirror, white and flashing and hot. He gasped, shut the door, turned off the lights, and collapsed to the floor against the wall. The soft bath mat muffled the jolt. His heart throbbed under his breastbone. He put his face into his knees, and he breathed. A familiar, vague tickle of ammonia crept into his nostrils, and he gagged and slammed his head back against the wall. Pain flared in his chest.
His pajama pants were drenched from the crotch to the calves. He'd wet himself. He'd fucking pissed in his pants. They'd seen it. They must have. Both of them. Nausea coiled. His skin bloomed hot and bright with a fresh flush.
Voices murmured in the other room. Talking about him, probably.
He couldn't stop trembling, and his heart wouldn't slow.
Water lapped in the distance. “Hi,” his mirror Meredith said. “Please, don't be scared.” Her arms wrapped around him.
A knock on the door tore him from his desperate reverie.
“Derek?” Meredith said, her voice soft and muffled through the wood. A dark shadow shifted under the threshold. The doorknob moved a millimeter and then jammed as she tested it. He'd locked it. When had that happened?
“Can you at least tell me you're okay?” she said.
He reached. His cold, sweaty, shaking fingers slipped, but he managed to flip the latch. Eventually. And then he curled against his wet knees, letting the slant of his thighs support his body. As long as he didn't press, his sternum didn't hurt, though his ribs felt strange, and the bullet wound pulled like somebody poked him with a finger. He didn't care. He didn't speak. He pressed his forehead into the wet dip between his knees and sighed. He wanted it to stop. Why wouldn't it stop?
“Derek? I'm coming in, okay?”
A long, interminable stretch followed as she gave him a chance to say no, but words clotted in his throat. What the hell was he supposed to say? My friend who I've known since childhood came at me with a glass of water, and I thought I was going to die?
A shaft of daylight fell into the bathroom at a slant. He squinted, but couldn't see more than her willowy shadow. “Hey,” she said. She didn't turn on the light, but she left the door open a crack. She fumbled in the dark and stepped over his legs. If she found anything odd about him sitting on the floor in the dark in the bathroom, she said nothing about it. She sat on the toilet seat, and she touched his shoulder.
Her breath caught, and her hand froze. “Derek, you're shaking,” she said. Her palm moved against his deltoid. She shifted. With a thump, she slid into the small space between him and the toilet, and she hugged him while he sat there, glassy-eyed and scared and wondering why his brain was doing these things to him. Making him think things that weren't real.
“I didn't know Mark was visiting,” he said. He sounded wispy in the small space. Like he couldn't get his lungs to work. Meredith's grip tightened.
She sighed. “I should have mentioned it again. It's my fault. He's been wanting to stop by since I took you home. He's been calling so much, I swear, it's like I already thought the world knew his day off was today, and that he wanted to stop by. I'm really sorry he startled you. I told him to bring you a glass of water since he was headed into the living room anyway. I... I didn't think. Wasn't thinking.”
She babbled. He didn't hear much of it, but the low rush of words grounded him. Made him feel... Better. The fear that had lit him up like a firecracker sparked and flickered and died, until all that it left in its wake was a shaky, weak, tired feeling that told him he'd stressed himself far beyond his capability to be stressed. He swallowed, sitting in his soiled pants. He needed to clean up and change, but he couldn't... He thought of all the steps between him and his clean clothes, and his eyes watered. His throat constricted.
A shadow loomed by the door. “It's just me,” said Mark, enunciating loudly and firmly as though he thought he approached a jumper on a roof. “It's Mark.” His arm came through the crack in the door, and the slant of light yawned a bit wider. He held a dark, fuzzy blob in his grip, which Meredith stood up to take from him.
“Thanks,” she said.
Mark's arm slipped back out of the room, and the shadow disappeared. Meredith pushed the door closed with a thud, leaving them with no light but what the small blue plug-in nightlight provided.
She handed Derek the soft bundle. His fingers clenched the soft, dry, clean flannel. Hot flush swept over him. Again. A low, grating moan tore through him, and he wept in the dark. She squeezed back into the space between the toilet and his body, and she embraced him.
“It's okay,” she said.
Fat, hot tears rolled down his face. “I thought I was going to die.”
“I know.”
“I don't want to die.”
She rubbed his back with long, soothing strokes. “I know.”
He rolled his face into her shoulder, and a deep choking sob racked his body. And then another and another. He clutched her shirt, and he cried, stirring up agony in his chest, but he couldn't stop. He cried until exhaustion pulled him into a sniffling, throbbing silence. His chest ached, his throat felt raw, and muzzy cotton clogged his brain. He felt sick.
She sat with him. Until his eyes drifted shut. Sleep plowed into him like a muscle car in a drag race, but she shook him gently, enough to jolt him back into half awake. “Why don't you change, and you can sleep in the living room?” she suggested.
Beyond sentience, he listened to her tone of voice more than anything else. She convinced him to stand up. She pulled down his dirty pants. Water whooshed in the sink. She dabbed the hand towel under the faucet. She turned, but he stopped her.
“I can do it,” he said, his voice hoarse and unrecognizable. Defeated. She handed him the towel, and he wiped the drying urine off his bare legs while she stared in the mirror, or at the wall, or anywhere but at him. Water evaporated. His skin chilled and shivered. His muscles ached, and by the time he finished and dropped the urine-soaked towel... somewhere, he'd lost his breath, the room seemed to waver in and out, and he really thought he might fall, not from dizziness or doing something he shouldn't, but because he had nothing left.
Nothing.
And so he stood there, naked from the waist down except for his socks, his weight slumped against the wall. Meredith waited. She waited, until he swallowed, trembling. Fresh tears and blooming embarrassment broke loose. He clung to the towel rack because if he didn't he would collapse.
“I can't,” he said. “I can't, I can't.”
“It's okay,” she said. “It's okay. Derek, it's okay.”
She hugged him, and he started crying again. Not the deep, guttural, rending sobs from before. Just quiet, wet sniveling that made him sick inside. The harder he tried to stop, the worse the urge to weep. As she helped him step into the clean pants Mark had brought for him from upstairs, he gave up. He just gave up and cried.
She threw his old, soiled pajamas into the bowl of the sink.
“Can you walk if I help?” she said.
Shaking with effort, he transferred his grip from the towel rack to her shoulders. He took a test step. He nearly buckled. Her arm slipped around his waist. Another step, and he had to rest, panting. They made it into the hallway. And then the foyer. He couldn't go more than a foot without resting. He shambled, mindless. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to disappear to someplace else. A place that wasn't here, where he'd wet himself in terror in front of his wife and his friend. A place that wasn't here, where he couldn't have sex or walk up steps. A place that wasn't here, where he hurt.
He hurt here.
Mark stood in the center of the living room like a lost, lonely island. “Hey, man,” he said, and then he fell silent, and an odd, crumpled look shattered his usual, confident demeanor. Like he had no idea what to say that would be right or reasonable.
Derek wiped at his eyes, even as another flush spread over his skin, rendering any sort of appearance doctoring useless. He'd cried himself into exhaustion, and he'd wet himself, and he'd been shot. Three immutable facts. He couldn't even spare the energy anymore to speak.
He glanced around the room, unable to process anything else, and his gaze fell on the chair. The safe chair. Covered in supportive pillows and rumpled blankets. His back liked that chair.
“Don't sit there,” Meredith said. “We're moving this one, remember?”
No.
He blinked. She nudged him toward the couch. He hobbled and tripped as more and more parts of his body shut down and demanded rest. He tried not to think about Mark. Staring. Silent. Unsure.
Meredith transferred pillows while he clung to the armrest. She put a big, fluffy one next to the arm of the sofa, and another where his back would go. She wrapped a warm blanket around his body. He collapsed, and the faucet behind his eyes began to rush, fast, faster, until he lost track of everything.
A cold glass of water brushed his palm. Reflex made him clutch it, but it was too heavy. She helped him lift it to his lips, and he took weak swallow after weak swallow. The liquid hit his parched throat too fast, and he spluttered and spat with the shock. Water dribbled everywhere. He pushed the glass away, and she took it and set it nearby on the coffee table. She draped a thick, warm comforter over his legs. His eyes closed, and he stopped. Just stopped. His trembling, tired muscles loosened.
She kissed him. “I love you,” she said.
He floated in the dark.
“God, I'm so sorry,” Mark said. “I've never seen him like that. Not ever. I didn't want to let go because I thought he'd fall, but--”
“Does it make me a bad person?” Meredith said. “To hate a dead man so much I wish I could add some kerosene to whatever hell he's burning in?”
A pregnant pause. “No,” said Mark, his voice deep and low. “I think I'd help you.”
Meredith sucked in a wet breath and sniffed. “Let's just move this chair.”
“Okay,” said Mark, though he sounded unsure. “This is the chair you want moved?”
“Yeah.”
“I think... Yeah. You grab that end.”
The last noises Derek heard were of his friend and his wife, huffing and groaning while they lugged a huge chair up the stairs for him. He should be helping, he thought. He could help. He swallowed. Sometime between one thought and the next, he didn't hear anything anymore. His body wasn't sleeping on a couch. He was dying, instead.
“I love you,” Meredith said as they put the mask over his face, and Dr. Avery told him to breathe deeply.
Two knife stabs, and the pain lessened. Three, and relief washed over his nerve endings. His eyelids drooped. He watched Meredith watching him. He didn't want to leave, and then he couldn't not leave. His eyes shut. Voices disappeared through a long, echoing tunnel. His sense of the world faded like someone removed puzzle pieces in fast succession. Holes here. Holes there. Blotting out.
Black.
His eyes didn't open. He didn't exactly wake up. But he felt the roll of the lights overhead. Felt the rumble under his body. Heard voices. And then nothing.
A team of six or seven nurses counted to three. The sheets pinched his hips and his shoulders and the sides of his body, and they lifted him. The sheets relaxed. His body settled on something flat and soft. People touched him. Pulled at his hospital gown and did something with his mouth. Air hit his skin. Hands. All over him, touching places only Meredith should touch. A bag crinkled. The flinch that came with modesty lost itself in the mire. He sent the message, but his nerves didn't receive. Somebody picked up his hand and clipped something to his finger. Monitors bleeped in his ears. And then nothing.
When he managed to push his eyelids up the first time, even the dark hurt his eyes, and he closed them again for a moment. He tried again. Cristina stood there with a chart, and she talked with a woman. He didn't understand the words. Mostly, he saw ceiling. On the horizon, he saw his toes. Cristina stared at him, touched something on his chest. And then nothing.
The woman from before, the one he didn't know, unfurled a blanket over his body. He saw the edges of it fan into his view of the ceiling as she let the air fluff it up. Light flickered as the blanket eclipsed all else, and then returned as the blanket settled on top of his body, thin and not warm enough against the glaciers sliding underneath his skin. At least they'd covered him.
He couldn't move. Nausea swirled in the back of his throat, and his limbs froze with chill, but the tingly, weightless, not-really-there-yet feeling that made his head cotton overruled his ability to do more than lie there. He tried to swallow and couldn't. He had something in his mouth. His teeth couldn't meet, and his tongue sat mashed under the heavy weight. Thick straps gripped his face. He knew he had something stuck down his throat, but beyond that, numbness.
The woman looked at him, and a bright, wide smile curved her lips and crinkled at her eyes. “Dr. Shepherd,” she said, her tone low and whisper soft. “I'm told your surgery went just fine. It's about 3:30PM. You're on a ventilator right now, and you're in the cardiac intensive care unit at Seattle Grace. I just added more morphine to your drip. Can you nod for me if you're in any pain?”
The ventilator whirred and pushed air into his lungs. He felt like he breathed through a straw. Nothing made any sense. He couldn't move. How could he nod even if he wanted to? A blood pressure cuff constricted around his arm, tight, tighter. He blinked. His body shook. He didn't like it here. He wanted to go home.
The woman picked up his hand. He saw an intravenous line stuck in his wrist. A name tag encircled him. He couldn't read the tag. Couldn't feel it against his skin. He watched his hand in the woman's. He felt the touch. But he couldn't move. Like his body wasn't his. Just a prison.
“I know this is very scary, Dr. Shepherd. You've been given a lot of muscle relaxants and sedatives to keep you from moving around while you're waking up. There's a lot of tubes and wires, and we don't want you to dislodge anything by accident. But you're safe, and you're out of surgery. I'm told everything went just fine. Do you want to see Dr. Grey?”
Cold bleached his bones. He blinked.
“Meredith Grey,” said the woman. “Do you want to see Meredith, Dr. Shepherd?”
He stared. Desperation drove a sword into his nerves. He tried to squeeze his fingers, but they wouldn't move. He twitched. His head. Maybe not a nod, but a twitch. Please.
Please, give me Meredith.
“It's Mark,” said a deep voice. “I'm in the room. Over here. Just Mark.”
Mark's voice penetrated the fog before Derek even realized he'd woken up. He swallowed and squinted, trying to force the cobwebs of sleep away, but they didn't want to leave. He wiped at his eyes. His cheeks hurt, rubbed raw with evaporated tears and leftover salt. His eyes burned. His body throbbed, and his chest ached, and he knew he wouldn't be getting up anytime soon. He didn't even try.
“Do you need anything?” Mark said. “Meredith's doing some laundry, but I can get her.”
A vague sound caught in Derek's throat. He stared at Mark through half-lidded eyelids and half-awake eyes. “Mark,” he said. His voice sounded broken and weak and sick. His throat felt raw. Dry. Torn. Thoughts didn't work, and so he just stared.
“Yeah,” said Mark. “Go back to sleep if you want.”
Derek closed his eyes, trying, through the mire, to think of a way to ask for water that wouldn't sound pathetic. He swallowed and worked his salivary glands. Nothing helped. The pasty, gummy dryness in his mouth and throat lingered. He put his elbow over his eyes and breathed, fighting sentience for all he was worth, but something had decided he would wake up now, and he was stuck. Awake. Tired, but not tired enough to drift back into dreams without serious effort.
“I'd like some water,” he said. He couldn't bring himself to add a please. To beg. Not after the morning he'd had. His voice grated, and so he sat there, eyes shut, and he rested his throat.
“Sure,” Mark said. He left the room. Water rushed in the distance. Footsteps returned. “It's Mark. I'm coming into the room.”
Tired and spent and pushed beyond embarrassment into dejected indifference, Derek listened to Mark as he reported his positions in the room like a fucking sonar. Ping. Ping. Ping. I'm here! On a base level, Derek appreciated it. Just a little. Anything that helped him not become the terrified, nonsensical animal that wet himself. On an intelligent level, it annoyed him that Mark felt he needed to provide this sort of service. This coddling. And it frustrated Derek that Mark was probably right.
Mark handed him the glass of water, and Derek drank with slow, disinterested sips. When the glass emptied, Derek rubbed the cool crystal against his forehead. The chill broke some of the fog, but not much. “Thank you,” he said. His voice still cracked.
“No problem,” Mark said.
Meredith came into the room. She smiled when she saw Derek, blinking and sort of awake, but she didn't draw attention to him. She'd changed. She wore some old, faded jeans, flip-flops, and his favorite ratty Dartmouth shirt. She'd drawn her hair into a loose, scraggly ponytail that looped under on itself sort of like a bun but not really.
“I'm going to run some errands,” she said. “I'll be back in a few hours, okay?”
“Sure,” Mark said.
Derek stared.
“Do you want anything from the store?” she said. “Derek?”
“What?”
She smiled. “I'm going out. Do you want me to get you anything?”
“No.”
“Okay.” She kissed his cheek. She put on dark, stylish sunglasses, grabbed her purse, and she left. The resounding slam of the door rumbled through the house, and Derek flinched.
He fucking flinched. He wiped his eyes again. The blankets and comforter rustled as he leaned over his knees, trying to wake up his muscles and his body and his mind. Mark sat in front of the television, messing with cables and wires. He made clanks and thumps as he pushed the DVD player aside.
“What are you doing?” Derek said.
“I'm setting up my PS3 for you.”
“How do you even have enough time for a PS3?”
Mark shrugged. “I lead a vegetative, indoor life outside the hospital, unlike you, Mr. Fishing-Is-Fun.”
“Fishing is fun,” Derek said.
“It's like watching paint dry, Derek. No. It's like watching invisible paint dry, which is even worse, because there's nothing to fucking watch. Anyway, I figured this would help stave off some boredom when Meredith goes back to work. Plus, if I'm not mistaken, you owe me a stoned rematch.”
“What?”
“Remember when I got my wisdom teeth out?” Mark said. He grinned like a five-year-old in a candy store full of chocolate and gummy bears. “Space Invaders on the Atari? You beat my pants off every time because I was high on meds.”
“You say it was because you were high on meds,” Derek said.
“Right, well. Now's your chance to prove you're just better than me. Tables are turned.”
Derek blinked. “PS3 has Space Invaders?”
“You know, I read something about a remake a while ago, I think, but I don't have it,” Mark said. He lay flat on his belly on the rug and thumped around under the television. He grunted. Another thump. “There, got it.” He eased onto his haunches. When he hit the power on the television, the screen came alive with a flare of color. The rumble of a revving engine filled the room. Derek watched the screen, a bit disoriented with all the movement and flashing, and also helplessly engrossed because he didn't have the mental capacity for dividing his attention between multiple things.
Mark scooted across the floor. He pushed the coffee table away and sat down on the rug, his back resting against the sofa to the left of Derek. “Here,” Mark said, and he handed a controller over his shoulder for Derek to grab.
“What?” Derek forced his gaze away from the screen.
Mark glanced over his shoulder, an evil gleam in his eye. “Want to race?”
Derek stared at the controller. It had lots of buttons. Lots. It was way more complicated than the Atari joystick he could recall from the indistinct edges of his memory. “Mark, I haven't played a game since Space Invaders.”
“It's good for dexterity, you know,” Mark said. “Hand-eye coordination.”
“Right,” Derek said. “You do it for professional development.”
“Of course, I do,” Mark replied. “I didn't get to be this awesome just from my own excessive talent.”
Derek tilted the controller in his hands. He felt clumsy. Already. And he hadn't done anything yet. He stared at the screen and blinked. A flashy car sped past, and he could barely keep track of it. His head felt like cotton. He had no reflexes. The painkillers destroyed his normal ability for precision. His competitive spirit died a wheezing death because he knew he would lose. “Mark, I'm a bit more stoned than you were with your wisdom teeth.”
“It's okay,” Mark said. “I have a plan. And if you really hate it, there's always Netflix.”
“A plan?”
“Yes,” Mark said. He put his controller on the coffee table and crawled to the liquor cabinet. He peered into the space. Bottles clinked. “Do you mind if I finish off some of your scotch? Tequila is rank. I really don't get how Meredith drinks it straight.”
When Derek only stared, Mark took that as free license. Derek watched his good bottle of St. Magdalene single malt scotch turn up in the air. The scotch sloshed, and Mark chugged straight from the bottle. Chugged. He downed at least five shots worth of alcohol before he gagged. He rested with his mouth hanging open as his eyes watered. And then he took another long gulp.
“Give me a few minutes,” Mark said. “I haven't eaten in a while. We'll be on pretty even footing in no time.”
“Mark, it's not even dinner time.”
“So, what?” He took another swig and settled back against the couch. “I already asked Meredith if she minds a house guest, and I surrendered my keys. I don't have to work until tomorrow night. What's the big deal?” Another swig, and then he swayed. “Whoa,” he said.
“Mark...”
“Press,” Mark said. He stumbled on his tongue. “Press the shtart. The button.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “You are such an idiot.”
Mark poked Derek's knee. His face had turned a light cherry color. He took another swig. “Shhhut up, and race me, you pompous jerk.” He put the St. Magdalene on the coffee table, and he fumbled with his controller.
“Fine,” Derek grumbled. “Fine. How do I play?”
“I probly shhoulda expl...” Mark breathed. “Explained that before I got. Ham. Hammered, huh.”
Derek couldn't help the smile that took over his face. He laughed. Not hard, but he laughed. And it felt liberating. Just a little. “No, do tell, Mark,” he said. “I think I'll like this version.”
“Jus press buttons,” Mark said. “First one to the... fffinish line...”
“Will be a miracle?”
“Yep,” Mark said, and they played. Somehow.
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 7C
Gary Clark stared at him, the space between them separated by a sleek, black gun.
Words. Derek said words. He tried.
Adrenaline made his body quiver. Fight or flight? His body chose flight, but fear and logic made strange bedfellows, and they paralyzed him in a shivery, trembling pile. He swallowed. Flight just meant he'd get shot in the back.
His legs turned to jelly. Sweat dripped down the curve of his spine. His voice wavered, and he tried not to take a submissive stance. Tried. But he'd seen what guns did. Killed people. Killed his dad. He tried to convince the jabbering fear to shut up, but his thoughts kept coming back to that. To soft, wheezy, final words. To, “Derek, listen to me. This is very important.”
His hands moved in front of him. Please, they said for him when real words failed in his throat. Please, don't.
Given dominance, Gary Clark advanced. Anger burbled in his tone. “No talking!” he said.
Derek's legs drew him back one step. Two.
He tried. He tried to talk. He tried to break through and reach the man behind Gary Clark's hating gaze, but fear burbled in Derek's gut. He couldn't even keep track of what he said. Couldn't make it sound strong and commanding at all. The man who cheerfully announced that it was a beautiful day to save lives became submissive. Shivery. He couldn't keep his breaths steady. He knew he looked terrified, and he knew that was probably a mistake. He radiated easy pickings like a tripping, sick gazelle for a lion.
Gary Clark's gun shook. He stared at Derek with sharp, furious, hating eyes.
Derek tried to talk. The gun wavered, until it pointed at Derek's feet. He made the mistake of thinking he'd made progress.
He didn't remember the impact of the bullet. He didn't remember falling. He stared at the ceiling, breaths twisting in his torso while April panicked somewhere behind him. Sucking down air sent knives into his gut, but he needed air. He needed. The struggle became a war. Needing air versus not wanting it. Eternity stretched into something longer and more torturous.
April abandoned him. Gary Clark pointed the gun, and Derek waited to die. “No, Mr. Clark,” Derek managed in a feeble attempt at... what? To save his own life? To flee?
Something drew Gary Clark's attention to his right. Derek looked, too, but he didn't see anything. Didn't see anything but a blur, and then he was alone, cast away like a cheap, expendable thing. He lay on his back, confused, unable to breathe or move or think. He didn't know why Mr. Clark had disappeared, or when he would come back.
Somebody was in the room with him. Somebody not Meredith. He knew it before he opened his eyes. The steps as the body moved were too heavy. The breaths as the body breathed were too low and rasping. The general presence was too large. A man.
Derek's eyelids pushed up, and through blurry eyelashes he saw the outline of a large, looming person. Big. Male. Leaning near Derek's chair. Close. Closer.
No talking!
The impulse to flee grabbed his muscles and squeezed. His breaths sped into panting, and he lurched to his feet faster than he should have. Faster than his injured body could handle. A weird, twisting noise caught in his throat. “No,” he croaked. Fire snapped under his sternum. Things that had been healing stretched and twanged and broke inside.
The man dropped his gun to the floor where it shattered and made a wet splash. Something cold soaked into Derek's socks. Gasping, Derek tried to move. He did. One shaky step. More of a stumble, really. The Percocet didn't make him dizzy all the time anymore, but it still made elevation changes an invitation to faint if they weren't approached with enough caution.
The room blotted out at the edges and tilted.
Gary Clark pulled Derek into a tight bear hug before he fell. Pressure constricted Derek's chest. Pain. Trapped. Derek's heart plunged, every throbbing beat squeezing like a fist. His body shook. He made a whining, inhuman, keening sound as his lungs pushed and pulled, frantic for air. Something hot and wet seeped down his legs. He couldn't speak, and terror sucked him down into a black hole of panic.
“Jesus,” said Gary Clark as he adjusted his grip. The pain lessened, but didn't abate. “What's... Jesus Christ.”
Derek gulped for air, trembling. Run, run, run, run, run. Indomitable, his brain said run. His legs twitched with the need to obey. He clawed at Gary Clark's shirt, desperate, violent, but his murderer wouldn't let go.
“Stop it,” Mr. Clark said. “Stop it, Derek, you'll fucking hurt yourself. It's Mark. It's Mark. Stop!”
Heavy footsteps. “What the hell happened?” Meredith said.
“Please,” Derek said. The single desperate word of entreaty was all he could manage.
“I don't fucking know what happened,” Mr. Clark said. “Don't move, Derek. Jesus. There's glass on the floor by your feet.”
“Mark,” said Derek as spoken word began to register. The name skipped on his tongue and came out broken. He couldn't breathe, couldn't get his body to relax. The room spun. Mark, he thought. But Gary Clark wouldn't let go, and so Derek shivered, heart hammering like a gong, over and over. “Mark.”
Derek heard the whoosh of a broom scraping pieces of glass from the floor.
“The chair is two steps back,” Mark said, his voice low and cautious. “It's clear of glass.”
Mark let him go, and Derek fled in the opposite direction Mark had instructed him to go. He fled all the way to the foyer before he could make himself stop and assess. Unmitigated panic slowed into something less frenetic, less all-consuming, when he realized nobody chased him. Nobody yelled. Meredith was there, and she wasn't screaming or crying or distressed about a madman in their house. Daylight streamed in through the glass pane of the front door. He swallowed, looking back over his shoulder.
The scraping stopped. Meredith pushed shimmery, sparkling, broken bits into a dustpan and stood with a groan. Gary Clark? No. Mark. And the gun had been a glass. A fucking glass of water.
“Are you okay?” Meredith said.
“I'm fine,” Derek snapped. He moved deeper into the foyer, out of sight. One wobbling step. Two. “I'm fine.”
He hadn't just survived a murder attempt. Mark had been putting down a glass of water for him on the side table by the chair. Heat flamed across his face and his throat and his ears. He clawed at his neck, trying to hide it. He felt them staring at him through the wall as he moved, felt their eyes on him.
He shuffled into the windowless downstairs bathroom. Gunfire flared in the mirror, white and flashing and hot. He gasped, shut the door, turned off the lights, and collapsed to the floor against the wall. The soft bath mat muffled the jolt. His heart throbbed under his breastbone. He put his face into his knees, and he breathed. A familiar, vague tickle of ammonia crept into his nostrils, and he gagged and slammed his head back against the wall. Pain flared in his chest.
His pajama pants were drenched from the crotch to the calves. He'd wet himself. He'd fucking pissed in his pants. They'd seen it. They must have. Both of them. Nausea coiled. His skin bloomed hot and bright with a fresh flush.
Voices murmured in the other room. Talking about him, probably.
He couldn't stop trembling, and his heart wouldn't slow.
Water lapped in the distance. “Hi,” his mirror Meredith said. “Please, don't be scared.” Her arms wrapped around him.
A knock on the door tore him from his desperate reverie.
“Derek?” Meredith said, her voice soft and muffled through the wood. A dark shadow shifted under the threshold. The doorknob moved a millimeter and then jammed as she tested it. He'd locked it. When had that happened?
“Can you at least tell me you're okay?” she said.
He reached. His cold, sweaty, shaking fingers slipped, but he managed to flip the latch. Eventually. And then he curled against his wet knees, letting the slant of his thighs support his body. As long as he didn't press, his sternum didn't hurt, though his ribs felt strange, and the bullet wound pulled like somebody poked him with a finger. He didn't care. He didn't speak. He pressed his forehead into the wet dip between his knees and sighed. He wanted it to stop. Why wouldn't it stop?
“Derek? I'm coming in, okay?”
A long, interminable stretch followed as she gave him a chance to say no, but words clotted in his throat. What the hell was he supposed to say? My friend who I've known since childhood came at me with a glass of water, and I thought I was going to die?
A shaft of daylight fell into the bathroom at a slant. He squinted, but couldn't see more than her willowy shadow. “Hey,” she said. She didn't turn on the light, but she left the door open a crack. She fumbled in the dark and stepped over his legs. If she found anything odd about him sitting on the floor in the dark in the bathroom, she said nothing about it. She sat on the toilet seat, and she touched his shoulder.
Her breath caught, and her hand froze. “Derek, you're shaking,” she said. Her palm moved against his deltoid. She shifted. With a thump, she slid into the small space between him and the toilet, and she hugged him while he sat there, glassy-eyed and scared and wondering why his brain was doing these things to him. Making him think things that weren't real.
“I didn't know Mark was visiting,” he said. He sounded wispy in the small space. Like he couldn't get his lungs to work. Meredith's grip tightened.
She sighed. “I should have mentioned it again. It's my fault. He's been wanting to stop by since I took you home. He's been calling so much, I swear, it's like I already thought the world knew his day off was today, and that he wanted to stop by. I'm really sorry he startled you. I told him to bring you a glass of water since he was headed into the living room anyway. I... I didn't think. Wasn't thinking.”
She babbled. He didn't hear much of it, but the low rush of words grounded him. Made him feel... Better. The fear that had lit him up like a firecracker sparked and flickered and died, until all that it left in its wake was a shaky, weak, tired feeling that told him he'd stressed himself far beyond his capability to be stressed. He swallowed, sitting in his soiled pants. He needed to clean up and change, but he couldn't... He thought of all the steps between him and his clean clothes, and his eyes watered. His throat constricted.
A shadow loomed by the door. “It's just me,” said Mark, enunciating loudly and firmly as though he thought he approached a jumper on a roof. “It's Mark.” His arm came through the crack in the door, and the slant of light yawned a bit wider. He held a dark, fuzzy blob in his grip, which Meredith stood up to take from him.
“Thanks,” she said.
Mark's arm slipped back out of the room, and the shadow disappeared. Meredith pushed the door closed with a thud, leaving them with no light but what the small blue plug-in nightlight provided.
She handed Derek the soft bundle. His fingers clenched the soft, dry, clean flannel. Hot flush swept over him. Again. A low, grating moan tore through him, and he wept in the dark. She squeezed back into the space between the toilet and his body, and she embraced him.
“It's okay,” she said.
Fat, hot tears rolled down his face. “I thought I was going to die.”
“I know.”
“I don't want to die.”
She rubbed his back with long, soothing strokes. “I know.”
He rolled his face into her shoulder, and a deep choking sob racked his body. And then another and another. He clutched her shirt, and he cried, stirring up agony in his chest, but he couldn't stop. He cried until exhaustion pulled him into a sniffling, throbbing silence. His chest ached, his throat felt raw, and muzzy cotton clogged his brain. He felt sick.
She sat with him. Until his eyes drifted shut. Sleep plowed into him like a muscle car in a drag race, but she shook him gently, enough to jolt him back into half awake. “Why don't you change, and you can sleep in the living room?” she suggested.
Beyond sentience, he listened to her tone of voice more than anything else. She convinced him to stand up. She pulled down his dirty pants. Water whooshed in the sink. She dabbed the hand towel under the faucet. She turned, but he stopped her.
“I can do it,” he said, his voice hoarse and unrecognizable. Defeated. She handed him the towel, and he wiped the drying urine off his bare legs while she stared in the mirror, or at the wall, or anywhere but at him. Water evaporated. His skin chilled and shivered. His muscles ached, and by the time he finished and dropped the urine-soaked towel... somewhere, he'd lost his breath, the room seemed to waver in and out, and he really thought he might fall, not from dizziness or doing something he shouldn't, but because he had nothing left.
Nothing.
And so he stood there, naked from the waist down except for his socks, his weight slumped against the wall. Meredith waited. She waited, until he swallowed, trembling. Fresh tears and blooming embarrassment broke loose. He clung to the towel rack because if he didn't he would collapse.
“I can't,” he said. “I can't, I can't.”
“It's okay,” she said. “It's okay. Derek, it's okay.”
She hugged him, and he started crying again. Not the deep, guttural, rending sobs from before. Just quiet, wet sniveling that made him sick inside. The harder he tried to stop, the worse the urge to weep. As she helped him step into the clean pants Mark had brought for him from upstairs, he gave up. He just gave up and cried.
She threw his old, soiled pajamas into the bowl of the sink.
“Can you walk if I help?” she said.
Shaking with effort, he transferred his grip from the towel rack to her shoulders. He took a test step. He nearly buckled. Her arm slipped around his waist. Another step, and he had to rest, panting. They made it into the hallway. And then the foyer. He couldn't go more than a foot without resting. He shambled, mindless. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to disappear to someplace else. A place that wasn't here, where he'd wet himself in terror in front of his wife and his friend. A place that wasn't here, where he couldn't have sex or walk up steps. A place that wasn't here, where he hurt.
He hurt here.
Mark stood in the center of the living room like a lost, lonely island. “Hey, man,” he said, and then he fell silent, and an odd, crumpled look shattered his usual, confident demeanor. Like he had no idea what to say that would be right or reasonable.
Derek wiped at his eyes, even as another flush spread over his skin, rendering any sort of appearance doctoring useless. He'd cried himself into exhaustion, and he'd wet himself, and he'd been shot. Three immutable facts. He couldn't even spare the energy anymore to speak.
He glanced around the room, unable to process anything else, and his gaze fell on the chair. The safe chair. Covered in supportive pillows and rumpled blankets. His back liked that chair.
“Don't sit there,” Meredith said. “We're moving this one, remember?”
No.
He blinked. She nudged him toward the couch. He hobbled and tripped as more and more parts of his body shut down and demanded rest. He tried not to think about Mark. Staring. Silent. Unsure.
Meredith transferred pillows while he clung to the armrest. She put a big, fluffy one next to the arm of the sofa, and another where his back would go. She wrapped a warm blanket around his body. He collapsed, and the faucet behind his eyes began to rush, fast, faster, until he lost track of everything.
A cold glass of water brushed his palm. Reflex made him clutch it, but it was too heavy. She helped him lift it to his lips, and he took weak swallow after weak swallow. The liquid hit his parched throat too fast, and he spluttered and spat with the shock. Water dribbled everywhere. He pushed the glass away, and she took it and set it nearby on the coffee table. She draped a thick, warm comforter over his legs. His eyes closed, and he stopped. Just stopped. His trembling, tired muscles loosened.
She kissed him. “I love you,” she said.
He floated in the dark.
“God, I'm so sorry,” Mark said. “I've never seen him like that. Not ever. I didn't want to let go because I thought he'd fall, but--”
“Does it make me a bad person?” Meredith said. “To hate a dead man so much I wish I could add some kerosene to whatever hell he's burning in?”
A pregnant pause. “No,” said Mark, his voice deep and low. “I think I'd help you.”
Meredith sucked in a wet breath and sniffed. “Let's just move this chair.”
“Okay,” said Mark, though he sounded unsure. “This is the chair you want moved?”
“Yeah.”
“I think... Yeah. You grab that end.”
The last noises Derek heard were of his friend and his wife, huffing and groaning while they lugged a huge chair up the stairs for him. He should be helping, he thought. He could help. He swallowed. Sometime between one thought and the next, he didn't hear anything anymore. His body wasn't sleeping on a couch. He was dying, instead.
“I love you,” Meredith said as they put the mask over his face, and Dr. Avery told him to breathe deeply.
Two knife stabs, and the pain lessened. Three, and relief washed over his nerve endings. His eyelids drooped. He watched Meredith watching him. He didn't want to leave, and then he couldn't not leave. His eyes shut. Voices disappeared through a long, echoing tunnel. His sense of the world faded like someone removed puzzle pieces in fast succession. Holes here. Holes there. Blotting out.
Black.
His eyes didn't open. He didn't exactly wake up. But he felt the roll of the lights overhead. Felt the rumble under his body. Heard voices. And then nothing.
A team of six or seven nurses counted to three. The sheets pinched his hips and his shoulders and the sides of his body, and they lifted him. The sheets relaxed. His body settled on something flat and soft. People touched him. Pulled at his hospital gown and did something with his mouth. Air hit his skin. Hands. All over him, touching places only Meredith should touch. A bag crinkled. The flinch that came with modesty lost itself in the mire. He sent the message, but his nerves didn't receive. Somebody picked up his hand and clipped something to his finger. Monitors bleeped in his ears. And then nothing.
When he managed to push his eyelids up the first time, even the dark hurt his eyes, and he closed them again for a moment. He tried again. Cristina stood there with a chart, and she talked with a woman. He didn't understand the words. Mostly, he saw ceiling. On the horizon, he saw his toes. Cristina stared at him, touched something on his chest. And then nothing.
The woman from before, the one he didn't know, unfurled a blanket over his body. He saw the edges of it fan into his view of the ceiling as she let the air fluff it up. Light flickered as the blanket eclipsed all else, and then returned as the blanket settled on top of his body, thin and not warm enough against the glaciers sliding underneath his skin. At least they'd covered him.
He couldn't move. Nausea swirled in the back of his throat, and his limbs froze with chill, but the tingly, weightless, not-really-there-yet feeling that made his head cotton overruled his ability to do more than lie there. He tried to swallow and couldn't. He had something in his mouth. His teeth couldn't meet, and his tongue sat mashed under the heavy weight. Thick straps gripped his face. He knew he had something stuck down his throat, but beyond that, numbness.
The woman looked at him, and a bright, wide smile curved her lips and crinkled at her eyes. “Dr. Shepherd,” she said, her tone low and whisper soft. “I'm told your surgery went just fine. It's about 3:30PM. You're on a ventilator right now, and you're in the cardiac intensive care unit at Seattle Grace. I just added more morphine to your drip. Can you nod for me if you're in any pain?”
The ventilator whirred and pushed air into his lungs. He felt like he breathed through a straw. Nothing made any sense. He couldn't move. How could he nod even if he wanted to? A blood pressure cuff constricted around his arm, tight, tighter. He blinked. His body shook. He didn't like it here. He wanted to go home.
The woman picked up his hand. He saw an intravenous line stuck in his wrist. A name tag encircled him. He couldn't read the tag. Couldn't feel it against his skin. He watched his hand in the woman's. He felt the touch. But he couldn't move. Like his body wasn't his. Just a prison.
“I know this is very scary, Dr. Shepherd. You've been given a lot of muscle relaxants and sedatives to keep you from moving around while you're waking up. There's a lot of tubes and wires, and we don't want you to dislodge anything by accident. But you're safe, and you're out of surgery. I'm told everything went just fine. Do you want to see Dr. Grey?”
Cold bleached his bones. He blinked.
“Meredith Grey,” said the woman. “Do you want to see Meredith, Dr. Shepherd?”
He stared. Desperation drove a sword into his nerves. He tried to squeeze his fingers, but they wouldn't move. He twitched. His head. Maybe not a nod, but a twitch. Please.
Please, give me Meredith.
“It's Mark,” said a deep voice. “I'm in the room. Over here. Just Mark.”
Mark's voice penetrated the fog before Derek even realized he'd woken up. He swallowed and squinted, trying to force the cobwebs of sleep away, but they didn't want to leave. He wiped at his eyes. His cheeks hurt, rubbed raw with evaporated tears and leftover salt. His eyes burned. His body throbbed, and his chest ached, and he knew he wouldn't be getting up anytime soon. He didn't even try.
“Do you need anything?” Mark said. “Meredith's doing some laundry, but I can get her.”
A vague sound caught in Derek's throat. He stared at Mark through half-lidded eyelids and half-awake eyes. “Mark,” he said. His voice sounded broken and weak and sick. His throat felt raw. Dry. Torn. Thoughts didn't work, and so he just stared.
“Yeah,” said Mark. “Go back to sleep if you want.”
Derek closed his eyes, trying, through the mire, to think of a way to ask for water that wouldn't sound pathetic. He swallowed and worked his salivary glands. Nothing helped. The pasty, gummy dryness in his mouth and throat lingered. He put his elbow over his eyes and breathed, fighting sentience for all he was worth, but something had decided he would wake up now, and he was stuck. Awake. Tired, but not tired enough to drift back into dreams without serious effort.
“I'd like some water,” he said. He couldn't bring himself to add a please. To beg. Not after the morning he'd had. His voice grated, and so he sat there, eyes shut, and he rested his throat.
“Sure,” Mark said. He left the room. Water rushed in the distance. Footsteps returned. “It's Mark. I'm coming into the room.”
Tired and spent and pushed beyond embarrassment into dejected indifference, Derek listened to Mark as he reported his positions in the room like a fucking sonar. Ping. Ping. Ping. I'm here! On a base level, Derek appreciated it. Just a little. Anything that helped him not become the terrified, nonsensical animal that wet himself. On an intelligent level, it annoyed him that Mark felt he needed to provide this sort of service. This coddling. And it frustrated Derek that Mark was probably right.
Mark handed him the glass of water, and Derek drank with slow, disinterested sips. When the glass emptied, Derek rubbed the cool crystal against his forehead. The chill broke some of the fog, but not much. “Thank you,” he said. His voice still cracked.
“No problem,” Mark said.
Meredith came into the room. She smiled when she saw Derek, blinking and sort of awake, but she didn't draw attention to him. She'd changed. She wore some old, faded jeans, flip-flops, and his favorite ratty Dartmouth shirt. She'd drawn her hair into a loose, scraggly ponytail that looped under on itself sort of like a bun but not really.
“I'm going to run some errands,” she said. “I'll be back in a few hours, okay?”
“Sure,” Mark said.
Derek stared.
“Do you want anything from the store?” she said. “Derek?”
“What?”
She smiled. “I'm going out. Do you want me to get you anything?”
“No.”
“Okay.” She kissed his cheek. She put on dark, stylish sunglasses, grabbed her purse, and she left. The resounding slam of the door rumbled through the house, and Derek flinched.
He fucking flinched. He wiped his eyes again. The blankets and comforter rustled as he leaned over his knees, trying to wake up his muscles and his body and his mind. Mark sat in front of the television, messing with cables and wires. He made clanks and thumps as he pushed the DVD player aside.
“What are you doing?” Derek said.
“I'm setting up my PS3 for you.”
“How do you even have enough time for a PS3?”
Mark shrugged. “I lead a vegetative, indoor life outside the hospital, unlike you, Mr. Fishing-Is-Fun.”
“Fishing is fun,” Derek said.
“It's like watching paint dry, Derek. No. It's like watching invisible paint dry, which is even worse, because there's nothing to fucking watch. Anyway, I figured this would help stave off some boredom when Meredith goes back to work. Plus, if I'm not mistaken, you owe me a stoned rematch.”
“What?”
“Remember when I got my wisdom teeth out?” Mark said. He grinned like a five-year-old in a candy store full of chocolate and gummy bears. “Space Invaders on the Atari? You beat my pants off every time because I was high on meds.”
“You say it was because you were high on meds,” Derek said.
“Right, well. Now's your chance to prove you're just better than me. Tables are turned.”
Derek blinked. “PS3 has Space Invaders?”
“You know, I read something about a remake a while ago, I think, but I don't have it,” Mark said. He lay flat on his belly on the rug and thumped around under the television. He grunted. Another thump. “There, got it.” He eased onto his haunches. When he hit the power on the television, the screen came alive with a flare of color. The rumble of a revving engine filled the room. Derek watched the screen, a bit disoriented with all the movement and flashing, and also helplessly engrossed because he didn't have the mental capacity for dividing his attention between multiple things.
Mark scooted across the floor. He pushed the coffee table away and sat down on the rug, his back resting against the sofa to the left of Derek. “Here,” Mark said, and he handed a controller over his shoulder for Derek to grab.
“What?” Derek forced his gaze away from the screen.
Mark glanced over his shoulder, an evil gleam in his eye. “Want to race?”
Derek stared at the controller. It had lots of buttons. Lots. It was way more complicated than the Atari joystick he could recall from the indistinct edges of his memory. “Mark, I haven't played a game since Space Invaders.”
“It's good for dexterity, you know,” Mark said. “Hand-eye coordination.”
“Right,” Derek said. “You do it for professional development.”
“Of course, I do,” Mark replied. “I didn't get to be this awesome just from my own excessive talent.”
Derek tilted the controller in his hands. He felt clumsy. Already. And he hadn't done anything yet. He stared at the screen and blinked. A flashy car sped past, and he could barely keep track of it. His head felt like cotton. He had no reflexes. The painkillers destroyed his normal ability for precision. His competitive spirit died a wheezing death because he knew he would lose. “Mark, I'm a bit more stoned than you were with your wisdom teeth.”
“It's okay,” Mark said. “I have a plan. And if you really hate it, there's always Netflix.”
“A plan?”
“Yes,” Mark said. He put his controller on the coffee table and crawled to the liquor cabinet. He peered into the space. Bottles clinked. “Do you mind if I finish off some of your scotch? Tequila is rank. I really don't get how Meredith drinks it straight.”
When Derek only stared, Mark took that as free license. Derek watched his good bottle of St. Magdalene single malt scotch turn up in the air. The scotch sloshed, and Mark chugged straight from the bottle. Chugged. He downed at least five shots worth of alcohol before he gagged. He rested with his mouth hanging open as his eyes watered. And then he took another long gulp.
“Give me a few minutes,” Mark said. “I haven't eaten in a while. We'll be on pretty even footing in no time.”
“Mark, it's not even dinner time.”
“So, what?” He took another swig and settled back against the couch. “I already asked Meredith if she minds a house guest, and I surrendered my keys. I don't have to work until tomorrow night. What's the big deal?” Another swig, and then he swayed. “Whoa,” he said.
“Mark...”
“Press,” Mark said. He stumbled on his tongue. “Press the shtart. The button.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “You are such an idiot.”
Mark poked Derek's knee. His face had turned a light cherry color. He took another swig. “Shhhut up, and race me, you pompous jerk.” He put the St. Magdalene on the coffee table, and he fumbled with his controller.
“Fine,” Derek grumbled. “Fine. How do I play?”
“I probly shhoulda expl...” Mark breathed. “Explained that before I got. Ham. Hammered, huh.”
Derek couldn't help the smile that took over his face. He laughed. Not hard, but he laughed. And it felt liberating. Just a little. “No, do tell, Mark,” he said. “I think I'll like this version.”
“Jus press buttons,” Mark said. “First one to the... fffinish line...”
“Will be a miracle?”
“Yep,” Mark said, and they played. Somehow.