All Along The Watchtower - Part 9A
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.
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All Along The Watchtower - Part 9A
When Meredith walked up to the house, the sky had darkened a little from its afternoon azure brilliance into early evening hues. She leaned back her head, inhaling the temperate breeze. The sun had been out all day, only half-obscured by a sky pocked with dark, heavy clouds that spoke of rain. Not a single drop of rain had fallen. No drizzle mist had hovered in the air. Sometime soon, the rain would come. It always did in Seattle. But not today.
It figured that would be the day she had to return to work instead of spending it with Derek.
The dim foyer greeted her with silence. She didn't call out as she put her purse down by the door. A line of white illumination framed the underside of the kitchen door.
No lights glowed in the dreary living room. The couch had been torn apart. The cushions against the back of the sofa had been avulsed and lay strewn on the floor. Derek lay along the length of the couch, pillows heaped up under his torso and against one side. She could see the curly mop of his dark hair, piles of fluffy blankets, and the frills of her favorite pillowcases sticking out, but that was it. An empty glass sat on the coffee table. No plates or food. She frowned, wondering why he hadn't gone upstairs if he'd wanted to lie down. Surely, Mark would have helped him.
You'll get through this. And so will he.
Something twinged in her heart, and an unseen force pulled her toward the room. She thought about sitting down and watching him for a while. At the last second before the living room, she veered. He slept. He lay still, breaths inaudible. The sound of the door unlocking hadn't woken him up. He clearly needed the sleep, and she didn't want to chance rousing him like she'd done the day before with that stupid kiss.
She went into the kitchen. Mark sat at the dinette table, a sprawl of papers and notes fanned out in a semi-circle around him. He wore a beat up pair of jeans, fluffy white socks, and an old, scruffy, black t-shirt. He scribbled something against a yellow pad, and then flipped the page. Brightly colored MRI scans shimmered under the glare of the overhead light.
“Hey,” she said.
Mark looked up from his work. “Grey. How was your first day back?”
“Fine,” she said. “How is everything?”
Mark glanced behind him, in the direction of the living room and Derek, as though he could see through walls. “He's slept almost all day. Every once in a while, he asks for water.” He glanced at his watch. “I made sure he took his pills at 8, 12, and 4, just like you said.”
She flopped down into the seat across from Mark. He stacked his notes and pushed them to the side. She sighed. “He didn't take a walk or anything?” she said.
“Nothing,” Mark said. His eyes creased with concern. “I think yesterday really fucked him up.”
“He needs to start walking, soon,” Meredith said. “Real walks. Not laps in the house...” Her voice trailed away when she thought more about it.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember, tried to picture him in her mind's eye. He spent anywhere from half to three-quarters or more of his day sitting around, either sleeping or vegetating, and he'd never gone outside to sit on the porch swing. All his physical activities had been limited to things he could do indoors. Stairs. Laps. Small chores. He'd never even looked out the window wistfully that she'd seen.
Wrong. It all seemed wrong. Derek loved being outside. He loved nature and woodsy things and sitting in the fresh air. He loved wide open space. He loved rain and mud almost as much as sunshine. The Seattle weather had never once been a source of melancholy for him, not like with a lot of the new transplants from other areas of the United States that weren't so freaking rain-happy. But now that she thought about it, really thought about it, he hadn't been outside, excluding the car trip home, since before he'd been shot. He'd spent nine mornings in the hospital and another four at home, and he'd never said a word about being cooped up.
“I don't think he's been outside, Mark. At all.”
“I noticed that, too,” Mark said. “I thought about suggesting it today sometime, but...” He shrugged helplessly.
“Yeah, I know,” Meredith said. “Thank you. For staying with him.”
Mark gave her a small smile. “Sure,” he said. The chair squawked as he pushed it back. “Have you eaten yet?”
“No.”
He raised his eyebrow. “Hungry?”
“Completely famished, actually,” Meredith said. “I haven't eaten since... I haven't... Um. I think I had breakfast.”
“Didn't you leave when it was still dark out?”
“Well, fine,” she said. “I had coffee. Coffee is breakfast sometimes.”
Mark shook his head and went to the refrigerator. The appliance hummed as he opened it. She twisted around, trying to see. He pulled an ugly green Tupperware bowl off the top shelf and removed plastic wrap covered with thick condensation. Water droplets fell to the floor as he carried the bowl to the kitchen and tossed the plastic wrap in the trash.
“Listen,” he said as he put down two plates and scooped... something reddish and goop-y. His shoulders shifted, but his wide body blocked her view. “I know that you're in a bad spot. You don't have any sick leave left. You used up all your un-categorized leave already--”
“I saved one day for emergencies,” she said.
“Right,” he said. He put the first plate in the microwave. The machine beeped as he tapped the cook time onto the key pad. She finally got a full glance at the cold plate. Spaghetti. Her stomach growled. Mark must have made it sometime that day, because she couldn't recall seeing any pasta in the fridge yesterday when she'd rummaged for dinner prospects. “But my point is,” Mark continued, “You don't really have leave, and you can't afford to take off anyway, or it'll set you back even further.”
The microwave hummed, and the pasta inside popped as heat zapped it into submission. “I've taken off a lot of time,” she said. Bombs, appendicitis, a liver transplant, and dying once had not been good to her. Meredith remained in a constant state of amazement that nobody had held her back a year on her pay scale. Yet.
“Right,” he said, nodding. “And Derek told me about the crappy schedule you're trying to shoulder.”
“It can't be helped,” Meredith said. “He needs somebody here in the evenings and stuff. I can't just leave him alone for thirty-six hour shifts when he can't get into the shower or go up steps or pick up anything heavy by himself. And I--”
“How about you go back to your regular schedule, so you can have days off during the week, and I'll take my un-categorized leave now, and stay home with him?” Mark said. “I haven't used any of mine yet. I've been helping Seattle Presbyterian with its overflow.”
“Mark,” she began, but the microwave dinged and cut her off.
He pulled a fork from the drawer for her and placed the steaming plate in front of her. “Parmesan?” he said.
She nodded, staring down at the reheated pasta. The noodles looked a little desiccated, but he'd made food. And she needed food. He put down the cheese container next to her and returned to put his plate in the microwave next. He turned toward her as the microwave hummed. She dumped a heaping pile of grated cheese on her plate and ensnared a clot of noodles with her fork.
“I have a lot of leave banked, too,” Mark continued as she stuffed herself. “I can stay longer if it's needed. I don't mind. I'll clear out on your days off and when Lexie's here, if she wants.”
“But--” she muttered around a mouthful of spaghetti. The sauce was some sort of mushroom concoction. She couldn't taste any meat. Mark had probably made it with Derek's healthy sensibilities in mind. But after hours and hours of not eating, she'd take anything. A small, pleased moan displaced her voice, and she chewed and chewed and then shoveled another bite.
“Look,” Mark continued, “I know I'm probably not your first choice for mature and responsible, but he needs someone here, Meredith.” The microwave dinged, and he pulled out his plate. He sat across from her. “He shouldn't be alone, whether he needs help with anything or not. I've never seen him like this. Not even after Mr. Shepherd died.”
The men who shot my dad got away.
Her stomach churned, and she put her fork down. “I talked with Dr. Wyatt today,” she said, and she looked at her lap.
Mark took a bite of spaghetti. “The shrink?”
“Yeah.”
“About Derek?”
“Yeah.”
He swallowed. With no precursor, no lead up, nothing, he stared at her, took a slow, deep breath, and said, “How bad is it?”
She bit her lip when she realized Mark had been as worried, if not more so, than she had been.
“She said he's got acute stress whatever,” Meredith said. “It's like the precursor to post-traumatic stress disorder, but it won't necessarily develop that far. We're supposed to let him talk if he wants, but not push him if he doesn't. Don't let him isolate himself or wallow. Spend time in the same room even if we're not doing anything with him. Um...” What else? “Offer love and support. Encourage him to make choices. And...” She bit her lip, trying to remember it all, but it got tangled in her head, somewhere between the thought, Derek is hurting and sick, and her mouth. Dr. Wyatt had said so many things. Meredith's lip quivered, and she wiped at her face. “Let me just get the packet that explains it all,” she said. Her voice cracked and died.
She pushed away from the table and retreated to the foyer before Mark could say anything. She glanced into the living room. Derek hadn't moved. He remained a quiet lump under heaps of blankets. This far away, she couldn't hear him breathe, and with that many things resting on top of him, she couldn't see his chest rise and fall either. The quiet stillness unsettled her, and a small voice in her head whispered dead. Dead. He's dead. The inexplicable force pulled at her again, but she denied it. He needed rest. She refused to wake him up, accidentally or not, for her own peace of mind. She wasn't clingy. She wasn't five. It wasn't like somebody had taken her special bear away. She could function. She could.
Her fists clenched. She forced herself back to her objective, and she retrieved the pamphlet from her battered purse. Assault Victimization, the paper said in big bold letters, and there was a tacky picture of a gun, a knife that looked more like a giant sword than anything else, and a baseball bat on the front. The words inside were what mattered, though. The words that spoke regretfully of Derek with every syllable. Her thumb brushed the soft paper. She stood, unmoving, staring. The paper crinkled as her fist squeezed.
Victims may be fearful of a repeat incident, however unlikely.
That's what the pamphlet said, somewhere in the spill of warnings about all the other awful feelings that might surface as the result of nearly being killed. She bit her lip and opened the pamphlet. She scanned the page, and she found that sentence, stuck in the middle of the rest. The words blurred. Before, she'd lost that warning under the riptide force of the rest of all the badness. It'd seemed innocuous compared to the other scary things. Sort of a duh.
But Derek didn't go outside.
Her fingers tightened, and her breaths shortened into stabbing pants of grief. He locked doors. Loud things and strangers scared him. He didn't go outside. Puzzle pieces snapped into place. She sniffed. The wet sound of fluid in her nose crackled in the silence. She forced herself to plod back into the kitchen where Mark sat, waiting for her. He'd finished his spaghetti.
“Here,” she said, her voice rough and weary. She foisted the paper at him, hands shaking.
She watched Mark's eyes zip back and forth as he read. After a few minutes, he came to a stop. He hunkered low in his chair, and a dark, foreboding hint of violence crossed his face. He jammed his fist against the table in a repeated, frustrated venting of energy. The wood rumbled softly. “Fuck,” he said. “I wish...” he began, but his voice trailed away.
“Somebody tried to murder him, Mark,” she said. She collapsed back into her seat and sighed. Murder. The word made it sound so much more... More. Don't let him isolate himself. “You should stay,” she said. “It would be good for you to stay.”
Mark put the pamphlet down. “Thank you,” he said.
She finished her spaghetti in silence, throat raw. Mark made no mention of her sniffling. She never used to cry so much. Now, her tear ducts felt like infinite buckets of rebelliousness. Like, once she'd gotten past internalizing everything bad that happened to her, now she couldn't stop letting it all explode out of her face.
“This sucks,” she said as she put her fork down. She sighed. “This really, really sucks. We were supposed to be okay, now. He's alive. I thought that was all I wanted. It is all I wanted. Just... I don't know.”
“Yeah,” said Mark.
She stood and took her plate to the sink to wash it off. The sound of rushing water filled the empty space in the air. She took a glass and filled it. It almost slipped from her wet hands when the kitchen door swung on its hinges, and Derek lumbered into the room.
“Hey, man,” said Mark. “There's some spaghetti in the Tupperware thing on the counter if you want some. Your favorite sauce and whole wheat noodles.”
Derek looked awful. Dark, fleshy circles hugged his eyes. He'd lost weight, maybe fifteen pounds or so since he'd been shot, evident by the angular, gaunt appearance of his face, and the way his t-shirt hung loosely against his torso. The hair on his head stuck up every which way. Thick stubble carved a dark swath against his too-pale face. His glazed stare didn't really see much. He didn't say a word in response to Mark. He headed for the sink where she stood, pale lips parted like a man staring at an oasis in a drought. She held out the glass she'd filled for herself. He took it, grunted some sort of word at her, maybe thanks, maybe hi, maybe just urgh. He eyed the bowl of leftover spaghetti on the counter, but didn't move to serve himself any. He went to the table and sat down diagonally from Mark, and then he nursed his water like it was a glass of scotch or something.
She dished him a plate and heated the spaghetti. She didn't care if he wanted it or not, didn't care whether he'd chosen not to eat, or instead just existed on a distant plane so far removed from earth that he'd seen the food, but hadn't really seen it. She would try. She would try to get him to consume something. She watched as he blinked, disheveled and half-awake, over the table. She filled a new glass of water for herself and sipped, waiting for the microwave to finish.
“You alive?” Mark said. He laughed, but the awkward attempt at levity fell flat in the silence.
“Define alive,” Derek said.
“I'd say if you need a definition, you're probably alive enough to count,” Mark said.
“Hmm.”
The microwave beeped, and Meredith brought the plate and a fork to Derek. “You should really at least try to eat something,” she said as she set the plate down and pushed his water glass aside. “Please.”
She sat down next to Mark, across from Derek, and bit her lip. She didn't want to sound mother henish. She didn't. She also didn't want Derek to starve himself to death while she smiled and tried to ignore the fact that he wasn't eating enough.
At first, when she'd brought him home, she'd thought when he hadn't finished the sub she'd ordered, it'd been a fluke born out of the fact that he'd been near collapse with exhaustion. But then she hadn't seen him finish anything the rest of the weekend, and that was assuming he ate something at all. He skipped meals, sometimes even breakfast, which felt weird, considering what a poster child he was for breakfast being the most important meal of the day.
Derek looked at the plate. He didn't protest. He didn't say he wasn't hungry. He took two tiny bites and chewed, the expression on his face dead of any interest or enjoyment. Like she'd reminded him to comb his hair or something instead of keep himself fed.
“How was work?” he said.
“Um,” she said. Didn't do anything productive. Looked up articles about PTSD. Had a rather long chat with a shrink about you. Said chat disturbed me so much I lost track of the rest of the day. Figured out you developed agoraphobia or whatever in the space of days because Gary Clark decided to murder you instead of deal with his freaking grief appropriately. “Fine.”
He took a third bite. “Fine?” he said.
“Being back was weird,” she amended. Damn that word. Fine. She couldn't use it anymore. “The place is just dead. And quiet. No elective surgeries, just emergencies. And since people aren't coming to our ER voluntarily, we're limited to what the paramedics bring in, which isn't all that much, well, not much surgical. Mostly jerks who called 911 for stubbed toes and runny noses or whatever.”
“Oh,” he said. “Doesn't surprise me.”
At least she didn't feel particularly bad about wasting her day on non-work things. There hadn't been any real work to do. Her fingers clenched as she watched him take a fourth bite. He seemed to be perking up a little. Maybe he'd just been groggy from sleep. Or maybe she was just hopeful.
He glanced at Mark, and his gaze dropped to the pamphlet on the table. She held her breath. Derek didn't ask about it, didn't even seem to notice the stupid pictures of weapons on the front. For the first time, she wanted to cheer at how catastrophically the painkillers had screwed up his detail orientation. Though, she wondered, if maybe it would be good for him to read it. To help him make sense of himself, so he'd know he wasn't alone. That other people went through this often enough that law enforcement had tacky but informative pamphlets.
Fifth bite. He'd cleared a fourth of the plate. But his spree ended, then. He put his fork down and gulped the remains from his glass of water. When he finished, he stared at her. His lip curved into a small, hesitant smile. “Hi, by the way,” he said, and she melted.
“Hi,” she said. She grinned back. “More alive, now?”
“Yeah. You're home early.”
“I left early,” she said. “Twelve hour shift today. I wanted to get home at a reasonable time.”
He'd been in the chair in their room when she'd left. Her shrill alarm had jarred her from a sound sleep so early that the morning had still seemed like night. The new chair had worked well to save him from midnight jaunts, it seemed, though, it had been odd to wake up with him to the left of her, sitting, instead of to the right, lying down, or gone. At first, in her not-sentient-yet confusion, she'd seen the blurry outline his knee in the corner of her eye and jumped. Nearly fallen off the bed. He'd blinked at her, all bleary and groggy, and then he'd drifted off while she'd forced herself into the shower.
“I know you left early,” Derek said. “I was sad.”
“Sad?”
He gestured at Mark. “Being helped into the shower is much more fun when the help is sexy.”
“Hey, I'm sexy,” Mark said. “I can't help it that you're blind to my hotness.”
“I'm stoned, not drunk. I'm perfectly capable of discerning ugly.”
“That hurts, man,” said Mark. He patted his chest over his heart. “I'm hurt.”
Derek snorted. A wince creased his features, but the expression of pain faded in seconds. “I think I win in the hurt department. Don't even try me there.”
“Fine,” Mark said. “But you blow at racing cars.”
“Racing fake cars,” said Derek.
“Whatever. You still suck.”
“I'm surprised you can even remember who won.”
“I did,” said Mark. “That's my story, and your memory is too shitty to say otherwise.”
“So,” Derek said. “What you're saying is that I won.”
“Nobody is saying that,” said Mark. “Least of all me.”
Derek smirked and didn't reply. The little energy he'd managed to conjure bled out of him over the course of silent minutes. He slumped forward and put his face in his hands, yawning. A small sliver of worry jabbed her heart. He'd been awake for thirty minutes. He'd slept all day. Even taking his surgery into account, he shouldn't be that exhausted after doing such a great impression of a slug all day.
“Mark and I talked a little,” Meredith said. She swallowed. Derek would take this badly. She knew it. But... “I'm going to go back to my regular schedule, and Mark's going to stay here for a week or two.” Let him make decisions wherever feasible. “Is that okay with you?”
Derek raised his head. His dark, hopeless eyes stared at her. In the wan daylight, his irises seemed almost black. “Okay,” he said.
“Really?” The word popped out before she could stop it, and she resisted the urge to cover her mouth with her hands.
“You want me to argue?” Derek said. “What good would it do?”
Silence stretched between them. Derek pushed back his chair and eased into a crooked standing position. “Are you going back to sleep already?” Meredith said.
He clenched the back of his chair, and his knuckles turned sickly white. “I'm tired,” he snapped.
Mark rumbled as he cleared his throat, stood, and gathered up all his papers and notes. “I'm going to go home and start packing some things so you two can talk, and then I'll head into Grace for my shift,” he said. “I'll be back in the morning before you leave for work, Grey.”
Derek watched him go, silent, brooding. When the front door slammed shut, Derek sighed.
“I really think he should stay,” Meredith said, “But if you're categorically against it, say something. You have a say, Derek. Your opinion matters. I don't want you to feel like it doesn't.”
He stared at his hands. “Maybe I can't get into the tub or carry things or drive or...” His voice fell away, and he swallowed. He drew in a wet breath. “I can take care of myself for a few hours. I can be left alone. I'm not some delinquent puppy.”
“I know,” she said. “Getting Mark to stay with you all day has nothing to do with that. If it were that, he could stop by over lunch and be done in an hour, and I would stay on my twelve hour days so you'd have somebody here every night.”
He looked up. His desolate stare made her chest tighten. “Then why?” he said.
“Because I love you, and I don't want you to be alone right now,” she said. “That's all.”
She watched him, watched the edges of his expression soften. “Oh,” he said. He swallowed, and she kept watching as he tried to compose himself again. He failed. His eyes rimmed with red, and he looked away.
She leaned across the table, face resting on her palms. “Derek, do you want to be alone?”
That question seemed to catch him off guard. He blinked. She bit her lip. He wasn't crying, but he was close, and all she really wanted was to close the space between them and wrap herself around him. “No,” he said. He ran his fingers along the edge of the table, following the wood grain. “I don't know. I want...” His voice trailed away, and he closed his eyes. “I don't know.”
She frowned. “What were you going to say?”
“If I told you the entire list of what I want, I'd just be whining, and I...” His fingers clenched. He scraped at his face with his hands, sniffed, and his skin reddened. He pushed away from the table, and he took his plate to the sink, where he scrubbed the uneaten spaghetti into the garbage disposal with an old, dirty sponge as he blinked furiously against tears he didn't seem to want. He flipped the switch, and the disposal growled to life. He sponged off the remains of the spaghetti sauce with all the violence he could manage, and then he loaded all the plates into the dishwasher. The dishes clanked.
When he finished, he stood at the sink, staring. She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. “Top of the list,” she whispered. “What do you want?”
“I can't even narrow that down,” he said darkly.
She cupped her hands over his trapezius muscles and squeezed, obliterating tense coils of stress. He leaned into it. She rose to her tiptoes, and she kissed the side of his neck as she punched fingers deep into the knots in his back. She'd looked up a list of stretching exercises to help him, but most of them assumed the person doing the stretching had full use of his chest muscles and arms for support, and Derek didn't. There had been a couple, though, that had looked promising. One he could do by himself. Two he would need help with.
She kissed him, and then she went back to the dinette table. She pulled out his chair for him well away from the table. “Sit,” she said. “I want to try something. It might make you feel better.”
He didn't ask her why or what. He sat.
“Spread your legs,” she said.
A small chuff of air fell from his lips. “Are we doing something naughty?”
“You wish,” she said. “Seriously, just spread your legs.”
He did as she asked, a curious look on his face. “Okay,” she said. “Now drop your arms between your knees. Don't hold onto anything, just let your arms hang.” He did. She touched his stomach with one hand and the small of his back with the other. Warmth soaked her palms through his shirt. He inhaled. His skin twitched at her light touch. “Curl over my hand, don't bend at the waist, and just... ease forward or whatever. Go as far as you can go.”
He didn't have much flexibility anymore. He didn't make it very far. His breaths sped up as he pushed her hand forward with his stomach. His abs tightened. She rubbed his back. She felt him tremble under her palm. “Does it hurt?” she said.
“No,” he said. “No, it's...” A soft sigh fell from his lips. “It's good. It feels good.”
He did that same stretch four more times. Each time, he dropped lower. “Okay,” she said. “Now, lie on the floor on your back.”
“Here?”
She shrugged. “It's clean, and it's hard. It'll work.”
“This really sounds like something naughty,” he muttered.
“Because you have a dirty, dirty mind,” she said, grinning.
Lying flat proved difficult for him with no support on a hard floor that would hurt if he let himself collapse to it via gravity. After he sat down, awkward and stiff and moving poorly, she held his shoulders, and he tipped backward, surrendering his weight to her hands. She slowed his descent. When he lay flat, resting in the space between the counter and the table, he looked at her, eyes glazed with painkillers, and something sharp stabbed her heart. The kitchen floor flashed immaculate white, and her fingers slicked with blood.
You don't get to die.
She flinched, and she focused on his chest. He wore a dark gray shirt with a high collar that hid his incision and the bullet wound from view. No hole in the shirt. No blood. He didn't pant with agony.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“Fine,” she said.
She splayed her palm against his breastbone, brushing the soft cotton of his shirt. Her fingers roamed across his damaged pectoral. The scab from the bullet wound made what had once been marble smooth dented and imperfect. Marred. Reflex almost made her ask if it hurt, but he moved, a whisper in the silence, and put his palm over hers in an echo of what he'd done when he'd been shot, and she'd been trying to stop the relentless tide of his blood. But there was no blood. His skin wasn't cold or shivery or slick with sweat. He felt warm. Warm and dry and living.
“It doesn't hurt unless I'm breathing hard, you press down, or I stretch my left arm weird,” he said. “I'm okay.”
She stroked his shirt as he breathed, relaxed, not clipped with pain.
“I see things sometimes, too,” he said when she didn't speak.
A lump formed in her throat. “Like what?” she said, but he looked away and wouldn't answer. She didn't press the issue. The refrigerator hummed. Birds chirped outside. He lay on the floor, breathing, not hurting, not bleeding, and she soaked in all the things that told her Derek wasn't dying. He'd been shot, but the pain he experienced now was just an echo of then. A memory. Something long past and gone. Real, but not real now.
He rubbed her arm with his thumb, and then he relaxed against the floor, resting his hands at his sides. “Have your way with me,” he said, his voice soft and tired, but she heard a spark. A spark of the Derek she knew. Her Derek. Just waiting to ignite. His eyelids lowered, and he watched her through his eyelashes. The corners of his mouth twitched with the hints of a smile.
She snorted, and forced herself to the present. “Put your knees up.” He did as she asked. With this exercise, he was supposed to pull his legs toward his chest with his arms wrapped under his knees. He wouldn't be able to do that, so she would be his arms, she decided. “I'm going to pick up your legs. Relax. And tell me right away if it hurts, okay? It's not supposed to hurt.”
“Hmm,” he said. He closed his eyes. She knelt at his shoulders, her kneecaps pushing into his trapezius muscles to the left and the right of his head. She rose as high onto her knees as she could go, and she leaned forward.
He laughed. Really, clearly laughed. Like a bell. His body tensed as he winced with the backlash, but the look in his eyes made her quiver. No sparkles. Stupid painkillers. But the skin around his eyes crinkled, and she couldn't see a single hint of sadness or anger or anything bad anymore. He was looking at her, and he was happy. “In what universe is this not naughty?” he said, staring at her crotch.
“Shut up,” she said. “I'm helping you.”
“Oh, I agree. This is definitely helping.”
She laughed as she reached under his thighs. She looped her arms. At first, he didn't budge when she tried to pull back his legs. “Relax,” she said.
“I'm stuck, helpless as a lamb, in your game of dirty twister, and you want me to relax?”
“Well, close your eyes and pretend I'm Mark or something.”
He made a disgusted sound. “Please, don't say that when my face is inches from your--”
“Relax, damn it,” she commanded. She pulled, and his weight came with her. She eased his knees toward his chest, and she lowered herself to the floor behind his head as his muscles extended as far as they would go. He inhaled, and a soft moan fell from his lips as she held his knees for him. She watched as the tears he'd held back earlier overflowed. “Does it hurt?” she asked, and she bit her lip.
“No,” he said, his voice wet and thick. “No, it doesn't hurt.”
After twenty seconds, she rose up and lowered his legs to the floor with care. He rested for thirty seconds, and she repeated. He didn't make any more jokes. He lay with his eyes closed, his expression sublime, even as tears leaked down his face. She repeated that stretch eight more times.
“Okay,” she said. “Same thing, sort of, but we're going to the side. Stay flat on your back.”
She scooted across the floor away from his shoulders to his legs. She touched his knees and pushed him to the left. He didn't need encouraging this time. He tilted his legs to the side. His right hip came off the floor. She stopped when his breaths jerked to a halt, and he made a small sound of discomfort. “Too much?” she said. “Keep your upper back flat. Only your hips should be moving.”
“A little too much,” he said, his voice clipped and tight. She eased up, and he rested, sort of tilted, sort of stretched. Tension bled away from him. “Better,” he said.
She kept forgetting that his flexibility was crap right now. He hadn't done much physical activity in weeks. His muscles had gotten used to stiffness and pain and overuse in the same position for hours and hours. She wished she'd thought of this earlier. Stretching exercises for his back. He couldn't run or lift weights or do any of the usual things he did in the gym with Mark, but he could at least do this. Natural instinct after a serious injury was to curl up and hibernate forever. But studies had shown that movement and exercise after a trauma was what sped healing. Dr. Altman had given him a list of stretching exercises that would help his arms and chest, which he did, but none for his back. She'd also enrolled him in physical therapy, but that didn't start for another two weeks. They'd wanted to give his sternum a chance to heal more before putting him through anything overly strenuous.
Meredith repeated that stretch to the left, going a little further each time for four more times. Then she switched to his right for another five.
When she finished, she watched him. He relaxed his knees and lay flat. Eyes closed, he didn't move. He'd cried steadily since that second set of stretches, but somewhere in the course of the third set of stretches, the tears had petered and then stopped. Wet tracks glistened against his temples, and small patches of his hair above his ears had gotten soaked. She licked her lips. “There are a few more we can try, but that seems like a good start. I think. Do you think?” When he didn't respond, she leaned forward. “Did you fall asleep?” she whispered, peering at his relaxed face. She stroked the skin above his eyebrows and teased her fingers through the hair over his forehead.
A lazy smile curled at his lips. “No,” he said, his voice thick and low. “This is just the first time I've been on my back in two weeks, and it's been a modicum of comfortable.”
“Oh,” she said. She eased herself onto her side next to him and picked up his hand, worrying at the joints. “Well, do you want to stay here a while?”
He looked at her. “I just want my wife.”
“Is that the top of your list, then?” She winked.
“Definitely,” he said. “Thank you for helping me narrow it down.”
She grinned. “Well, you have me, now. And with this new plan with Mark, I get days off here and there, and I can stay the day with you every once in a while instead of just being here for a few hours before you crash for the night.”
“That's true,” he said. He smiled as he tilted his head to look at her. “I'm glad you'll get days off. You need days off. You shouldn't have to work every day just to take care of me.”
“See?” She returned his grin. “It's all about me, me, me. It has nothing to do with you. I want my breaks. I need my freaking beauty rest or whatever.”
He laughed. Even despite the clipped ending that sounded more moaning than laughing, the noise of it hit her eardrums like balm. “But I'm very important,” he said. “How could it not have anything to do with me?”
“You're right,” she said. “My mistake. It must be all about you.”
His eyebrows rose. “You're admitting I'm right?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“I can't decide whether to file that under the benefits of being high and hallucinating, or under the benefits of being wounded and vulnerable.”
“Maybe both?”
“Hmm,” he rumbled. “It could be both. You might be banking on me forgetting this conversation ever happened while at the same time suffering from hopeless sympathy for me and my not-so-hidden pain.”
She winked. “I guess you'll never know.”
“That's mean, you know,” he said. “Leaving me wondering.”
“Doesn't the mystique add to my sex appeal? I thought men liked a little mystery.”
“I prefer open books,” he said, and then his gaze shifted into gleeful realization that he'd been given an opening. He leaned into her body. “How about a story?” he said, his eyes inches from hers.
“This again?” she said.
“Well, you can't hardly expect me to believe you were born, stole hair dye, and then came to Seattle Grace, where you fell head-over-heels for the sexiest neurosurgeon on the planet.”
She laughed. “I don't know. Can't I?”
“Remind me not to ever let you play connect the dots,” he grumbled. “The sheer weight of your failure at it might cause you to implode, and then I'd miss you.”
He flopped against the hard floor. “Any suggestions on how to get up?” he said, his voice wry. “You seem to be an expert at naughty twister.”
She moved back behind his shoulders. “Do a sit up. I'll push you. Don't pull with your arms.”
“Hmm,” he said. “So very bossy.”
But he did what she said to do. Under his own steam, he rose to a 45 degree angle. She shoved him up the rest of the way with a grunt. Once he'd gotten into a sitting position, he managed the rest on his own, albeit slowly. The stretching might have made his back feel better, but he still wasn't moving all that well. As he stuttered to his feet, he groaned, and it took him a while to straighten out.
She watched as he shuffled to retrieve his empty glass, and then he refilled it under the rushing faucet. He gulped until the water disappeared. The corners of his mouth dripped, and he wiped them off with a paper towel. She glanced at the window. Daylight had waned considerably into dusk since she'd come into the house, and the overhead light in the kitchen did much more to illuminate the room now than it had when she'd entered. Slivers of pink and deep hues of blue stretched across the sky outside the window, highlighted with the deep greens and spruce colors of the treetops.
“Let's take a walk,” she said. “It's really nice out today.”
His fingers squeaked as he clenched his glass. The apprehension slathered all across his face made her ache. “Since when do you walk for fun?” he said.
“I walked with you,” she said. “We've walked. With Doc. I thought that was fun.”
“Meredith...”
You have to let him heal at his own pace, but you can't let him wallow, either.
“If you take a walk with me, I'll tell you a story,” she said. “A short walk. We'll go slow.”
“But I'm in my pajamas,” he said.
His meaning was clear. A trip up and down the steps would wear him out. He thought he'd found an out. She considered offering to bring down some clothes for him, but decided against it. Help emphasize to him what he can control, rather than what he can't.
“There are some clean jeans in the dryer.” She pointed toward the utility room. “You can grab those if you want.”
“But...”
She shrugged. “No walk, no story. But it's your choice. We could watch a movie or whatever. You pick.”
“It's getting dark,” he said.
“It is,” she agreed. “But it's not like I live in the middle of nowhere. The streets are lit.”
He peered at her, suspicion carving his expression. “How good is this story?”
“You'll have to come along to find out.”
He shifted on the balls of his feet, agitated. She wanted to tell him nothing would happen. That he'd be fine. But she thought letting him know she'd figured out his fears might make his anxiety about them worse. It would embarrass him that she'd noticed. He put his empty glass in the sink and sighed.
“Fine,” he said, and he shuffled out of the room, muttering, “But this had better be a damned good story,” as he went.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
Thank you so very much to everyone who has taken the time to post feedback. Seriously, I get behind on replying a lot because there's so many of you, but I adore each and every piece of feedback you all post :)
I'm participating in the Dempsey Challenge this year on October 2, and 3. I'll be walking the 10k with several friends. My personal donation page is here: http://dempseychallenge.kintera.org/ariaadagio. If you choose to donate, please save your email receipt. I will be doing a raffle and an auction later to reward the people who have donated, and the winners will be able to send me fic prompts, which I will attempt to write to order. Stay tuned for details, but don't let that stop you from showing your support now :)
All Along The Watchtower - Part 9A
When Meredith walked up to the house, the sky had darkened a little from its afternoon azure brilliance into early evening hues. She leaned back her head, inhaling the temperate breeze. The sun had been out all day, only half-obscured by a sky pocked with dark, heavy clouds that spoke of rain. Not a single drop of rain had fallen. No drizzle mist had hovered in the air. Sometime soon, the rain would come. It always did in Seattle. But not today.
It figured that would be the day she had to return to work instead of spending it with Derek.
The dim foyer greeted her with silence. She didn't call out as she put her purse down by the door. A line of white illumination framed the underside of the kitchen door.
No lights glowed in the dreary living room. The couch had been torn apart. The cushions against the back of the sofa had been avulsed and lay strewn on the floor. Derek lay along the length of the couch, pillows heaped up under his torso and against one side. She could see the curly mop of his dark hair, piles of fluffy blankets, and the frills of her favorite pillowcases sticking out, but that was it. An empty glass sat on the coffee table. No plates or food. She frowned, wondering why he hadn't gone upstairs if he'd wanted to lie down. Surely, Mark would have helped him.
You'll get through this. And so will he.
Something twinged in her heart, and an unseen force pulled her toward the room. She thought about sitting down and watching him for a while. At the last second before the living room, she veered. He slept. He lay still, breaths inaudible. The sound of the door unlocking hadn't woken him up. He clearly needed the sleep, and she didn't want to chance rousing him like she'd done the day before with that stupid kiss.
She went into the kitchen. Mark sat at the dinette table, a sprawl of papers and notes fanned out in a semi-circle around him. He wore a beat up pair of jeans, fluffy white socks, and an old, scruffy, black t-shirt. He scribbled something against a yellow pad, and then flipped the page. Brightly colored MRI scans shimmered under the glare of the overhead light.
“Hey,” she said.
Mark looked up from his work. “Grey. How was your first day back?”
“Fine,” she said. “How is everything?”
Mark glanced behind him, in the direction of the living room and Derek, as though he could see through walls. “He's slept almost all day. Every once in a while, he asks for water.” He glanced at his watch. “I made sure he took his pills at 8, 12, and 4, just like you said.”
She flopped down into the seat across from Mark. He stacked his notes and pushed them to the side. She sighed. “He didn't take a walk or anything?” she said.
“Nothing,” Mark said. His eyes creased with concern. “I think yesterday really fucked him up.”
“He needs to start walking, soon,” Meredith said. “Real walks. Not laps in the house...” Her voice trailed away when she thought more about it.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember, tried to picture him in her mind's eye. He spent anywhere from half to three-quarters or more of his day sitting around, either sleeping or vegetating, and he'd never gone outside to sit on the porch swing. All his physical activities had been limited to things he could do indoors. Stairs. Laps. Small chores. He'd never even looked out the window wistfully that she'd seen.
Wrong. It all seemed wrong. Derek loved being outside. He loved nature and woodsy things and sitting in the fresh air. He loved wide open space. He loved rain and mud almost as much as sunshine. The Seattle weather had never once been a source of melancholy for him, not like with a lot of the new transplants from other areas of the United States that weren't so freaking rain-happy. But now that she thought about it, really thought about it, he hadn't been outside, excluding the car trip home, since before he'd been shot. He'd spent nine mornings in the hospital and another four at home, and he'd never said a word about being cooped up.
“I don't think he's been outside, Mark. At all.”
“I noticed that, too,” Mark said. “I thought about suggesting it today sometime, but...” He shrugged helplessly.
“Yeah, I know,” Meredith said. “Thank you. For staying with him.”
Mark gave her a small smile. “Sure,” he said. The chair squawked as he pushed it back. “Have you eaten yet?”
“No.”
He raised his eyebrow. “Hungry?”
“Completely famished, actually,” Meredith said. “I haven't eaten since... I haven't... Um. I think I had breakfast.”
“Didn't you leave when it was still dark out?”
“Well, fine,” she said. “I had coffee. Coffee is breakfast sometimes.”
Mark shook his head and went to the refrigerator. The appliance hummed as he opened it. She twisted around, trying to see. He pulled an ugly green Tupperware bowl off the top shelf and removed plastic wrap covered with thick condensation. Water droplets fell to the floor as he carried the bowl to the kitchen and tossed the plastic wrap in the trash.
“Listen,” he said as he put down two plates and scooped... something reddish and goop-y. His shoulders shifted, but his wide body blocked her view. “I know that you're in a bad spot. You don't have any sick leave left. You used up all your un-categorized leave already--”
“I saved one day for emergencies,” she said.
“Right,” he said. He put the first plate in the microwave. The machine beeped as he tapped the cook time onto the key pad. She finally got a full glance at the cold plate. Spaghetti. Her stomach growled. Mark must have made it sometime that day, because she couldn't recall seeing any pasta in the fridge yesterday when she'd rummaged for dinner prospects. “But my point is,” Mark continued, “You don't really have leave, and you can't afford to take off anyway, or it'll set you back even further.”
The microwave hummed, and the pasta inside popped as heat zapped it into submission. “I've taken off a lot of time,” she said. Bombs, appendicitis, a liver transplant, and dying once had not been good to her. Meredith remained in a constant state of amazement that nobody had held her back a year on her pay scale. Yet.
“Right,” he said, nodding. “And Derek told me about the crappy schedule you're trying to shoulder.”
“It can't be helped,” Meredith said. “He needs somebody here in the evenings and stuff. I can't just leave him alone for thirty-six hour shifts when he can't get into the shower or go up steps or pick up anything heavy by himself. And I--”
“How about you go back to your regular schedule, so you can have days off during the week, and I'll take my un-categorized leave now, and stay home with him?” Mark said. “I haven't used any of mine yet. I've been helping Seattle Presbyterian with its overflow.”
“Mark,” she began, but the microwave dinged and cut her off.
He pulled a fork from the drawer for her and placed the steaming plate in front of her. “Parmesan?” he said.
She nodded, staring down at the reheated pasta. The noodles looked a little desiccated, but he'd made food. And she needed food. He put down the cheese container next to her and returned to put his plate in the microwave next. He turned toward her as the microwave hummed. She dumped a heaping pile of grated cheese on her plate and ensnared a clot of noodles with her fork.
“I have a lot of leave banked, too,” Mark continued as she stuffed herself. “I can stay longer if it's needed. I don't mind. I'll clear out on your days off and when Lexie's here, if she wants.”
“But--” she muttered around a mouthful of spaghetti. The sauce was some sort of mushroom concoction. She couldn't taste any meat. Mark had probably made it with Derek's healthy sensibilities in mind. But after hours and hours of not eating, she'd take anything. A small, pleased moan displaced her voice, and she chewed and chewed and then shoveled another bite.
“Look,” Mark continued, “I know I'm probably not your first choice for mature and responsible, but he needs someone here, Meredith.” The microwave dinged, and he pulled out his plate. He sat across from her. “He shouldn't be alone, whether he needs help with anything or not. I've never seen him like this. Not even after Mr. Shepherd died.”
The men who shot my dad got away.
Her stomach churned, and she put her fork down. “I talked with Dr. Wyatt today,” she said, and she looked at her lap.
Mark took a bite of spaghetti. “The shrink?”
“Yeah.”
“About Derek?”
“Yeah.”
He swallowed. With no precursor, no lead up, nothing, he stared at her, took a slow, deep breath, and said, “How bad is it?”
She bit her lip when she realized Mark had been as worried, if not more so, than she had been.
“She said he's got acute stress whatever,” Meredith said. “It's like the precursor to post-traumatic stress disorder, but it won't necessarily develop that far. We're supposed to let him talk if he wants, but not push him if he doesn't. Don't let him isolate himself or wallow. Spend time in the same room even if we're not doing anything with him. Um...” What else? “Offer love and support. Encourage him to make choices. And...” She bit her lip, trying to remember it all, but it got tangled in her head, somewhere between the thought, Derek is hurting and sick, and her mouth. Dr. Wyatt had said so many things. Meredith's lip quivered, and she wiped at her face. “Let me just get the packet that explains it all,” she said. Her voice cracked and died.
She pushed away from the table and retreated to the foyer before Mark could say anything. She glanced into the living room. Derek hadn't moved. He remained a quiet lump under heaps of blankets. This far away, she couldn't hear him breathe, and with that many things resting on top of him, she couldn't see his chest rise and fall either. The quiet stillness unsettled her, and a small voice in her head whispered dead. Dead. He's dead. The inexplicable force pulled at her again, but she denied it. He needed rest. She refused to wake him up, accidentally or not, for her own peace of mind. She wasn't clingy. She wasn't five. It wasn't like somebody had taken her special bear away. She could function. She could.
Her fists clenched. She forced herself back to her objective, and she retrieved the pamphlet from her battered purse. Assault Victimization, the paper said in big bold letters, and there was a tacky picture of a gun, a knife that looked more like a giant sword than anything else, and a baseball bat on the front. The words inside were what mattered, though. The words that spoke regretfully of Derek with every syllable. Her thumb brushed the soft paper. She stood, unmoving, staring. The paper crinkled as her fist squeezed.
Victims may be fearful of a repeat incident, however unlikely.
That's what the pamphlet said, somewhere in the spill of warnings about all the other awful feelings that might surface as the result of nearly being killed. She bit her lip and opened the pamphlet. She scanned the page, and she found that sentence, stuck in the middle of the rest. The words blurred. Before, she'd lost that warning under the riptide force of the rest of all the badness. It'd seemed innocuous compared to the other scary things. Sort of a duh.
But Derek didn't go outside.
Her fingers tightened, and her breaths shortened into stabbing pants of grief. He locked doors. Loud things and strangers scared him. He didn't go outside. Puzzle pieces snapped into place. She sniffed. The wet sound of fluid in her nose crackled in the silence. She forced herself to plod back into the kitchen where Mark sat, waiting for her. He'd finished his spaghetti.
“Here,” she said, her voice rough and weary. She foisted the paper at him, hands shaking.
She watched Mark's eyes zip back and forth as he read. After a few minutes, he came to a stop. He hunkered low in his chair, and a dark, foreboding hint of violence crossed his face. He jammed his fist against the table in a repeated, frustrated venting of energy. The wood rumbled softly. “Fuck,” he said. “I wish...” he began, but his voice trailed away.
“Somebody tried to murder him, Mark,” she said. She collapsed back into her seat and sighed. Murder. The word made it sound so much more... More. Don't let him isolate himself. “You should stay,” she said. “It would be good for you to stay.”
Mark put the pamphlet down. “Thank you,” he said.
She finished her spaghetti in silence, throat raw. Mark made no mention of her sniffling. She never used to cry so much. Now, her tear ducts felt like infinite buckets of rebelliousness. Like, once she'd gotten past internalizing everything bad that happened to her, now she couldn't stop letting it all explode out of her face.
“This sucks,” she said as she put her fork down. She sighed. “This really, really sucks. We were supposed to be okay, now. He's alive. I thought that was all I wanted. It is all I wanted. Just... I don't know.”
“Yeah,” said Mark.
She stood and took her plate to the sink to wash it off. The sound of rushing water filled the empty space in the air. She took a glass and filled it. It almost slipped from her wet hands when the kitchen door swung on its hinges, and Derek lumbered into the room.
“Hey, man,” said Mark. “There's some spaghetti in the Tupperware thing on the counter if you want some. Your favorite sauce and whole wheat noodles.”
Derek looked awful. Dark, fleshy circles hugged his eyes. He'd lost weight, maybe fifteen pounds or so since he'd been shot, evident by the angular, gaunt appearance of his face, and the way his t-shirt hung loosely against his torso. The hair on his head stuck up every which way. Thick stubble carved a dark swath against his too-pale face. His glazed stare didn't really see much. He didn't say a word in response to Mark. He headed for the sink where she stood, pale lips parted like a man staring at an oasis in a drought. She held out the glass she'd filled for herself. He took it, grunted some sort of word at her, maybe thanks, maybe hi, maybe just urgh. He eyed the bowl of leftover spaghetti on the counter, but didn't move to serve himself any. He went to the table and sat down diagonally from Mark, and then he nursed his water like it was a glass of scotch or something.
She dished him a plate and heated the spaghetti. She didn't care if he wanted it or not, didn't care whether he'd chosen not to eat, or instead just existed on a distant plane so far removed from earth that he'd seen the food, but hadn't really seen it. She would try. She would try to get him to consume something. She watched as he blinked, disheveled and half-awake, over the table. She filled a new glass of water for herself and sipped, waiting for the microwave to finish.
“You alive?” Mark said. He laughed, but the awkward attempt at levity fell flat in the silence.
“Define alive,” Derek said.
“I'd say if you need a definition, you're probably alive enough to count,” Mark said.
“Hmm.”
The microwave beeped, and Meredith brought the plate and a fork to Derek. “You should really at least try to eat something,” she said as she set the plate down and pushed his water glass aside. “Please.”
She sat down next to Mark, across from Derek, and bit her lip. She didn't want to sound mother henish. She didn't. She also didn't want Derek to starve himself to death while she smiled and tried to ignore the fact that he wasn't eating enough.
At first, when she'd brought him home, she'd thought when he hadn't finished the sub she'd ordered, it'd been a fluke born out of the fact that he'd been near collapse with exhaustion. But then she hadn't seen him finish anything the rest of the weekend, and that was assuming he ate something at all. He skipped meals, sometimes even breakfast, which felt weird, considering what a poster child he was for breakfast being the most important meal of the day.
Derek looked at the plate. He didn't protest. He didn't say he wasn't hungry. He took two tiny bites and chewed, the expression on his face dead of any interest or enjoyment. Like she'd reminded him to comb his hair or something instead of keep himself fed.
“How was work?” he said.
“Um,” she said. Didn't do anything productive. Looked up articles about PTSD. Had a rather long chat with a shrink about you. Said chat disturbed me so much I lost track of the rest of the day. Figured out you developed agoraphobia or whatever in the space of days because Gary Clark decided to murder you instead of deal with his freaking grief appropriately. “Fine.”
He took a third bite. “Fine?” he said.
“Being back was weird,” she amended. Damn that word. Fine. She couldn't use it anymore. “The place is just dead. And quiet. No elective surgeries, just emergencies. And since people aren't coming to our ER voluntarily, we're limited to what the paramedics bring in, which isn't all that much, well, not much surgical. Mostly jerks who called 911 for stubbed toes and runny noses or whatever.”
“Oh,” he said. “Doesn't surprise me.”
At least she didn't feel particularly bad about wasting her day on non-work things. There hadn't been any real work to do. Her fingers clenched as she watched him take a fourth bite. He seemed to be perking up a little. Maybe he'd just been groggy from sleep. Or maybe she was just hopeful.
He glanced at Mark, and his gaze dropped to the pamphlet on the table. She held her breath. Derek didn't ask about it, didn't even seem to notice the stupid pictures of weapons on the front. For the first time, she wanted to cheer at how catastrophically the painkillers had screwed up his detail orientation. Though, she wondered, if maybe it would be good for him to read it. To help him make sense of himself, so he'd know he wasn't alone. That other people went through this often enough that law enforcement had tacky but informative pamphlets.
Fifth bite. He'd cleared a fourth of the plate. But his spree ended, then. He put his fork down and gulped the remains from his glass of water. When he finished, he stared at her. His lip curved into a small, hesitant smile. “Hi, by the way,” he said, and she melted.
“Hi,” she said. She grinned back. “More alive, now?”
“Yeah. You're home early.”
“I left early,” she said. “Twelve hour shift today. I wanted to get home at a reasonable time.”
He'd been in the chair in their room when she'd left. Her shrill alarm had jarred her from a sound sleep so early that the morning had still seemed like night. The new chair had worked well to save him from midnight jaunts, it seemed, though, it had been odd to wake up with him to the left of her, sitting, instead of to the right, lying down, or gone. At first, in her not-sentient-yet confusion, she'd seen the blurry outline his knee in the corner of her eye and jumped. Nearly fallen off the bed. He'd blinked at her, all bleary and groggy, and then he'd drifted off while she'd forced herself into the shower.
“I know you left early,” Derek said. “I was sad.”
“Sad?”
He gestured at Mark. “Being helped into the shower is much more fun when the help is sexy.”
“Hey, I'm sexy,” Mark said. “I can't help it that you're blind to my hotness.”
“I'm stoned, not drunk. I'm perfectly capable of discerning ugly.”
“That hurts, man,” said Mark. He patted his chest over his heart. “I'm hurt.”
Derek snorted. A wince creased his features, but the expression of pain faded in seconds. “I think I win in the hurt department. Don't even try me there.”
“Fine,” Mark said. “But you blow at racing cars.”
“Racing fake cars,” said Derek.
“Whatever. You still suck.”
“I'm surprised you can even remember who won.”
“I did,” said Mark. “That's my story, and your memory is too shitty to say otherwise.”
“So,” Derek said. “What you're saying is that I won.”
“Nobody is saying that,” said Mark. “Least of all me.”
Derek smirked and didn't reply. The little energy he'd managed to conjure bled out of him over the course of silent minutes. He slumped forward and put his face in his hands, yawning. A small sliver of worry jabbed her heart. He'd been awake for thirty minutes. He'd slept all day. Even taking his surgery into account, he shouldn't be that exhausted after doing such a great impression of a slug all day.
“Mark and I talked a little,” Meredith said. She swallowed. Derek would take this badly. She knew it. But... “I'm going to go back to my regular schedule, and Mark's going to stay here for a week or two.” Let him make decisions wherever feasible. “Is that okay with you?”
Derek raised his head. His dark, hopeless eyes stared at her. In the wan daylight, his irises seemed almost black. “Okay,” he said.
“Really?” The word popped out before she could stop it, and she resisted the urge to cover her mouth with her hands.
“You want me to argue?” Derek said. “What good would it do?”
Silence stretched between them. Derek pushed back his chair and eased into a crooked standing position. “Are you going back to sleep already?” Meredith said.
He clenched the back of his chair, and his knuckles turned sickly white. “I'm tired,” he snapped.
Mark rumbled as he cleared his throat, stood, and gathered up all his papers and notes. “I'm going to go home and start packing some things so you two can talk, and then I'll head into Grace for my shift,” he said. “I'll be back in the morning before you leave for work, Grey.”
Derek watched him go, silent, brooding. When the front door slammed shut, Derek sighed.
“I really think he should stay,” Meredith said, “But if you're categorically against it, say something. You have a say, Derek. Your opinion matters. I don't want you to feel like it doesn't.”
He stared at his hands. “Maybe I can't get into the tub or carry things or drive or...” His voice fell away, and he swallowed. He drew in a wet breath. “I can take care of myself for a few hours. I can be left alone. I'm not some delinquent puppy.”
“I know,” she said. “Getting Mark to stay with you all day has nothing to do with that. If it were that, he could stop by over lunch and be done in an hour, and I would stay on my twelve hour days so you'd have somebody here every night.”
He looked up. His desolate stare made her chest tighten. “Then why?” he said.
“Because I love you, and I don't want you to be alone right now,” she said. “That's all.”
She watched him, watched the edges of his expression soften. “Oh,” he said. He swallowed, and she kept watching as he tried to compose himself again. He failed. His eyes rimmed with red, and he looked away.
She leaned across the table, face resting on her palms. “Derek, do you want to be alone?”
That question seemed to catch him off guard. He blinked. She bit her lip. He wasn't crying, but he was close, and all she really wanted was to close the space between them and wrap herself around him. “No,” he said. He ran his fingers along the edge of the table, following the wood grain. “I don't know. I want...” His voice trailed away, and he closed his eyes. “I don't know.”
She frowned. “What were you going to say?”
“If I told you the entire list of what I want, I'd just be whining, and I...” His fingers clenched. He scraped at his face with his hands, sniffed, and his skin reddened. He pushed away from the table, and he took his plate to the sink, where he scrubbed the uneaten spaghetti into the garbage disposal with an old, dirty sponge as he blinked furiously against tears he didn't seem to want. He flipped the switch, and the disposal growled to life. He sponged off the remains of the spaghetti sauce with all the violence he could manage, and then he loaded all the plates into the dishwasher. The dishes clanked.
When he finished, he stood at the sink, staring. She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. “Top of the list,” she whispered. “What do you want?”
“I can't even narrow that down,” he said darkly.
She cupped her hands over his trapezius muscles and squeezed, obliterating tense coils of stress. He leaned into it. She rose to her tiptoes, and she kissed the side of his neck as she punched fingers deep into the knots in his back. She'd looked up a list of stretching exercises to help him, but most of them assumed the person doing the stretching had full use of his chest muscles and arms for support, and Derek didn't. There had been a couple, though, that had looked promising. One he could do by himself. Two he would need help with.
She kissed him, and then she went back to the dinette table. She pulled out his chair for him well away from the table. “Sit,” she said. “I want to try something. It might make you feel better.”
He didn't ask her why or what. He sat.
“Spread your legs,” she said.
A small chuff of air fell from his lips. “Are we doing something naughty?”
“You wish,” she said. “Seriously, just spread your legs.”
He did as she asked, a curious look on his face. “Okay,” she said. “Now drop your arms between your knees. Don't hold onto anything, just let your arms hang.” He did. She touched his stomach with one hand and the small of his back with the other. Warmth soaked her palms through his shirt. He inhaled. His skin twitched at her light touch. “Curl over my hand, don't bend at the waist, and just... ease forward or whatever. Go as far as you can go.”
He didn't have much flexibility anymore. He didn't make it very far. His breaths sped up as he pushed her hand forward with his stomach. His abs tightened. She rubbed his back. She felt him tremble under her palm. “Does it hurt?” she said.
“No,” he said. “No, it's...” A soft sigh fell from his lips. “It's good. It feels good.”
He did that same stretch four more times. Each time, he dropped lower. “Okay,” she said. “Now, lie on the floor on your back.”
“Here?”
She shrugged. “It's clean, and it's hard. It'll work.”
“This really sounds like something naughty,” he muttered.
“Because you have a dirty, dirty mind,” she said, grinning.
Lying flat proved difficult for him with no support on a hard floor that would hurt if he let himself collapse to it via gravity. After he sat down, awkward and stiff and moving poorly, she held his shoulders, and he tipped backward, surrendering his weight to her hands. She slowed his descent. When he lay flat, resting in the space between the counter and the table, he looked at her, eyes glazed with painkillers, and something sharp stabbed her heart. The kitchen floor flashed immaculate white, and her fingers slicked with blood.
You don't get to die.
She flinched, and she focused on his chest. He wore a dark gray shirt with a high collar that hid his incision and the bullet wound from view. No hole in the shirt. No blood. He didn't pant with agony.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“Fine,” she said.
She splayed her palm against his breastbone, brushing the soft cotton of his shirt. Her fingers roamed across his damaged pectoral. The scab from the bullet wound made what had once been marble smooth dented and imperfect. Marred. Reflex almost made her ask if it hurt, but he moved, a whisper in the silence, and put his palm over hers in an echo of what he'd done when he'd been shot, and she'd been trying to stop the relentless tide of his blood. But there was no blood. His skin wasn't cold or shivery or slick with sweat. He felt warm. Warm and dry and living.
“It doesn't hurt unless I'm breathing hard, you press down, or I stretch my left arm weird,” he said. “I'm okay.”
She stroked his shirt as he breathed, relaxed, not clipped with pain.
“I see things sometimes, too,” he said when she didn't speak.
A lump formed in her throat. “Like what?” she said, but he looked away and wouldn't answer. She didn't press the issue. The refrigerator hummed. Birds chirped outside. He lay on the floor, breathing, not hurting, not bleeding, and she soaked in all the things that told her Derek wasn't dying. He'd been shot, but the pain he experienced now was just an echo of then. A memory. Something long past and gone. Real, but not real now.
He rubbed her arm with his thumb, and then he relaxed against the floor, resting his hands at his sides. “Have your way with me,” he said, his voice soft and tired, but she heard a spark. A spark of the Derek she knew. Her Derek. Just waiting to ignite. His eyelids lowered, and he watched her through his eyelashes. The corners of his mouth twitched with the hints of a smile.
She snorted, and forced herself to the present. “Put your knees up.” He did as she asked. With this exercise, he was supposed to pull his legs toward his chest with his arms wrapped under his knees. He wouldn't be able to do that, so she would be his arms, she decided. “I'm going to pick up your legs. Relax. And tell me right away if it hurts, okay? It's not supposed to hurt.”
“Hmm,” he said. He closed his eyes. She knelt at his shoulders, her kneecaps pushing into his trapezius muscles to the left and the right of his head. She rose as high onto her knees as she could go, and she leaned forward.
He laughed. Really, clearly laughed. Like a bell. His body tensed as he winced with the backlash, but the look in his eyes made her quiver. No sparkles. Stupid painkillers. But the skin around his eyes crinkled, and she couldn't see a single hint of sadness or anger or anything bad anymore. He was looking at her, and he was happy. “In what universe is this not naughty?” he said, staring at her crotch.
“Shut up,” she said. “I'm helping you.”
“Oh, I agree. This is definitely helping.”
She laughed as she reached under his thighs. She looped her arms. At first, he didn't budge when she tried to pull back his legs. “Relax,” she said.
“I'm stuck, helpless as a lamb, in your game of dirty twister, and you want me to relax?”
“Well, close your eyes and pretend I'm Mark or something.”
He made a disgusted sound. “Please, don't say that when my face is inches from your--”
“Relax, damn it,” she commanded. She pulled, and his weight came with her. She eased his knees toward his chest, and she lowered herself to the floor behind his head as his muscles extended as far as they would go. He inhaled, and a soft moan fell from his lips as she held his knees for him. She watched as the tears he'd held back earlier overflowed. “Does it hurt?” she asked, and she bit her lip.
“No,” he said, his voice wet and thick. “No, it doesn't hurt.”
After twenty seconds, she rose up and lowered his legs to the floor with care. He rested for thirty seconds, and she repeated. He didn't make any more jokes. He lay with his eyes closed, his expression sublime, even as tears leaked down his face. She repeated that stretch eight more times.
“Okay,” she said. “Same thing, sort of, but we're going to the side. Stay flat on your back.”
She scooted across the floor away from his shoulders to his legs. She touched his knees and pushed him to the left. He didn't need encouraging this time. He tilted his legs to the side. His right hip came off the floor. She stopped when his breaths jerked to a halt, and he made a small sound of discomfort. “Too much?” she said. “Keep your upper back flat. Only your hips should be moving.”
“A little too much,” he said, his voice clipped and tight. She eased up, and he rested, sort of tilted, sort of stretched. Tension bled away from him. “Better,” he said.
She kept forgetting that his flexibility was crap right now. He hadn't done much physical activity in weeks. His muscles had gotten used to stiffness and pain and overuse in the same position for hours and hours. She wished she'd thought of this earlier. Stretching exercises for his back. He couldn't run or lift weights or do any of the usual things he did in the gym with Mark, but he could at least do this. Natural instinct after a serious injury was to curl up and hibernate forever. But studies had shown that movement and exercise after a trauma was what sped healing. Dr. Altman had given him a list of stretching exercises that would help his arms and chest, which he did, but none for his back. She'd also enrolled him in physical therapy, but that didn't start for another two weeks. They'd wanted to give his sternum a chance to heal more before putting him through anything overly strenuous.
Meredith repeated that stretch to the left, going a little further each time for four more times. Then she switched to his right for another five.
When she finished, she watched him. He relaxed his knees and lay flat. Eyes closed, he didn't move. He'd cried steadily since that second set of stretches, but somewhere in the course of the third set of stretches, the tears had petered and then stopped. Wet tracks glistened against his temples, and small patches of his hair above his ears had gotten soaked. She licked her lips. “There are a few more we can try, but that seems like a good start. I think. Do you think?” When he didn't respond, she leaned forward. “Did you fall asleep?” she whispered, peering at his relaxed face. She stroked the skin above his eyebrows and teased her fingers through the hair over his forehead.
A lazy smile curled at his lips. “No,” he said, his voice thick and low. “This is just the first time I've been on my back in two weeks, and it's been a modicum of comfortable.”
“Oh,” she said. She eased herself onto her side next to him and picked up his hand, worrying at the joints. “Well, do you want to stay here a while?”
He looked at her. “I just want my wife.”
“Is that the top of your list, then?” She winked.
“Definitely,” he said. “Thank you for helping me narrow it down.”
She grinned. “Well, you have me, now. And with this new plan with Mark, I get days off here and there, and I can stay the day with you every once in a while instead of just being here for a few hours before you crash for the night.”
“That's true,” he said. He smiled as he tilted his head to look at her. “I'm glad you'll get days off. You need days off. You shouldn't have to work every day just to take care of me.”
“See?” She returned his grin. “It's all about me, me, me. It has nothing to do with you. I want my breaks. I need my freaking beauty rest or whatever.”
He laughed. Even despite the clipped ending that sounded more moaning than laughing, the noise of it hit her eardrums like balm. “But I'm very important,” he said. “How could it not have anything to do with me?”
“You're right,” she said. “My mistake. It must be all about you.”
His eyebrows rose. “You're admitting I'm right?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“I can't decide whether to file that under the benefits of being high and hallucinating, or under the benefits of being wounded and vulnerable.”
“Maybe both?”
“Hmm,” he rumbled. “It could be both. You might be banking on me forgetting this conversation ever happened while at the same time suffering from hopeless sympathy for me and my not-so-hidden pain.”
She winked. “I guess you'll never know.”
“That's mean, you know,” he said. “Leaving me wondering.”
“Doesn't the mystique add to my sex appeal? I thought men liked a little mystery.”
“I prefer open books,” he said, and then his gaze shifted into gleeful realization that he'd been given an opening. He leaned into her body. “How about a story?” he said, his eyes inches from hers.
“This again?” she said.
“Well, you can't hardly expect me to believe you were born, stole hair dye, and then came to Seattle Grace, where you fell head-over-heels for the sexiest neurosurgeon on the planet.”
She laughed. “I don't know. Can't I?”
“Remind me not to ever let you play connect the dots,” he grumbled. “The sheer weight of your failure at it might cause you to implode, and then I'd miss you.”
He flopped against the hard floor. “Any suggestions on how to get up?” he said, his voice wry. “You seem to be an expert at naughty twister.”
She moved back behind his shoulders. “Do a sit up. I'll push you. Don't pull with your arms.”
“Hmm,” he said. “So very bossy.”
But he did what she said to do. Under his own steam, he rose to a 45 degree angle. She shoved him up the rest of the way with a grunt. Once he'd gotten into a sitting position, he managed the rest on his own, albeit slowly. The stretching might have made his back feel better, but he still wasn't moving all that well. As he stuttered to his feet, he groaned, and it took him a while to straighten out.
She watched as he shuffled to retrieve his empty glass, and then he refilled it under the rushing faucet. He gulped until the water disappeared. The corners of his mouth dripped, and he wiped them off with a paper towel. She glanced at the window. Daylight had waned considerably into dusk since she'd come into the house, and the overhead light in the kitchen did much more to illuminate the room now than it had when she'd entered. Slivers of pink and deep hues of blue stretched across the sky outside the window, highlighted with the deep greens and spruce colors of the treetops.
“Let's take a walk,” she said. “It's really nice out today.”
His fingers squeaked as he clenched his glass. The apprehension slathered all across his face made her ache. “Since when do you walk for fun?” he said.
“I walked with you,” she said. “We've walked. With Doc. I thought that was fun.”
“Meredith...”
You have to let him heal at his own pace, but you can't let him wallow, either.
“If you take a walk with me, I'll tell you a story,” she said. “A short walk. We'll go slow.”
“But I'm in my pajamas,” he said.
His meaning was clear. A trip up and down the steps would wear him out. He thought he'd found an out. She considered offering to bring down some clothes for him, but decided against it. Help emphasize to him what he can control, rather than what he can't.
“There are some clean jeans in the dryer.” She pointed toward the utility room. “You can grab those if you want.”
“But...”
She shrugged. “No walk, no story. But it's your choice. We could watch a movie or whatever. You pick.”
“It's getting dark,” he said.
“It is,” she agreed. “But it's not like I live in the middle of nowhere. The streets are lit.”
He peered at her, suspicion carving his expression. “How good is this story?”
“You'll have to come along to find out.”
He shifted on the balls of his feet, agitated. She wanted to tell him nothing would happen. That he'd be fine. But she thought letting him know she'd figured out his fears might make his anxiety about them worse. It would embarrass him that she'd noticed. He put his empty glass in the sink and sighed.
“Fine,” he said, and he shuffled out of the room, muttering, “But this had better be a damned good story,” as he went.