All Along The Watchtower - Part 22A
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.
Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? I'm so sorry this took so long to write. I've been very busy this summer! This chapter takes place almost immediately after chapter 21, so if you haven't read that in a while, you might want to refresh yourself, since there are a lot of referbacks that won't make a lot of sense, otherwise. Derek's taking a lot of positive steps in this chapter. I hope you enjoy it :)
For those of you who are unaware, I will be participating in the Dempsey Challenge 2011. I'd really appreciate any support you can offer. You can find more information at http://ariaadagio.livejournal.com/169723.html.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 22A
Derek had been living the last few hours in a shocked daze, drifting from one moment to the next without plan or forethought. He'd ended up in the cafeteria after his session with Dr. Wyatt, and he'd eaten alone at a small table in the farthest corner, seeing, hearing, but not really watching or listening. Eyes had been focused on him everywhere, but he'd been almost too numb to care. He'd had no plans about how to take his life back or to fix his fracturing future as a doctor or a husband or a father or anything. Plans required thinking, and... he couldn't really do that, yet. Couldn't think. He could only exist, pulled forward by a morsel of hope.
He wasn't looking for April when he found her. By nothing more than cruel happenstance, he saw her in the bright hallway outside the cafeteria, first in haggard profile as she rounded the corner, and then face-to-face. Sunlight slanting through the windows made the ragged chunks of brown hair that had fallen down around her eyes shine. Deep, irritated red blotched her cheeks. Puffy skin hugged her bloodshot eyes, which widened as she caught sight of him. She stopped in her tracks. A moment passed in which she didn't move. Didn't breathe. Didn't speak. Then she turned on her heels and darted around the corner from which she'd first appeared.
A jagged spear of guilt stabbed him underneath the ribs. He'd done that. Made her cry. Him. He took one step, two steps, and then aimless ambling became a pointed jog. He didn't have any plans or answers, but he did need to do one thing. Apologize.
He rounded the corner and called after her retreating figure, “Dr. Kepner, wait.” He hadn't said much to anybody since leaving Dr. Wyatt's office, and the words stumbled from his throat, cracked and broken and dry. A soft request, not a command. April didn't stop. He cleared his throat, and tried again. “Please, wait,” he said, stronger, more hoping.
She stopped and sighed, a huffy, displeased sound, and then she turned to face him. She wiped her wet eyes, ruining the effect of her angry glare with her distress. “What do you want?” she said, her tone petulant.
They were alone in the short hallway. An empty, discarded gurney kept them separated. Her bloodshot gaze pierced him, and a quiver of nerves took residence in his gut. He had no plan. No answers. But remembering every word he'd said to her, how he'd threatened her, nauseated him. Disgusted him. He swallowed.
“I want to apologize for earlier,” he said. He took a breath. “I'm deeply, truly sorry for what I said, and for the position I put you in. I didn't fill the script. I tore it up. I'm sorry.”
Her gaze didn't flicker or soften. “You meant it all,” she accused. “What you said to me. Didn't you?”
“You did this to me,” he'd said. “You got me shot.”
He looked at his feet as vicious memories tumbled around in his head. Of Mr. Clark lowering his gun, and then of April jogging toward Derek like it was any other day, and there wasn't a man standing with a loaded firearm only feet away. Of the white ceiling rushing over Derek's field of view as he fell backward. Derek's lip quivered as, in his head, he hit the ground on the catwalk, shot and bleeding. He forced himself to take a long breath to save himself from losing his barely-managed composure.
“Do you blame her, Derek?” Dr. Wyatt had said. “It's okay if you do.”
“I'm... deeply sorry for saying it,” was all he could muster, his voice shaky and low and barely there. “My behavior was despicable.”
He couldn't lie, even with her glaring at him, even knowing false words of repentance might mean he wouldn't lose his job. He was sorry for what he'd said. Deeply. And he was sorry he'd threatened her. And sorry he'd let himself lose his figurative head so horrifically. But he'd meant every cold, hating word, and white lying himself out of the situation felt more wrong than saying those things in the first place.
A long silence followed. She sniffed, and nodded. To him or to herself, he didn't know. Then her silence became blubbering.
“I didn't mean for any of it to happen. I swear, I didn't mean it,” she wailed, and he felt nothing. No sympathy. No relief that she suffered. Nothing but emptiness. “I saw my friend with her brains splattered on the floor that morning, and I... The whole day was scrambled. I never meant for you to be hurt. I lo--” Her words cut off abruptly, and her eyes widened, as if she'd almost let something slip that she didn't want to say. She cleared her throat, almost choking on the gesture as she wiped her eyes once more. “I mean I've always been grateful to you for giving me a second chance.”
Derek shifted from foot to foot as his gut churned. She was fishing for something he couldn't hope to offer right now, and the longer he spoke to her, the more he regretted approaching her without a plan or a clear head. Without anything other than the intrinsic knowledge that he needed to apologize.
“I know you didn't mean it,” Derek said, “but I...” Can't. Can't forgive. He couldn't say can't. He got stuck on the word.
“You can't do anything,” Mr. Clark said, a whisper in the din.
Derek was so sick of not being able to do things, and he couldn't say the word to this woman who'd nearly gotten him killed and caused a whole mountain of can'ts. A better person would forgive, he knew, but he was apparently shit, and he couldn't stop watching the white ceiling spill over his head as he tumbled backward. Couldn't stop feeling the bullet cleave his chest with an incinerating blade of pain. All because of her blithe moment of negligence. Negligence with his life.
April blurred, and he clenched his teeth, blinking. He would not lose his composure in front of her. Not again.
“I'm sorry for what I said,” was all he could say, almost a whisper.
April bristled. “You said that already,” she snapped. “So, you won't forgive me, but you expect me to forgive you?”
This was going horribly.
“What did you expect?” said Mr. Clark.
Derek swallowed as he shook his head. “I don't expect anything,” he said, meaning it. Go. Get out. Everything in his body was screaming at him to remove himself from this conversation before he did something else he'd regret. “I just wanted you to know that I'm deeply sorry, and that you don't have to worry about... your job.”
He didn't give her a chance to reply. He turned on his heels and fled back the way he'd come.
“So, what is that?” Mark said.
The loud intrusion tore Derek from his troubled musing. He blinked as the sounds of the dim, noisy bar pressed against him. Voices. The crack of pool balls striking each other like distant gunfire in the back room where the pool tables were. Glasses clinking. Joe shuffling behind the counter of the bar. And Meredith.
Meredith was laughing again, a bright, cheerful, warm sound that reminded him of bells or birds or birds and bells all at once. The warm, recognizable timbre of her pleasure slid down his spine like she'd run her hand along his back, and his tense muscles loosened. She sat across the room with Alex, Cristina, and Lexie. Between them rested two beers, a fizzing soda, and something clear with a lemon garnish. Water, perhaps.
Alex said something Derek couldn't hear. Cristina made a face, Lexie blushed beet red, and Meredith smiled in that cute, coy way she did, with her incisors nipping into her pink, plush lower lip. She had a lot of different smiles. That one in particular, radiant and shy at the same time, warmed him. He didn't see it often enough anymore, and he found himself tempted to stare, except she was sitting in profile with her friends on the opposite side of the bar. All she had to do was turn her head, and she would see him staring, and he didn't want to intrude on her fun.
“What is what?” Derek said absently.
Mark pointed to the small spiral notebook Derek had procured earlier that day from the hospital gift shop after his horrific collision with April. Derek's fingers clenched around his pen reflexively at the scrutiny. The notebook, which had a dark blue cover, was the size of his palm, and he'd already filled the first several pages with his slipshod scrawl.
1. Ate an apple for lunch - easy to digest.
2. Apologized to April - right thing to do.
3. Found Miranda - wanted busywork.
4. Napped in Mark's office - tired, needed to wait anyway.
5. Came inside the bar -
6. Waited to tell Meredith the truth -
7. Ordered water, no lemon -
“That,” Mark said, frowning. “Please, don't tell me you've gone all Anne Frank on me.”
“It's not a diary,” Derek said.
“It sure looks like a diary to me.”
Derek glared. “What the hell is it to you if I want to write a diary, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Mark said with a shrug. His gaze creased as his serious look deepened into a frown again. “It's just... not something a man does at a bar.”
Derek sighed as he stared at the notebook resting between his palms. Off in his own head space, he'd been playing catch up on his assignment for the last fifteen minutes, but he still had three choices listed with no reasons. Mark's scrutiny made it difficult to think, and all the noise made it hard to think, and everything made it so fucking hard to think, and worse, Mark was sort of right.
Keeping a list like this was definitely not something a normal man did at a bar with his friends, but Derek was so desperate for something to work to counter his heaping plate of mental spaghetti that he thought he might consider donning a hula skirt and dancing on the table with a ukelele if Dr. Wyatt thought it would fucking help. Something had to help. Well, maybe not a hula skirt. But the ukelele... He imagined it would be similar to a guitar, at least.
The black gel pen he'd been using slipped from his grip and rolled an inch as he pushed the small pad of paper idly between his hands, back and forth across the smooth, polished surface. They'd ordered drinks from one of the wandering waitresses, but the drinks hadn't arrived yet, leaving lots of space on the lacquered wooden table for embarrassed, diversionary ping-pong. Mark's gaze darted back and forth, following the offending object.
Not normal.
A familiar, coiling snarl gathered in Derek's head. Not normal. “You're not--”
“It's homework,” Derek admitted before his thoughts could take a bad turn.
Mark's eyebrows raised. “Homework?”
“It's for Dr. Wyatt.”
“Dr. Wyatt wants you to write a diary?” Mark replied, a teasing smirk on his face.
“It's not a fucking diary, Mark.”
“You're writing your intimate, innermost feelings about what you had for lunch on it.”
Derek snorted as Mark drew his attention to the first item on the list, the apple for lunch. “You know, that explains a lot about you,” Derek said, a weak, wry grin slanting his lips.
“What does?” Mark said.
“The fact that you think what you had for lunch is diary material.”
“Oh? What exactly does it explain about me?”
Derek shrugged. “I think people usually save their diaries for more weighty things.”
“What exactly are you getting at?” Mark demanded.
Derek shrugged again, unable to keep the smirk off his face.
Mark's eyebrows raised as the pieces connected. “Are you implying I'm emotionally stunted?” he said, his tone incredulous.
A helter-skelter, scruffy group of four filed into the bar and sat at an adjacent table between Mark and Derek's table and the bar. One of the four was tall. Like six-foot-five, and bulky like a body-builder. He wore a scuffed leather biker jacket and he looked... dangerous. All four of them looked dangerous. The big one could probably crack Mark like an egg. Derek would be an afterthought in the omelet of pain.
Derek inched backward in his seat. The big man blocked Derek's line of sight to Meredith and her friends. An unsettled feeling crept along Derek's spine.
God, the room was so fucking crowded, stuffed full of shoulder-to-shoulder people looking for cheap beer and peanuts after a long day at work. All the social bombardment made Derek's ears itch with every sound, and he couldn't relax or sit still in his seat. Derek hoped happy hour would end soon, perhaps driving the bar back to a more tolerable level of occupancy.
The walls closed in, and Derek's shoulders hunched defensively.
The four dubious intruders wheeled their stools around to face the television over the bar, which was muted, but showed the Yankees slowly destroying the Mariners at Yankee Stadium. A fly ball popped up and was caught, resulting in an out against the Yankees, and the group of four clapped with bland enthusiasm, having only just tuned in. Mariners fans, then, Derek guessed. With their backs to him, he didn't feel quite as threatened, and he forced himself to look at Mark, to try and function despite the coil of nerves fluttering inside his gut.
“Wh...” he tried, but his voice faltered, and he swallowed.
Mark watched him, his incredulous look shifting to concerned.
Derek had gotten good at making himself deal with small social situations. One-on-one interaction. One-on-two. Even one-on-three or one-on-four. He could usually even pretend to be fine even when he wasn't. But this whole bar thing was more than a challenge. To a small degree, it hurt.
Derek rubbed the bridge of his nose with his shaky fingers. He rolled his shoulders to loosen up. “I'm sorry, what?” Derek said, his voice soft as he tried to force himself beyond his tremble-y, easily distracted weakness.
If Mark felt any irritation at Derek's space-out session, he didn't show it. “I said, are you saying I'm emotionally stunted?” Mark repeated, his tone innocuous, but something sharper hovered in his gaze.
For a moment, Derek couldn't remember what they'd been talking about. He blinked. He'd been joking, really, but Mark didn't seem amused. At all. A small caution flag waved in the back of Derek's mind, but he shoved it away. He and Mark always teased and needled each other. This was no different.
Derek gave Mark a wary grin. “I might be,” Derek said.
Mark laughed, but the sound wasn't a happy one. “Coming from you, that's kind of ironic.”
The last of Derek's cautious grin faded. He frowned. “How is that ironic?”
“Well, who's seeing a shrink?” Mark said.
Derek prickled. The big man in the biker jacket shifted on his stool, his leather coat creaking. There was a bulge in the rear pocket of the man's leather pants. Probably keys or... could be a weapon or... Derek shied backward another inch, his hands gripping the sides of the table as though it were his life preserver.
“And who stole whose wife?” Derek snapped.
Mark's wounded expression lashed Derek like a knife. Derek closed his eyes for a moment and took slow, deep breaths. He had to stop doing this. Letting his temper take him by the reins whenever he felt terrified. He was scared all the time, and it'd turned him into a nasty, despicable person. He'd come to Joe's to try and remember how to socialize. Not fight with his friend over a necrotic, beat-to-shit horse that would never heal.
Mark stared, silent, his expression unreadable for moment after passing moment. The group of four at the table next to them jeered at the television. “Low blow,” Mark said darkly, his gaze darker.
Derek's nerves fluttered as he tried to resist the billion different pulls on his injured attention span. The television. The dangerous people less than two strides away. All the noise. Mark. He would look at Mark. The person with whom Derek was trying to have a discussion. He wouldn't be frightened, and he wouldn't lash out like an ass. They could talk.
“So was yours,” Derek countered, forcing civility into his tone.
“Yours was lower,” Mark said.
Derek sighed. “Dr. Wyatt is helping me.”
“And I've apologized for the thing with Addison a thousand times.”
Derek glowered. “An apology doesn't make it go away.”
“And the reason you're seeing the shrink doesn't mean you're less emotionally stunted,” Mark said. He fiddled with an empty coaster, staring at his fingers like he was performing complicated, pinpoint surgery on a phantom only he could see. “Just... you know.” Mark shrugged and didn't look up, uncharacteristically cowed and quiet as his focus intensified on the coaster. “It's about different things.”
“What, my coping skills blow, and you stab your friends in the back with a ten-blade when they least expect it?” Derek said, incredulity dripping from his tone.
Mark wouldn't stop playing with the coaster. Wouldn't look up. His shoulders slumped, and he didn't speak, and Derek had no idea what to do or how to handle this situation. He hadn't wanted to have this fight again. Except the whole fucking disaster was like a bug bite on Derek's brain. Whenever he scratched, it itched more.
“You hurt me, Mark,” Derek said, not sure what else to say.
“I know I did,” Mark said. He swallowed. “But that doesn't give you the right to keep making me pay.”
“I'm not making you pay anymore,” Derek countered. “That doesn't mean you can cancel your fucking debts like it's bankruptcy court.” He ground his teeth together. This was edging away from civil.
“I loved her.”
Derek sighed. “You just don't get it, do you? It was never about Addison; it was about me.”
Mark slapped the coaster on the table. When he looked up, his melancholic expression had sharpened into something more volatile. Something angry. Churning. “That's all it's ever about. You.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You, Derek,” Mark said. “You ride around on your moral high horse like the fucking King of the Universe, judging everybody.”
Derek blinked.
You're not my dad, and you're not my doctor. Stay the fuck away from me. You don't understand anything, Derek.
Amy had said that to him, moments before running out into the pouring rain and getting into a car with her drunk friends. He'd pulled the tarp off his bike and gotten on without a helmet. He'd chased after her. He'd woken up with his bloody face jammed against the rough pavement, alone, shivering, wet, and stuck.
I'm done, he'd said after she'd overdosed a year later. She'd been propped up in her hospital bed, pale and almost lifeless. She had been lifeless, earlier. Amy, I won't do this with you, anymore.
Her eyes had been wet. She'd blinked. I never asked you to, she'd said, her voice bitter as she'd glared.
You're going to die if you keep this up, he'd said, trying to keep his voice cold. You're a liar, and an addict, and you're wasting your life.
And then he'd left her. He'd shut the door behind him before she could respond. It'd been one of the easiest and hardest things he'd ever done.
The group of four at the adjacent table broke into cheers, and Derek glanced wildly at the television. Loaded bases unloaded. Mariners gained four runs in a single at-bat. He dropped his head into his hands, rubbing the bridge of his nose. There was so much noise.
“I do not,” Derek said, his voice tired. But he was such a liar. He did. He did judge. All the time.
“You do, too,” Mark said, echoing Derek's inner thoughts. “Except, now, you don't even have a fucking high horse anymore, and you're still doing it.”
Derek couldn't speak.
“We all do stupid shit, Derek,” Mark snapped, “but in case you haven't noticed, I'm still here trying to help, despite all your unbelievable fuckery. And you? You always leave. So, who exactly are you trying to call emotionally stunted?”
Hypocrite. Hypocrite.
“You're a fucking hypocrite,” Mr. Clark snarled in his ears, and Derek closed his eyes, trying to shut the words out as his throat closed up.
“Fucking hypocrite,” Mark snapped like an echo. His stool squawked in protest as he pushed it backward along the wood floor and rose to his daunting, full height. He made a scathing visual appraisal of the table and of Derek, and he scoffed before he turned away, grabbing his wind breaker from the pile of their coats on the adjacent stool.
Do you hit all your patients? Derek had asked.
Derek swallowed. “I'm sorry,” he said, feeling nauseous.
Mark froze.
Derek's hands shook. “You've helped me a lot, too, and I'm sorry. Thank...” He took a deep, cleansing breath. “Thank you.” He'd never said thank you. He'd meant to, but he hadn't. So many times.
Mark's coat rustled as he turned back to the table. Bewilderment replaced fury. Mark stared, and Derek couldn't take the scrutiny, or the revelation of his own poor character. Derek had said thank you, and Mark looked like he'd been presented with some sort of miracle. Water into wine, or the parting seas before his feet, or some other impossibility. That wasn't the sort of reaction that was easy to see.
Derek looked at his lap. “You and Meredith have both stayed, and I...” Don't know why I deserve it, he didn't say.
“You don't deserve it,” said Mr. Clark.
“Thank you,” Derek said, choking hoarsely.
A rustle filled the space between them as Mark replaced his windbreaker and sat gracelessly on the stool he'd vacated moments earlier. He scooted back into his seat. He cleared his throat. “Whatever, man. It's not a big deal,” he said, sounding as awkward and uncomfortable as Derek felt.
Except it was a big deal. Mark had been there from the start of this whole pile of shit. Not necessarily vocal about it - quiet - but he'd been there.
He'd brought his PS3 and hooked it up to the television so Derek would have something to do at the house while he was healing. Mark had helped Meredith carry that hulking chair up the stairs to the bedroom, back when Derek had needed to sleep in a chair for part of the night. Mark had also helped her get Derek himself up the stairs after the return trip from Seattle Presbyterian, when Derek had been too shaky and sick and tired to walk more than a few feet, let alone climb steps. Mark had rearranged his entire schedule so that Derek would have somebody at home those first few weeks after the shooting, once Meredith had run out of leave. Mark had been there when Derek had been kicking the Percocet, too, doing things even a paid nurse might wince over, like cleaning up all the vomit and holding up a grown man in the shower. And then there was today. Mark had pushed him to do something social, and though it felt horrible, Derek was smart enough to realize it might be best for him in the long run. Just like he was trying to push through the badness at work, he could push through the devastated wasteland of his social life. Maybe, salvage something and start enjoying it again. Find some level of normalcy somewhere.
Mark was drunk as a fucking skunk. His little car slammed into the barrier and caught fire. His thumbs jammed on his controller, and the clicks and clacks echoed over the roaring sound of engines and goofy music.
Derek blinked at the assault of color and sound. The drugs made all of the sensory bloom so hard to process. He swallowed, putting his controller down, his hands shaking. His car rolled to a stop while Mark fumbled through another lap with his own damaged vehicle. The lower part of the screen flashed some sort of message at Derek. Probably something like, “Press A to move your car forward, you dumb fuck.” But Derek couldn't read because everything was spinning.
When Mark noticed Derek wasn't participating, he pressed pause and looked at Derek, his gaze bright, his face flushed. “Whatsamatter?” he slurred.
The blankets rustled as Derek struggled to stand. He was so exhausted, the mere act of putting weight on his feet sucked all of his willpower away, and he stood by the couch, in the center of the room, swaying. The backs of his knees pressed against the cushions and threatened to buckle. His battered chest ached with every inhalation. The fullness in his bladder urged him onward, but the bathroom was... really far away.
Mark lumbered oafishly to his feet.
“I'm fine,” Derek snapped, his voice hoarse. He looked toward the hallway forlornly. He'd barely made it to the couch from the bathroom with Meredith helping. He was so fucking tired of being helped.
Mark shuffled next to Derek and put an arm around Derek's waist. “Bathrum?” he said.
“You're drunk,” Derek replied.
“And you're shh... shtoned. We'll be a shh... shircus act.”
Derek closed his eyes. He shifted one foot forward. Every muscle wailed. The room spun around his head. The bathroom was so far. “I can't,” he whispered, an echo of hours earlier, when he'd been hanging off the towel rack, an inch away from collapsing because he'd had nothing left inside. His eyes burned. He didn't think he could bear another accident. But he didn't think he could walk by himself, either. A lump formed in his throat, raw and hurting.
“Wanna glass?” Mark said, a loud breath more than speech, by Derek's ear.
“I'm not going to pee in a fucking cup!” Derek snapped as his face turned blistering red and his eyes spilled. He wiped the mess away with the backs of his palms. He was such a fucking piece of shit.
The hand at Derek's back pressed into him, urging him forward. “Then move,” Mark said.
“I can't,” Derek said, almost a growl. He hurt. “I can't do this. I'm tired.”
Mark moved instead. A wobbly step. The momentum pulled Derek forward. Derek gasped, and he clawed for Mark's shoulders. Mark said nothing. They rested.
“Move,” Mark commanded after a moment. They shuffled forward a step. The loose bedding and blankets fell away like gnarled vines slipping free. Derek rested, his fingers clutching tents of Mark's shirt as though he thought them a life preserver. “Another,” Mark said, and they moved again. Again. Shuffling. Sliding. Swaying.
By the time they made it to the hallway, sweat slicked Derek's brow, and breathing wrought columns of fire in his chest. But he'd made it. He rested by the doorframe, panting. Mark grinned sloppily at Derek and smacked him on the shoulder.
“Thanksh, man,” Mark slurred. He grabbed the other side of the door frame and swung a drunken loop-de-loop around the frame, hanging by his extended arm, and slingshotted inside. Derek gaped as Mark shut the door. “Didn't think I could make it,” said Mark's rumbling, slurred voice through the door. “I'm fucking... dru... drunk.”
A familiar liquid sound filled the silence.
Derek pressed his forehead against the wall as he tried to catch his breath. A bead of sweat slipped down the tip of his nose. His limbs shook. He thought he might have to sit down or fall down. Or possibly throw up from exertion. For now, he leaned. A small smile tugged at his lips.
Derek looked down at his list of choices as all his memories of Mark whirled in his head.
I'm sure that looked ridiculous, Derek had said after waddling like a duck to get into Mark's Mustang without hurting himself.
I'm sure I don't care, Mark had replied. Always there. Supporting.
Derek took a deep breath, eyes closed as he listened to the bedlam of the bar. People. Everywhere. Talking, drinking, playing. The Mariners fans at the next table whooped again with glee, but Derek watched Mark, who sat across the table from him, eyes averted, fiddling with his coaster again. Mark didn't do emotional talks like this. Certainly not prolonged ones. Mark was Mark. But he was the best friend Derek had ever had beside Meredith.
Derek stroked the small notebook with his index finger. “I'm recording my choices,” he said.
Mark dropped his coaster and looked up. “So, it is a diary,” he said.
“More of a ledger.”
“A diary ledger.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “Fine, it's a diary ledger,” he said. “Whatever you want to call it.”
“So, what's it for?” Mark said.
“To help me.”
“Help you, how?”
Derek shrugged as he stared at his list, which was still left with three empty reasons. Why he'd come here. Why he'd chosen to lie to Meredith for a few hours despite the trust he was trying so hard to reestablish with her. Why he'd ordered a damned water without a lemon.
Derek walked into the bar with Mark around 5:30, right in the middle of happy hour. Or, well, stumbled. Stumbled in and stopped on the well-trodden welcome mat like a fucking idiot statue. The heavy press of bodies, the endless pulse of noise, and the frenetic activity hit Derek like he'd run smack into a wall. Mark plowed into Derek's back, and Derek's throat closed up as the jolt pressed him inches closer to the chaos. He barely caught himself from toppling to the ground, and the impulse to flee sank into every tendon he possessed.
His heart throbbed in his ears.
“Are you all right, man?” Mark said as though his voice were floating through a tunnel in Derek's general direction, echoing and distant. A strong hand clamped on Derek's shoulder.
“I can't,” Derek said, his voice hoarse, and he turned. A boisterous patron wandered past with a foaming pitcher of beer, his trajectory pointing him toward a crowded table full of chattering men and women Derek vaguely recognized from the hospital. The beer carrier bumped into Derek as he passed. A small slosh of alcohol dripped on Derek's shirt. Derek barely heard the apology despite how loudly it was uttered.
Derek curled away instinctively. “I'm sorry, I can't,” he said, his words breathy and barely there. “I can't do this. I can't.”
“It's okay, man,” said tunnel Mark. “You tried.”
Derek couldn't. Couldn't socialize like this. Not after the day he'd had. A craving crushed his healing heart, it was so intense and overwhelming. He panted. Percocet would make this better. He wouldn't be so anxious. He--
The hairs on the nape of his neck crackled with a peculiar sensation, and then her laugh cut through the terrifying din. He halted at the threshold, and Mark ran into him again with a curse, but Derek barely heard the foul word. His thoughts focused pinpoint on that sound. That laugh. He didn't hear that sound enough anymore. White-knuckled, he gripped the doorframe and looked for her.
Meredith sat at the back of the bar with her friends, her face flushed and happy and truly carefree for the first time in... what felt like years, and just the sight of her so relaxed helped him relax. Just a little. She laughed again at something somebody had said. Her eyes scanned the crowded room. And then her gaze stopped dead on him.
She blinked as if to double check reality. Incredulity spread across her face. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. In that moment, witness to her shock, all of Derek's paranoid suspicions about her joining forces with Mark in an effort to get Derek out of the house died. This had been Mark's idea, and Mark's alone.
Derek watched her body twitch, but she didn't move from her seat, like she wanted to come over and say hi to him, but she couldn't bear to draw attention to the enormity of the moment and have him chicken out and leave as a result. The fact that the moment was enormous at all - Derek walks into a bar, breaking news at eleven! - started the slow creep of embarrassed flush across his face, a reddening in his cheeks that had nothing to do with alcohol.
She would move, he realized. If he turned on his heels and ran out like a pathetic idiot, now that she'd noticed his presence, she would chase after him to make sure he was okay. She would ditch her friends, because he'd had a terrible day, and she'd left him on a precarious note that morning. She'd left him on a precarious note, but had still felt okay enough to go out with her friends instead of wait at home for him. Probably because he hadn't called to tell her how much worse everything had gotten, and she'd convinced herself that radio silence was a good thing. For the first time since he'd been shot, she'd let herself be optimistic about his well-being, sight unseen. She hadn't needed to press her ear against his chest and listen to him breathe. Hadn't needed to touch him to confirm life. He hadn't called, and she'd assumed things were okay. If he walked out, now, all that self-convincing on her part would undo itself in an eye blink, and worse, would probably guarantee she'd be less adventurous for quite some time to come, and he couldn't bear that. Not after seeing that beautiful smile.
He swallowed. Lack of movement made him tremble, and he felt light-headed. Nausea coiled in his stomach.
“Derek?” Mark prodded.
“Can we find someplace in the corner out of the way?” Derek said, barely able to get his vocal cords to function.
“I thought you wanted to leave.”
“No,” Derek said, forcing himself two steps back into the chaos. “No, I want to try.”
Derek picked up his pen. He'd come inside the bar because... I wanted her to keep smiling, he wrote for number five. One reason down. Two to go.
He realized Mark watched him, unblinking, curious.
“Dr. Wyatt wants me to record all the choices I make and my reasons for making them,” Derek explained. “She thinks it will help draw my attention to the control I still have over my life.”
“To include what you ate for lunch?” Mark said, his tone wry.
Derek sighed as his face heated. “Look, I know it's fucking silly,” he said. “I feel ridiculous writing it. You don't need to rub it in.”
“Well, is it helping?”
“No, the needling is not helping,” Derek said.
Mark pointed at the notebook. “I meant the diary,” he said, drawing Derek's attention back to his two remaining choices on the list.
Meredith waved at him, her eyes sparkling, as he and Mark settled at the table in the far corner by the restrooms, as far away from the crush of the crowd as possible. She mouthed, “Are you okay?” across the noisy bar.
A fair question, given the state in which she'd been forced to leave him that morning, and given that he'd stopped dead on the fucking welcome mat and almost run back outside in terror. He debated then what to tell her. No was the most honest answer. No, I did a horrible thing earlier, and I think I might faint from nerves, now. But she was smiling and laughing and socializing, and he didn't want to wreck it for her. Not now. I love you, he mouthed at her with a wink in response. Not a lie, just... deferring the bad stuff until later.
He'd waited to tell Meredith the truth because... She deserves to have some fun with her friends, he wrote for his reason on number six. Whether he told her the truth about how he'd slipped now or five hours from now wouldn't matter in the grand scheme. This wasn't like concealing his marriage to Addison or hiding his addiction unless he let the lie perpetuate, and he wouldn't, but he could give Meredith a few happy hours with her friends.
Two reasons down. One to go. Why had he ordered water, no lemon? His pen hovered next to line seven, and he realized he'd sort of grown to look forward to this. Tabulating all the times he'd made a decision. Coming up with reasons.
“I like it,” Derek said, at last. “I feel less... lost.”
The waitress, a short woman, even more slender-boned and slight than Meredith, smiled at them as she arrived with their drinks on a tray full of dripping, foaming pints and other fare. Mark had ordered a club soda, not a beer, and Derek wondered if that had been a concession toward Derek's need for sobriety. Mark hadn't said anything about his drink choice, though, hadn't advertised it other than by his quiet order, and so Derek tried not to focus on it too much. Derek took his water with no lemon, tipped her $1, and thanked the woman as she brushed curly black hair out of her face. Sweat dotted her brow from the heat of so many bodies in the room.
She smiled. “Sorry this took so long,” she called over the din. “We're a bit busy tonight.”
The Mariners table booed. Loudly.
“I hadn't noticed,” Mark cracked with a charming wink as he tipped her as well, and the waitress laughed.
As she moved to another table, Mark picked up his fizzing, clear glass, and tipped it a smidgen toward Derek. “Being less lost is nice, even if it is a diary,” Mark said in a clear attempt at a toast, though his gaze kept darting down to Derek's notebook, as if he hadn't read it three times already and memorized the contents line-by-line.
Derek grinned as an idea struck him. He held out his hand, gesturing for Mark to wait a moment. Mark watched Derek expectantly as Derek picked up his gel pen. Bucking Big Brother, Derek wrote on the notepad, and then he clinked his water glass against Mark's to complete the toast.
“'Bucking Big Brother'?” Mark said.
Derek smirked. Predictable as always. “Still reading over my shoulder?”
“If you don't want me to read it, you shouldn't leave it open,” Mark said. “Are you on a 1984 kick, or something?”
Derek shrugged. “You wanted me to get club soda.”
Mark blinked. “I did?”
“This morning, you told me I'd get a club soda,” Derek said. He tipped back his glass and took a sip of the cool water. The liquid spread across his tongue. He swallowed, glancing at the crowded room.
“What does that have to do with 1984?” Mark said.
“It doesn't have anything to do with 1984.”
Mark frowned. The ice in his glass clinked as he took a sip. “Then why'd you write about it?”
“I didn't write about 1984,” Derek said. He grinned slyly. “I wrote about you.”
Mark's eyebrows rose. “I'm 'Big Brother'?” he said, incredulous. He pressed his right palm flat against his chest in a classic gesture of, Who, me?
Derek nodded. “You're sure acting like it.”
“Unless you've recently hopped in a time machine, I'm clearly the dashing younger brother in this twisted equation,” Mark said, a haughty expression on his face.
Derek sighed, shaking his head. “I can see my attempt at witty humor has fallen flat on its face.”
“Now, you're saying I'm stupid in addition to emotionally stunted?” Mark said, though there was no bite in his tone this time. No anger. This was the teasing and needling that was normal.
Derek chuckled as a weight lifted. “Not stupid. Sometimes obtuse.”
“I think your fucked up sense of humor is obtuse,” Mark countered. He turned up his glass and took a sip that turned into a gulp. “That's what I think.”
“Who's being judge-y, now?” Derek said.
Mark chuckled. “Since when do you say words like judge-y?”
Derek sighed, unable to stop his gaze from wandering across the room, through the crowd, to Meredith. The big biker guy had moved enough to the side when he'd scooted his stool for Derek to see her. She wore her hair in a no-fuss, looped ponytail that sent loose ends of wispy blonde and brown jagging every which way. She'd worn jeans, her black Chucks, a lilac-colored blouse, and very little makeup, devoid of fashion, as though she'd been too tired to worry very much about her appearance. It didn't matter to Derek. To Derek, she looked beautiful, anyway. Her smile made her beautiful. Beautiful and pregnant and just... perfect. He pressed his chin against his hands, resting as he watched her, not caring if he came off like a lovesick fool at this point. He needed her. The past few horrible months had proven it to him. He needed her, and he could admit that.
“Since I married a woman who makes them up so often, I can't even remember what's real,” Derek said.
“She does have that talent,” Mark said. Following the direction of Derek's gaze, he peered over the undulating crowd. He smiled when his gaze caught Meredith, too, and he shook his head. “It's kind of cute.”
“It's adorable,” Derek agreed, “but it sometimes prevents me from functioning without spell check.”
“So, how am I obtuse?” Mark said.
Derek blinked, tearing his gaze away from Meredith. “Hmm?” he said.
Mark rolled his eyes as if to say, good god, you're so fucking hopeless when it comes to that woman. “Obtuse, Derek,” he said, impatient. “How am I obtuse?”
“Oh,” Derek said. He took a long sip from his water, relishing the cool feel as it washed down his parched throat. “Well, you keep reading over my shoulder.”
“That's not obtuse,” Mark said. “That's me being a nosy bastard.”
“That doesn't seem 'Big Brother' to you?” Derek said, raising his eyebrows. “On multiple levels, both literal and metaphorical?”
“But you said it didn't have anything to do with 1984.”
Derek's mouth opened and closed. “I meant...”
Mark slapped the table. Their drinks splashed. “Hah!” he said, a triumphant grin on his face. “Obtuse, my ass. You just don't know what you're talking about.”
“You told me to order a fucking club soda, and you keep reading over my shoulder,” Derek said, frowning. “That's totally 'Big Brother'.”
“You seriously got water because I suggested club soda?”
“Well, no,” Derek admitted. “I just felt like water.”
Mark snorted. “So, now, you're perpetrating revisionist history in your pansy diary just to fuck with my head. I think that's far more Orwellian.”
“It's not a damned diary, Mark.”
“You say tomato,” Mark said. His face lit with an evil grin. “I say it's a fucking diary.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “I'm not going to live this down, am I?”
“Nope,” Mark said. “It's like the time you broke my hand.”
“On my face!” Derek argued. “You broke your hand on my face.”
“I more meant it as a time I was offered scientific, painful proof, of your impossibly hard head,” Mark countered.
Derek sighed. “Can we at least call it a map?”
“You've leaped from George Orwell to maps, and you're calling me obtuse?” Mark said.
“Because writing it makes me less lost!” Derek snapped. He took another sip from his drink. “I said that!”
Mark shook his head. “That's pathetic.”
“It sounds less pathetic than a diary,” Derek grumbled as he stared into his half-empty glass. The water flickered in the dim light.
“No offense, man, but that's completely cracked, less lost or not,” Mark said.
Derek frowned. “It's not cracked.”
“At least you're writing it on a spiral notepad,” Mark said. “That's better than one of those prissy bound books only a girl would buy.”
“Gee, thanks,” Derek said. He stared at his so-called diary and sighed.
“Look, man,” Mark said. “If it makes you feel better, do it. Keep the diary. I'll stop giving you a hard time.”
“It does make me feel better,” Derek said.
“How about we call it a journal?”
“That's... less bad than diary.”
Mark shrugged. “Darts?” he said. “Or are you going to buck 'Big Brother' in your journal some more?”
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? I'm so sorry this took so long to write. I've been very busy this summer! This chapter takes place almost immediately after chapter 21, so if you haven't read that in a while, you might want to refresh yourself, since there are a lot of referbacks that won't make a lot of sense, otherwise. Derek's taking a lot of positive steps in this chapter. I hope you enjoy it :)
For those of you who are unaware, I will be participating in the Dempsey Challenge 2011. I'd really appreciate any support you can offer. You can find more information at http://ariaadagio.livejournal.com/169723.html.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 22A
Derek had been living the last few hours in a shocked daze, drifting from one moment to the next without plan or forethought. He'd ended up in the cafeteria after his session with Dr. Wyatt, and he'd eaten alone at a small table in the farthest corner, seeing, hearing, but not really watching or listening. Eyes had been focused on him everywhere, but he'd been almost too numb to care. He'd had no plans about how to take his life back or to fix his fracturing future as a doctor or a husband or a father or anything. Plans required thinking, and... he couldn't really do that, yet. Couldn't think. He could only exist, pulled forward by a morsel of hope.
He wasn't looking for April when he found her. By nothing more than cruel happenstance, he saw her in the bright hallway outside the cafeteria, first in haggard profile as she rounded the corner, and then face-to-face. Sunlight slanting through the windows made the ragged chunks of brown hair that had fallen down around her eyes shine. Deep, irritated red blotched her cheeks. Puffy skin hugged her bloodshot eyes, which widened as she caught sight of him. She stopped in her tracks. A moment passed in which she didn't move. Didn't breathe. Didn't speak. Then she turned on her heels and darted around the corner from which she'd first appeared.
A jagged spear of guilt stabbed him underneath the ribs. He'd done that. Made her cry. Him. He took one step, two steps, and then aimless ambling became a pointed jog. He didn't have any plans or answers, but he did need to do one thing. Apologize.
He rounded the corner and called after her retreating figure, “Dr. Kepner, wait.” He hadn't said much to anybody since leaving Dr. Wyatt's office, and the words stumbled from his throat, cracked and broken and dry. A soft request, not a command. April didn't stop. He cleared his throat, and tried again. “Please, wait,” he said, stronger, more hoping.
She stopped and sighed, a huffy, displeased sound, and then she turned to face him. She wiped her wet eyes, ruining the effect of her angry glare with her distress. “What do you want?” she said, her tone petulant.
They were alone in the short hallway. An empty, discarded gurney kept them separated. Her bloodshot gaze pierced him, and a quiver of nerves took residence in his gut. He had no plan. No answers. But remembering every word he'd said to her, how he'd threatened her, nauseated him. Disgusted him. He swallowed.
“I want to apologize for earlier,” he said. He took a breath. “I'm deeply, truly sorry for what I said, and for the position I put you in. I didn't fill the script. I tore it up. I'm sorry.”
Her gaze didn't flicker or soften. “You meant it all,” she accused. “What you said to me. Didn't you?”
“You did this to me,” he'd said. “You got me shot.”
He looked at his feet as vicious memories tumbled around in his head. Of Mr. Clark lowering his gun, and then of April jogging toward Derek like it was any other day, and there wasn't a man standing with a loaded firearm only feet away. Of the white ceiling rushing over Derek's field of view as he fell backward. Derek's lip quivered as, in his head, he hit the ground on the catwalk, shot and bleeding. He forced himself to take a long breath to save himself from losing his barely-managed composure.
“Do you blame her, Derek?” Dr. Wyatt had said. “It's okay if you do.”
“I'm... deeply sorry for saying it,” was all he could muster, his voice shaky and low and barely there. “My behavior was despicable.”
He couldn't lie, even with her glaring at him, even knowing false words of repentance might mean he wouldn't lose his job. He was sorry for what he'd said. Deeply. And he was sorry he'd threatened her. And sorry he'd let himself lose his figurative head so horrifically. But he'd meant every cold, hating word, and white lying himself out of the situation felt more wrong than saying those things in the first place.
A long silence followed. She sniffed, and nodded. To him or to herself, he didn't know. Then her silence became blubbering.
“I didn't mean for any of it to happen. I swear, I didn't mean it,” she wailed, and he felt nothing. No sympathy. No relief that she suffered. Nothing but emptiness. “I saw my friend with her brains splattered on the floor that morning, and I... The whole day was scrambled. I never meant for you to be hurt. I lo--” Her words cut off abruptly, and her eyes widened, as if she'd almost let something slip that she didn't want to say. She cleared her throat, almost choking on the gesture as she wiped her eyes once more. “I mean I've always been grateful to you for giving me a second chance.”
Derek shifted from foot to foot as his gut churned. She was fishing for something he couldn't hope to offer right now, and the longer he spoke to her, the more he regretted approaching her without a plan or a clear head. Without anything other than the intrinsic knowledge that he needed to apologize.
“I know you didn't mean it,” Derek said, “but I...” Can't. Can't forgive. He couldn't say can't. He got stuck on the word.
“You can't do anything,” Mr. Clark said, a whisper in the din.
Derek was so sick of not being able to do things, and he couldn't say the word to this woman who'd nearly gotten him killed and caused a whole mountain of can'ts. A better person would forgive, he knew, but he was apparently shit, and he couldn't stop watching the white ceiling spill over his head as he tumbled backward. Couldn't stop feeling the bullet cleave his chest with an incinerating blade of pain. All because of her blithe moment of negligence. Negligence with his life.
April blurred, and he clenched his teeth, blinking. He would not lose his composure in front of her. Not again.
“I'm sorry for what I said,” was all he could say, almost a whisper.
April bristled. “You said that already,” she snapped. “So, you won't forgive me, but you expect me to forgive you?”
This was going horribly.
“What did you expect?” said Mr. Clark.
Derek swallowed as he shook his head. “I don't expect anything,” he said, meaning it. Go. Get out. Everything in his body was screaming at him to remove himself from this conversation before he did something else he'd regret. “I just wanted you to know that I'm deeply sorry, and that you don't have to worry about... your job.”
He didn't give her a chance to reply. He turned on his heels and fled back the way he'd come.
“So, what is that?” Mark said.
The loud intrusion tore Derek from his troubled musing. He blinked as the sounds of the dim, noisy bar pressed against him. Voices. The crack of pool balls striking each other like distant gunfire in the back room where the pool tables were. Glasses clinking. Joe shuffling behind the counter of the bar. And Meredith.
Meredith was laughing again, a bright, cheerful, warm sound that reminded him of bells or birds or birds and bells all at once. The warm, recognizable timbre of her pleasure slid down his spine like she'd run her hand along his back, and his tense muscles loosened. She sat across the room with Alex, Cristina, and Lexie. Between them rested two beers, a fizzing soda, and something clear with a lemon garnish. Water, perhaps.
Alex said something Derek couldn't hear. Cristina made a face, Lexie blushed beet red, and Meredith smiled in that cute, coy way she did, with her incisors nipping into her pink, plush lower lip. She had a lot of different smiles. That one in particular, radiant and shy at the same time, warmed him. He didn't see it often enough anymore, and he found himself tempted to stare, except she was sitting in profile with her friends on the opposite side of the bar. All she had to do was turn her head, and she would see him staring, and he didn't want to intrude on her fun.
“What is what?” Derek said absently.
Mark pointed to the small spiral notebook Derek had procured earlier that day from the hospital gift shop after his horrific collision with April. Derek's fingers clenched around his pen reflexively at the scrutiny. The notebook, which had a dark blue cover, was the size of his palm, and he'd already filled the first several pages with his slipshod scrawl.
1. Ate an apple for lunch - easy to digest.
2. Apologized to April - right thing to do.
3. Found Miranda - wanted busywork.
4. Napped in Mark's office - tired, needed to wait anyway.
5. Came inside the bar -
6. Waited to tell Meredith the truth -
7. Ordered water, no lemon -
“That,” Mark said, frowning. “Please, don't tell me you've gone all Anne Frank on me.”
“It's not a diary,” Derek said.
“It sure looks like a diary to me.”
Derek glared. “What the hell is it to you if I want to write a diary, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Mark said with a shrug. His gaze creased as his serious look deepened into a frown again. “It's just... not something a man does at a bar.”
Derek sighed as he stared at the notebook resting between his palms. Off in his own head space, he'd been playing catch up on his assignment for the last fifteen minutes, but he still had three choices listed with no reasons. Mark's scrutiny made it difficult to think, and all the noise made it hard to think, and everything made it so fucking hard to think, and worse, Mark was sort of right.
Keeping a list like this was definitely not something a normal man did at a bar with his friends, but Derek was so desperate for something to work to counter his heaping plate of mental spaghetti that he thought he might consider donning a hula skirt and dancing on the table with a ukelele if Dr. Wyatt thought it would fucking help. Something had to help. Well, maybe not a hula skirt. But the ukelele... He imagined it would be similar to a guitar, at least.
The black gel pen he'd been using slipped from his grip and rolled an inch as he pushed the small pad of paper idly between his hands, back and forth across the smooth, polished surface. They'd ordered drinks from one of the wandering waitresses, but the drinks hadn't arrived yet, leaving lots of space on the lacquered wooden table for embarrassed, diversionary ping-pong. Mark's gaze darted back and forth, following the offending object.
Not normal.
A familiar, coiling snarl gathered in Derek's head. Not normal. “You're not--”
“It's homework,” Derek admitted before his thoughts could take a bad turn.
Mark's eyebrows raised. “Homework?”
“It's for Dr. Wyatt.”
“Dr. Wyatt wants you to write a diary?” Mark replied, a teasing smirk on his face.
“It's not a fucking diary, Mark.”
“You're writing your intimate, innermost feelings about what you had for lunch on it.”
Derek snorted as Mark drew his attention to the first item on the list, the apple for lunch. “You know, that explains a lot about you,” Derek said, a weak, wry grin slanting his lips.
“What does?” Mark said.
“The fact that you think what you had for lunch is diary material.”
“Oh? What exactly does it explain about me?”
Derek shrugged. “I think people usually save their diaries for more weighty things.”
“What exactly are you getting at?” Mark demanded.
Derek shrugged again, unable to keep the smirk off his face.
Mark's eyebrows raised as the pieces connected. “Are you implying I'm emotionally stunted?” he said, his tone incredulous.
A helter-skelter, scruffy group of four filed into the bar and sat at an adjacent table between Mark and Derek's table and the bar. One of the four was tall. Like six-foot-five, and bulky like a body-builder. He wore a scuffed leather biker jacket and he looked... dangerous. All four of them looked dangerous. The big one could probably crack Mark like an egg. Derek would be an afterthought in the omelet of pain.
Derek inched backward in his seat. The big man blocked Derek's line of sight to Meredith and her friends. An unsettled feeling crept along Derek's spine.
God, the room was so fucking crowded, stuffed full of shoulder-to-shoulder people looking for cheap beer and peanuts after a long day at work. All the social bombardment made Derek's ears itch with every sound, and he couldn't relax or sit still in his seat. Derek hoped happy hour would end soon, perhaps driving the bar back to a more tolerable level of occupancy.
The walls closed in, and Derek's shoulders hunched defensively.
The four dubious intruders wheeled their stools around to face the television over the bar, which was muted, but showed the Yankees slowly destroying the Mariners at Yankee Stadium. A fly ball popped up and was caught, resulting in an out against the Yankees, and the group of four clapped with bland enthusiasm, having only just tuned in. Mariners fans, then, Derek guessed. With their backs to him, he didn't feel quite as threatened, and he forced himself to look at Mark, to try and function despite the coil of nerves fluttering inside his gut.
“Wh...” he tried, but his voice faltered, and he swallowed.
Mark watched him, his incredulous look shifting to concerned.
Derek had gotten good at making himself deal with small social situations. One-on-one interaction. One-on-two. Even one-on-three or one-on-four. He could usually even pretend to be fine even when he wasn't. But this whole bar thing was more than a challenge. To a small degree, it hurt.
Derek rubbed the bridge of his nose with his shaky fingers. He rolled his shoulders to loosen up. “I'm sorry, what?” Derek said, his voice soft as he tried to force himself beyond his tremble-y, easily distracted weakness.
If Mark felt any irritation at Derek's space-out session, he didn't show it. “I said, are you saying I'm emotionally stunted?” Mark repeated, his tone innocuous, but something sharper hovered in his gaze.
For a moment, Derek couldn't remember what they'd been talking about. He blinked. He'd been joking, really, but Mark didn't seem amused. At all. A small caution flag waved in the back of Derek's mind, but he shoved it away. He and Mark always teased and needled each other. This was no different.
Derek gave Mark a wary grin. “I might be,” Derek said.
Mark laughed, but the sound wasn't a happy one. “Coming from you, that's kind of ironic.”
The last of Derek's cautious grin faded. He frowned. “How is that ironic?”
“Well, who's seeing a shrink?” Mark said.
Derek prickled. The big man in the biker jacket shifted on his stool, his leather coat creaking. There was a bulge in the rear pocket of the man's leather pants. Probably keys or... could be a weapon or... Derek shied backward another inch, his hands gripping the sides of the table as though it were his life preserver.
“And who stole whose wife?” Derek snapped.
Mark's wounded expression lashed Derek like a knife. Derek closed his eyes for a moment and took slow, deep breaths. He had to stop doing this. Letting his temper take him by the reins whenever he felt terrified. He was scared all the time, and it'd turned him into a nasty, despicable person. He'd come to Joe's to try and remember how to socialize. Not fight with his friend over a necrotic, beat-to-shit horse that would never heal.
Mark stared, silent, his expression unreadable for moment after passing moment. The group of four at the table next to them jeered at the television. “Low blow,” Mark said darkly, his gaze darker.
Derek's nerves fluttered as he tried to resist the billion different pulls on his injured attention span. The television. The dangerous people less than two strides away. All the noise. Mark. He would look at Mark. The person with whom Derek was trying to have a discussion. He wouldn't be frightened, and he wouldn't lash out like an ass. They could talk.
“So was yours,” Derek countered, forcing civility into his tone.
“Yours was lower,” Mark said.
Derek sighed. “Dr. Wyatt is helping me.”
“And I've apologized for the thing with Addison a thousand times.”
Derek glowered. “An apology doesn't make it go away.”
“And the reason you're seeing the shrink doesn't mean you're less emotionally stunted,” Mark said. He fiddled with an empty coaster, staring at his fingers like he was performing complicated, pinpoint surgery on a phantom only he could see. “Just... you know.” Mark shrugged and didn't look up, uncharacteristically cowed and quiet as his focus intensified on the coaster. “It's about different things.”
“What, my coping skills blow, and you stab your friends in the back with a ten-blade when they least expect it?” Derek said, incredulity dripping from his tone.
Mark wouldn't stop playing with the coaster. Wouldn't look up. His shoulders slumped, and he didn't speak, and Derek had no idea what to do or how to handle this situation. He hadn't wanted to have this fight again. Except the whole fucking disaster was like a bug bite on Derek's brain. Whenever he scratched, it itched more.
“You hurt me, Mark,” Derek said, not sure what else to say.
“I know I did,” Mark said. He swallowed. “But that doesn't give you the right to keep making me pay.”
“I'm not making you pay anymore,” Derek countered. “That doesn't mean you can cancel your fucking debts like it's bankruptcy court.” He ground his teeth together. This was edging away from civil.
“I loved her.”
Derek sighed. “You just don't get it, do you? It was never about Addison; it was about me.”
Mark slapped the coaster on the table. When he looked up, his melancholic expression had sharpened into something more volatile. Something angry. Churning. “That's all it's ever about. You.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You, Derek,” Mark said. “You ride around on your moral high horse like the fucking King of the Universe, judging everybody.”
Derek blinked.
You're not my dad, and you're not my doctor. Stay the fuck away from me. You don't understand anything, Derek.
Amy had said that to him, moments before running out into the pouring rain and getting into a car with her drunk friends. He'd pulled the tarp off his bike and gotten on without a helmet. He'd chased after her. He'd woken up with his bloody face jammed against the rough pavement, alone, shivering, wet, and stuck.
I'm done, he'd said after she'd overdosed a year later. She'd been propped up in her hospital bed, pale and almost lifeless. She had been lifeless, earlier. Amy, I won't do this with you, anymore.
Her eyes had been wet. She'd blinked. I never asked you to, she'd said, her voice bitter as she'd glared.
You're going to die if you keep this up, he'd said, trying to keep his voice cold. You're a liar, and an addict, and you're wasting your life.
And then he'd left her. He'd shut the door behind him before she could respond. It'd been one of the easiest and hardest things he'd ever done.
The group of four at the adjacent table broke into cheers, and Derek glanced wildly at the television. Loaded bases unloaded. Mariners gained four runs in a single at-bat. He dropped his head into his hands, rubbing the bridge of his nose. There was so much noise.
“I do not,” Derek said, his voice tired. But he was such a liar. He did. He did judge. All the time.
“You do, too,” Mark said, echoing Derek's inner thoughts. “Except, now, you don't even have a fucking high horse anymore, and you're still doing it.”
Derek couldn't speak.
“We all do stupid shit, Derek,” Mark snapped, “but in case you haven't noticed, I'm still here trying to help, despite all your unbelievable fuckery. And you? You always leave. So, who exactly are you trying to call emotionally stunted?”
Hypocrite. Hypocrite.
“You're a fucking hypocrite,” Mr. Clark snarled in his ears, and Derek closed his eyes, trying to shut the words out as his throat closed up.
“Fucking hypocrite,” Mark snapped like an echo. His stool squawked in protest as he pushed it backward along the wood floor and rose to his daunting, full height. He made a scathing visual appraisal of the table and of Derek, and he scoffed before he turned away, grabbing his wind breaker from the pile of their coats on the adjacent stool.
Do you hit all your patients? Derek had asked.
Derek swallowed. “I'm sorry,” he said, feeling nauseous.
Mark froze.
Derek's hands shook. “You've helped me a lot, too, and I'm sorry. Thank...” He took a deep, cleansing breath. “Thank you.” He'd never said thank you. He'd meant to, but he hadn't. So many times.
Mark's coat rustled as he turned back to the table. Bewilderment replaced fury. Mark stared, and Derek couldn't take the scrutiny, or the revelation of his own poor character. Derek had said thank you, and Mark looked like he'd been presented with some sort of miracle. Water into wine, or the parting seas before his feet, or some other impossibility. That wasn't the sort of reaction that was easy to see.
Derek looked at his lap. “You and Meredith have both stayed, and I...” Don't know why I deserve it, he didn't say.
“You don't deserve it,” said Mr. Clark.
“Thank you,” Derek said, choking hoarsely.
A rustle filled the space between them as Mark replaced his windbreaker and sat gracelessly on the stool he'd vacated moments earlier. He scooted back into his seat. He cleared his throat. “Whatever, man. It's not a big deal,” he said, sounding as awkward and uncomfortable as Derek felt.
Except it was a big deal. Mark had been there from the start of this whole pile of shit. Not necessarily vocal about it - quiet - but he'd been there.
He'd brought his PS3 and hooked it up to the television so Derek would have something to do at the house while he was healing. Mark had helped Meredith carry that hulking chair up the stairs to the bedroom, back when Derek had needed to sleep in a chair for part of the night. Mark had also helped her get Derek himself up the stairs after the return trip from Seattle Presbyterian, when Derek had been too shaky and sick and tired to walk more than a few feet, let alone climb steps. Mark had rearranged his entire schedule so that Derek would have somebody at home those first few weeks after the shooting, once Meredith had run out of leave. Mark had been there when Derek had been kicking the Percocet, too, doing things even a paid nurse might wince over, like cleaning up all the vomit and holding up a grown man in the shower. And then there was today. Mark had pushed him to do something social, and though it felt horrible, Derek was smart enough to realize it might be best for him in the long run. Just like he was trying to push through the badness at work, he could push through the devastated wasteland of his social life. Maybe, salvage something and start enjoying it again. Find some level of normalcy somewhere.
Mark was drunk as a fucking skunk. His little car slammed into the barrier and caught fire. His thumbs jammed on his controller, and the clicks and clacks echoed over the roaring sound of engines and goofy music.
Derek blinked at the assault of color and sound. The drugs made all of the sensory bloom so hard to process. He swallowed, putting his controller down, his hands shaking. His car rolled to a stop while Mark fumbled through another lap with his own damaged vehicle. The lower part of the screen flashed some sort of message at Derek. Probably something like, “Press A to move your car forward, you dumb fuck.” But Derek couldn't read because everything was spinning.
When Mark noticed Derek wasn't participating, he pressed pause and looked at Derek, his gaze bright, his face flushed. “Whatsamatter?” he slurred.
The blankets rustled as Derek struggled to stand. He was so exhausted, the mere act of putting weight on his feet sucked all of his willpower away, and he stood by the couch, in the center of the room, swaying. The backs of his knees pressed against the cushions and threatened to buckle. His battered chest ached with every inhalation. The fullness in his bladder urged him onward, but the bathroom was... really far away.
Mark lumbered oafishly to his feet.
“I'm fine,” Derek snapped, his voice hoarse. He looked toward the hallway forlornly. He'd barely made it to the couch from the bathroom with Meredith helping. He was so fucking tired of being helped.
Mark shuffled next to Derek and put an arm around Derek's waist. “Bathrum?” he said.
“You're drunk,” Derek replied.
“And you're shh... shtoned. We'll be a shh... shircus act.”
Derek closed his eyes. He shifted one foot forward. Every muscle wailed. The room spun around his head. The bathroom was so far. “I can't,” he whispered, an echo of hours earlier, when he'd been hanging off the towel rack, an inch away from collapsing because he'd had nothing left inside. His eyes burned. He didn't think he could bear another accident. But he didn't think he could walk by himself, either. A lump formed in his throat, raw and hurting.
“Wanna glass?” Mark said, a loud breath more than speech, by Derek's ear.
“I'm not going to pee in a fucking cup!” Derek snapped as his face turned blistering red and his eyes spilled. He wiped the mess away with the backs of his palms. He was such a fucking piece of shit.
The hand at Derek's back pressed into him, urging him forward. “Then move,” Mark said.
“I can't,” Derek said, almost a growl. He hurt. “I can't do this. I'm tired.”
Mark moved instead. A wobbly step. The momentum pulled Derek forward. Derek gasped, and he clawed for Mark's shoulders. Mark said nothing. They rested.
“Move,” Mark commanded after a moment. They shuffled forward a step. The loose bedding and blankets fell away like gnarled vines slipping free. Derek rested, his fingers clutching tents of Mark's shirt as though he thought them a life preserver. “Another,” Mark said, and they moved again. Again. Shuffling. Sliding. Swaying.
By the time they made it to the hallway, sweat slicked Derek's brow, and breathing wrought columns of fire in his chest. But he'd made it. He rested by the doorframe, panting. Mark grinned sloppily at Derek and smacked him on the shoulder.
“Thanksh, man,” Mark slurred. He grabbed the other side of the door frame and swung a drunken loop-de-loop around the frame, hanging by his extended arm, and slingshotted inside. Derek gaped as Mark shut the door. “Didn't think I could make it,” said Mark's rumbling, slurred voice through the door. “I'm fucking... dru... drunk.”
A familiar liquid sound filled the silence.
Derek pressed his forehead against the wall as he tried to catch his breath. A bead of sweat slipped down the tip of his nose. His limbs shook. He thought he might have to sit down or fall down. Or possibly throw up from exertion. For now, he leaned. A small smile tugged at his lips.
Derek looked down at his list of choices as all his memories of Mark whirled in his head.
I'm sure that looked ridiculous, Derek had said after waddling like a duck to get into Mark's Mustang without hurting himself.
I'm sure I don't care, Mark had replied. Always there. Supporting.
Derek took a deep breath, eyes closed as he listened to the bedlam of the bar. People. Everywhere. Talking, drinking, playing. The Mariners fans at the next table whooped again with glee, but Derek watched Mark, who sat across the table from him, eyes averted, fiddling with his coaster again. Mark didn't do emotional talks like this. Certainly not prolonged ones. Mark was Mark. But he was the best friend Derek had ever had beside Meredith.
Derek stroked the small notebook with his index finger. “I'm recording my choices,” he said.
Mark dropped his coaster and looked up. “So, it is a diary,” he said.
“More of a ledger.”
“A diary ledger.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “Fine, it's a diary ledger,” he said. “Whatever you want to call it.”
“So, what's it for?” Mark said.
“To help me.”
“Help you, how?”
Derek shrugged as he stared at his list, which was still left with three empty reasons. Why he'd come here. Why he'd chosen to lie to Meredith for a few hours despite the trust he was trying so hard to reestablish with her. Why he'd ordered a damned water without a lemon.
Derek walked into the bar with Mark around 5:30, right in the middle of happy hour. Or, well, stumbled. Stumbled in and stopped on the well-trodden welcome mat like a fucking idiot statue. The heavy press of bodies, the endless pulse of noise, and the frenetic activity hit Derek like he'd run smack into a wall. Mark plowed into Derek's back, and Derek's throat closed up as the jolt pressed him inches closer to the chaos. He barely caught himself from toppling to the ground, and the impulse to flee sank into every tendon he possessed.
His heart throbbed in his ears.
“Are you all right, man?” Mark said as though his voice were floating through a tunnel in Derek's general direction, echoing and distant. A strong hand clamped on Derek's shoulder.
“I can't,” Derek said, his voice hoarse, and he turned. A boisterous patron wandered past with a foaming pitcher of beer, his trajectory pointing him toward a crowded table full of chattering men and women Derek vaguely recognized from the hospital. The beer carrier bumped into Derek as he passed. A small slosh of alcohol dripped on Derek's shirt. Derek barely heard the apology despite how loudly it was uttered.
Derek curled away instinctively. “I'm sorry, I can't,” he said, his words breathy and barely there. “I can't do this. I can't.”
“It's okay, man,” said tunnel Mark. “You tried.”
Derek couldn't. Couldn't socialize like this. Not after the day he'd had. A craving crushed his healing heart, it was so intense and overwhelming. He panted. Percocet would make this better. He wouldn't be so anxious. He--
The hairs on the nape of his neck crackled with a peculiar sensation, and then her laugh cut through the terrifying din. He halted at the threshold, and Mark ran into him again with a curse, but Derek barely heard the foul word. His thoughts focused pinpoint on that sound. That laugh. He didn't hear that sound enough anymore. White-knuckled, he gripped the doorframe and looked for her.
Meredith sat at the back of the bar with her friends, her face flushed and happy and truly carefree for the first time in... what felt like years, and just the sight of her so relaxed helped him relax. Just a little. She laughed again at something somebody had said. Her eyes scanned the crowded room. And then her gaze stopped dead on him.
She blinked as if to double check reality. Incredulity spread across her face. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. In that moment, witness to her shock, all of Derek's paranoid suspicions about her joining forces with Mark in an effort to get Derek out of the house died. This had been Mark's idea, and Mark's alone.
Derek watched her body twitch, but she didn't move from her seat, like she wanted to come over and say hi to him, but she couldn't bear to draw attention to the enormity of the moment and have him chicken out and leave as a result. The fact that the moment was enormous at all - Derek walks into a bar, breaking news at eleven! - started the slow creep of embarrassed flush across his face, a reddening in his cheeks that had nothing to do with alcohol.
She would move, he realized. If he turned on his heels and ran out like a pathetic idiot, now that she'd noticed his presence, she would chase after him to make sure he was okay. She would ditch her friends, because he'd had a terrible day, and she'd left him on a precarious note that morning. She'd left him on a precarious note, but had still felt okay enough to go out with her friends instead of wait at home for him. Probably because he hadn't called to tell her how much worse everything had gotten, and she'd convinced herself that radio silence was a good thing. For the first time since he'd been shot, she'd let herself be optimistic about his well-being, sight unseen. She hadn't needed to press her ear against his chest and listen to him breathe. Hadn't needed to touch him to confirm life. He hadn't called, and she'd assumed things were okay. If he walked out, now, all that self-convincing on her part would undo itself in an eye blink, and worse, would probably guarantee she'd be less adventurous for quite some time to come, and he couldn't bear that. Not after seeing that beautiful smile.
He swallowed. Lack of movement made him tremble, and he felt light-headed. Nausea coiled in his stomach.
“Derek?” Mark prodded.
“Can we find someplace in the corner out of the way?” Derek said, barely able to get his vocal cords to function.
“I thought you wanted to leave.”
“No,” Derek said, forcing himself two steps back into the chaos. “No, I want to try.”
Derek picked up his pen. He'd come inside the bar because... I wanted her to keep smiling, he wrote for number five. One reason down. Two to go.
He realized Mark watched him, unblinking, curious.
“Dr. Wyatt wants me to record all the choices I make and my reasons for making them,” Derek explained. “She thinks it will help draw my attention to the control I still have over my life.”
“To include what you ate for lunch?” Mark said, his tone wry.
Derek sighed as his face heated. “Look, I know it's fucking silly,” he said. “I feel ridiculous writing it. You don't need to rub it in.”
“Well, is it helping?”
“No, the needling is not helping,” Derek said.
Mark pointed at the notebook. “I meant the diary,” he said, drawing Derek's attention back to his two remaining choices on the list.
Meredith waved at him, her eyes sparkling, as he and Mark settled at the table in the far corner by the restrooms, as far away from the crush of the crowd as possible. She mouthed, “Are you okay?” across the noisy bar.
A fair question, given the state in which she'd been forced to leave him that morning, and given that he'd stopped dead on the fucking welcome mat and almost run back outside in terror. He debated then what to tell her. No was the most honest answer. No, I did a horrible thing earlier, and I think I might faint from nerves, now. But she was smiling and laughing and socializing, and he didn't want to wreck it for her. Not now. I love you, he mouthed at her with a wink in response. Not a lie, just... deferring the bad stuff until later.
He'd waited to tell Meredith the truth because... She deserves to have some fun with her friends, he wrote for his reason on number six. Whether he told her the truth about how he'd slipped now or five hours from now wouldn't matter in the grand scheme. This wasn't like concealing his marriage to Addison or hiding his addiction unless he let the lie perpetuate, and he wouldn't, but he could give Meredith a few happy hours with her friends.
Two reasons down. One to go. Why had he ordered water, no lemon? His pen hovered next to line seven, and he realized he'd sort of grown to look forward to this. Tabulating all the times he'd made a decision. Coming up with reasons.
“I like it,” Derek said, at last. “I feel less... lost.”
The waitress, a short woman, even more slender-boned and slight than Meredith, smiled at them as she arrived with their drinks on a tray full of dripping, foaming pints and other fare. Mark had ordered a club soda, not a beer, and Derek wondered if that had been a concession toward Derek's need for sobriety. Mark hadn't said anything about his drink choice, though, hadn't advertised it other than by his quiet order, and so Derek tried not to focus on it too much. Derek took his water with no lemon, tipped her $1, and thanked the woman as she brushed curly black hair out of her face. Sweat dotted her brow from the heat of so many bodies in the room.
She smiled. “Sorry this took so long,” she called over the din. “We're a bit busy tonight.”
The Mariners table booed. Loudly.
“I hadn't noticed,” Mark cracked with a charming wink as he tipped her as well, and the waitress laughed.
As she moved to another table, Mark picked up his fizzing, clear glass, and tipped it a smidgen toward Derek. “Being less lost is nice, even if it is a diary,” Mark said in a clear attempt at a toast, though his gaze kept darting down to Derek's notebook, as if he hadn't read it three times already and memorized the contents line-by-line.
Derek grinned as an idea struck him. He held out his hand, gesturing for Mark to wait a moment. Mark watched Derek expectantly as Derek picked up his gel pen. Bucking Big Brother, Derek wrote on the notepad, and then he clinked his water glass against Mark's to complete the toast.
“'Bucking Big Brother'?” Mark said.
Derek smirked. Predictable as always. “Still reading over my shoulder?”
“If you don't want me to read it, you shouldn't leave it open,” Mark said. “Are you on a 1984 kick, or something?”
Derek shrugged. “You wanted me to get club soda.”
Mark blinked. “I did?”
“This morning, you told me I'd get a club soda,” Derek said. He tipped back his glass and took a sip of the cool water. The liquid spread across his tongue. He swallowed, glancing at the crowded room.
“What does that have to do with 1984?” Mark said.
“It doesn't have anything to do with 1984.”
Mark frowned. The ice in his glass clinked as he took a sip. “Then why'd you write about it?”
“I didn't write about 1984,” Derek said. He grinned slyly. “I wrote about you.”
Mark's eyebrows rose. “I'm 'Big Brother'?” he said, incredulous. He pressed his right palm flat against his chest in a classic gesture of, Who, me?
Derek nodded. “You're sure acting like it.”
“Unless you've recently hopped in a time machine, I'm clearly the dashing younger brother in this twisted equation,” Mark said, a haughty expression on his face.
Derek sighed, shaking his head. “I can see my attempt at witty humor has fallen flat on its face.”
“Now, you're saying I'm stupid in addition to emotionally stunted?” Mark said, though there was no bite in his tone this time. No anger. This was the teasing and needling that was normal.
Derek chuckled as a weight lifted. “Not stupid. Sometimes obtuse.”
“I think your fucked up sense of humor is obtuse,” Mark countered. He turned up his glass and took a sip that turned into a gulp. “That's what I think.”
“Who's being judge-y, now?” Derek said.
Mark chuckled. “Since when do you say words like judge-y?”
Derek sighed, unable to stop his gaze from wandering across the room, through the crowd, to Meredith. The big biker guy had moved enough to the side when he'd scooted his stool for Derek to see her. She wore her hair in a no-fuss, looped ponytail that sent loose ends of wispy blonde and brown jagging every which way. She'd worn jeans, her black Chucks, a lilac-colored blouse, and very little makeup, devoid of fashion, as though she'd been too tired to worry very much about her appearance. It didn't matter to Derek. To Derek, she looked beautiful, anyway. Her smile made her beautiful. Beautiful and pregnant and just... perfect. He pressed his chin against his hands, resting as he watched her, not caring if he came off like a lovesick fool at this point. He needed her. The past few horrible months had proven it to him. He needed her, and he could admit that.
“Since I married a woman who makes them up so often, I can't even remember what's real,” Derek said.
“She does have that talent,” Mark said. Following the direction of Derek's gaze, he peered over the undulating crowd. He smiled when his gaze caught Meredith, too, and he shook his head. “It's kind of cute.”
“It's adorable,” Derek agreed, “but it sometimes prevents me from functioning without spell check.”
“So, how am I obtuse?” Mark said.
Derek blinked, tearing his gaze away from Meredith. “Hmm?” he said.
Mark rolled his eyes as if to say, good god, you're so fucking hopeless when it comes to that woman. “Obtuse, Derek,” he said, impatient. “How am I obtuse?”
“Oh,” Derek said. He took a long sip from his water, relishing the cool feel as it washed down his parched throat. “Well, you keep reading over my shoulder.”
“That's not obtuse,” Mark said. “That's me being a nosy bastard.”
“That doesn't seem 'Big Brother' to you?” Derek said, raising his eyebrows. “On multiple levels, both literal and metaphorical?”
“But you said it didn't have anything to do with 1984.”
Derek's mouth opened and closed. “I meant...”
Mark slapped the table. Their drinks splashed. “Hah!” he said, a triumphant grin on his face. “Obtuse, my ass. You just don't know what you're talking about.”
“You told me to order a fucking club soda, and you keep reading over my shoulder,” Derek said, frowning. “That's totally 'Big Brother'.”
“You seriously got water because I suggested club soda?”
“Well, no,” Derek admitted. “I just felt like water.”
Mark snorted. “So, now, you're perpetrating revisionist history in your pansy diary just to fuck with my head. I think that's far more Orwellian.”
“It's not a damned diary, Mark.”
“You say tomato,” Mark said. His face lit with an evil grin. “I say it's a fucking diary.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “I'm not going to live this down, am I?”
“Nope,” Mark said. “It's like the time you broke my hand.”
“On my face!” Derek argued. “You broke your hand on my face.”
“I more meant it as a time I was offered scientific, painful proof, of your impossibly hard head,” Mark countered.
Derek sighed. “Can we at least call it a map?”
“You've leaped from George Orwell to maps, and you're calling me obtuse?” Mark said.
“Because writing it makes me less lost!” Derek snapped. He took another sip from his drink. “I said that!”
Mark shook his head. “That's pathetic.”
“It sounds less pathetic than a diary,” Derek grumbled as he stared into his half-empty glass. The water flickered in the dim light.
“No offense, man, but that's completely cracked, less lost or not,” Mark said.
Derek frowned. “It's not cracked.”
“At least you're writing it on a spiral notepad,” Mark said. “That's better than one of those prissy bound books only a girl would buy.”
“Gee, thanks,” Derek said. He stared at his so-called diary and sighed.
“Look, man,” Mark said. “If it makes you feel better, do it. Keep the diary. I'll stop giving you a hard time.”
“It does make me feel better,” Derek said.
“How about we call it a journal?”
“That's... less bad than diary.”
Mark shrugged. “Darts?” he said. “Or are you going to buck 'Big Brother' in your journal some more?”