Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 9
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
~~~~~
Meredith woke to the sound of silence. Real silence. Not a tick, a creak, a mutter, a breath, nothing. She gazed at the ceiling, wondering what had roused her. She'd gone to bed alone.
Derek had been out cold still when the family had started winding down for bed. She'd gone to check on him while they had been settling all the kids down in their sleeping bags. She'd woken him up to make sure he was still fine. He'd mumbled and groaned and blinked. She'd managed to get him to answer a question or two that at least indicated he could think, and then he'd gone back to sleep almost as soon as she'd left him. Everyone had decided that it'd be better to just leave him be until he woke up tomorrow. Then they'd move him.
She felt the empty space across the bed. She was so unused to sleeping alone these days. Her heart throbbed each time her mind wandered to the cold vacancy on Derek's side. Derek's side. A man had a side in her bed. A year ago, had somebody told her she would be this committed to a relationship, this stuck under the throng of devotion, she would have laughed and told him or her that there was absolutely no way she was ever going to fall that fast or hard for anyone, let alone someone who was married, someone who was her boss... two things that had made it even worse on the scale of appropriateness.
She just didn't do the relationship thing.
It wasn't her.
She was the one who dragged a guy home for a night of bump and grind between the sheets, only to go sniffing in the water again as soon as the door had hit his ass on the way out in the morning. It's what she did. It was her modus operandi.
And Derek had gone and messed it all up. Now, she couldn't sleep alone. And she had mushy, gummy, nauseatingly sweet thoughts about him. She had X-rated thoughts about him, too, but not about anyone else anymore, aside from the occasional pinup model, which, really, would never go away in any sane person who walked the earth, so she didn't count that. It was downright weird, this sudden need to have him in her life. And scary.
And yet, so fucking right.
Her stomach growled, and she glanced at the clock. Four-thirty.
Apparently, her intern clock had woken her. This was about the right time for her to get up for an early shift, were she working that day. She sighed and groaned and pushed herself off the bed, knowing she wasn't going to be going back to sleep anytime soon.
She tiptoed out into the hall. Dim plug-in nightlights lit the length of it. It was long and wrapped around a corner at the end, probably to more bedrooms, though she hadn't explored at all yet. All the bedroom doors were shut. Not a peep came from downstairs, which meant all the children were still miraculously asleep in their sleeping bags in the den and the office and wherever else the Shepherd family had found to stash them during the night. They'd probably start getting up around six-thirty. That was when the good cartoons started. Or at least, that was when they'd started back when she was young enough to still enjoy them.
She pattered down the steps and into the kitchen, and was routing around in the cabinets before a noise made her still. The hairs on the back of her neck pricked, and goose bumps flushed their way down her skin. She turned as she pulled out a box of Raisin Bran, for the first time noticing that another person was with her in the quiet darkness. Derek sat at the kitchen table, head propped up in his hands. He stared at her in the darkness. Moonlight filtered in from the windows, casting his face with a pale glow.
He wiped at his eyes, but she caught the glisten of tears on his skin before he could clear it away entirely. "Are you okay?" she asked.
He didn't say a word, just stared darkly.
"Do you want something from the fridge?" she asked as she moved over to grab some milk to go with the cereal she'd found. "Something to drink?"
She didn't even hear him move. As she closed the door to the fridge, she gasped when his face hovered right in front of her, mere inches away, close enough that his body heat wavered in the space between them. He slid his hand around her waist and pushed her up against the fridge. His palm, warm and soft, slipped under her shirt and caressed her skin. She squeaked in shock when his lips came down on hers, but quickly silenced as her body realized what was happening for her, and pressed herself up against him. The box of cereal slipped from her grip as she surrendered to the bliss and wrapped her arms around him. The milk fell just after that.
One of his hands roamed down, down, down, past the curve of her butt to her thigh. He lifted her leg up against his hip as he caressed the underside of it and ground her up against the fridge. She shifted, panting desperately when he pulled away for a moment. His lips ran down the side of her neck, leaving a salty, evaporating chill behind. She twisted her fingers in the mop of hair on his head, careful to avoid the line of stitches. He sucked her breath away again when he roamed back to her mouth in a delicious, sensual plundering.
In the euphoria, in the heaven that was him actively, voluntarily touching her with his warm, sexy, surgeon's hands, actively, voluntarily kissing her, actively, voluntarily loving her, she didn't think to question things, didn't think to wonder why this was happening. It felt. So. Good. And she missed him so much already... Him kissing her filled a throbbing, painful void, and she wanted it, wanted it so badly she couldn't think straight, couldn't see straight. She just let him.
His warm panting buffeted her. His skin slid along her own as he ravaged her like he was a drowning man and she was his long-awaited shore. Everything, every nerve ending, every muscle, all of it burned with lust as he built her into a pile of needing. She curled her fingers, digging into his flexing rhomboids. He groaned, and the rumbling sound of it washed down her throat and filled her with her own low-pitched moan.
And then it all stopped.
He groaned again, but this wasn't a groan of lust or happiness, it was a groan of suffering. He'd been cradling her before, supporting most of her weight, but now she was decidedly on her own two feet, slipping from the awkward angle as his larger body pressed down over hers, his weight inching up against her with each passing moment. He pulled back and leaned his forehead against the cool refrigerator door, swallowing thickly, eyes screwed shut.
"Derek?" she asked, panting, trying to catch up with the situation. His body dipped, and she sunk her fingers tightly into his back, trying to hold him up.
"Damn it," he whispered. He clawed at the fridge with a shaking hand, righting himself, but only barely. "Damn it," he said again. And then he slammed the heel of his palm into the door of the fridge so forcefully that it shook. A few boxes that had been stacked on top cascaded to the floor. He hit the fridge again. And again. He stopped and stood against the door, breathing, breathing, breathing. His posture dipped again as he started to surrender to the floor, and this time, he didn't seem to be able to catch himself.
She gripped her hands around his waist, slipped out from the crush of him, and pulled his arm over her shoulder. He stopped falling, at least, but he didn't look like he was in good shape. She turned toward the kitchen table. He said nothing, but he let her guide him to the chair. He collapsed into it with a sigh and put his head down on one of the placemats, cradling himself in the dip between his crossed arms.
She rubbed his back. "Dizzy?" she asked.
He groaned. "The room won't stop spinning," he mumbled into his arms. His voice was thick and low and weeping and dark. It was the first time he'd really spoken, aside from his whispered cursing, since she'd noticed him in the kitchen. She frowned at the utter misery there. This wasn't just because he was dizzy...
"Did you remember something, Derek?" she asked. She put the milk back in the fridge. The carton thankfully hadn't split open when it'd fallen. She picked up the boxes, tilted up onto the tips of her toes, and put them back on top of the fridge, though she couldn't reach to push them all the way to the back where they'd first rested. Next, she picked up the Raisin Bran and put it on the counter. She checked the floor and nodded, confident that she'd picked up all the rubble from the box cascade.
Then she sat down next to him, pulling up a chair, scooting in close. Given that he'd nearly just sucked her skin off, she wasn't all that worried about breaching personal space barriers anymore, at least. She caressed his shoulders, his back, ran her fingers through his hair. At least he'd stopped shaking. Now he just hung there in a state of distress.
"Did you?" she prodded.
He turned his head, giving her a view of bloodshot, tearing eyes. "You smell like a flower," he said.
"Lavender," she said.
"I like it."
"It's always been your favorite."
He laughed, but it was a breaking, self-deprecating, shattering sort of sound. "I used to like coconut. Addison... She used this special rinse... It was at least thirty dollars a bottle. I used to like it," he said, but the words were far from reverent. Disgust warped his tone into a wretched, trembling thing. He sounded like he was ill.
"Derek, what is this about?" Meredith asked, trying desperately not to let herself fall into the trap of getting jealous over Addison. She had no reason for jealousy right now. Derek didn't have a full set of memories to work with. Of course he was going to mention the woman he couldn't remember divorcing yet...
"She smelled like that when I found her. She smelled like that when she begged me not to leave. All while he hid upstairs in the bathroom like a fucking coward..." His voice cut off with a choking sound. He twitched, and it almost looked like he was trying not to vomit. He ran his hands through his hair and stared at some distant point beyond the table.
She sat there, shock sucking all sort of coherency away. She had no idea what to do, what to say... She hovered, frozen, wondering. She'd known that finding Mark in bed with Addison had really upset him, but she'd never, never imagined this...
It's like I was drowning, and you saved me.
She scooted closer. Her chair legs squawked as she drew the seat across the floor tiles, until it bumped up against his chair and shuddered to a halt. She leaned in and wrapped her arms around him. Tiny tremors that she hadn't noticed from a farther distance raced through his body, but she was afraid to ask if they were because he was upset, because of his head injury, or a little of both. She ran her hand up and down the length of his arm before pulling him into her. He let her. She laid her cheek against his shoulder. He let her. He had no idea who she was and he was letting her do all these things, but it didn't matter anymore.
"That was over a year ago, Derek," she whispered against his ear.
"It was yesterday to me," he replied. He stayed trembling in her embrace, tension wiring his muscles to the point that she thought he might break like glass if she pushed against him too hard.
"I know," she said. She didn't really know what else to tell him. She had no idea what would make it better for him. She opted for silence, letting the moments try to soothe his frantic thoughts. The clock ticked from the wall over the doorway to the hallway, and the refrigerator contributed a low, dull hum to the air, but other than that, the room was silent. The house was quiet and still. She was surprised that Derek's violence against the fridge hadn't woken anyone up, but she wasn't willing to question it. Not now.
His skin felt warm against her own. Running her fingers through his hair felt so familiar. The scent of him, just Derek, curled around her, relaxing her. And yet, it felt strange and foreign. He was letting her do all these things, but he wasn't responding like he normally would have. When he looked at her, his eyes weren't hooded with the same catalog of feelings that she was supposed to draw from him, love, familiarity, all of that. He didn't speak to her with the same voice. His very demeanor didn't place her on a pedestal. It was strange, and weird, and different, but she missed him enough that she didn't care, almost didn't want the moment to end, despite how unhappy he was.
Eventually, she came to terms with the fact that this was all just a mirage. That he was distraught, and he was letting her touch him and love him like she wanted to only because he was vulnerable, and sick, and tired, and upset.
"Okay, come on," she said, her voice trembling at the vague, tearing sensation she felt in her chest. He languished like some sort of broken thing, and so she pulled up on his shoulders.
"Wh-- What?" he muttered, breathy as he registered the change in the atmosphere. His eyes, glassy with what almost seemed like a daze, gradually regained their focus. He blinked and looked at her. Something dark and heavy clouded his stare.
"Get up, Derek," she said.
He stood, slowly, only to stumble and claw out against the table with a gasp. She wrapped an arm around his waist. "You can lean on me," she said.
He laughed, just a little gruff thing scrabbling for air under the weight of his misery, but it was a laugh, nonetheless. "But you're tiny," he said.
"Oh, get off it, Derek, and just lean," she said. "I'm not a helpless little waif."
She took a step forward and paused to make sure he was on the same page. He shuffled forward with her, slightly awkward, groaning. Five steps away from the table, and it was obvious that she was going to be doing most of the heavy lifting. "Are you dizzy?" she grunted as they stumbled forward. "Or is it something else?"
"Just dizzy," he gasped. "Whenever I stand up, it's like things have hopped on a turntable and won't get off."
"I'm going to write you a prescription tomorrow," she heaved as they plunged into the hallway.
"You're a doctor?" he asked.
"Surgical intern," she replied through gritted teeth. "Soon to be neurosurgical resident."
He didn't reply as they gasped and groaned and shuffled into the living room. She peered at the sofa, thinking it would be easier to drop him off there, easier, and yet... She couldn't bring herself to do it. He was close to her, and breathing, and warm, and even though he didn't know her, he was letting her be near, and she didn't want it to end.
"Where are we going?" he said when she shuffled them past the couch and headed for the stairs.
"To a real bed. Where you will get some real sleep. And you won't worry about Mark or Addison anymore," she replied.
The first step had him flailing against the railing. He panted. His hands started to shake, followed shortly by the rest of him. She bit back a pang of guilt for putting him through this with the sole purpose of fulfilling her own desire to ease her loneliness. She glanced back at the couch. She could still turn around.
He took another step, almost entirely on his own, and she rushed to follow him, to match his strides. The distraction was enough to convince her to stop worrying about it. They managed to get all the way up the stairs with a gargantuan effort.
Natalie poked her head out of one of the rooms down the hall. "Everything okay?" she muttered sleepily as a yawn cracked her lips apart like a roaring lion. Her shoulder-length, slightly curled, dark brown hair stuck out in all directions. Her bathrobe had been flung across her shoulders in a haphazard sort of way. The tie at the waist sat loose enough on her hip that the top and bottom gaped open, revealing a t-shirt and flannel pants underneath. She wiped her hand over her face and sighed in a motion that reminded Meredith of Derek when he woke up in the mornings before he was ready to be awake. Even the fuzzy gaze and the preference for flannel pants looked like Derek.
"It's fine," Meredith said, swallowing against the unsettling feeling of having his sister, who looked like a bad Xerox of Derek's female clone, watch them while they stumbled down the hallway. "We're just going back to bed."
Natalie shrugged. "Okay," she said, and she disappeared back into her bedroom. The door closed behind her with a soft thud, and Meredith sighed in relief that the audience was gone.
She guided Derek through the doorway to the king-sized bed where she had been sleeping the past two nights. He collapsed onto it on his back with a sigh. She stood there, uncertain for a moment as he settled in and drew his shaking hands up onto his heaving stomach. Now that the effort of exertion was gone, his features sank back into the upset, tormented look he'd had downstairs at the kitchen table. Angst clouded around him like a thick, solid, writhing thing.
"I can sleep on the couch if you'd rather be alone," she offered as a sudden slip of fear tore through her. He was grieving his marriage, sick over finding the woman he'd loved before in bed with his best friend. And Meredith was just... Meredith. What did she have to offer? And what if, without alcohol, he didn't want her this time?
He swallowed as his gaze drifted to her. "No."
"Okay," she replied, and she climbed in on her side. She slipped under the sheets, which felt cool against her skin for a few moments until they started soaking up the warmth of her body. She thumped back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling, listening to his soft breathing. It had a sluggish, calming effect on her, and her eyes started to drift shut as her nerves bled away into the darkness.
"It's Mark. That's the part that makes my insides roil," he said.
She blinked and turned to him. "What?"
"I'm not married anymore. I have no wife. It's all gone," he said, staring at the ceiling, not turning his head to meet her gaze. His eyes watered. She could see the tears slipping out of the corner his eye. He reached up and brushed his shaky hands at them. "I finally remembered what triggered it. And the fact that it's Mark is what makes me ill. I mean, Addison upsets me... but... it's not... it's not what I would have expected. And I--"
My home was wrecked well before you came into the picture...
The bed shifted, and he rolled toward her. His eyes were messed up with a layer of water. Tracks ran down his face. He wrapped his arms around her and slid up against her. "Is this okay?" he whispered in her ear as he settled against her body like a puzzle piece that fit.
"Derek, anything you're comfortable with is okay," she replied as the backs of her eyes pricked up with tears.
He sighed. "I don't even know you, and I miss you."
"I'm so glad you didn't die," she sobbed into his chest.
He crushed her up against him, and suddenly it was easy to sleep.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
~~~~~
Meredith woke to the sound of silence. Real silence. Not a tick, a creak, a mutter, a breath, nothing. She gazed at the ceiling, wondering what had roused her. She'd gone to bed alone.
Derek had been out cold still when the family had started winding down for bed. She'd gone to check on him while they had been settling all the kids down in their sleeping bags. She'd woken him up to make sure he was still fine. He'd mumbled and groaned and blinked. She'd managed to get him to answer a question or two that at least indicated he could think, and then he'd gone back to sleep almost as soon as she'd left him. Everyone had decided that it'd be better to just leave him be until he woke up tomorrow. Then they'd move him.
She felt the empty space across the bed. She was so unused to sleeping alone these days. Her heart throbbed each time her mind wandered to the cold vacancy on Derek's side. Derek's side. A man had a side in her bed. A year ago, had somebody told her she would be this committed to a relationship, this stuck under the throng of devotion, she would have laughed and told him or her that there was absolutely no way she was ever going to fall that fast or hard for anyone, let alone someone who was married, someone who was her boss... two things that had made it even worse on the scale of appropriateness.
She just didn't do the relationship thing.
It wasn't her.
She was the one who dragged a guy home for a night of bump and grind between the sheets, only to go sniffing in the water again as soon as the door had hit his ass on the way out in the morning. It's what she did. It was her modus operandi.
And Derek had gone and messed it all up. Now, she couldn't sleep alone. And she had mushy, gummy, nauseatingly sweet thoughts about him. She had X-rated thoughts about him, too, but not about anyone else anymore, aside from the occasional pinup model, which, really, would never go away in any sane person who walked the earth, so she didn't count that. It was downright weird, this sudden need to have him in her life. And scary.
And yet, so fucking right.
Her stomach growled, and she glanced at the clock. Four-thirty.
Apparently, her intern clock had woken her. This was about the right time for her to get up for an early shift, were she working that day. She sighed and groaned and pushed herself off the bed, knowing she wasn't going to be going back to sleep anytime soon.
She tiptoed out into the hall. Dim plug-in nightlights lit the length of it. It was long and wrapped around a corner at the end, probably to more bedrooms, though she hadn't explored at all yet. All the bedroom doors were shut. Not a peep came from downstairs, which meant all the children were still miraculously asleep in their sleeping bags in the den and the office and wherever else the Shepherd family had found to stash them during the night. They'd probably start getting up around six-thirty. That was when the good cartoons started. Or at least, that was when they'd started back when she was young enough to still enjoy them.
She pattered down the steps and into the kitchen, and was routing around in the cabinets before a noise made her still. The hairs on the back of her neck pricked, and goose bumps flushed their way down her skin. She turned as she pulled out a box of Raisin Bran, for the first time noticing that another person was with her in the quiet darkness. Derek sat at the kitchen table, head propped up in his hands. He stared at her in the darkness. Moonlight filtered in from the windows, casting his face with a pale glow.
He wiped at his eyes, but she caught the glisten of tears on his skin before he could clear it away entirely. "Are you okay?" she asked.
He didn't say a word, just stared darkly.
"Do you want something from the fridge?" she asked as she moved over to grab some milk to go with the cereal she'd found. "Something to drink?"
She didn't even hear him move. As she closed the door to the fridge, she gasped when his face hovered right in front of her, mere inches away, close enough that his body heat wavered in the space between them. He slid his hand around her waist and pushed her up against the fridge. His palm, warm and soft, slipped under her shirt and caressed her skin. She squeaked in shock when his lips came down on hers, but quickly silenced as her body realized what was happening for her, and pressed herself up against him. The box of cereal slipped from her grip as she surrendered to the bliss and wrapped her arms around him. The milk fell just after that.
One of his hands roamed down, down, down, past the curve of her butt to her thigh. He lifted her leg up against his hip as he caressed the underside of it and ground her up against the fridge. She shifted, panting desperately when he pulled away for a moment. His lips ran down the side of her neck, leaving a salty, evaporating chill behind. She twisted her fingers in the mop of hair on his head, careful to avoid the line of stitches. He sucked her breath away again when he roamed back to her mouth in a delicious, sensual plundering.
In the euphoria, in the heaven that was him actively, voluntarily touching her with his warm, sexy, surgeon's hands, actively, voluntarily kissing her, actively, voluntarily loving her, she didn't think to question things, didn't think to wonder why this was happening. It felt. So. Good. And she missed him so much already... Him kissing her filled a throbbing, painful void, and she wanted it, wanted it so badly she couldn't think straight, couldn't see straight. She just let him.
His warm panting buffeted her. His skin slid along her own as he ravaged her like he was a drowning man and she was his long-awaited shore. Everything, every nerve ending, every muscle, all of it burned with lust as he built her into a pile of needing. She curled her fingers, digging into his flexing rhomboids. He groaned, and the rumbling sound of it washed down her throat and filled her with her own low-pitched moan.
And then it all stopped.
He groaned again, but this wasn't a groan of lust or happiness, it was a groan of suffering. He'd been cradling her before, supporting most of her weight, but now she was decidedly on her own two feet, slipping from the awkward angle as his larger body pressed down over hers, his weight inching up against her with each passing moment. He pulled back and leaned his forehead against the cool refrigerator door, swallowing thickly, eyes screwed shut.
"Derek?" she asked, panting, trying to catch up with the situation. His body dipped, and she sunk her fingers tightly into his back, trying to hold him up.
"Damn it," he whispered. He clawed at the fridge with a shaking hand, righting himself, but only barely. "Damn it," he said again. And then he slammed the heel of his palm into the door of the fridge so forcefully that it shook. A few boxes that had been stacked on top cascaded to the floor. He hit the fridge again. And again. He stopped and stood against the door, breathing, breathing, breathing. His posture dipped again as he started to surrender to the floor, and this time, he didn't seem to be able to catch himself.
She gripped her hands around his waist, slipped out from the crush of him, and pulled his arm over her shoulder. He stopped falling, at least, but he didn't look like he was in good shape. She turned toward the kitchen table. He said nothing, but he let her guide him to the chair. He collapsed into it with a sigh and put his head down on one of the placemats, cradling himself in the dip between his crossed arms.
She rubbed his back. "Dizzy?" she asked.
He groaned. "The room won't stop spinning," he mumbled into his arms. His voice was thick and low and weeping and dark. It was the first time he'd really spoken, aside from his whispered cursing, since she'd noticed him in the kitchen. She frowned at the utter misery there. This wasn't just because he was dizzy...
"Did you remember something, Derek?" she asked. She put the milk back in the fridge. The carton thankfully hadn't split open when it'd fallen. She picked up the boxes, tilted up onto the tips of her toes, and put them back on top of the fridge, though she couldn't reach to push them all the way to the back where they'd first rested. Next, she picked up the Raisin Bran and put it on the counter. She checked the floor and nodded, confident that she'd picked up all the rubble from the box cascade.
Then she sat down next to him, pulling up a chair, scooting in close. Given that he'd nearly just sucked her skin off, she wasn't all that worried about breaching personal space barriers anymore, at least. She caressed his shoulders, his back, ran her fingers through his hair. At least he'd stopped shaking. Now he just hung there in a state of distress.
"Did you?" she prodded.
He turned his head, giving her a view of bloodshot, tearing eyes. "You smell like a flower," he said.
"Lavender," she said.
"I like it."
"It's always been your favorite."
He laughed, but it was a breaking, self-deprecating, shattering sort of sound. "I used to like coconut. Addison... She used this special rinse... It was at least thirty dollars a bottle. I used to like it," he said, but the words were far from reverent. Disgust warped his tone into a wretched, trembling thing. He sounded like he was ill.
"Derek, what is this about?" Meredith asked, trying desperately not to let herself fall into the trap of getting jealous over Addison. She had no reason for jealousy right now. Derek didn't have a full set of memories to work with. Of course he was going to mention the woman he couldn't remember divorcing yet...
"She smelled like that when I found her. She smelled like that when she begged me not to leave. All while he hid upstairs in the bathroom like a fucking coward..." His voice cut off with a choking sound. He twitched, and it almost looked like he was trying not to vomit. He ran his hands through his hair and stared at some distant point beyond the table.
She sat there, shock sucking all sort of coherency away. She had no idea what to do, what to say... She hovered, frozen, wondering. She'd known that finding Mark in bed with Addison had really upset him, but she'd never, never imagined this...
It's like I was drowning, and you saved me.
She scooted closer. Her chair legs squawked as she drew the seat across the floor tiles, until it bumped up against his chair and shuddered to a halt. She leaned in and wrapped her arms around him. Tiny tremors that she hadn't noticed from a farther distance raced through his body, but she was afraid to ask if they were because he was upset, because of his head injury, or a little of both. She ran her hand up and down the length of his arm before pulling him into her. He let her. She laid her cheek against his shoulder. He let her. He had no idea who she was and he was letting her do all these things, but it didn't matter anymore.
"That was over a year ago, Derek," she whispered against his ear.
"It was yesterday to me," he replied. He stayed trembling in her embrace, tension wiring his muscles to the point that she thought he might break like glass if she pushed against him too hard.
"I know," she said. She didn't really know what else to tell him. She had no idea what would make it better for him. She opted for silence, letting the moments try to soothe his frantic thoughts. The clock ticked from the wall over the doorway to the hallway, and the refrigerator contributed a low, dull hum to the air, but other than that, the room was silent. The house was quiet and still. She was surprised that Derek's violence against the fridge hadn't woken anyone up, but she wasn't willing to question it. Not now.
His skin felt warm against her own. Running her fingers through his hair felt so familiar. The scent of him, just Derek, curled around her, relaxing her. And yet, it felt strange and foreign. He was letting her do all these things, but he wasn't responding like he normally would have. When he looked at her, his eyes weren't hooded with the same catalog of feelings that she was supposed to draw from him, love, familiarity, all of that. He didn't speak to her with the same voice. His very demeanor didn't place her on a pedestal. It was strange, and weird, and different, but she missed him enough that she didn't care, almost didn't want the moment to end, despite how unhappy he was.
Eventually, she came to terms with the fact that this was all just a mirage. That he was distraught, and he was letting her touch him and love him like she wanted to only because he was vulnerable, and sick, and tired, and upset.
"Okay, come on," she said, her voice trembling at the vague, tearing sensation she felt in her chest. He languished like some sort of broken thing, and so she pulled up on his shoulders.
"Wh-- What?" he muttered, breathy as he registered the change in the atmosphere. His eyes, glassy with what almost seemed like a daze, gradually regained their focus. He blinked and looked at her. Something dark and heavy clouded his stare.
"Get up, Derek," she said.
He stood, slowly, only to stumble and claw out against the table with a gasp. She wrapped an arm around his waist. "You can lean on me," she said.
He laughed, just a little gruff thing scrabbling for air under the weight of his misery, but it was a laugh, nonetheless. "But you're tiny," he said.
"Oh, get off it, Derek, and just lean," she said. "I'm not a helpless little waif."
She took a step forward and paused to make sure he was on the same page. He shuffled forward with her, slightly awkward, groaning. Five steps away from the table, and it was obvious that she was going to be doing most of the heavy lifting. "Are you dizzy?" she grunted as they stumbled forward. "Or is it something else?"
"Just dizzy," he gasped. "Whenever I stand up, it's like things have hopped on a turntable and won't get off."
"I'm going to write you a prescription tomorrow," she heaved as they plunged into the hallway.
"You're a doctor?" he asked.
"Surgical intern," she replied through gritted teeth. "Soon to be neurosurgical resident."
He didn't reply as they gasped and groaned and shuffled into the living room. She peered at the sofa, thinking it would be easier to drop him off there, easier, and yet... She couldn't bring herself to do it. He was close to her, and breathing, and warm, and even though he didn't know her, he was letting her be near, and she didn't want it to end.
"Where are we going?" he said when she shuffled them past the couch and headed for the stairs.
"To a real bed. Where you will get some real sleep. And you won't worry about Mark or Addison anymore," she replied.
The first step had him flailing against the railing. He panted. His hands started to shake, followed shortly by the rest of him. She bit back a pang of guilt for putting him through this with the sole purpose of fulfilling her own desire to ease her loneliness. She glanced back at the couch. She could still turn around.
He took another step, almost entirely on his own, and she rushed to follow him, to match his strides. The distraction was enough to convince her to stop worrying about it. They managed to get all the way up the stairs with a gargantuan effort.
Natalie poked her head out of one of the rooms down the hall. "Everything okay?" she muttered sleepily as a yawn cracked her lips apart like a roaring lion. Her shoulder-length, slightly curled, dark brown hair stuck out in all directions. Her bathrobe had been flung across her shoulders in a haphazard sort of way. The tie at the waist sat loose enough on her hip that the top and bottom gaped open, revealing a t-shirt and flannel pants underneath. She wiped her hand over her face and sighed in a motion that reminded Meredith of Derek when he woke up in the mornings before he was ready to be awake. Even the fuzzy gaze and the preference for flannel pants looked like Derek.
"It's fine," Meredith said, swallowing against the unsettling feeling of having his sister, who looked like a bad Xerox of Derek's female clone, watch them while they stumbled down the hallway. "We're just going back to bed."
Natalie shrugged. "Okay," she said, and she disappeared back into her bedroom. The door closed behind her with a soft thud, and Meredith sighed in relief that the audience was gone.
She guided Derek through the doorway to the king-sized bed where she had been sleeping the past two nights. He collapsed onto it on his back with a sigh. She stood there, uncertain for a moment as he settled in and drew his shaking hands up onto his heaving stomach. Now that the effort of exertion was gone, his features sank back into the upset, tormented look he'd had downstairs at the kitchen table. Angst clouded around him like a thick, solid, writhing thing.
"I can sleep on the couch if you'd rather be alone," she offered as a sudden slip of fear tore through her. He was grieving his marriage, sick over finding the woman he'd loved before in bed with his best friend. And Meredith was just... Meredith. What did she have to offer? And what if, without alcohol, he didn't want her this time?
He swallowed as his gaze drifted to her. "No."
"Okay," she replied, and she climbed in on her side. She slipped under the sheets, which felt cool against her skin for a few moments until they started soaking up the warmth of her body. She thumped back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling, listening to his soft breathing. It had a sluggish, calming effect on her, and her eyes started to drift shut as her nerves bled away into the darkness.
"It's Mark. That's the part that makes my insides roil," he said.
She blinked and turned to him. "What?"
"I'm not married anymore. I have no wife. It's all gone," he said, staring at the ceiling, not turning his head to meet her gaze. His eyes watered. She could see the tears slipping out of the corner his eye. He reached up and brushed his shaky hands at them. "I finally remembered what triggered it. And the fact that it's Mark is what makes me ill. I mean, Addison upsets me... but... it's not... it's not what I would have expected. And I--"
My home was wrecked well before you came into the picture...
The bed shifted, and he rolled toward her. His eyes were messed up with a layer of water. Tracks ran down his face. He wrapped his arms around her and slid up against her. "Is this okay?" he whispered in her ear as he settled against her body like a puzzle piece that fit.
"Derek, anything you're comfortable with is okay," she replied as the backs of her eyes pricked up with tears.
He sighed. "I don't even know you, and I miss you."
"I'm so glad you didn't die," she sobbed into his chest.
He crushed her up against him, and suddenly it was easy to sleep.