All Along The Watchtower - Part 12C

[ariaadagio]

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 12C

Running away from confrontation.  Just like he always freaking did.  Where did he get off, calling her a lemon and broken when he did the same freaking thing for different reasons?  Hypocrite.  Ass.  She swallowed around the grapefruit taking residence in her throat.  She wiped her face.  She took a deep breath.  And then she chased after him.  Not this time.  She was not letting him end their fight by slamming a figurative door in her face.

Panic burbled in her gut when she saw him with his hand outstretched, reaching for the front door.  He was going to leave.  He was--

“Don't you dare!” she said, and he froze.  She closed the distance between them, and she slipped between him and the door.  “You're not leaving.  We're not done.”

He breathed in her space.  His warm skin, inches from hers, called like a siren.  She wanted to wrap her arms around him.  She wanted to lean into his heat and his strength and let him make it better.  He always did that.  When he was healthy and fine, he always did that.  She knew he wouldn't, this time.  She trembled, blocking the door.  She reached behind her back and turned the deadbolt.  It clicked in the heavy silence.

“I was just going to sit on the swing,” he said.

“You were going to leave,” she said.

He leaned against the door, resting his forehead against the cool wood.  He laughed, more like a sob than anything else.  “Where would I go, Meredith?”

“I don't know.”

“I can't drive.  I can walk two blocks.  Maybe three.  I...”  He blinked.  He pressed against her body, and he breathed.  Breathed her in.  She felt his nose at her hair, and when she closed her eyes, she could pretend that everything was back to the way it had been.

You're hovering.

No.  I'm breathing you in.

“I do want to have sex with you,” he said.

“Well, you have a screwy way of showing it.”

He sighed.  “I told you I wanted to wait until--”

“But you're walking a lot,” she protested, interrupting him.  “You're in physical therapy, now.  Your pain is much better.  You kicked the pneumonia.  You wouldn't just be lying there, Derek.  You're much better.”  She thought of his open pill bottle on the coffee table.  “Your pain is much better, right?”

“Yes, but, Mere, I...”  His voice trailed away, and she hated to watch him.  Lost.  Broken.  He slammed the flat of his palm into the door, which rocked on its hinges, and then he moved away.  Toward the living room.  He collapsed onto the couch with a sigh, and she bit her lip.  She wanted to finish this.  Badly.  But if he needed to rest...

She shook her head.  If he needed to rest, he could sit like he was, and he would be fine.  An honest discussion wouldn't freaking kill him.  She chased after him.  He sat on the left corner.  She sat on the middle cushion.  She wouldn't give him space.  She felt obnoxious, and mean, and all sorts of pushy, but they needed this.

If he said no, she would stop needling him, she promised herself.  If he ever said no.  Silence wasn't no.  Looking mopey and sad wasn't no.  Walking away wasn't no.  He had to say it.  N.  O.  No.

“But what?” she prodded.  “Derek, talk.  Please.”

He blinked.  He put his face in his hands against his knees.  “I can't use my arms,” he said.  “I try every morning in the shower, but--”

“Every morning?”

“Yes, every morning!” he snapped.  “I want to have sex with my wife.  But I can't take my weight without it hurting, and I--”

“So freaking what?” she said.

He glared at her, like she'd just lambasted his love of ferryboats, or told him that his trailer made her laugh.  His voice dropped low.  “What do you mean, so what?”

“We don't have to make love in a bed,” she said.  “There are plenty of ways we can have sex without you being prone.  We've done them before.”

He looked at her.  “But it's not the same.”

“What's not the same?”

“You can't compare lying in bed together for hours with a quickie on the kitchen counter,” he said.

She sighed as the ghost of his soft laughter hit her ears.  He'd pushed a stack of cereal boxes out of the way, lifted her like her weight competed with a grain of sand, and pushed her onto the counter.  So, this is wedded bliss or whatever, she'd said.

No, he'd said.  She'd gasped as he'd sheathed himself with her body.  This is wedded bliss.

They hadn't spent more than fifteen minutes there, but she'd loved every moment of it.  How the hell could she get him to understand she didn't expect a marathon out of the gate?  How the hell could she get him to stop expecting himself to perform a marathon out of the gate, regardless of her desires?

“We can figure something out,” she said.  “If we actually try.”

“But I don't want to have to try,” he said.

“Well, you're being a stubborn idiot, then,” she said.

His fingers clenched against his jeans.  He looked away.  A wet sound filled the air, and his shoulders shook as he tried to shield his misery from her.

She bit her lip.  Nausea rolled in her stomach.  Why did he have to make this feel like she was kicking a freaking puppy?  She touched his shoulder.  When he didn't tense, she leaned against his back, and she wrapped her arms around his body.  The sound of her skin as she touched his shirt rasped in the silence.  She rested against him, and he leaned backward.  Into it.  Into her embrace.  A thrill of hope spiraled into her.

“Look, I get that this is something you need right now.  Being able to contribute to the act instead of just receiving,” she said.  She kissed the nape of his neck.  “But you don't have to wait until things are perfect again.  I know right now wouldn't be perfect.  It might not even be good or great.  But I need you.”  She pulled loose fingers through his hair.  “I need you.  I care about you, and you almost died, and just being with you would be perfect.  Five minutes or an hour or whatever.  I don't care.  But I need it, Derek.  Please.”

“Five minutes would be embarrassing,” he said.

“It shouldn't be.”

He pulled away, and she let him go.

“I'm...”  He swallowed, and the bitter, dark look on his face made her hurt.  “I'm really not in the mood right now.”

“Well, I didn't mean right this second,” she said.

“But you would do it, if I was in the mood,” he countered.

“Of course I would.”  She touched his shoulder again.  He didn't tense.  “Are you even listening to a word I'm saying?  I need you.  The rest doesn't matter to me.”

“I'm listening,” he said.  He heaved a weary, shaky breath, wrapped his arms around his stomach, and then he dropped over his knees to stare at the floor.

She bit her lip.  A car with a half-busted muffler drove past, and the windows rattled.  The world outside had darkened.  She hadn't even noticed they were arguing in the dark.  She flipped on the lamp on the other side of the couch and resettled.  The clock she'd put on the mantle ticked.  She stared into space.

The warm scent of tuna and cheese and potato chips had saturated the house, and she swallowed as the grapefruit returned to her throat.  Cheese and potato chips were like dietary hara-kiri.  Maybe he knew he didn't have much to lose, given how underweight he was.  It didn't matter.  The fact that he'd made it for her...

“What did I do wrong?” she said.  “In the hospital.  I want to know.”

He looked away.  “It didn't feel good.”

“What didn't?  When?”

“When you touched me.”

She turned.  “But you let me touch you on the face...”

He sighed.  His lips parted.  The sound was an empty syllable, like he'd lost his voice again.  He took a deep breath.  “I can't explain.”

She put her palm on his thigh.  He didn't flinch.  She rubbed from the crease where his leg turned into hip, all the way to his knee.  The gesture didn't seem to bother him.  She settled into what she hoped was a reassuring, comforting rhythm.  Thigh to knee.  Thigh to knee.  “Please, try, Derek,” she said.  “Please.”

He put his elbow on the arm of the couch and rested against it.  He stared, his expression blank, at the far wall.  “The curtain came open,” he said.

“What curtain?”

“The one around the bed,” he said.  He blink, blink, blinked, but that didn't stop the sudden renewal of tears on his face.  “And I was naked.”

She remembered the moment in fine detail, like it'd been flash frozen in her brain.

Pneumonia was one of the leading causes of death in the United States.  If Derek had been healthy to begin with, she wouldn't have worried, but his immune system had been totaled by stress and depression, he'd had surgery that interfered with his ability to cough, and his fever had gotten wildly out of control.  Generally speaking, anything over 105 was considered potentially life-threatening.  106 meant likely brain damage.  When he'd hit 104.4 and kept going up, the doctors had gotten concerned.  He'd been hallucinating and lethargic, and his blood-oxygen levels had gotten so low they'd discussed putting him on a ventilator.  She'd spent most of the night crying all over Mark, and the few minutes she'd spent with Derek, he'd either been staring blankly into space or croaking at Gary Clark to leave him alone.

She'd come up early after a nurse had come to the waiting room to tell her his respiration and temperature had improved instead of gotten worse, for once.  She'd wanted to see him.  Wanted to reassure herself.  An orderly had stopped her outside of Derek's cubicle.  It's not visiting hours yet, he'd said, and she'd fought him tooth and claw.

She couldn't even remember what she'd said to get past him at this point.  When Derek's heart monitor had shrieked about a flat line, her stomach had dropped out of her body.  She'd opened the curtain.  Derek had been standing naked by his bed, his eyes glassy and unfocused, and she'd run for him without thinking about anything other than the fact that he would fall, and his catheter could rip out, or he'd tear the vein in his wrist when his IV ran out of slack, or he'd smack into the bed platform and give himself a bloody concussion.  She'd run, and all she'd been thinking about was keeping him off the floor.  She hadn't thought about the curtain.

“When I ran to catch you, I left it open,” she said, swallowing.  It wasn't something she could regret, sacrificing his modesty to save him from physical harm.  But...

“Yes,” he said.  “And I...”

“You what?” she pressed.  “Derek, you what?”

He grunted against his hand.  Tears slicked his face.  He didn't try to wipe them away, but he wouldn't look at her.  “I was so sick, I couldn't even cover myself, and I...”

She leaned into him.  “You?”

“When you touched me, and that nurse touched me, and I couldn't say no, I just...”

“Just?”

He pulled in a breath.  Once.  Twice.  He scrunched his hands in his hair and yanked.  And then he burst.  “It was the last straw,” he said.  “I need to have a say about my life, and I didn't have...”  A sob skipped loose, and he moaned.  “Anything.  I haven't had anything since he shot me, and I can't do it anymore.  I can't.”

He looked at her, and she wanted to melt into the crevices between the cushions.  His hair stuck up all over.  He had a dark rash of stubble over his face and down his throat, which contrasted sickly with his bloodless face.  Bloodshot blue eyes rimmed with red peered at her.  He looked exhausted.  Like he hadn't slept well in days.  He probably hadn't.  And he looked starved.  His angular face, all sharp points and bones, didn't have a single ounce of extra anymore.

She'd been so freaking wrapped up in being annoyed with how awful he'd been lately to her and to Mark that she hadn't considered him beyond how he was making her life miserable.  Hadn't considered him as a person who had bone-deep issues regarding control.  She'd let it get this way with her hands-off approach.  This was her fault.

He rocked back and forth, stuck in the grips of gut-wrenching sobs.  She shifted, and she pulled him against her.  He was jelly in her arms.  Unresisting.  Pliant.  She rubbed his back, and she sat there, quivering with nauseating disquiet.  She didn't know this man, this stranger with Derek's face.  Gary Clark had damaged much more than simple flesh.  She closed her eyes and pictured Derek's soul.  Mr. Clark had shot a gaping, jagged hole through it.

“I'm sorry,” she said.  She kissed his shoulder through his shirt.  “I didn't mean to make you feel like that.”

He scrunched a tent of her shirt.  “He took my dignity, Meredith.  I don't have anything.”

I have no dignity left at all, he'd said.

He stole everything from me, he'd said.

Disconnected pieces of the puzzle formed a straight edge with a solid picture.

“You have me,” Meredith said.  “I'm not going anywhere.”

“But I don't own anything.  Nothing is...”  His voice trailed away.  He pulled away from her, and he stared at his arm.  His wrist had an old scar on it.  A dot on his flesh that told her where the intravenous line after his surgery had been placed.  The back of his hand had a fresher mark from when he'd been admitted for pneumonia.  “Since he shot me,” Derek said, “I've been bathed by other people.  And shaved.  And dressed.  And fed.  Dozens of people have seen me naked.”  He took a jagged breath and exhaled.  “I've had my penis handled by employees who I have to interact with on a daily basis, employees who make monetary bets about how McDreamy I am in bed.”  He looked at her.  “I can't stop crying.  I've peed on myself, Meredith.  I'm a grown man, and I can't even hold my bladder.”

“You were scared, Derek,” she said.  “That's a natural response to--”

“But I'm always scared,” he confessed.  “And I can't make it stop.”

I want to stop seeing him over my shoulder and in the mirror and when I wake up and in my dreams and everywhere, he'd said.

She rested her hand on his thigh.  His muscle twitched.  “Scared of what?” she said.  “Of being killed?”

“Of everything,” he said.  “I can't even relax in my own home.  I'm...”  He swallowed.  “I don't enjoy anything anymore.  I just want to get to the next minute.”

I want to be able to get through an hour of my life without feeling like this, he'd said.

She swallowed.  “Do you think maybe an alarm system or something would help?”

He shrugged.  “I don't know.”

“Well, it couldn't hurt, could it?”

“I guess not,” he said, but he sounded like he'd already doomed the idea to failure.  He pushed his hands against his thighs and stood with a wince.  He wouldn't look at her again.  He turned and wandered through the dining room toward the kitchen.

But he hadn't said no.  Hadn't said stop.  She stood, and she followed him.  After weeks of not talking, not really saying anything, he'd finally started opening up a bit.  Getting him to speak was like poking an insect with a toothpick, over and over and over, and it made her feel like crap.  But he spoke.  She'd learned more in the past hour than she had in the entire month since he'd been shot.

He picked up the casserole dish and covered it with plastic wrap.  She rinsed the dishes.  “I'm sorry,” she said as she turned off the water.  The faucet dripped.  He closed the refrigerator door and stared at her.  She took a breath.  “I shouldn't have pressured you.  I'm being selfish, and not sensitive, and I--”

“You're my wife,” he said.  “It shouldn't be taboo for you to ask for sex.  It shouldn't be taboo for you to talk to me about anything.”

“It's not,” she replied.  “This is sort of a special circumstance.”

He slammed his hand against the refrigerator door.  Four magnets went flying.  A menu fell to the ground, followed by a ream of pizza coupons.  “I don't want this to be a special circumstance,” he said.  He hit the fridge again, and it shook.  “I want it to be like it was.”  Again.  “I want me to be like I was.”  His lip quivered.  He looked at his palm like his need for violence disgusted him.  “I don't know what's wrong with me.”

When he dropped his gaze to the floor and didn't move, she settled next to him.  The refrigerator skidded under their weight and stopped.  Derek flinched, and the way his eyes jerked to assess the situation made her heart squeeze.  She didn't know Derek anymore, but she didn't love him any less.  She kissed his shoulder through his shirt as he shook in her arms.  She rubbed his back, and he leaned against her, into her space, reluctant at first, and then he settled.  His breathing hitched, and she realized, again, what a freaking idiot she'd been.

She hadn't touched him all week except during times of necessity, not even when he'd been sick and hurting and unable to get up on his own.  He hadn't said anything, but he had to have noticed and internalized the inadvertent message she'd been sending.  She kept whining that she didn't know him anymore.  That Derek had become a stranger.  But he seemed more bewildered by it, more unhappy about it, than she did.

She closed her eyes, and she inhaled his warm, musky scent.  Her nose rubbed his shirt.  She petted his arms, and she thought about the packet she'd left folded in her purse.  The one about assault victims.

“You can't just be fine after something like this,” she told him.  “Nobody is.”

“Alex is,” he said.  “You are.  Everybody is but me.”

“Alex is a freaking iceberg, Derek.  Ninety-nine percent of what's going on in his head, you'll never see.  I sincerely doubt he's fine, and I imagine his whole life-is-great Broadway musical routine will crash and burn just like mine did after I drowned.  It's fake.”

She gasped when he shifted, and his warm body enveloped hers.  He kissed her hairline, and then he rested his chin against her forehead.  She blinked at the unexpected, silent support.  The room blurred.  She tilted her head into his chest and cried against his shirt.  His soft, unhindered breaths thundered in her ears.  No pops or crackles or fluid sounds filled his lungs.  His heart beat.  His warm skin reassured her.  Warm, but not fever hot.  And he had such great arms.  His body shifted to accommodate her as she moved.  He said nothing, but he held her.  For minutes and minutes and minutes.  A deep chorus of crickets filtered through the closed windows.  Beyond that, the world hovered in silence.

“I'm not fine,” she admitted after she'd gathered her resolve.  “And I'm a liar.  I lied to you.”

“It's okay,” he said.  “I'm sorry I haven't been there for you.  I don't know--”

“I'm seeing Dr. Wyatt,” she clarified.

“Dr. Wyatt,” he echoed.  He kept stroking her, kept holding her.  “Isn't she a therapist at Seattle--”  His hands stopped moving.  “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“About the miscarriage?” he said.

She squeezed her eyes shut as she pictured the puzzle pieces assembling in his head.  She didn't want to do this, but she had to.  It wasn't fair to him not to know.  And if he knew, she could give him the pamphlet.  And that might...  It might help.

“Sort of,” she said.

He stepped backward and looked her in the eyes.  The confusion slathered on his face made her want to run.  Run before the earthquake.  “How do you sort of see a therapist about a miscarriage?” he said.

“It's...”  Her voice cracked.  “It's more to do with you.”

He frowned.  “Me.”

“I was really worried,” she said.  “I'm still really worried.”

“About me.”

“Yes, about you.”

He dropped his hands.  Her eyes watered.  She wiped her face, bereft.  “You need to see a therapist because of me,” he said.  His voice had dropped in pitch.  His gaze darkened.

“Derek, it's not like that.”

“Well, what's it like?” he said.  “Because it's sounding like--”

“I'm seeing a therapist because of me,” she corrected him.  “I love you, and I want to help you, and I don't know how.  It's not like there's a manual on this sort of thing.”  Just a damned pamphlet.

His lips parted.  He made a hollow, lost sound, and he backed up another step.  “Do you talk to her?” he asked.  “About what I've said?"

“I sort of have to, so she can help me,” Meredith said.  He nodded, and his wary expression flattened into something dead.  Just like that.  Like a light switch had been thrown.  No love, no anger.  Just dead.  She had a ludicrous, wild image in her head of the play Julius Ceasar.  She stood there in a toga holding a jagged knife.

Et tu, Brute?

She shook her head.  “Please, say something,” she said.  “I'm sorry.  I'm--”

He shrugged.  “It's fine.”

Her eyebrows shot up.  “It is?”

“Sure,” he said.  His eyes creased, and the awful flatness became a glare and a nasty, wounded snarl.  “What's one more episode of the Naked Derek Show for the employees of Seattle Grace?”

He turned on his heels.  She chased after him as he stalked down the hall.  He flipped on the hallway lights.  His feet hit the stairs.

“Derek, it's not like that,” she said.

He stopped and wheeled to face her.  She nearly plowed into him.  He grimaced, and his eyes flashed with fury.  “Did you talk to her about sex, too?  Sex with me?” he snapped.  “Is that why this is such a big deal to you today?”  His hot breaths hit her face.  He continued up the steps, his legs growing more wobbly as he went.  She had to slow down to stay behind him, and he roared with frustration when he had to lean against the banister.

“I talked to her about sex, but it's a big deal because I love you, not because I talked to her,” she insisted.  She wanted to assure him she hadn't given any details, but her stomach roiled.  She'd told Dr. Wyatt about his nighttime erections.  He'd probably consider that a big freaking detail.

Derek reached the top of the steps, and he stopped, panting.  His squeezed his eyes shut, and he drew a shaky hand through his hair.  His knees buckled, and he looked like he needed to collapse from the exertion, but he fell against the wall and caught his weight with his shoulder instead.  “Does she know I pissed myself, too?” he said.

She couldn't meet his eyes.  “Yes.”

“God, damn it, Meredith!” he said.  He thudded down the hall, and he slammed the bedroom door in her face.  Paintings in the hallway crashed to the ground.  A dog barked somewhere outside.  The crickets remained a constant, undulating wave of sound.  He hadn't said no, she told herself.  She hadn't once heard the word no or stop.

She took a breath, grabbed the knob, and followed him into the lion's den.  He stood by his drawer.  “Get out,” he hissed.

“No,” she said.

He pulled a pair of pajamas loose and slammed the drawer shut.  He stomped across the room and bore down on her.  She backed into the door with a thud.  He leaned into her space, close, menacing.  “Get out!” he yelled in her face.  His pearly teeth flashed centimeters away.  His skin had turned a deep shade of red.

I said leave!  Meredith!  Leave!

“Shut up,” she spat back at him.  “Just shut up.”  She took a breath.  He wasn't giving her any space.  He hovered against her, eyes blazing, fever-bright with anger.  She took his rage.  She funneled it into herself.  And then she gave it back to him.  “You're not allowed to be angry about this,” she said.  “I've worked my ass off trying to keep your confidence.  You want to know why I'm talking to Dr. Wyatt?  You really want to know why?”

“Fine,” he snapped.  “Why?”

“Because I knew I couldn't talk to Cristina, or you'd react just like this, and I haven't, Derek.  I haven't said a word to Cristina because I knew it would be important to you,” Meredith said.  “I know Dr. Wyatt from before.  She doesn't gossip.  And she helped me.  She really helped me, and I--”

“What do you mean, you know her from before?”

She slid away from the door.  He didn't stop her.  “How the hell do you think I got all whole and healed for you, Derek?  Do you think I just flipped a freaking switch?”

He blinked.  “You saw a therapist?”

“Yes, I saw a therapist.  I saw Dr. Wyatt,” she said.  Her eyes burned.  “I wanted to be with you, but you wanted things that I didn't know how to give, and she helped me.”

He sat on his side of the bed with a heavy thud.  The pajamas he'd liberated from the chest-of-drawers lay against his lap, and he stared at them, soft in his hands.  “Oh,” he said.

She sat next to him.  Her throat tightened at his upset expression.  The unadulterated anger had mixed and twisted and swirled with other black emotions.  She couldn't decide if what she saw now was better or worse.  She touched his back.  His muscles tensed under her hand like a tripwire, ready to set off an explosion, and he didn't look at her.  She swallowed.

“I swear, Derek,” she said.  “I wouldn't be talking to her if I didn't think she was discreet and a hundred percent professional.  I didn't want this.  I didn't want you to be angry.  I just needed help.”

A deep sound rumbled in his throat.  He glowered.  “I don't want you to need help.”

“I don't either, but this happened, Derek.  You were shot, and we have to deal with this.  We have to deal with this.  It's not just about you.  It hasn't been since day one.”

He collapsed onto his side with a heaving breath.  His pajama pants fell to the floor.  He grabbed a pillow, and he squeezed it against him.  “He did take everything,” Derek said.  The emotional barometer in the room shifted.  His lower lip quivered.  He broke like he'd stepped on a minefield.  Dark and twisty rage became a flash flood.  He blinked, and tears glittered in the dim light.  “He took everything from me,” he said.  He rolled his face into the pillow and breathed shivery, jagged breaths.

She put her hand on his side.  Her fingers found the ripples of his ribs, and she stroked him armpit to hip.  She shifted.  The mattress sank under her knee, and she climbed over his body.  She pushed pillows and blankets and sheets away.  She settled behind him, and wrapped her arms around his waist.  “He'll never take me, Derek.  I'm here.  And I always will be.”

“Dr. Wyatt helped you with that, too?” he said, his voice low and raw and muffled by the pillow.

She stared at his back, and she kissed the space between his shoulder blades.  “She did,” she said.  “She really did.”

His body shifted.  The pillow rustled.  He sniffed.  “Remind me to send her a thank you note,” he said, and then he didn't speak anymore.  She rested along his length, quiet.  He shook, and he said nothing.  Not a word.

“It's okay,” she said.  “Derek, it'll be okay.  Maybe not tomorrow.  Or next week.  But it will be.  If I can be here, wrapped around you, not running and not wanting to run after all this, we can be okay.  Eventually.  It just won't be a surgical fix.”

She couldn't tell if he was even listening.  He sighed, deep and long and low.  His torso filled her arms, and then he deflated.  His breaths stretched evenly.  At least he'd stopped crying.

The door slammed downstairs.  She winced as she heard Alex and Lexie tromp through the door, their footsteps heavy in the foyer below.  Derek flinched, and she squeezed his hip.  Alex said something in a deep timbre, and Lexie laughed in response.  The television snapped on.

“Do you want a beer?” Alex called.

“Yeah, bring me one,” replied Lexie.

The channels hopped and skipped until the loud, rushing, rumble of a crowd filled the house.  A sports announcer reported a home run.  Beer bottles clinked.

Meredith pulled her fingers through Derek's hair.  She knew he hated roommates.  He hated everything about her house situation with its constant revolving door of inhabitants, but he stayed there, and he didn't pressure her to fix it.  He was sick and hurt.  He liked privacy.  He liked his space.  He still hadn't complained.  Not once.

He'd made her an unhealthy dinner on a whim, just as a treat to her.  When she'd needed to be held, before she'd dropped the nuclear therapy bomb on him, he'd held her despite his own emotional wasteland.  She inhaled.  He had the same deep, male scent she'd always loved.  Intoxicating and comforting at the same time.

He'd yelled and screamed and spat at her, but she'd done the same to him, and she'd never felt physically threatened.  Even when he'd crowded her by the door.  He'd been trying to scare her.  Trying to drive her off.  Puffed himself up like big peacock or a scared cat or something.  But she'd known on a deep level he had no follow through, and his scare tactics hadn't worked.

He did want her to touch him.  The setting, not the act, was what had been inappropriate.  And she should have realized that.  Should have thought.  Should have... considered.  Just for a second.  Her husband was a private person.  Very private.  He didn't like the gossip or the silly nicknames.  He touched and kissed her at Seattle Grace, but rarely when they had an audience.  He'd been lain out on display, helpless and unclothed, and she should have thought about how he would feel about being intimately touched in that setting.

And he did want sex.

You know what says thank you like nothing else?

She kissed him once.  Again.  Maybe not such a stranger after all.  Her Derek.  He'd just gotten lost.  And she'd been a freaking idiot.

“I'm really sorry about what I did,” she said.  “In the hospital.  I never wanted you to feel...” She swallowed.  Something sharp stabbed her esophagus, bisected her to the stomach, and her throat felt like it was closing up.  She swallowed again.  She'd touched him, not intending to be sexual about it, but, really, how the hell was he supposed to interpret her playing with his nipple?  “I never wanted you to feel violated.  I never wanted that.  Not ever.  I'm very sorry.  And I'm sorry about the sponge bath.  I thought it would help.  Being from me instead of a stranger, I thought...  I'm sorry.”

Silence.  She wished she could see his face.  Anything.

“I know you didn't mean to do it,” he said after a long time.  His shoulders hitched.  “The bath felt good.”

She blinked against tears.  “It did?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought...”

He sighed.  “I didn't like needing it.”

The sheets and pillows rustled.  He moved.  Clumsily.  His jeans stuck on the sheets.  She backed away from him to let him roll, and she bit her lip when she saw him wince.  He settled on his left side, his damaged side.  His eyes creased with discomfort, but his expression evened after several moments.  She lay next to him, inches from his face, her body flush with his.

“Receiving it from you was nice, though,” he said.

“Really?”

His gaze shifted away, and his face tinged red.  She didn't press it.  She didn't want him to be embarrassed about needing help.  She rubbed his stomach as she tried to think back, tried to recall when he'd attempted speech, and when he hadn't spoken and...  He'd been sick.  He'd been so sick, he couldn't bathe himself or eat or stand.  She'd been a paranoid freak about him not responding to every question with abundant reassurance.  He had said it was okay early on.  That should have been enough for her.

“I'm sorry about tonight, too,” she said.  “About everything.  The last thing I wanted was to upset you.  Thank you for dinner.”

“I shouldn't have yelled at you,” he said.  “You need somebody to talk to.”

The sick look in his eyes made her sniffle, and she resisted the urge to justify why she hadn't chosen him to be that somebody.  “I should have told you sooner,” she said.

He grunted, and he didn't disagree, but he didn't condemn her either.  He blinked.  She stared into his eyes, deep, endless depths of blue.  His pupils had long since corrected themselves from terror to correspond with the light level, and he seemed, well, almost normal.  Flecks of dark, royal blue interspersed with lighter, ice shades.  Darkish almost-black rimmed his irises.  His pupils reflected her face.  She stared, and his irises tightened.  His gaze didn't seem glassy anymore.  Her Derek.  Hers.  The man who'd told her with an delighted, relaxed smile that he'd been in love with her forever.

I'm a little late.  I know I'm a little late in telling you that, he'd said.

She pushed her nose against his, and a small smile tipped his lips upward as their foreheads bumped.  She pushed her socked toe against his bare foot and slipped under his pant leg.  His eyes crinkled.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Beats me,” she said.

She pressed her lips against his, and he inhaled.  His hand gripped her waist and squeezed.  She kissed him again and again and again, until she lost the sound of the rumbling television and the voices below them.  His stubble scratched at her face, and it hurt, but she didn't care.  He tasted a bit like tuna, but she didn't care.  She stroked his lip with her tongue.  When the room began to fuzz, she finally had to pull away to catch her breath.

He winced, and he rolled off his wounded side and onto his back.  His hands came to rest on his abdomen as he panted.  She pushed against his shoulder.  He shifted, and his arm wrapped around her body.  She rested the flat of her cheek against the soft space where his pectoral muscle melded into the fibers of his deltoid.  His heart thrummed underneath his sternum, and she listened as she rubbed his stomach.  Her palm rustled against his shirt.

“What did you have in mind when you said not a bed?” he said.

She kissed his throat.  “No,” she said.

“No?”

“I'm not letting you have sex with me right now.”

He turned his chin against her.  “You're not?” he said.  His voice rumbled against her ear through his chest, and she smiled.  She liked that sound.  His lilting tenor tones humming through bone and flesh.

“No,” she said.  “I pressured you.  We had a bad fight, and you're still a little upset.  It really wouldn't be perfect if we did it right now.”

He didn't respond right away, didn't disagree, and she knew she'd hit the mark.  She raised her head to peer at him.  He pondered the ceiling.  She kissed his jawline, and a vague smile tugged at his lips.  “How about a week from tonight?” he said.

She put her head back down.  “Why a week?” she asked as she stared across the plane of his soft black shirt.

“My weight restriction will be lifted to forty pounds, and that will make two weeks of physical therapy,” he said.  His lips pressed against her forehead, and he kissed her.

“I like that plan,” she said.  “How was PT today, anyway?”

A bark of deprecating laughter stuttered in his chest.  “It hurt, Mere.”

She sighed.  “The sternum is one of the worst bones to break.”

“It's getting a little better,” he said.

She ran an index finger down his center.  He had a swollen, rough bump at the top near his neck, and the long, raised scar felt jagged under her fingertip.  She didn't press.  His muscles didn't tense.  She did it once more, memorizing every piece of his first wound.  Then she shifted to the bullet wound.  She didn't touch that.  He'd said once that it hurt when he pressed or poked, and she didn't want to risk it.  She flattened her palm and rested over his heart.  His nipple puckered through his shirt, and she touched him, rubbed him, trying to erase the bad feelings she'd instilled there in the hospital.

He drew a deep, relaxed breath.

“I got my period, by the way,” she said.  “This morning.”

“Is that what brought this on?”

“No,” she said.  “I want a baby, but I need you, Derek.  I need you.”

“I need you, too,” he said.  “I always need you.”

She stroked his abdomen with her palm.  She wandered lower, past his bellybutton.  His skin quivered under his shirt.  She slipped under the hemline and touched the line of soft fuzz that trailed from his navel, down and down.

“May I touch you?” she said.

“Mmm,” he purred.  “Yes.”

She fiddled with the first button on his jeans.  It popped loose, and she worked her way down the line.  She slipped her palm beneath the waistband of his boxer briefs and sighed as her palm met warm, solid, soft skin.  If she'd had any doubts about his ability to have sex, they would have been doused now.  She moved her hand lower.  Lower.  Her body shifted.  She cupped him, and he loosed a beautiful, low moan.

“I'm really not that upset anymore,” he said.  His breaths shivered in his chest.

“I can feel that,” she replied.  She withdrew her hand, not wanting to tease him when he was already that aroused.  “But we should wait.  I want to wait.  We're always stupid, and we never wait when we should.”

“Okay,” he said.

She splayed her palm and crept along his skin.  She settled against his body with a long, low sigh, and stroked his chest and abs underneath his shirt, staring out over the floor by his side of the bed.  Her eyelids dipped.  So warm.

“Mmm,” he rumbled, and she felt all the remaining tension in his muscles slip away.  “Feels good,” he said, his voice spreading at the seams into slurs as she relaxed him.  He inhaled and exhaled in a long, deep sigh.  A soft, low sound, not a word or a moan or a groan settled in his chest on the coattails of a breath.  She hadn't heard that in so long, that familiar utterance of tired contentment.  They hadn't done this in so long.  Just... lain together.  Touching with no destination in mind.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he replied.

The minutes passed, and they lay interlocked.

“Are you allowed to take a bath yet?” she murmured.  She couldn't remember how long--

“Mmm.  Not for four to six weeks,” he said, eyes closed.  “It's been five.”

She squeezed him.  She sat up, crawled across him, and slid off the bed.  Her feet thumped on the floor.  She scrunched her toes against the soft carpet.  She sighed, unable to stop the lazy grin that infected her face when she thought of relaxing in warm, bubbly water, naked skin to naked, slippery skin.  He didn't move.

“Let's do that,” she said.  “We haven't done that in a while.”

He watched her through half-lidded eyes.  A tired smile rolled across his face.  “Okay,” he said.

She leaned over the bed and kissed him.  “You relax.  I'll get it started.  My treat for a lousy night,” she said.  She went to start the tap and find the matches for the candles before he could reply.