Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 25

[ariaadagio]

Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh.  (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.

~~~~~

Crap, he thought, barely a second after the words had left his lips.  He lay there, unable to move, stuck in the after haze of some of the most amazing sex he could recall from recent history, tips three and four notwithstanding.  He lay there, naked, next to the most beautiful woman he'd ever met, both inside and out.  He lay there, and his brain just couldn't function.  He'd known he'd wanted to propose.  He'd known it since...  Well, he couldn't really identify the exact moment he'd known.  But he'd known he'd wanted to ask.  Kathy had helped him, really helped him work through the last of his doubts.

He wanted a life with Meredith.  He wanted it more than anything else he'd ever wanted.  He loved her to the point that he hurt just thinking about the concept of being without her.  It was like his life before he'd met her had been some sort of fuzzy, black and white, soundless sketch, and now, the world was in Technicolor, in focus, with surround sound...  And it was beautiful.  She was beautiful.  And he wanted it to last forever.

He.  Wanted.  Her.  Forever.

So, why.  Why.  Why had he ever asked her about marriage now?  Actually, he hadn't even really asked.  He'd sort of just commanded.  And that was...

Really stupid.

Sex made him dumb, he decided on second number two, and finally, he understood Meredith's compulsion to knit.  Because sex...  He was convinced now that orgasms killed brain cells.  Sort of like head trauma.  Perhaps he was a few scoops low on neurons.  He did have plenty of head trauma.  And he definitely had plenty of orgasms.  Combined, the results must have catastrophically affected his IQ.

But the simple fact of the matter was that he was the dumbest, stupidest, most idiotic person ever to walk the earth.  Because this was Meredith.  This was Meredith, and she was going to bolt now, and he might never get her to slow down long enough to say another word to her.

And even then, even with that creeping realization that he'd just made a horrific mistake...  He didn't regret it.  Because he wanted it.  He really wanted it.

By second number three, the worry began to sink its claws in, rending, tearing.  He didn't regret it.  But she wasn't saying a word, let alone fleeing.  And...

"Crap," she whispered.

"Meredith," he replied, finding his voice somewhere in the fray, but it was a cracking, barely there thing that sounded awful, like he was recovering from laryngitis.

Meredith blinked.  Her eyes flared so he could see the whites of her eyes all around the soft gray of her irises.  She swallowed, visibly.  Her muscles started to tense.

"Meredith," he said again, his voice stronger.  He tried to brush her arm, tried to soothe her, but she pulled away like his touch had burned her.  A spear of dread plunged through the space behind his heart.  She was...

"Crap!" she repeated in an ugly exclamation as she sat up, stumbled from the bed, and started to gather up her clothes.

Derek took one breath, two breaths, three, trying to garner some energy.  Any energy.  He rubbed his hands down over his face.  "Crap," he said with a sigh.  A twisting groan rolled out of him as he forced himself into a sitting position.  His head swam, and the dim on-call room revolved around him like he was on a slow-moving carousel.  He sat there, sort of curled over on himself for a moment, breathing.  She had a head start on him.  Her underwear was back on already, and he...

He heaved a breath and stood, only to have to sit back down again when his body simply just...  Didn't.  Didn't do what he wanted it to do.  His muscles cried at him.  The haze of sex was gone with the movement, and now he hurt.  Everywhere.  His headache was already starting to throb again.  His mouth felt dry.  He was starving.  Breakfast.  Should have had some...

"Meredith, please," he said.  "I don't..."  Have the energy to chase you.  He squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing thickly.  This was not good.  He opened his eyes again.  After a few blinking seconds, the world sharpened from the blotted mess into something he could identify.

Her gaze darted to him, sitting naked on the gurney.  He ran his hands through his hair, unashamed despite the horrified look on her face.  She shook out her pants and started to pull them on, her movements tight, stiff, jerky.

"We should get back," she said.  "They're going to wonder why we haven't come back yet.  They'll think something is wrong with you, and they'll freak out."

He met her eyes in the relative darkness.  She took a small breath.  Her eyes were wide, and he could almost hear her heart throbbing in the silence, rapid thumpity-thump, thump thumps, like she was some sort of canary staring down a cobra, unable to move, terrified, and he felt awful for it, like some sort of twisted movie villain who'd sprung his trap on the unsuspecting, buxom heroine.  Except he hadn't meant for it to be a trap.  He hadn't meant for it to be anything bad...  He wanted to marry her.  It wasn't bad.  It wasn't.

"Meredith-" he managed.

"They'll freak out, Derek," she said, her voice low and falsely calm as she interrupted him.  And then she started frantically searching for her shirt.

He was going to have to move.  She was going to bolt, and he was still naked.  He was going to have to...  If he wanted her.  Move.  Move, damn it.  Move.  Get up, fool, he told himself.  Get up before the rest of your life runs out the door.  Get up.  Get up, get up, get up.  He jammed his hands down onto his thighs and threw himself forward, letting momentum carry him up to something that resembled being upright.  He groaned.  He didn't even try to hide how bad he was feeling, despite the fact that he had no desire for her to stay merely out of sympathy, or some sense of obligation.  But she was so engrossed in trying to find her clothing that she didn't seem to even notice he'd moved.  He leaned to the left, catching his balance with his foot as he scraped it across the floor, barely.  He swallowed and stood there for a minute, just trying to get the room to stop spinning.

She was going to leave.  She was going to leave.  She was going to leave, and he could barely fucking walk.  He'd just asked her for the rest of her life, and she couldn't look at him without...  Fear.  He could...  He would make himself.  Move.  Move to...  He wobbled to his boxers.  Leaning down to pick them up was torture as his overused quads and lower back began to whine, whine, whine.  Capture the flag the night before had been a bad idea.  He could have managed the sex or the capture the flag, but both...  Both seemed to have done bad, bad things to him.

Fucking car accident.  Fucking concussion.  Fuck, fuck, fuck, he hissed inwardly.

He pulled his boxers up to his waist, where they settled, cool against his skin.  Boxers.  Boxers he had managed.  Now what.  Swaying into the wall seemed to be what his legs had in mind.  Tiredness tried to suck him down into a dark, dark hole.  He blinked the spots away, resting his forehead against the wall, the cool, smooth, shell-white wall.  It felt like an ice cube against his fever.  Did he have a fever?  He felt hot.  He swallowed, sucked down some more air, tried to get enough to say...

"Meredith, stop," he said, his voice breaking on his vocal cords as she pulled her shirt over her head in twitchy, spooked, economized movements.  He watched her as he rested, staring down the plane of the wall.  It blurred, but she was sharp, sharp like a photograph.  And she was running away.  She was going to run...  As soon as she was decent.  "Please, can't we-"  Talk?

Why had he ever opened his mouth?  Why, why, why.  Because he wanted her.  And he was a stupid idiot who couldn't fucking be patient, even when he flat out knew she was gun-shy about commitment, most specifically because of things he had done.  Fuck.  But he wanted her, and that wasn't wrong.  And he couldn't regret it now that he'd said it.  He could be fucking angry with himself, but he couldn't bring himself to regret it.  He couldn't.

"My shoes.  Where are they?" she said.  She started to look around for them.

He breathed once, twice, three times again, and pushed off the wall to propel himself toward his jeans.  They were on the floor by the foot of the cot.  He leaned over, and everything swam, but he blinked it all away, stepped into them, and pulled them up to his waist.  Buttoning them was not nearly as fun as the unbuttoning had been.  He wanted to growl in frustration as his shaking hands slipped and slid along the buttons, tangled in the activity of it as he tried to keep his eyes on bolting Meredith, rather than watch what the hell he was doing.

He found his shirt mixed in with the blankets on the mattress.  He swallowed thickly, barely curtailing a groan as he yanked it down over his head.  Shoes.  Where...  He wandered over to the left one.  He couldn't even remember kicking them off.  Couldn't remember...

Something crinkled behind him.  He saw Meredith stuffing her scrub cap in the plastic gift shop bag.  She had both her shoes on.  He rushed to get the second one on, and had just finished lacing it up when she rushed for the doorway.

"Meredith," he said, stumbling forward as he tied off the lace.  "Wait."

She stared at him like some sort of scared rabbit, and then she was out the door.  "Car.  I...  Car.  I'll meet you," she muttered as she left.

He stumbled out into the hallway after her, leaning against the walls, against anything that would support him.  Railings.  Hospitals had railings.  After the darkness of the on-call room, the fluorescent lights that ran along the ceiling were positively painful.  Each time he blinked, it was like tiny toothpicks were stabbing at his eyes.  He wanted to close his eyes and curl up, but if he closed his eyes, he wouldn't be able to see anything.  The rest of his life was escaping.  And he couldn't let it.  Not until he had a chance to talk with her, make some fucking sense of things.

"Meredith," he said.  His arms started to shake under his weight like he had done too many push ups.  Hell, he'd spent half the night crawling through the damned bushes.  It was the same thing.  "Damn it," he hissed.  Damn it, damn it, damn it.  Why had he opened his stupid mouth?  Why?

Because he wanted her.  Wanted.  Wanted.  Wanted.

He curled against the wall for a moment, breathing, stunned as everything went topsy-turvy for a second.  He bit back on the sudden nausea.  She was leaving.  She was leaving.  She was leaving.

Stupid.

"Hey!  You can't be here!  This area is restricted!" someone shouted from behind him, guttural and mean.

The sudden intrusion into his own mental space jabbed him back into stumbling movement.  "Sorry, got lost," he called back over his shoulder, cringing at how... off he sounded.  His muscles snapped and twined with tension.  He propelled himself after her, watched with a frown as her tiny, lithe little body disappeared around the corner.  Everything.  Everything hurt.  It hurt.

He'd been sore from the night before.  Now he felt more than sore.  He felt torn.  And tiredness stuck behind his eyes like some sort of thick, melted, gooey taffy.  He couldn't...  He growled at himself.  Weak.  He wanted to yell in frustration, wanted to yell, and rage and stomp, except he was so tired he'd probably just fall over if he tried.  Through sheer act of will, he managed to keep her mostly in sight.

Meredith plunged through the halls, past the waiting room for the trauma ward to the wide, sliding bay doors.  She moved out into the parking lot at a tromping, fleeing, breakneck pace.  He moved after her, slower, ganglier, but he managed.  Until the door whooshed open for him, and he stepped out onto the sidewalk.

It was like a wall of light had collided with him and slammed knives back through his eyeballs on impact.  For a second, he couldn't breathe, and he certainly couldn't see.  He stood there, frozen, his breath hanging on a gasp.  He flailed, searching for his sunglasses.  He could have sworn they'd been hooked on his jeans, but...  But now they weren't.  Where had he?  Where...

He couldn't remember, and he wanted to shout until the lack of air asphyxiated him.

When he tried to think back to where he'd put them, all he could think about was Meredith's naked skin sliding against his own, Meredith's slick, tight heat, clenching around him as she gasped and writhed, the soft gray of her eyes, hazed with sex as she stared at him while he speared her.  His sunglasses hadn't entered into the equation.  And he couldn't...

He blinked once, and the flare of brilliance tamped down into something more like an overexposed photograph than staring straight into the sun.  It was too bright.  Too bright.  But he would... He squinted, put a hand over his brow.  Tears formed in irritation as he forced himself to look, look despite the jabbing pain pulsing back through his skull.  Movement.  He saw the blur that had to be Meredith about forty paces ahead of him, and he forced himself to move.

Bright.  Bright.  It was too bright.  He wobbled, but righted himself before the pavement rushed up to grab him.  He swallowed against the sudden queasiness developing in the back of his throat.

"Meredith, wait.  Please, stop.  Just stop," he called, his voice sounding strangely twisted and hoarse to his own ears.  He'd been making lots of noise, lots of...  Grunting.  Earlier.  And now he was hoarse.  Stupid, stupid sex.

She didn't even look at him before she crumbled herself into the driver's side of Kathy's Mercedes.  He shambled around to the passenger side, praying she hadn't locked him out of the car or something.  He blindly searched for the handle, feeling along the side of the door.  The metal on the car was hot.  Hot and... there.  He curled his fingers under the lever and pulled.  The handle gave way, and he collapsed gratefully into the car.  He blinked, barely able to see straight.

Bright.  Bright.  Too bright.  He leaned his head back against the headrest and rolled to face her.  Spinning.  Spinning.  Things were spinning.  But now that he was there, had an audience with her, he couldn't let her see it, couldn't let her see that he was about ready to keel over, because she would... And he didn't want her to... He wanted her to listen and not feel guilty.

She still wasn't looking at him.  He had a minute.  He swallowed, blinked, wiped the tears back with his shaking hands, and forced himself to box up all the badness happening right then.  He boxed it up, until he could see if he squinted and ignored the pain.  As long as he didn't have to chase her again, he could manage.  He could...  He breathed.

"Meredith, I-" he began, but she sat there, staring blankly over the steering wheel at the sunny, shiny parking lot that he couldn't even force himself to look at, and she cut him off.

"But we don't want to get married," she said, her voice tiny.  Almost frightened.

He swallowed and shoved all the remaining complaints his body was lodging down, deep down.  They could wait.  They could wait, but this... This couldn't.  This was the rest of his life.  This was Meredith.  This couldn't wait.

"Meredith," he said, reaching across the parking brake to grab her arm.  He rubbed it with the pad of his thumb.  Her skin felt cool against his own.  Fever.  He hoped she wouldn't notice.  "I lied."

She blinked, finally turning to face him.  Her eyes widened.  "You what?"

"You practically spat at me when I mentioned it before," he said.  "What was I supposed to say to that?  Of course I shrugged it off and said no, I wasn't interested."

"But..."

By some miracle, he managed to hold his hands still as he reached across to cup her face.  "Meredith, I love you.  I want you.  I want this."  He drew his hands down and rested them on either side of her neck, just over the bumps of her clavicles, resting, waiting, trying to assure her that he was there and he wasn't leaving.

"But what about what I want?" she asked, her voice, tiny, small, like someone lost in the fray of life, unsure of anything.  She met his eyes, blinked, and her eyes watered over just a little, enough to send a pair of tears sluicing down with big, fat, plops as they rolled off her cheeks and landed on his forearms.

He swallowed, drawing back as though she'd slapped him away.  "What do you want, Mere?  If I can give it to you, I'll give it.  Just..."  Please, don't say no.

"I don't know," she whined.  "I love you, but..."

"But what?"

She started to cry.  Again.  She started to cry, and the sounds of her sobs slipped under his ribs like a knife.  He sat there, torn between trying to comfort her and giving her space.  He didn't know what the hell to do right then.  He was sitting there, a pile of confused, messy thoughts.  He didn't regret asking, but, he'd made her cry.  And that, he would regret forever.  This was supposed to be...

Different.

She was supposed to have smiled, said yes, and they would get their happily ever after.  In his fantasies, that was how things happened.  Except she was crying, and he was...  Sick with more things than just a concussion.  Confused.  Hurting.

"I just barely got used to the idea of wanting everything, seizing it for myself," she moaned.  "And you...  You went and shook it all up again.  I feel like a freaking snow globe.  Stewart warned me you were going to... but I thought.   I thought you'd do the kneeling thing at a restaurant or something, because..."  She paused, stopping to shrug at him helplessly.  "Because you're you.  And that's the sort of cheesy thing you'd do.  I thought I had some time.  I didn't expect... I... I..."

"Meredith, Meredith," he whispered.  "Just because I proposed... It doesn't mean..."

"It doesn't mean what?"

"It doesn't change anything.  It doesn't mean anything has to happen tomorrow.  It just means we know where the end of the road is going to be."

"But...  But Cristina..."  Meredith's voice broke, and Derek fought to hold the fury down as understanding crashed into him like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence.

He wished, just this once, that his friend had not gotten it in his head that he wanted to marry Cristina.  Meredith had told him about the cake tasting, told him about Burke's increasing list of demands that were driving Cristina into fit after fit.  And now, because of Burke, she thought...  She thought...  And now it was ruining everything.  Because Meredith and Cristina were each other's person.  Of course Meredith would compare her situation to Cristina's.  Even though it wasn't even remotely similar.  Because Derek Shepherd and Preston Burke had egos the size of Texas, but that was about where the similarities ended.

"Meredith, I'm not Preston Burke," Derek said.  "I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to do yet.  I'm not going to force a date on you.  I'm not going to make you pick a damned cake.  Hell, if you want a wedding with nothing but those little hotdog things on sticks for the menu, I really don't care."  He paused, breathed, blinked, tried to keep himself together.  "Well, okay, I care, but I'd still do it.  I love you.  I want you.  And if that means I have to wait until you're ready, then, fine, I'll wait.  But I want to marry you.  I couldn't imagine not marrying you at this point.  You're it for me, Meredith.  You're my end of the road.  I loved Addison.  I did."  She was staring at him oddly now, and he couldn't help but just keep talking, talking, talking.  Anything to get her to figure out he was serious, and that he wanted her, and that it was okay to say yes.  "But it never...  It was never like this, Meredith.  It never...  Clicked like this.  You fit with me.  I fit with you.  I know we both have issues we need to work on.  I know we both have baggage that we're trying to chuck.  But I...  You're just...  It.  I want to marry you, Meredith.  I want that.  Badly.  And, even if you don't want to say yes yet, I want you to know that that's where my head is at right now.  I'm sorry...  I'm sorry I was so abrupt like that.  It probably wasn't the most romantic thing I could have done, but I don't regret the actual saying of it.  At that moment, that moment when I said it, it just seemed perfect, and I..."

His voice fell away, and the words just... stopped, leaving him abandoned on the brink of explanation.  A strange anger racked him, anger at himself, for helping her get to this place, this place where he had to be sitting there spouting his undying devotion, just to get her to even consider, anger at her, for being so stubborn and flighty, despite the fact that most of it was his fault, anger at the world, and most of all, anger at the stupid car and the stupid deer that had made him crash it.  Because he felt terrible.  He felt terrible, and he had just proposed, and he should be on top of the world.  God, it was so fucking bright.  He leaned back against the seat and tried to breathe, tried to keep his eyes open and looking at her like he was supposed to be.  It was so hard.  He wanted to throw up.  He wanted to curl up and sleep.  She was so upset she didn't notice, and that started the whole thing again, anger.  Anger at them being in this situation.

He just wanted her to want him.

She sniffled.  "I do want to say yes," she said as she wiped her hands at her face, drawing the little tear tracks across her skin like a layer of wet paint.  "I do."

His heart thudded in his chest.  "Then say yes.  And we'll work on the rest later."

She turned away again and stared out at the parking lot.  He took the opportunity to wipe his tearing eyes again and rest, eyes shut against the wall of brightness.  Bright.  Too bright.

Her voice broke through the roar of blood in his ears.  "Would I have to wear a ring?"

"If you want a ring, I'll buy you a ring, Mere," he said, forcing his eyes back open, forcing, forcing.  Why were eyelids such heavy things?  And why did the sun have to be out today?  She was still looking away.  "Any ring you want."

He got a grip on his composure just in time, because she turned back to face him.  "But what do you want?"

He breathed through his nose.  "I just want to marry you."

"You really don't care about... the details?"

"You.  Me.  Wedding," he said, shrugging.  "The rest I don't care about, no."

A new well of tears collected in a film across her eyes.  She blinked, and they went careening down her face.  "Who would give me away?" she asked.

His heart twisted.  "Oh, Mere..." he whispered.  He reached across and brushed them away for her, reached across the parking brake and wrapped himself around her.  He suddenly didn't care how uncomfortable he was, didn't care how sick he felt.  "I'm sorry.  I really didn't mean to push you.  It's the last thing I intended.  I just..."

Want you.

"I'm not used to being wanted," she whispered into his neck, as if she'd heard him thinking.  Her tiny fingers clutched at the nape of his neck, curling into his hair, and it was the one soothing thing he felt in a mess of discomfort.

"Meredith, I want you," he said.  A sigh ratcheted his body, and he buried his face in her shoulder, where it was dark, and cool, and he could smell the lavender of her conditioner, the cinnamon of her body lotion, and it was just...  A rest from the world that watched him with a gleeful, sadistic smile, waiting for him to look up so it could plunge its bitter knives in.  Again.   "I want you more than that job.  I want you more than air, sometimes," he murmured into her neck.

She brushed her fingers through his hair, ran her hands down his back.  It felt so nice.  So nice.  And he wanted to sleep but...  "You'd really let me have a wedding banquet with nothing but hotdogs?" she asked.

"Um," he said, unable to stop the wry, breaking chuckle that spilled out from his lips.  "Well, I kind of hope you would rather have something actually edible.  But if it meant you'd say yes, then, yeah, Mere.  I'd live with it."  He pulled back from her, back into the brightness, and he forced himself not to flinch as the stabbing slammed into him again.

"Hotdogs are totally edible."

He flopped his head back against the seat and laughed.  "Do you know what's in hotdogs, Mere?"

"Do I want to?" she asked.

"Probably not."

"Okay," she said.

Silence stretched between them like the hammer pulling back in a gun.  It was a moment of anticipation, a dreadful, cloying moment, that had his heart thundering in his chest, because he could see that she was deciding.  He could see it from the way the thoughts crossed her face, each one clear and readable, just by the way her lips curled or her nostrils flickered or her eyebrows twitched.  She wore everything on her face, vulnerable, and she was deciding.  She was...

The bullet ignited, and the silence tore away.

"I don't have to pick a date if I say yes?" she said.  "I don't have to..."

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, Meredith."

Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel.  The whites of her knuckles grew white, white, whiter.  She swallowed.  "Where would we live?  After...  Where...  I can't kick Izzie and Alex out...  I can't..."

He reached to touch her shoulder.  "Meredith, breathe."

"Sorry."

"Stop worrying about the details right now.  We don't need details.  All I'm asking for is--"

"You're asking me for forever, Derek," she snapped.  "You can't ask me forever and not expect me to freak out a little.  I'm... Me."

He smiled.  "I love that you're you."

"I'm sorry I'm...  You really want forever?  With me?"

"I really do," he whispered.

She blinked and took a long, slow breath.  "What if I don't want kids?"

It wasn't what he'd been expecting.  Her words.  Not... What he'd been expecting.  He felt like she'd sucker punched him, gone for the guts and just... Slam.  He sucked in a breath, reeling.

"I..." he managed, but his voice was taken away from him.  She didn't want kids?  He'd had a feeling that she would, at the very least, want to wait for quite a few years if she was even willing to try at all, but, he'd never heard her come right out and say... It...  The crush wouldn't let him breathe.

She stared at him, her gaze serious, as if she were trying to separate his layers with an apple peeler or something.  "What if I don't want kids, Derek?" she said, her voice demanding, demanding that he face the precipice and answer.  "What then?  I know you.  I know you want them."

He swallowed, grunted, tried to find his voice.  She didn't want kids.  It...  No kids.  But...  But she was Meredith.  And she was...

Meredith.

And he loved her.

"Meredith, having a baby with you..." he replied, choking slightly on the words.  "That would be...  That would be the greatest gift in the world to me.  I sort of always assumed that I would never get a chance to be a dad.  With Addison.  She just didn't...  She's not a mothering type.  And I...  Well, you know I want kids, Meredith.  I can't lie about that.  I want them.  I really want them.  But..."  He stopped, stopped, and breathed.  And then he embraced the rest of his life without regret.  "If having kids means I can't have you...  It's...  It's not a deal breaker.  That you don't want them.  It's not."

"But it would hurt you," she said.

"It would hurt me more if you walked away from me," he replied.

"I just don't..."  She paused to shake her head and sigh.  "I don't understand why you're willing to give up so much for me, Derek.  I don't..."

"Meredith..."

"You'd make such a great dad," she said, her voice twisting with crying that wasn't happening.  "You would.  You're so good with kids.  And I... I'm just... Me."

"You're the love of my life, Meredith," he said, interrupting her.  "If you have kids, you'll be perfect to me.  If you don't, you'll still be perfect.  I just want you to say yes, Meredith.  I want you.  Please."

"Why?" she asked, sounding utterly exasperated.

He paused.  Why?  Why...  There really wasn't a why.  "Because you make me happy, Meredith," he said.  "Isn't that enough?"

The steering wheel squeaked as she clenched her fingers around it and wrung them nervously against the leather.  Squick, squick, squeak.  Squeak, squeak, squick.  It was maddening, maddening to watch her so distraught and...

"Okay," she whispered.

His thoughts stuttered to a halt, and he just sat there, stunned, off-kilter, reeling.  Things started to spin again, and he swallowed.

"Okay?" he asked.

She turned to look at him, her eyes serious, but... twinkling.  "But I don't want to set a...  Can we just... be... for a while?"

His heart started to skitter.  She was.  She was saying...  "We can just be for as long as you want, Mere," he said.

She smiled.  The seat squeaked as she leaned across the parking brake, pulled a tent of his shirt and twisted it between her fingers, and gently tugged him closer.  "So," she said, her lips a breath from his.  "I guess this makes me your fiancé."

"I guess it does," he said.  She leaned closer, and they met.  She sighed into his mouth, and he drank her down until he was dizzy with it.  He leaned, ran his fingers through her hair.  The seats squeaked as they shifted.  The air wafted with a sudden heat.  The sound of breathing rushed against his eardrums like a caress.  She whimpered as he pushed into her with his tongue, and they mingled, skin to skin in a delicious slip, slip, slide of twisting, slick heat.  Her hand went up the back of his shirt, running along his spine, and he rolled into her like a wave.  The parking brake jabbed his quad, but he didn't care, didn't care one bit.

When she pulled back, her flesh, pale before with anxiety and indecision, was flushed, rosy, and covered with just the faintest sheen of sweat.  Her hair was a muss of flying, wayward strands.  Her lips were swollen.  And she looked...  Happy.

"We can't have sex in Kathy's car.  I like Kathy," Meredith said, panting, but grinning.

He snorted.  "I think sex right now would kill me, Mere.  You don't have to worry."  He pulled back, enjoying the slight buzz that took away his aching for a moment.  He thumped his head against the cool glass of the window and sighed.  Cool, it felt.  Good.  A distressed sound ran over his vocal cords before he could stop it, but he didn't think she'd heard.  Sex.  In the car.  Yeah right.

"Do we have to tell everyone yet?" she asked.

He rolled his head to face her and regarded her.  "You decide, Mere.  The rest...  Whatever you want."  He had what he wanted.  He had it.  He had her.

She remained silent for a moment.  "I think I'd like to wait until we can at least come up with a cover story."

"A cover story?"

"I'm not telling your mother you proposed to me naked.  We should do the kneeling restaurant thing, you know, just to make it official."

"You want me to..."

"Yeah," she said, her lips quirking into an evil grin.  "Surprise me."

"We don't go out to eat that often, Mere.  I don't think it would be much of a surprise."

"It doesn't have to be over food.  Just..."  She shrugged.  "Surprise me."

"Okay.  I'll um...  Damn.  Now I have to get creative."

"At least you know I'll say yes."

They sank into a warm, comfortable silence for a moment, and he sat there, warm, shaky, and reeling.  He had to propose... Again?  How the hell...  He swallowed.  He'd tried to do the planning thing with Addison, and that hadn't worked out at all, because he'd just ended up fumbling all over himself and spilling the question before he was ready, he'd been so nervous.  But...  But this was Meredith.  And she wanted a surprise.  She would...  He would give her a surprise.

Because he had what he wanted.  And if he could give her something she wanted, well, he'd kill himself to do it.

"So," he said, his voice wavering as the stress of the morning finally started to leak away.  She settled back into the seat and started fumbling for her seatbelt.  "Are we okay now?"

"Yeah," she said, grinning.  The skin around her eyes crinkled, and she looked... Looked like she was glowing.  "We're okay, fiancé."  She giggled, giggled as if the word sounded foreign to her, and yet... perfect.  He watched her lips move as she mouthed the word again, silent, staring out at the stabbing, brilliant parking lot with a sort of delirious glee.

Warmth slipped around his heart and cupped it.  For just a minute, he was in a perfect place.  And for that moment, that blissful, perfect moment, he let himself just be, and watched her with a growing, exploding delight.

"Good," he said, smiling weakly as the thrill washed back down his throat and left him realizing his box was coming loose at the seams.  She was going to marry him.  She was.  His.  And...  "Good.  That's.  Good."  He collapsed back against the seat, finally letting the sickness roll over him like a wave.  He closed his eyes, shut the world out, and tried not to shake as everything swept back over him.

"Oh, my god," her voice whispered from far away.  He felt her hand on his shoulder, and then her touch slipped up along his skin to his neck, to the spot just under his jaw line where she would find his pulse, thready, fast, and badly in need of a pacemaker right then.  "Derek?"

"I want to go home," he said, swallowing.  "Please."

He couldn't move.  He didn't want to.  He just wanted to curl up in the dark right then and die.  Except it wasn't dark.  And he couldn't.

There was a long moment of silence, and he wondered, agonized, if she was ever going to start the car.  He heard a crinkling noise.  "Your sunglasses," she whispered.  "I took them and put them with my scrub cap. I... Didn't realize...  This whole time?"

He flinched and then relaxed as he figured out she was putting the sunglasses on his face, hooking them gently over his ears.  He blinked, tried opening his eyes again experimentally, but even behind the shade of the lenses, everything was still a wash of painful, bright, stabbing color.  He was overexposed, and it was way, way too late for the stupid things to do much good.  He closed his eyes.

"My head hurts," he said simply.

The car started without delay, and soon he felt the floor under his feet vibrating.  The car moved, thumping painfully over things like speed bumps, jerking, rolling, wobbling.  It made everything swim, even with his eyes shut.  He sat, silent, breathing, in misery.

In misery, but...

He smiled anyway.  Because she was going to marry him.  The pain bled away into the background, and the smile widened.  He couldn't turn it off.  It was just there, stuck on his face like a neon post-it note.  She was going to marry him.  She was.  She was his.  His thoughts drifted.  He thought he heard Meredith cursing at some, "Asshole!  He cut me off!  Five damned cars in the whole of the county, and he still found me to cut me off!" but it was in the peripheral.  Just a minute detail in a sketch of thousands.  A sigh lingered in his chest, and sleep finally came, despite the roil in his gut, the spinning, the lancing headache.  Because she was going to marry him.

And that was the best morphine in the world.