Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 48

[ariaadagio]

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

Well, I'm gonna ninja this part in here.  OMG, you're thinking.  A one part part?  It's actually only about 800 words short of the upper limit, so it's not all that much shorter :)  It's the first half of the bigger 'part' that I'm working on, but it was a really good stopping place, and I have a looong way to go to finish my original plans for what was all supposed to be part 48.  Obviously, this isn't the last part before the wedding like I had planned.  We'll just see how long I can manage to torment myself with extra parts, heh.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy this.  This was an issue I wasn't exactly planning on dealing with yet in the LSTverse, but it's been dangling there, Meredith decided she wanted to go there, and this will offer some good setup for the sequel, should I choose to write it.  And MerDer talk.  With words.  It's freaky that way.  And a nice change from the show.

I'm behind again on the feedback.  Thank you so much for the comments everyone, I adore/appreciate/devour/love every word :)

~~~~~

Izzie, Alex, Cristina, and George exited the locker room in a jumble of cheerful limbs and smiling faces, all clutching sheets of folded paper that had, in their brief moments of existence outside their envelopes, received far too much abuse.  Alex smacked George on the back, the paper fisted in his hand crinkling on the fleshy, thudding impact.  George shifted with the force of the playful blow and returned the gesture, for once not seeming to mind Alex's tendency toward violence.  Cristina wore a haughty, tight expression that said with the barest curl of her lip and the creases around her eyes that she knew she was the best.  Izzie glowed, bright cheer rolling from her features like a solid thing he could pluck out of the air with his fingers and taste.

But the person he wanted to see, the person he'd been searching for since he'd finished with Dr. Weller thirty minutes before, the person he intended to spend the rest of his life with, was absent.  Derek frowned, trying not to let painful, crushing amounts of concern spirit him to an early grave, trying to ignore the pangs of missing.  Missing her.  He hadn't seen Meredith since Friday morning when she'd woken him up to say goodbye.  He'd paged her when his mother had dropped him off at Seattle Grace that morning for his appointment, but she hadn't answered before Dr. Weller had led him back into an exam room.

Everyone looked up at Derek at once.  Derek halted mid-stride, leaning against the railing, feeling frail under the onslaught of all their stares.  He took his hand away from the wall, flexing his fingers as he tried to return their smiles and forced himself not to worry at his nonexistent hair.  There was nothing to grip, no satisfaction to be had from yanking on phantom curls and tangles, and it would only upset the cap he wore.  The cap Meredith had given him.

"Dr. Shepherd," Izzie said, her upward-turning pitch betraying her surprise.  "We all passed.  Yay!"  She pumped her splayed hands in the air as she flashed her brilliant teeth, and then she added as an afterthought, pointing at the door behind her, "Meredith is still changing."

"Congratulations," he said, a coil of relief winding through him.  Meredith.  In the locker room.  Meredith was fine.  Meredith had passed.  He tried not to worry about why she hadn't called.  Why she hadn't answered her cell phone or responded to his pages.  He tried.

The crowd of interns - residents, he corrected himself - brushed past him, laughing, joking, jovial.  It was only one in the afternoon, but it was tradition at Seattle Grace for all the newly adorned residents to leave early to celebrate.  He remembered his first day at work.  Chief Webber had warned him that residents would be a scarce resource that day because all the new second years would be absent, so Derek had improvised and asked the brand new interns for help with Katie Bryce.  He'd been pleased, because the request for aid had brought him Meredith, not just as an enchanting woman with a captivating presence and the most beautiful eyes he'd ever seen, but into his awareness as a capable, bright colleague who showed a thrilling amount of aptitude for neurosurgery.

The rest had been history.

He took a breath and pushed through the door into the locker room.  Empty, was his first thought.  Empty except for her.  His gaze fell onto the slope of her back and the stray wisps of her looped-under ponytail, and in that moment, perfection took away his ability to perceive anything but that fact that Meredith was there, he was happy to find her after so long without her, and they were alone.

"Hey!" he said.  "So, I seem to be going fishing with Dr. Weller in two weeks.  I have no idea how that happened.  I didn't know he fished, but-"  He breathed when his brain kicked in to interpret the scene before his eyes.  "Meredith?"

Meredith sat with her back to him, straddling the small wooden bench of the empty locker room.  She wore her pale blue scrubs and a lavender-colored undershirt.  Her shoulders curled over as though she were clutching something to her chest, and everything trembled, from her socked feet to the trail of her ponytail to the slice of her shoulder blades against the fabric of her scrubs.

She flinched, sniffled, and rubbed her nose.  "H-Hey," she said, her voice low and throaty.  She'd been crying.  Was crying.  "I missed you."

His chest tightened.  He swallowed, straddling the bench just behind her as he wrapped his arms around her and breathed her in, letting his torso settle against hers like a cloak.  Warmth seeped into him, dulling his ache for her, at the same time leaving him with a profound sort of guilt.  Guilt for taking comfort when something was so horribly jilted out of place.

"I missed you, too," he whispered into her neck.  "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," she said, staring at her lap.  "Nothing..."

"Why do I not believe you?" he began, peering over her shoulder.  A crumpled, stained piece of paper twisted its way through her clenched fist.  The scrub cap he'd given her lay against her lap, crinkled, splotched with darker patches hinting at wetness.  Tears?  The purple strings trailed over the sides of her quads, forgotten, wispy, and, for a moment, his site blurred on the wild sprawl of lavender sprigs.  He tightened his grip around her stomach, trying to ignore the pangs of worry snarling through his gut.  "Is that your letter?" he said.

Her fingers tightened around the paper.  The blood slipped from her knuckles, leaving them white, cold, and trembling.  "Yeah," she said.  "I...  Yeah."

"Is it..."  He swallowed, unable to bring himself to finish.

Is it bad?  Did you fail?

Maybe he'd misinterpreted what Izzie had said.  But something in his brain refused to believe it.  Meredith couldn't have failed.  She'd been ready.  She'd been more than ready.  She knew everything there was to know, at least everything that could possibly be on a test meant for beginners in the field.

The exam wasn't that hard.  At least not that he remembered.  Though, a decade tended to dull perceptions.

He'd waited the day before, waited for her to call when she got out of her exam, but it was an eight-hour proficiency test.  Eight hours, and he'd skipped sleeping while he waited because he'd been jittery, and hopeful, and anxious.  For her.  He'd known she was going to pass, but that hadn't precluded the act of worrying on her behalf.  He'd skipped sleeping, and he'd gotten a monster headache, one that'd started as a small throb and had degenerated quickly into lancing thunderbolts of agony the longer he pushed himself to ignore it.

He'd still waited.

He'd waited until he couldn't think straight, until his mother had shoved his prescription bottle of codeine at him, a bottle he hadn't yet had to use.  Skipping sleep and taking a narcotic known for its sedative qualities had been enough to pull him out of the waiting and into dreaming no matter how much he had wanted to hear her voice.  He hadn't woken up until his mother had slipped a hand down his back and whispered softly, Derek, sweetheart, your appointment is in an hour.

He'd blinked, groggily realizing a day had melted away into the ether while he'd been out, and then he'd spent five minutes staring at the empty pillow beside him, wondering.  Wondering.  Wishing.

"Mere, is it..." he murmured.

"Izzie, George, Cristina, and Alex all went to celebrate," she replied.

"I know.  Mere, what's...  How..."  He reached under her shoulders for the paper.  "May I see?"

"Yeah," she said, loosening her grip around the paper.

He pinched it and pulled it away from her, meeting only slight resistance.  Her torso wobbled as he shifted to uncrumple the mess.  The letter was thick, printed on expensive, extra-white paper that felt slick underneath his fingertips despite the wrinkles and lines Meredith had worried into the grain.  He scanned the letter quickly.  Dear Dr. Meredith Grey.  For a moment, he couldn't read it.  All he saw was the box with numbers listed by every specialty the interns were expected to have experience with.  General Surgery.  Neurosurgery.  Orthopedic Surgery.  Plastic Surgery.  Cardiothoracic Surgery.  Neonatal Surgery.  The list went on and on.  His breath caught on the column of percentages and the emboldened total at the bottom.

"This says you passed," he said.  "99th percentile.  You didn't just pass it.  You destroyed it."

"Yeah," she replied.

"Then what's...  Why?" he asked, flustered, unable to stop the broad, glowing smile from overtaking his features as unadulterated pride overwhelmed him.  "You had me worried for a second."

A shiver ran through her.  "It's over," she said.  "It's really over."

"Yes," he said.  "You're a second-year resident.  You did it."

"I'm a resident," she said, her tone a little dumbfounded.  "Not an intern."

"And you'll have your own interns to boss around soon enough," he added.  "Not until next year, though."

"I know," she said.  "I just...  It's over."

"Shhh," he whispered into her ear, tightening his embrace.  She leaned against him and started to cry again, into his neck, his shirt, clutching at him.  Her torso shivered with spasms of grief.  It was an ugly sort of crying.  Ugly, red-eyed, sniffling.  There was no elegance or sexiness to it, and the sound of her weeping made him feel like she'd taken his heart into her hands, applied a wrench to it, and was twisting, twisting, twisting.  He hugged her.  "You made it, Mere," he murmured, nuzzling her ear, rocking her slowly back and forth.  "You did it."

"I made it," she gasped, hiccupping.

"Did you want to go join your friends?" he asked.  "I'm sure they'd want you there to celebrate."

They'd, no doubt, gone to Joe's.  He remembered the night he'd found out he'd passed his test.  He and Mark and Addison had all gone out for shots, though Addison had been commemorating the start of her internship while Mark and Derek had been memorializing the end of theirs.  They'd all gotten drunk.  Very drunk.  One of the rare times Derek had allowed himself to get pissed to the point he hadn't been able to see straight.  He could count the times he'd gotten that drunk on one hand.  Turning twenty-one, graduating med school, finishing his internship, finding Mark in his marital bed, and meeting Meredith at Joes...  Five times.  In his whole life.  Except for finding Mark with Addison, they'd all marked happy points in his life, and they were good memories, what blurry bits he could recall.  He'd had Meredith rather solidly in his grasp for two weeks, and, though he missed her, she deserved to make good memories with her friends, too.  Because she'd made it.  She'd finished.  They'd all finished.  And, really, that was rather astounding given all the horrible moments crammed between the starting line and the moment they hovered in now, breathing, tired, finished.

"No," she whispered.  "No, I...  Please, just stay here for a minute."

"Okay," he replied.  "Okay, I'm here."

She gripped his forearms with her hands, letting her spindly, dexterous fingers run against the soft forest of hairs in a whisper of touch.  He sighed, his eyelids drooping shut, wishing he had any idea how to fix it for her.  Fix it.  He wasn't even quite sure what needed to be fixed.  She'd passed.  She'd more than passed.

But she was crying.  And the crying was what mattered.  The crying was what confused him.

His breaths jittered against the slope of her neck as he buried his nose in her hair.  The scent of lavender caressed his throat.  The locker room bounced noises around, the acoustics of bare tiles and metal lockers stretching sounds and repeating them faint, fainter, faintest as they cascaded into memory.  Though they were alone, the sighs of her shuddering breaths, the rustling of their clothes, the slide of skin on skin lapped against him like the undulation of waves against a shore.  Rush, silence, rush, silence, rush...  In the dips of quiet between her breaths, he listened to the blood coursing underneath her skin, stared dully at the shafts of sunlight slanting into the room through the wide windowpanes.  Gradually, her sadness waned into a relaxed sort of comfort.  He sighed as the tension slackened.  Her fingers slid against his skin, but her grip lost its worry, traded it for worship, as though she were convincing herself he was real.  He squeezed her.  He was real.

"How'd your appointment go?" she asked.

He grinned into her neck, kissing her softly over the bumps of her cervical vertebrae.  "I'm still in one piece."

"I'm sorry."

"That I'm still in one piece?" he said, quirking an eyebrow at her.  "I'm kind of pleased about that, actually..."

"No, I'm."  Her shoulders started to shake, followed quickly by the rest of her thin, tiny frame.  "I'm.  I'm..." she sobbed, spasms twitching through her like aftershocks from an earthquake.

"Shhh," he whispered.  "It's okay.  It's okay."  He rubbed her up and down with his hands, devolving frantically into confused worry again.  He had no idea.  No idea what to do.  No idea what was wrong.  And no idea how much longer they would have the locker room to themselves.

He stood, slipping his hand under her thighs.  He took her up into his arms, gravity pulling her body down until she fit, knees bent over his elbow.  Her scrub cap fell into the dipping v formed by her legs and torso.  The tips of her toes knocked aside her battered Converse sneakers from their precarious perch on the bench to the floor, where they tumbled into a one face up, one face down pose seemingly fit for a catalogue, but he didn't pay them any mind, and he doubted anyone would want to steal them.

She clutched at him, and he breathed, breathed as her weight settled onto his spine and into the muscles of his back and legs and shoulders.  His bones felt like they'd all jammed together, and his legs stiffened under the sudden strain.  She'd never been this heavy before, never ever.  But he could.  He could lift her.  And he could walk with her.  He was well rested, feeling fine, and he could lift Meredith.  He'd always been able to lift her.  He gritted his teeth.

"Stop," she whispered as he backed out into the hallway with her.  "You're not supposed to lift..."

"Shhh," he soothed.  "It's not like I'm going to herniate myself.  It's my head that's messed up."

"Derek..." she protested, but he ignored her.

He glanced up and down the hallway, which was empty in the late lunchtime lull, and pushed across the hall to the nearest on-call room.  Bunk beds lined the wall.  Silence gripped the room, but it wasn't as harsh, and the acoustics didn't mimic every stray sound like the barren locker room did.  Thin bars of indirect sunlight snuck in through the slats in the blinds, but it was muted, quiet, soft, like an afterthought more than something meant to light the room.  The beds were all made and neat, sheets crisply folded.  No one had taken refuge there, it seemed, at least not in a few hours.  He sighed with relief, trying to ignore the screaming insistence at the back of his mind that he needed to put her down, and he needed to do it soon.  He let go of her with one hand long enough to flip the metal door lock closed.  His whole body started to shiver with strain, and he collapsed with her against the lower bunk as gracefully as he could manage, trying to make it look like he'd planned the whole thing.  He doubted she fell for it, but she didn't comment.

"See?" he said, panting softly as he ran his fingers through her hair.  Her body sprawled against the mattress and the periwinkle blankets, against him, and he leaned over her, staring into the dim, watery, pained gray of her eyes.  "I already put you down."  He gifted her with his best, sexy smirk as he stretched and settled along the length of her, re-gathering her in his arms.  "You want to tell me what's wrong?"

She wiped at her face with her palms, laughing softly in the darkness, but it was a woeful sound, not a happy one, and it made his heart twist.  "You know that part of the stress thing?" she said.

"What part?"

"The part where it stops, and you realize you're a wreck..."

He nodded.  "I know that part."

"I'm there," she whispered.  "I'm so there.  I'm..."

"Breathe, Mere," he replied, rumbling against her ears.  "It's okay.  Breathe.  Take deep breaths."

"You don't understand," she said.  "I have to cook dinner."

He pulled back to peer at her.  "What?"

"I told Susan to come over tonight for dinner," she said.  "She called yesterday.  I'm sorry.  I didn't tell you.  I just... She blindsided me, and I was so nervous from the test, I just sort of said yes.  And I invited her for dinner.  And I just...  I just...  Oh, god."

"Mere, it's okay," he assured her.

Her fingers clutched the sleeves of his shirt.  "But we had plans!  Ice cream plans!"

"It's okay.  The ice cream will keep.  And who says we can't do it afterward, anyway?"

He grinned at her, petting her cheeks with his palms.  Her freckled skin was warm and soft.  The tiny, faint hairs caught on the pads of his fingers and prostrated themselves under his caresses.  She looked so distraught.  And worried.  Tears hugged her eyes like a layer of liquid glass, making the gray of her irises seem deeper, somehow.  Fathomless.  A part of him found relief in the fact that her upset had only sprung from the prospect of her stepmother coming over, only the prospect of not having time to have sex.  Except for someone like Meredith, her stepmother coming over wasn't really an event classifiable by the word only.  Because it was huge.

"It's really okay, Meredith," he murmured.  "We'll deal."

"But I don't know what to make," she moaned.  "I don't know how to make what I don't know that I'm making.  I don't...  Izzie made everything last time.  But she's out getting drunk with everyone.  And I...  Oh, god.  I'm going to be one of those people who throws catered stuff into the oven and calls it done.  It's horrible."

"Meredith, I'm sure Susan wouldn't mind if-"

"I don't even have anything to make.  I didn't..."

"Meredith!" he snapped, trying to get her to pay attention.  "Do you want me to call and cancel?  I can..."

"No, no, I just...  Food," she said.  "We need it."

"We'll go to the grocery store."

"I don't know what to make."

He laughed.  "I'll think of something.  Okay?"

She shook her head.  "You can't cook."

"Why not?"

"Because you're..."

"Meredith, I'm fine," he insisted.  "I'm completely fine.  I'm not ready to run a marathon or anything, but I think I can swing dinner for us."

"I didn't mean to...  What can you...  You don't..."

"Breathe," he said.  "I don't what?"

She frowned.

He paused for a moment to self-assess.  Was he lying?  Was he not fine?  She tended to know.  It was the only thing he could think of, the only reason she would be this vehemently opposed.  He didn't hurt.  The headache from yesterday had disappeared, slipping into the blur as his dreams had started.  Weird dreams.  Narcotic dreams that he didn't really remember beyond the vague impression that they had been very odd.  But dreams, nonetheless.  His muscles felt a little shaky from lifting her.  He didn't think he wanted to try that again anytime soon.  Fatigue buzzed behind his eyes.  Just a hint of it.  Like the whine of a mosquito passing by his ear only to fade.  But it was endurable.  He'd been enduring it since he'd gotten home from the hospital.  It was all normal, and he had no overriding need to rest, yet.  He really wasn't lying.

"Mere, I swear," he said, laughing now that he was sure.  "I'm really all right."

"But you can't cook!" she blurted.

"I just told you, Mere, I'm fine."

"No.  No, I mean, your mother.  She said...  Your soup thing.  It's fake."

He frowned, pulling back.  "What are you talking about?"

"You suck at cooking," she said.  "You used to be like me."

Her look was so serious and dire that he couldn't help but chuckle.  He'd never been like her.  He'd come to the conclusion after a year of knowing her that no one could ever be as bad in the kitchen as her.  She had the ability to mess up macaroni and cheese.  The boxed kind with the fake, powdered cheese.  He'd always thought that was impossible to mess up.  She managed, though.  He'd seen her explode hotdogs in the microwave, flatten toast into soot-patties, and even burn pop tarts.  Pop tarts, the breakfast mascot of kitchen-challenged junk food addicts everywhere.

He'd never been the best chef, but he'd had to feed himself through college and med school, and he'd been married to Addison, who, while she could cook, most often didn't deign herself to do it.  He hated going out every night, and he hated ordering in every night.  Even a simple salad from a restaurant could be death by cholesterol in a bowl.  Addison had left all the culinary work to be done by him or not to be done at all.  He'd sort of swum to keep from sinking.

But Meredith had very obviously been talking to his mother, very obviously been swapping stories.  Part of that realization made him want to groan with embarrassment.  He could imagine all the horror stories.

He remembered the time Nancy and Kathy had bullied him into clomping around the house in stilettos and a gaudy, flowery skirt.  It wasn't a memory he ever cared to explain or dwell on, but his mother had been aghast.  And he was certain that, in one of her many photo albums, his lone experience with cross-dressing had been immortalized.  Derekette.  Derekina.  Something like that.  At least, as the middle kid, he'd only had two sisters who'd ganged up on him instead of four.  He couldn't imagine what the results would have been if he'd been put under duress by four of them.  Four.  At least Mark had helped even the score.

The other part of the realization, though, was that Meredith had been talking to his mother.  His mother.  About him.  Meredith felt comfortable enough to talk to his mother.  Meredith.

And that made him forget all about embarrassment and, instead, realize a warm sort of thrill.  Meredith had found a mother figure she could actually relate with and confide in.  Meredith needed that.  And he would never, ever begrudge her any of that, stories of his childhood indiscretions notwithstanding.

"Oh, Mere," he said, leaning forward to kiss her.  "I haven't lived at home since I was eighteen.  At least not full time.  I can cook.  We'll figure something out."

"Your soup and rice thing is just soup and rice," she protested.

He laughed.  "So?  It tastes good, doesn't it?"

"Well, yeah," she conceded.  "That's kind of what your mother said, too."

"My mother is a smart woman.  Come on," he said.  "Let's go to the grocery store.  We'll figure something out.  I promise.  That's the cool thing about having family over for dinner.  Nobody cares if it's perfect because it's family.  Really, we'll be fine."

"Wait," she said, grabbing his shirt as he stood.  The fabric cut him in the side when it had no give left, and it felt like it was cutting a furrow into his neck.

He turned.  "What?"

She pulled on his shirt, drawing him a step back toward her.  She kissed his hand, her lips grazing him from the knuckle of his thumb to the bump that marked the start of his wrist.  His fingers curled, and he swallowed.  She stared at him, her eyes glazed over with a sudden riptide of sparkling desire.

"Here?" he whispered.

"Yes," she replied.

Somehow, in all their time at Seattle Grace, they'd managed to avoid the on-call rooms for sex.  The only time they'd ever had sex in the hospital at all had been during prom.  During prom and during that shower the week before.

She didn't give him a chance to answer yes or no, not that he needed it, and not that he ever would have said no.  Even if he had been tired and lying about being fine, he would have said yes.  He sighed as he collapsed back onto the bed and kissed her.

"Okay," he managed as he hovered against her lips.  "Okay, I... Oh."  She slipped her fingers underneath the waistline of his jeans, teasing his skin with her fingernails.  Then she withdrew and cupped him through the denim.  "Fuck."

"That's the idea," she purred.

She popped the top button loose, giving herself more room to stroke him, and he was lost in the overwhelming eclipse of her.  His lips parted, eyes glassy with bliss at the unexpected onslaught.  She rolled, and somehow, he ended up on his back, eyes hooded, staring up at the latticework of metal cradling the bunk overhead.  The metal crisscross pattern blurred to a dull silver, and then all he saw was her, brought into sharp clarity.  She smiled, leaning over him, flattening him against the bed.

"I really want you," she said as she clawed the rest of the buttons open.  She lunged, quick, desperate, rolling against him hip to shoulder like a settling wave.  Her lavender scrub cap fell forgotten by his waist.  They didn't even manage to get off their clothes.  She peeled away the front of his jeans, popping the remaining four buttons in quick succession and settling the flaps low against his hips, snaked him through the gap at the front of his boxers, shoved her scrubs down to her ankles, and sheathed him deep inside.

She gasped.  He gasped.

"No foreplay today, huh?" he joked, panting as she slid along his length.

"I need you," she said, and he let himself get lost in the flurry of her storm against him.  He gripped her hips, fingers biting into the layer of skin over her bones and muscles, and slid his splayed palms in an arching trail that found home when he pushed her underwires over the swell of her breasts.

She sighed, straining against him.  Her body clenched around him.  His world started to tilt at the sound of her gasping, at the hot, slick, tight feel of her as she rocked against him, an unending torrent of needing.  She nipped his lower lip, peeling it away from his teeth before plunging.  They interlocked, and her taste parted him from what was left of conscious thought.  His body started to tense, a small, hitching moan seized his vocal cords, his eyes widened, and he felt the burning, begging hint of an orgasm, urging him for a few more seconds of bliss, just a few more.  Please, please, please, just a few more.  Please.  Begging.

And then she stopped, collapsing against him with a sob.  She cried.  Was crying.  All over him.  During sex.

He blinked, forcing his arms to work, to wrap around her despite the driving instinct telling him to grind into her and let the thrum buzzing through him split into the euphoria of release.  She clenched around him, and he moaned, but he closed his eyes, counted to ten, skipping various numbers when he couldn't think of them.  One, three.  Seven.  What?  He shifted, pulling out of her before his mind exploded with the frenzy of a denied finish.  He couldn't...

He swallowed as he re-settled between her hot thighs.  "What's wrong?" he managed.  A nanosecond followed where he almost didn't care about the answer, and then reality sank in behind the fuzz of desperation.  Shivers of arousal became shivers of worry, and he tightened his grip around her trembling, tiny body.

He knew Meredith Grey.  He knew what made her smile, what made her sigh, what made her moan and shiver and writhe.  He'd drawn countless reactions from her during sex, from exquisite, simple, fluttery gasps of nearly silent orgasms, to screaming, begging, clawing explosions.  But he'd never made her cry.  During sex.  He'd never...

"God, Meredith, what..." he murmured.  "Did I hurt you?"  She'd skipped the careful moments he always took to prepare her, and she'd been very tight.  Worry slammed through him.  She'd been very tight.  She could have torn something, or... "Mere?"

She shook her head, more of a quiver than anything else.  He pulled the elastic tie from her hair and ran his fingers through the sprawl of soft, sun-kissed golds and browns and the coppers between.  The indirect light slanting into the room through the blinds made the strands sort of shimmer.  Her ear lay against his chest as though she were listening for his heartbeat, and she clutched a tent of his shirt to her nose and lips like a security blanket.  She inhaled, inhaled as though the scent of it was to her what lavender was to him.  He rubbed her back, letting her gather herself, desperately wanting to push for an answer, but forcing himself to let her go at her own pace.

He didn't have to wait long.

"I passed," she whispered, sniffling.

"You did."

She looked up at him and smiled.  "You told me I would."

He grinned back at her, wishing desperately that he had some sort of roadmap for this discussion, because he felt lost beyond the overwhelming desire to fix it.  Fix everything.  Fix the things that were making her so upset.  "I did," he agreed.

"I believed you.  On Thursday," she said.  "But then I took the test on Friday, and I freaked out, and I didn't believe you.  And I was freaking out, but I didn't want to call you, because you're dealing with your own stuff, and you need sleep, except I really did, I really did want to call you, and then Susan called, and the dinner invite thing happened, and I'm..."

"It's okay," he whispered.  "Shhh.  Everyone gets the jitters.  And, Mere?  You can call me.  When I'm at home.  You can always call me...  I told you, no kid gloves, remember?"

"I know, but..."

"But what?"

"I did," she confessed.  "I did call, and Ellen said you were out cold because you'd taken some codeine, so I told her not to wake you."

His grip tightened around her as he swallowed, a sudden sting hitting the backs of his eyes.  He'd slept through her call.  He'd missed it.  And he'd worried her.  A tide of anger coursed through him, anger that he'd pushed himself into such a bad spot that he'd needed the pain relievers.  He found it frustrating to be tired all the time, but he'd mostly been letting the frustration simmer, mostly been okay with it.

His mother had been a presence in the house and nothing more.  She went for walks with him when he decided to go out, and they talked about all sorts of stuff, stuff she'd missed out on during the last year, the hospital, Meredith, his future, his present, stuff he'd missed out on, developments with his sisters, her landscaping plans for the fall, family things, other things.  But, as though leaving the hospital was almost as liberating for her as it had been for him, she'd been able to keep her word and had never pressured him to do anything or not do anything.  He never felt like he was under scrutiny.  He'd been grateful, and the renewal of his privacy and his ability to decide for himself what he was up for and what he wasn't had done a lot to make him feel better.  But still, fatigue lingered as though he were a fly trying to pass through a spider's web.  Tendrils clung to every pore and thought.

"I wouldn't have minded being woken up," he said, forcing his frustration away.  He was okay.  And he was there now.  He would work with that.

"But your head..."

"Will hurt from time to time, Mere," he said, grinning in an attempt to reassure her.  "I just had brain surgery.  Okay?"

"I believe you," she whispered.  "I believe you.  I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for," he said.  "Just... Wake me up, next time."

She nodded into his chest.  "I wanted to," she confessed.  "I really did.  I missed you, and I wanted to."

He frowned, shushing her, whispering at her.  Too much.  Too much for her.  She'd had her test, worried about her test, been slammed with extra worry for him, and gotten blind-sided by family she wasn't sure she wanted yet.  Then she'd found out she'd passed, she'd definitively made it through this awful year, and she'd fallen apart because she couldn't hold it together anymore, a little like a crystal under the constant assault of a perfect pitch of sound.  He knew she wanted to work on things with Susan, but on top of everything else, the offer of dinner tonight had been maybe a little too much, too soon for her.

"Mere, are you--" he began, but she cut him off with a long, deep kiss that left him panting with renewed interest.  Okay, he'd meant to say.  Mere, are you okay?  The echo of his intended question bounced around in his head for one heartbeat, two, three, four, and then it died away.

He clutched the small of her back, his fingers slipping along the crease where hard muscle turned into spine and back to muscle.  Her shirt rustled, the hemline catching on his forearms.  She wriggled against him, and he leaned back against the pillow, sighing as new tension coiled in his groin.  Heat collected in the brief, uninterrupted space of her skin against his.  Desire, flaring.  Like a wall of fire, the needing struck him, newly kindled.  Meredith taught him in that moment that the reprieve he'd wrangled out of his body minutes before had been a lie.

"Are you sure?" he said, moaning softly as she slid back, plowing into him.

"I want sex, Derek," she whispered against his neck.  "I need you.  I'm sure.  Sex, now, please."

No reprieve.

He raked his fingers through her hair and winked.  "Yes, ma'am."

He loved her, he had to have her, all the time, and there was no reprieve from that.  She stripped him to his self, laying bare his flaws, but when she looked at him, all he saw in the deep gray of her eyes was satisfaction, unadulterated.  He could never be a perfect man.  His list of past mistakes was far too long, and the hint of future errors sprawled before him like the wind and twist of a path demanding to be taken.  But when he looked at her looking back at him, he knew he was perfect to at least one person in the world.  The most important person.  It was the sort of addiction he hoped even an eighth of the people in the world would be lucky enough to find.  It was the sort of addiction he, as a healthcare professional, had no problem advertising from the rooftops.

She sighed, laying herself flat against him.  She reached back, touching him, guiding herself.  A soft gasp buffeted his neck as she slid down along his length, taking him back into her.  The union made him quiver with pleasure.  They rested, unmoving.

"I'm sorry I'm a mess today," she said.

He interlocked his fingers with hers, drawing her arm forward.  "It's okay to be a mess, Mere.  I love that you're a mess.  I love that you're my mess.  And I love you."

He'd found love with Meredith Grey, the only once in forever kind, the kind that made his head spin and his heart hurt and his body shiver.  For once in his life, he felt like he had a clue, though he'd never felt more clueless.  He never wanted a reprieve from that, and he hoped, when she looked at him looking at her, she felt perfect, too.

She slipped her index finger underneath his cap, toiling with the soft hint of hair underneath.  She slid back the fabric, leaning close, her breaths hot and soft against his skin.  She hovered nose to nose, staring.  Her irises flicked back and forth in the dimness, shining as she took in the sight of him, and her eyes narrowed as she found pleasure in what she saw.

He smiled.

She kissed him, and when she pulled away, her eyes, still glassy with tears, had a sparkle to them, like someone had coiled a bunch of old Christmas tree lights and hung them there behind his head to reflect against her pupils.  Her hair fell about her shoulders, loose, unkempt, tangled, a drape of lavender and silk.  She began to move against him, slowly, unhurried.  Her lips curled upward at the ends in a pleased, adorable smile interrupted by her incisors as she bit her lip in that cute way that told him she wanted to use that mouth for naughty things involving him.  Kissing, licking, biting.

He lowered his eyelids, staring at her through the blurry shade of his eyelashes.  Beautiful.  His breath caught as his fingertips stroked the warmth of her skin.  She'd started quickly, unprepared, but they finished, warm, close, and barely moving, just enough friction to set her into a soft gasp and light, twitching spasms.

She throbbed around him, breathy moans and clenching muscles and raking fingers bringing him with her.  He spilled into her, and the world swept away, sucked into a mushroom cloud of sensation.  Pleasant.  Unbearable.  Euphoric.  Torturous.  Because it was the end, and he almost didn't want it.  The end.  But then, there were always new beginnings.  He arched backward.  She ran the heel of her palm against his abdomen, sliding his shirt with it.  His lips parted as he fell back to the bed, and he inhaled her scent, lavender and woman.  It saturated the back of his mouth, leaving him dizzy and humming.  She leaned forward, trembling, to kiss him.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Are you okay, now?"

She smiled, her expression sheepish.  "More than.  I needed that.  I can't believe I cried on you.  Actually cried, cried, and not just shouted your name in a wilty, crying fashion.  I mean, really, you'd think I was a crazy, manic-depressive lunatic, which, I admittedly may have been at one point in my recent life, particularly the part where I was dead, but let's cast that aside for the now.  The now in which I'm very happily engaged, sitting on top of my very sexy fiancé, getting lots of great sex and ice cream, a newly adorned surgical resident, on the cusp of inevitable professional superstardom.  That now is a very happy place for me.  I'm happy.  Which makes the crying really pretty inexplicable.  Who actually cries during sex except very sad people?  And not sad as in boohoo.  Sad as in pitiful, though I suppose boohoo people would cry during sex, too.  But I'm pitiful, aren't I?"  She looked down at him, and he couldn't help but snort with laughter.  Babbling.  He loved her babbling.  He found it adorable.

"Don't answer that," she continued, her lips quirking into a grin as she shared his mirth, petting his breastbone softly with her lithe fingers.  He lowered his eyelids, feeling drunk and snoozy and loose and safe.

"I'm sorry," she rambled.  "I think I might be PMSing on top of all the rest of this crap.  I'm supposed to start on Sunday..."  Her voice trailed away, and her fingers came to a quiet stop just over his navel, splaying against his shirt as though she were trying to smooth out the seams in a wrinkled tablecloth.  The animated pleasure on her face froze and sank into horror.  The blood withdrew from her skin, leaving her porcelain-colored and spooked, and in the moments he watched her mood shift, he felt his insides turning into nauseating, slip-sliding glaciers.

"Crap!" she hissed.

"What?" he said, trying to blink back the panic he felt at her sudden shift in mood.  What.  What had?  She'd been fine, and then she'd been horrified.  And it made him feel sick inside, sick and twisting and wrong.

"Get off me," she said, her expression near hysterical as she either ignored or didn't comprehend the fact that she was most decidedly the one on him.  Whatever her expectations were, it didn't matter.  She clawed backward, scuttling like a crab, pulling apart from him.  He gasped as the cold air hit his skin, replacing what had been deep, caressing warmth.  His hands shifted, sort of an out of control, protective, twitchy motion that covered his torso as he curled onto his side.

"What?" he said, his word a jerky, bare syllable of frantic upset.  "What did I do?"

He clawed at his jeans as he stumbled to his feet, trying to button them, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity, but her hysteria was like a vibrating whine in the air, and it tore him apart.  His fingers slipped and slid and shook.  He'd never seen her like this before.  Utterly.  Freaked.  As in ready to bolt, ready to slap him if he got in the way, not out of anger, but out of desperation, and he had no idea why.

"I forgot to take my pill today," she said, raking her fingers through the tangles of her hair.  After she yanked her pants back up, she paced, paced, paced, and then jarred to a halt, turning to look at him, red-faced, wide eyed.  "And yesterday.  And...  Crap, Derek.  Crap!  Since last Tuesday.  I was so upset, I forgot.  I forgot.  Oh, my god.  I forgot.  I forgot.  We've had sex four times since then, and I totally forgot."

He froze.

For a moment, he didn't know how to react.  He had no idea.  His muscles started to shiver, and he blinked.  Tuesday.  Last Tuesday.  His surgery.  His fault.  His lips parted, and a small sound came out, but it was a lost, desperate, twisting thing that didn't find any sort of life or meaning in the air.  He pulled his hands back against his scalp in an upset gesture as he let himself receive the offered support of the wall.

Tuesday.  Last Tuesday.  Eleven days.  Not just one or two.  Eleven pills, she'd forgotten.  An argument came to mind, the one he'd used on Addison at least three times that he could recall over the course of eleven years, the argument that one missed pill wasn't very likely to mean the end of the world, particularly since they'd realized it so quickly.  The day of the missed pill didn't usually match the day of conception.  Except...  The argument shattered to bits, leaving his head strangely silent.  They'd had sex four times.  And eleven days was plenty of time for the sex to actually start working.  Plenty of...

He blinked again, barely starting to process the fact that she was pacing and upset again, pacing and upset, and he was just standing there.  He was just standing there, useless, because...  His eyes watered, and he stood there, shivering, a slow hint of ache forming underneath his skull from his sinuses to the nape of his neck.  He shuffled forward, one step off the wall, two steps, and he found her out of habit, like a reflex or an instinct or something base, something below his awareness, and he crashed into her, halting her.  His arms snaked around her, and he breathed her in.

"Shhh, it's okay, Mere," he said, "It'll be fine," more out of habit than anything else, because he had no idea what to say or how to say it.  This was one of those moments where he saw the road, the road with all the errors, waiting for him to step into the slow lane and putter along, hitting each and every possible wrong thing on the way to the end of his life.  If he wanted her to be pregnant, it was wrong, because she didn't want it.  If he didn't want her to be pregnant, it was wrong, because he wanted kids, and she would know he was maybe lying.  And if she was pregnant, it was wrong because...  He blinked.

She clutched at him, clutched at him like he was a life preserver, her earlier abhorrence of his touch melting away with each breath.  For a moment.  And then she pulled away, wiping at her face with the backs of her palms.  She was crying.  Again, she was crying, and he wished he could fix it, he wanted it fixed, but...   How was he supposed to...  She didn't want... But.

"We have to get groceries, now," she whispered.  "We have to..."

He tightened his arms around her waist.  "You don't want to..." he began, taking a deep breath when the words didn't quite come out right.  He closed his eyes.  "You could get...  Do you want to get...  Morning after pills.  It's not too late.  For the...  Well, for the last two times.  Seventy-two hours.  They could work.  For this.  And the...  For the studying."

"I don't know," she said.  "I don't...  You...  You..."  She inhaled sharply, shaking her head.  "No, I can't.  I can't.  I couldn't."

"Mere..."

"Derek, I am not going to get an abortion when you want kids badly enough to trade your left arm for them.  I'm not."

"Progestin isn't abortion," he said softly.

"I won't fucking do it, Derek," she snapped.  "It's all theoretical, anyway.  Let's just go to the grocery store."

"Okay," he said, leaning into her.  He rested his chin against the top of her head and breathed, blinking, blinking.  His eyes burned.  "Okay, Mere."

She slipped from his grasp and moved toward the bed to grab the discarded scrub cap, and he stood there, staring, numb, shivering.  For a moment, he felt nauseated.  She didn't want to...  Emergency contraception.  She didn't want it.  Because of him.  But she didn't want to be pregnant either.

"Please, get the morning after pill, Mere," he said, found himself babbling, breathless.  "Just go up to OB.  I'll wait.  Or I can go with you.  Or...  Please."

She looked up at him.  "I can't."

"But I don't want you to be pregnant," he snapped.

"You don't," she said, her tone flat with what could only be disbelief.

He sighed.  "I want a kid, Meredith.  Not a mistake," he said.  "And I'm not sure...  I'm not sure if I can be supportive if you just let yourself get pregnant like this and then decide it's a mistake later.  I'm not sure I..."  His voice faltered.  He cleared his throat, trying to ignore the ugly, cracking sound he made.  "Mere, I really want kids, which you know, and I love you, which I hope you also know.  I love you more than my own life.  If you get pregnant, I'll do whatever you want.  But, if you're going to decide you don't want it, I need it to be something we couldn't have helped."  He sniffed, wiping at his face with his palms.  "Please, Mere.  I need that.  I think it might kill me when I hold your hand later in the clinic if you don't at least try the morning after pill, now.  Whatever you want if it happens, Mere, but, please, just do this for me.  Please."

His chest constricted, and he exhaled until his diaphragm ached.  He wanted kids.  He wanted Mere.  He wanted kids, and he wanted Mere.  But he had no idea how to deal with wanting both when both were suddenly real and painful and bright.  When having kids was just a dream for someday later, he stood on solid ground.  Meredith first.  He loved Meredith.  But, now, the ground had cracks and canyons and splits, and he couldn't find his footing anymore.  This wasn't supposed to be happening.

He stared at her, breathing tightly, unable to get himself to suck down the air that he really needed.  He loved Meredith.  Meredith first.  Always.  Always first.  But...  He blinked.  Eleven days.  His fault.

She stared back at him, her lips parted, hair falling in a tangle to her shoulders.  She leaned against the wall next to the door, crossed her feet and arms, and then her gaze shifted to the floor.  She traced the tiles with the tips of her socks, rubbing her hands up and down her biceps as though she were cold.

"You'd...  Sit with me?" she asked, her voice a vague whisper.  "For an abortion, you'd actually sit with me?  You?"

"If that's what you need," he replied.

She looked up, her expression stricken.  "But what about what you need?"

"You'd resent me if you had a baby just because I want one, Mere.  You'd resent me, and you'd resent it.  You can't do that."

"And you'd resent me if I got rid of it, Derek," she said.

"I don't know.  I don't know how I'd feel," he said.  "But I love you.  You're first.  That's what I do know."

She stepped closer.

"Please, Mere, get the morning after pill.  Please.  I don't want to know how I'll feel if you get rid of it after it's real.  And I don't want to know how I'll feel if you keep it just for me.  I don't.  I don't want to find out."

She slipped her arms around his waist, and he stood there, staring blankly at the door as she leaned against him, resting, breathing, quiet.  She pulled back after a moment, splayed her palms against his shoulders, and slid her fingers down his arms, tracing first the crease-line where his t-shirt had been folded, and then along the soft hairs of his forearms.  She found his fingers, dedicating careful attention to the lines of his thumbs, before pulling his hands into a loose grasp.  Breathing softly, she guided him to the waistline of her scrubs, pushing his palms against her stomach and lower, past her navel.

"You're sure?" she said.

He sighed.  The flat plane of her abdomen felt warm and soft and silk-touched.  She pressed into him with every inhalation, left him slightly with every exhalation.  Baby fine hairs caressed his palms as he slid his hands against her.  His fingertips touched the first hint of coarser curls, and she sighed, leaning into his chest.  The bump of her nose fit with his breastbone.  He pulls his hands from her pants and hugged her.

"It's not an abortion, Meredith.  It prevents conception.  That's all."

"But it's doing something," she said.  "It's doing something instead of letting nature figure stuff out."

"So is birth control, Meredith.  So is using condoms."

"I know.  But it feels different.  You're sure, Derek?  Because I don't want...  That thing you don't want from me?  The resentment?  I don't want it from you, either.  That's...  I don't want you to hate me."

"Not possible," he said, smiling.

"I'll go," Meredith said.  "Will you wait in the car for me?"

"I can go with you," he offered.

She ran a hand up his back, up his neck, and found the light, soft hairs on his scalp.  "No, it's okay.  It's just to get a pill.  And you're...  Why don't you take five minutes?  We still need to go shopping."

She kissed him softly, smiled, and pulled away.

He stared at her, almost ready to protest that he was fine, except he wasn't fine.  It was obvious.  And she knew it.  He shivered slightly with tension.  His head throbbed behind the rushing clot of worry and other thoughts.  He closed his eyes, and it took effort to prop them back open.

"Okay," he said, though he felt vaguely criminal for letting her wander off alone after...  Everything.

She nodded, satisfied, took one last moment to straighten her clothes, and let herself out of the room, leaving him behind in the dim quiet.  He listened as she padded away on socked feet toward the locker room.  His pants were still unbuttoned, though, at some point, he'd managed to get himself back into his boxers, get himself remotely put back together.  He swallowed, and shakily went to retrieve his cap, which lay in a crumpled pile against the pillow on the lower bunk.  Bars of light fell down over the sheets from the window through the blinds.  He buttoned himself up again and sat down against the mattress, breathing.

For a moment, he didn't want to move, and it had nothing to do with tiredness, nothing to do with anything except the fact that moving meant time had jumpstarted, and he needed a moment where nothing was jumping.  He needed a moment to re-collect the pieces of himself he felt were scattered about the room like refuse at a junkyard.  He wrung his hands together, resisting the urge to curl up and sleep only because that would require more movement.  Instead, he picked staring catatonia.  Thoughts jumbled in his head, clamoring for an exit, except there was none to be found.  His insides were a black hole, and he couldn't get anything straight again because it kept compacting and twisting and multiplying.

The first chuckle that fell from his lips was a halfhearted, dying thing that made it perhaps one bouncing echo around the tiled room.  The second and the third had spines and flesh.  The fourth felt vaguely wheezy.  The fifth seemed pointless.  He gripped his arms against his stomach, hunching over, feeling nauseated.  He stared at the floor tiles, letting the lines blur.  The room smelled faintly of cleaning products, but underneath the lemon and acrid bite, he found the strands of lavender she'd left behind for him.  He sighed, letting his eyelids droop for a moment.  Just a moment.

"If you could just give me one fucking second outside of the OR where I knew how to do everything right," he said softly, "I'd really appreciate it.  Because I don't have an OR right now."

He raised his right fist to his mouth, inhaled, eyes squeezed shut, and then he stood.  He replaced the cap, made sure he straightened the lines of his shirt and the way his jeans fell against his body.  There was no mirror in the room to tell him whether he'd eliminated his disheveled appearance in favor of the something more kempt, or at least just sexily mussed.  He wondered if anything would help at that point as he shuffled forward one step, two steps, three.  He gripped the door handle and sighed as the cool metal bit into his palm, and then he walked to the car with the best smile he could manage.