Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 51A
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
I nearly broke my brain trying to get this part written. Please feedback if you have the time :)
~~~~~
The water spread out like a gray, glass sheet. Slivers of broken, white surf exploded in a spray of froth and foam, only to disappear when they slipped back into endless, choppy murk. Chill buffeted his cheeks as he stared along the gray horizon line. Distant, low-hanging nimbus clouds formed a second dark line, and the deep blue of rain formed a wet, misty sheet between them. The rain hadn't reached Seattle yet. But it was coming.
He blinked, wiping his face with his free hand, clutching his warm coffee mug in the other. If he watched the horizon line, he was okay. He was riding the ferry into Seattle. The smell of oil and flames, the wailing cries of search and rescue sirens, and the roar of controlled panic had long since passed into memory. His fiancé was very much warm, alive, and smiling as she rested against the crook between his shoulders, her thin, strong arms wrapped around his midsection, hands clutching at his coat. He was on his way to work for the first time in eight weeks.
By all means, he should have been ecstatic.
And he was. As long as he looked at the horizon line.
If he put his head down, he became aware that his body was moving. Up and down. Up and down. Subtly. And that drew his attention to the twisting gnarl of his stomach, which had been coiling into tighter and tighter knots ever since he'd woken up. The closer to the ferry's destination he found himself, the more his body protested.
He hadn't been able to eat breakfast. He'd stared, uninterested, at the bagels Meredith had bought the day before, unable to think of them as food. Unable to think of anything as food.
No breakfast.
He leaned back into Meredith's arms and stared. The horizon line was flat and calm and wet. And he was all right. He clenched his free hand around the railing. The chill metal served a sharp contrast to the warm coffee mug in his other hand. Cold, dried, bumpy paint scraped against his palm as he twisted his grip.
He was on his way to work for the first time in eight weeks.
"Derek, if you're not ready to go back yet..." Meredith whispered into his neck as if she'd read his mind.
Water slapped against the side of the boat as the ferry sliced through the Sound. He closed his eyes, letting the wind whip against his skin. "Mere..."
"I mean just because Burke and Cristina are out on their honeymoon, and Dr. Krycek is on maternity leave, it doesn't mean..."
"Mere, I'll be fine," he assured her. "Really. I'm going to have to go back sooner or later. Neurosurgery is down three with me, Dr. Krycek, and Dr. Shriver. I need to..."
"You need to," Meredith agreed with a definitive nod as he turned to face her. "Because you're bored, and going crazy, and tired of being not okay, and I... We're not going to be like that? Right? We're not."
"Like..." His voice trailed away, and he squinted at her, wondering when she'd made a left turn in the conversation and how he'd missed it. "What? Mere, what?"
Her eyes widened. "Mother hen," she blurted. "Bad. Bad, bad, bad. I'm stopping, I swear."
"Meredith, what are you talking about?"
"Cristina and Burke!" she exclaimed.
"What?"
"It's just... They hid it," she said. "When Burke wasn't ready. His hand shook, but he did surgeries anyway. And then they didn't talk, and Cristina was a wreck and forced to eat cereal. And then they were getting married. And then Mama was glaring, and it was just... She has to be happy, Derek. She has to..."
"Okay, Mere? Meredith. You're..." He paused, growling in frustration. He usually had a much easier time getting a read on her, even when her words weren't making that much sense. But now? "You're losing me, here. I really have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sorry." Which made him feel slow and inadequate, but he held on anyway because he had a feeling this was one of those sink or swim moments. He clutched his hands around her shoulders and stared at her. The coffee mug dangled precariously.
"It's just," she said, sighing, "I want her to be happy so bad, and during the wedding, she looked like she wanted to strangle something."
"I did sort of notice that," he replied.
He looked down at his hand, imagining a wedding ring sliding over the left ring finger, piloted by her thin, arching fingers. He'd exchanged rings once before. The metal had felt gelid against his skin. Nerves had robbed him of his body heat and the sureness of graceful, deliberate movement. The gold band had slipped over his knuckle and settled, wrapped around his skin, a promise for a long, long future that, sadly, hadn't been fate's plan.
That would be the difference, this time. There would be no nerves. And it wouldn't be a promise. Promise implied there was a chance it could be broken.
It wouldn't be.
"I wonder where Mama was," Meredith mused.
"I don't know, Mere," he said, shrugging. "I didn't ask."
"Maybe they had a fight. Before. About... Where she would be. And that's why Cristina was mad. Maybe."
"Maybe."
"We're not going to be like that, though," she said.
Meredith stared at him, her gray eyes hooded with such a serious look of consternation it disturbed him. She didn't make it a question. It wasn't one. But her tone quivered, and it tore at his heart that she still had moments like this. Moments where she wasn't sure. Even tiny ones.
If there was one thing in his life he was sure about, it was this. Them. And he wished it was a feeling he could share like a piece of bread, or an extra kernel in a popcorn bowl. Here, have some. Sureness. I'm overflowing, and it tastes delicious.
Certainty wasn't like that, though. For her. She couldn't pluck it from other people who were ripe with it. She needed her own garden, and she had one, slowly healing. Anger spiraled through him as he imagined all the reasons why it needed healing. Thatcher walking out. Ellis giggling in a closet with another man. Derek Shepherd, telling her he had a wife.
Moments like this made him want to scrape and claw and kick and shout. Nobody deserved it, least of all her, and the fury over the injustice and his own stupidity always made him tremble. Instead, he channeled all that fire, and he kissed her until the world around them peeled away. He wasn't on his way to work for the first time in eight weeks, they weren't on a boat, and he wasn't nauseated with nerves about whether he could, or should. He was Derek Shepherd. Able-bodied at sweeping his fiancé off her feet. Able-bodied, strong, and certain.
She tasted warm and bitter like his coffee, but he didn't care. Warm and bitter was perfect. Her lithe fingers clutched the lapels of his dark coat and yanked him closer as her weight sagged, nerveless. He dipped forward against her backward arch, the palm of his free hand in the small of her back, and held them both up.
"Absolutely not," he stated, brushing her swollen lips with his before pulling away. Close, but far enough away for some perspective, he could still count her freckles, not that he didn't already know how many there were. He'd counted them a thousand times. He could see every line and follicle and blemish. Her lashes brushed low against her cheeks. He gripped her chin, hovered nose-to-nose, and breathed her in. He brushed his cheek against her own and settled against the softness of her earlobe, his nose buried in the loose strands of her hair. Lavender. Heat. Even in the chill, despite the wind and frothy, choppy, nauseating water, she warmed him and made the world go still. He told her, low and thrumming and sure, as he slid his arms behind her waist and pulled her close.
"Meredith," he continued, wishing he could hear her heartbeat over the roar of everything else, "When we walk down that aisle, or meet at city hall, or elope in Vegas, or step over a broomstick, whatever you want to do, it's going to be because you're ready, and you want it. And if you're not ready? We won't. Simple as that. I'm happy to be with you. The rest is just details. You said yes. You said yes, and you meant it, even if you're not sure when or where or how, and that means more to me than any pomp and circumstance."
Her eyes narrowed, irises twinkling even in the gray. "I love you," she replied, though the statement had the lilt of a comma but at the end, and he wasn't sure he liked it.
"I love you, too," he said.
"And I love your family," she continued.
He nodded. "Our family."
"Our family," she amended. "It's just..."
"Just what, Meredith?" he prodded.
"Promise me we're not going to be robbing any banks? Please?" she said, her voice tiny, hopeful. "Because I'm so far in this at this point that if you asked me to, I would, and I... You're not the best about telling me when you're strapped for cash or whatever, and it could be just... I don't ever want to be like them. Like Cristina and Burke. She's my person, and I love her, but yesterday? Yesterday, she scared the ever-loving crap out of me. And I don't ever want to be her. Ever. I'm done with dark and twisty. I'm so freaking done."
"What?" He blinked. "Mere, I... What?"
She sighed. He watched the frustration clamor across her gaze, sparking like firecrackers, and he felt a mirror of it collecting in his gut. Pop. Pop. Pop. Get with it. Why can't you understand her today? Was he really that slow? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Something made him feel like he should know what she was referring to. A wispy ghost of something, a thought, a smell, a taste, stuck in the back of his head.
Bank robberies. Which isn't really the point. It's just that she was jogging, and...
Meredith's fingers scraped lightly down his neck in a petting gesture robbed of affection by need. Need to make him understand. She pulled him out of drifting, and he saw that need flare in her eyes. "If you're not okay, promise you'll stop without me having to drag you?" she clarified. "And that you'll tell me? You're so much better, Derek. You're so, so much better. But you're not... You're not..." Okay.
You're not okay.
He sighed. Reality crept back, and the boat started to rock again. The chill wind slapped away the feeling in his skin. He was going to work, and he was vastly not okay. Everyone would know it. Everyone he hadn't wanted staring at him while he was bedridden, doped, shaved, and naked. They'd be staring, now. Staring while he calculated dosages, tried to read charts and answer questions, tried to act human when he still felt strange and foreign all the time except when he wasn't thinking at all, or when Meredith had taken the world away for him.
"I know, Meredith," he said. "I'm... But if I wait until everything is in tiptop shape again, I won't be working for months, still, or... never. And I need to work Meredith. I love to fish and relax and hike. But I'm just not built to do it twenty-four seven. I'm a surgeon. And I'm going crazy."
"I know," she said. She leaned into his space and assured him, "It won't be never."
For a long moment, he couldn't take his eyes from her. From her certainty. Her confidence in him. Ripe like red delicious apples dangling from a tree in May. And he knew innately why he couldn't fix things for her, because now? Now, she couldn't fix things for him. He could reassure her over and over and over. He could be certain until the world ended. And she would find comfort in the fact that he was so sure. She would find comfort, but she wouldn't find her own certainty unless it stemmed from herself.
You're broken. And you're not ready.
He leaned into her and sighed. Her tiny body felt so fragile next to his. Fragile and his. He sniffed, blotting the world away in the darkness of her hair. Her scent. Her. The roar of the ferry underneath his feet seemed distant, but it was there. A roar. Underneath. Malevolent.
"Sometimes, it feels like it," he confessed. "I still feel so retarded sometimes, it... I'm scared. I have to work, Meredith. If I don't start working again..."
You might always be broken. You need to not be broken.
She frowned. "You're not re..." she said, unable to finish the word. "You're not."
"I have to think about thinking. And I have to... What if people think I'm..."
"They won't. You're eight weeks out from surgery to repair a traumatic brain injury. A traumatic brain injury, Derek. Nobody will think..." A sigh puffed past her lips. "Nobody expects... It's not..." He watched the way her lips curled as she stumbled over reassurances, the way her eyes shifted, and the soft movements of her skin. "But you have to... If you're not okay? You have to stop and admit it. You can't just... be Derek-y about it. You can't. Your body wants you to go slow for a reason."
"I know. I promise," he said, feeling better as he watched her body relax. He'd won something in that moment. Won something with her. And that felt... Good. Even in the stumble and churn of everything else. "And we'll never be them, Meredith. Not ever. I'll page you if it gets bad. I swear."
"Okay," she replied, smiling deeply at him. "Okay," she echoed herself, distant and quiet. She left his embrace and approached the railing to stare at the choppy gray. Her lithe fingers tapped the railing, and he found himself settling next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder, to watch the stormy horizon. If he watched the horizon, he didn't feel sick.
"We're commuting together, you know," she said, her voice quiet against the breeze and the roar and the waves.
He turned to her. If he watched Meredith, he didn't feel sick either. "We are," he replied. He took a sip from his coffee mug. Bitter warmth snaked down his throat and didn't quite settle. He grimaced. Bad idea. He counted her eyelashes until he felt steady again, and she waited, as if she sensed his difficulty.
"On a ferry," she said once the world had re-settled. "We're commuting together. Like a couple that works together."
"Meredith," he said with a laugh, enjoying the roll of her name against his tongue. "We are a couple that works together. We sort of always have been."
"But we're commuting together," she said. "And that's..."
He grinned, inching against the railing until his shoulder made her body slant. He couldn't get closer, so he wrapped his arm around her and she rested there against his body. "Yeah," he replied. "It is."
"I like it."
"Me, too."
They settled. She watched the choppy water for a moment. He watched her.
"Do you think they're having fun?" Meredith mused. "In Hawaii?"
"Burke and Cristina?"
"Yeah."
"If I was in Hawaii with the woman I love, I'd be happy," he said. "And I'd be having fun."
"They have to have fun," she said, turning to peer at him. "Right? In the moments we're not there watching them? I mean... They can't possibly..."
"I'm sure Cristina had reasons for saying yes, Meredith," Derek assured her. "She's too..." He searched for a word, trying not to get frustrated when it wouldn't come. Too... Self-assured? Bossy? Definitive? Abrasive? None of those were quite right.
"Yeah," Meredith agreed despite his faltering speech, as if she knew what he was trying to say before he did. He sighed. "We'll have fun wherever we're going," she added.
He closed his eyes and imagined the roar of the waves underneath them as the soft roll of surf in the distance. "Somewhere with a beach."
"Definitely somewhere with a beach," she replied.
His balance shifted when her hip bumped into his. She slid along the railing, her forearms brushing the cold, painted metal. The small, pink tip of her tongue slipped out between her lips, her skin flushed, and he watched the twinkle in her eyes as he caught himself from falling on his ass.
"The boat," she said, her voice quivering with laughter. "It's choppy."
"Really?" he said. "I hadn't noticed."
He bumped her in return, and she shrieked. He felt dozens of gazes shift to them in response to the flailing commotion, but he didn't care. He kissed her, and in the distance, he heard a haze of clapping and whistles. "You're right," he murmured against her skin. "It's choppy."
Her fingers slipped through his hair, and he sighed, his hand clenching around his coffee mug. He supposed it was good. That he had the coffee mug. If he didn't, he'd have had two hands with which to ravish her, and nothing to keep his flagging sense of propriety in check. It wouldn't do to sweep her off her feet, only to spill coffee down her pants or something. Then again, her shirt was white, and it would probably look quite delectable when it was wet and sticky. He halted a growl before he made it, instead forcing his mind back to things like talking. And thinking. Talking and thinking.
Both were admirable endeavors.
"How hopeful are you on a scale from one to ten that we'll even make it out of the bedroom on our honeymoon?" he asked, woefully unable to make the talking and thinking about anything of substance.
"Hmm," she purred. Her index finger traced the bump of his scar, which was buried underneath an inch of thick, raven-brown hair. "Nine."
"Wow, nine?"
"Yeah. You promised me sex on a balcony overlooking the beach."
"Oh, right," he said with a sheepish snort. "Well, discounting that."
Her lips flattened into a wide, lazy grin, and her eyes went glassy as her focus lost him and found someplace else. "Zero," she replied, and he fought the urge to die a lazy death as she twisted her fingers through his hair, over and over and over. He loved having his hair back. He really did.
"Hmm," he considered. "I don't know whether to be pleased or intimidated."
"Oh, like you actually planned on playing tourist with me?"
"Could be fun, you know," he said. "We could use a real camera this time. See the sites. Add to your knickknacks."
"We could," she agreed with a little nod. "Where do you..." Want to go?
"No idea," he said.
"Me either."
"We have time," he said. "It's only September."
She grinned, turning back to watch the water. "We do."
The rest of the trip passed in quiet. Their breaths traded in the silence, and they stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, watching, waiting, his nerves held hostage in the warmth of the moment.
He was on his way to work for the first time in eight weeks, but it didn't matter as the ferry finally found its port. It didn't matter as they wandered down to the car. It didn't matter as she drove them out of the canopy of the boat and into the new splatter of rain. It didn't matter as she found a parking spot, and it didn't matter as she asked him one last time if he was sure. Because they were commuting. Like a couple that worked together. On a ferry. In a car. And it was so perfect it made him ache.
It wasn't until he found himself standing alone in the attendings' locker room, his fingers slipping against the plastic wrap that hugged a newly sterilized pair of navy scrubs, that he realized just how thoroughly he'd lied to himself. To Meredith. The chains around his thumping heart and worried thoughts shucked away with hollow, rusty clinks, leaving him almost breathless with the uncertainty. He threw the scrubs packet on the bench. His fingers trembled as he tried to enter the right locker combination.
Page her if it got bad. It was already bad. The nerves she'd robbed him of had returned on stealthy feet, piling in his gut like worms, twisting, quickly enough that he didn't notice until they were overpowering. A thin bead of sweat trickled down the small of his back, slow and creeping, like a bug. He tore his fingers through his hair, resisting the fluttery impulse to pace, pace, pace.
His locker door flung open with the strength of his yank, and he found himself staring at things he hadn't laid eyes on in months. From the hook on the right wall hung his white lab coat. In the maze of long neglected folds and twists of fabric, he could just make out the blue cursive embroidery on the pocket that bared his name to the world. Dr. Derek Shepherd. On the left wall hook, his stethoscope hung precariously, swaying in the aftershocks of his intrusion. His battered black cross trainers sat on the overhead shelf, their laces a spill of tangled spaghetti. A collection of disorganized junk sat at the bottom in a pile. Papers. Notes. Socks -- some dirty, some not. A pen. A few other odds and ends. A small photograph of Meredith the size of an index card hung against the rear wall, glossy and hard to see in the dark, but there. Meredith didn't know he had it. Usually, it hid behind his coat, invisible to any questioning eyes. Her gray eyes peeked at him as he swept his shaking hand against the coarse white fabric of his lab coat and removed it from the hook, replacing it with his black duster.
He was at work, and there was no going back, now. People would know. Dr. Derek Shepherd was a little bit broken. Or maybe a lot. He wasn't quite sure.
He sat against the bench and pulled clean, navy scrubs up his legs, sighing at the soft feel of them against his skin. It was the first time in his life that they felt... wrong. Like a butterfly crawling back into the cocoon. Wrong. Unnatural. He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready to... Was he?
He leaned forward and sighed into his hands. His hands. He could hold them still, direct them to do precise movements. He still had his physical finesse, which made his mental stumbling seem so much more pronounced. He could grip a scalpel and draw it down a plane of flesh. In a perfect world, that was fine. He was a surgeon, and he was ready. He could cut just as adroitly as he'd always been able to. But what about a flat line?
He closed his eyes, listening to the distant whine of shrieking monitors. A heart stops. Ask Dr. Derek Shepherd for the precise dosage of epinephrine or the voltage needed on the defibrillator?
He couldn't do it without tearing apart his brain piece by bloody piece, rifling desperately for an answer that laughed at him, making faces just beyond his reaching grasp. Patient's weight? Patient's age? Patient's... what? What had he been hunting for?
Bleep. Dead. I think that was enough electricity to kill a horse.
He wasn't clueless. He was just being blackmailed by all the fucking clues. We'll let you know the answer if you beat the inside of your skull to a frustrated, bloody pulp, first, and not a moment sooner.
And what about the stretch of moments? That eleventh hour, eleventh in a long procession of painful moments? He cut beautifully the first time. The second time. The third time. The fourth. Maybe even the fifth. By the sixth repetition, asking his fingers to do something so precise began to hurt. Not his fingers. But his eyes. His pupils wouldn't want to wind into sharp pinpricks of focus anymore. His mind. The space behind his nose would begin to throb. He would stare and blink and force himself steady, try to keep everything sharp and clear. But then a pin would drop, a sheet would rustle, a clock would tick. Maybe a spoken word would wrap around his neck like a noose.
It didn't matter. It happened when he was repairing his fishing poles. It happened when he was fixing doorjambs. It happened when he cut up fresh salmon for dinner. And it would surely happen if he were to cut into someone's brain matter. Dr. Derek Shepherd would look up whether he wanted to or not.
Bleep. Dead. Did you mean to cut that artery?
He could think when he wasn't pushing it. Any sort of pressure brought him crumbling into frustration. He'd had Meredith test him with some of her intern flashcards and an egg timer, and he'd felt like a bumbling fool by the end. Slow and stuttery and stupid. He still knew the answers. They were all there. But when did a surgeon ever need the answer eventually? A surgeon needed answers now. Now, now, now.
And he couldn't do it. He knew he couldn't. People would notice as soon as they started grilling him. They would know he was damaged. He never wanted anyone to look at him as that guy who used to be really smart. That guy who used to be capable. That guy who needed a few extra seconds.
What the fuck had ever possessed him to come back so soon?
He needed to not be that guy. The guy who used to be really smart. The guy who used to be capable. The guy who needed a few extra seconds.
He couldn't stay at home in the trailer anymore. He couldn't stare at the lake and think forever, no matter how slow his thoughts were. And he couldn't listen to another one of Meredith's bright-eyed, cheerful stories about how fascinating her day had been, moments that made him want to hug her and hurt her all at once, because he was supposed to be there, too. In those stories. He was supposed to be there.
He was a surgeon. And he needed to do it again, or he'd go crazy. He'd seen far too many people rot after a brain injury, seen far too many people let themselves get frustrated and just... stop. Stop living, convinced they couldn't do things anymore, convinced they'd never heal. Some really didn't heal.
But he wouldn't be one of those.
He wouldn't.
Right?
Right.
"Hey, Shep," Dr. Lewis said, his tone deep and thrumming, as he stepped out from behind a row of lockers. "Really good to see you back."
Derek nodded and smiled, watched the world tilt as the friendly slap to his shoulder sent his limp, nervous body reeling. He swallowed around his tongue, which felt too thick. Too thick to form words, and so he settled for just the smile and the nod, hoping nobody would think him rude.
He thought about visiting the Chief. He thought about it. The Chief knew he was coming back to work today. The Chief had been the one who'd called him to subtly hint that with Dr. Burke gone and neurosurgery down at least three very good surgeons, the hospital was woefully understaffed.
But right then, right at that moment, he didn't think he could stomach a spiel about taking it easy, a spiel that would emphasize his reduced hours, the fact that he was banned from anything involving a scalpel. And the Chief would. He'd do that. Because he was nosey and intrusive, and when it came to Derek and Meredith, he never seemed to recognize personal boundaries.
Derek stood, brushing his sweaty palms against his scrubs. He pulled his jacket on and hooked his penlight and stethoscope inside his breast pocket. The Chief could find him if he wanted to talk logistics about running the neurosurgery department, or signing off of disability leave, or any of the numerous things that didn't involve asking Derek how he felt or if he was really ready.
He tore through the halls, feeling the rushing heat of roaring blood overwhelming the skin on his face. Every time he passed someone in the hall, they would look up and smile and give him a huge welcome back greeting. A greeting that he didn't want. He didn't want to be an event.
It made his hair feel too short and stupid. It made him wonder if he was still walking a little funny. It made him want to avoid talking, because if people were already scrutinizing his presence that much, surely, they would notice he was very slow on the uptake. Rapid-fire subject changes flummoxed him, even with Meredith, though she took great care to never make a big production out of repeating herself or clarifying the babbling brook of words that sometimes spilled from her lips.
He arrived at the haven of his office, panting at the exertion of dodging everyone and everything possible. He slumped against the door as he shut it, trying to ease the thump, thump, thump-thump-thump of his heart as he hovered in the darkness. His fingers found the bridge of his nose, and he rubbed his grip up and down his skin, trying to ease the tension. When he opened his eyes after a long, quiet set of minutes, the room felt cooler against his skin. His heart wasn't outpacing the tick of the analog wall clock. His limbs felt a little less shaky.
He flipped the lights on, and everything spiraled out of his control again.
He let his gaze linger on his diplomas hanging from the wall, trying to ignore the rest of it. And then he sighed, letting the stale air of his office fill his lungs. Familiar. Even this far away from patients, the sharp scent of antiseptic managed to work its way through the air vents. The manila scent of paper laced underneath everything else drew his gaze to the desk. Dustless and clean despite his long neglect of it. The paperwork he'd left for himself before his departure for Connecticut still sat a foot high in his inbox. After he soaked that in, he let himself cope with the rest of it.
Balloons. Streamers. Cards. Get well. Welcome back. Flowers. The You're-Really-Sick fairy had vomited all over the room.
He sat at his desk, letting his fingertips brush along the cool grain of wood. In the soft light, it gleamed, and he could see a vague ghost of his outline in the lacquer. His hair stuck up, straight and scattered. It was too short to weigh itself down against his scalp. Too short for the mop of curls he was used to. He drew his palms back against his scalp. His hair flattened and sprang back up, and all the gesture did was remind him his skull wasn't an even curve anymore.
He could feel it. The piece of bone Dr. Weller had carved out of it and wired back on. There was a slight depression that would probably remain for years. The soft gnarl of his scar left a knick in the skin. He wondered what Meredith thought of the lack of symmetry when they made love, and she tore at his hair. She never mentioned it.
Really, aside from her self-proclaimed tendency to mother hen every once in a while, she ignored his illness. Ignored it in a way that was somehow mindful of it, but never focused on it. He never felt scrutinized with her. And he never felt oddly overlooked. She was considerate in a way that didn't make him feel overly considered, but she was never oblivious when he needed a break or a moment or... something. He was all right with that. When that was the only fanfare he received, he could be sick, and it didn't bother him so much.
The get-well cards and smiles and welcome backs and staring. Those bothered him. And then he couldn't be sick. It was unacceptable. Which only drove the frustration deep into his gut like a serrated, twisting knife. It was unacceptable, but there was absolutely nothing he could do to fix it except wait. And hope. And be sick.
He stared at the door for a moment. Then he picked up the first card, feeling more like it was a bamboo shoot under his fingernail than an expression of sympathy. The nurses. Smiley faces. Hearts. Loopy signatures. Get well! Hope you're feeling better! Come back soon! The next card was from the neurosurgery department. All of his employees except Dr. Weller had signed it. More of the same. Get well, get well, get well.
Get well.
Had Meredith known about this? He wondered if they'd tried to ambush her at work with all of this stuff, stuff to take home to him. He doubted she would have felt comfortable throwing out all of it. It wasn't hers to throw away. Well, it was. But she was Meredith, and it probably wouldn't have occurred to her that the concept of his stuff and her stuff, as far as he was concerned, was sort of melding into a vastly more amorphous their stuff. But she knew him. And he also doubted she would have brought it home for him had she known. But she wouldn't have left it... Like this. On display. Everywhere. Obtrusive.
He bopped a few of the balloons out of the way. They'd sagged as the helium had slowly left them, and they hung low in the room. But he didn't want to deal with them. Not right then. They settled against the far wall as their lazy dance slowed and stilled.
He reached forward and pulled his stack of paperwork to the center of his desk, sighing. Charts. Proposals. Budgets. His head was spinning by folder number three, barely an hour later. The text started blurring in and out, and the space behind his eyes began to throb as he forced himself to read and write and focus. Focus. FOCUS. He leaned forward on the desk, plunging his elbows against the hard wood, and jammed his fingers against his eye sockets, trying to relieve the pressure, but nothing helped. Nothing would help.
Broken, broken, broken.
He slammed his hands down, almost reveling in the pain that shot up to his elbows, distracting him from the mess in his head, and he wheeled his chair back, standing up. He'd always been shitty at paperwork. Always. He hated it even when his head wasn't pounding.
It drove him out, out, out, like a guilty spot. Out of his office. Back to the wolves.
Still overwhelmed with the urge to duck and cover, he found himself in the gallery, watching Meredith performing a simple laparoscopic gallbladder removal. It was. Simple. Barely a forty-minute procedure, if that. The gallery was empty, which made him sigh with relief. The surgery wasn't exactly a complicated, groundbreaking, or interesting one. Interns were, no doubt, out hunting down the fascinating and bizarre. Cardio, neuro, plastics. Flaming hearts. A pickaxe in a brain. Cheerleaders with burns on their asses. Not gallstones.
But Meredith was flying solo, which wasn't so simple. Not for a brand new resident. He watched her fingers, watched the subtle way her body shifted as her arms moved. She was wearing the white scrub cap he'd bought her. The one with the sprawl of lavender sprigs. Tiny, leftover curls and twists of sun-kissed hair poked out at the nape of her neck where the cap ended in a graceful purple tie. He found himself leaning forward, elbows pressed into his knees, a small smile lazily stretching across his lips as he lived vicariously through her, imagined his own hands doing the work of hers. She really would make an excellent neurosurgeon when it came time to commit to a specialty. She had the finesse and the focus and the drive to be brilliant.
When she finished, she looked up and caught his eyes. Even despite the mask over her mouth, he could read the smile bursting across her face from the way her gray irises sparkled and the subtle wrinkles of skin around her eyes. After a cute little wave that had everyone looking up at him, she turned back and wandered out of the room to scrub out, and he found himself wandering again, no interest in watching the scrub nurses sterilize the room for the next procedure.
It was replaying Meredith's surgery in his mind, over, and over, and over, that finally drove him out of his anxious funk and pushed him to be productive despite the claw of worries in his gut. He wanted it. He couldn't cut, but he wanted to do something. He could still be a damned doctor. He could. And the prospect of going back to his still mountainous pile of paperwork sent a warning pulse of throbs through his head.
The clinic bustled with activity. Every single bed had someone in it. Dr. Bailey stood at the center desk, shuffling through a pile of charts with a deep frown on her face. Something drew her attention up from her notes, and her gaze found him, standing, sheltered in the shadow of the doorway. Half in, half out. Unsure. Hesitant.
"Well," Dr. Bailey said, "Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to pick up a chart and help?" Her words were shocking and sharp, though her gaze was soft and warm, as though she were trying to come off prickly as always, but, really, was just happy to see him.
He stood in the doorframe, unmoving, muscles clenched and stiff. "Hi," he said. He felt heat rushing to his face. Hi. Hi? That was it? That was all his battered neurons could come up with? Hi?
Walk. Walk into the room and be a doctor. Be a cocky, know-it-all surgeon. Walk. He forced himself toward the desk. He tore his fingers through his hair as he came to rest against his elbows next to her and leaned. "How can I help?" he asked, forcing the words past his seizing lungs and vocal cords.
Dr. Bailey smiled again. She held four charts off the desk for him in a fan of yellow. "I've got a broken toe, a scalp laceration, the stomach flu, and mild abdominal pain that might be appendicitis. What would you like?" she asked. Her voice was deep and meaningful, full of honey rich intonations and seriousness, as though the cases she'd offered him included a cordotomy, a hemispherectomy, an undiagnosed brain tumor... Her brown eyes peered at him, irises ticking back and forth as she took in his expression and catalogued his reaction. To her, it didn't matter. Every patient, from one with a splinter to one with a sucking wound, was important. She wasn't just trying to bolster his feelings of self worth.
"I'll take the scalp laceration. She's hot," said a familiar, deep voice. Derek looked up, clamping down on the little flutter of startle that gripped his heart. Mark had pushed through the doors like a wraith, unseen, and he was close and breathing and abruptly hovering there in Derek's space.
Mark made a grab for the second chart from the left, but Dr. Bailey yanked it away and handed it to Derek while she glared at Mark. "We don't take patients because they're hot, Dr. Sloane," she growled. "What are you doing here? We didn't call for a plastics consult."
Mark shrugged. "I'm volunteering," he said with a Gallic shrug. He settled into a relaxed pose, breathing for a moment, and then his body flashed forward in a movement reminiscent of his quarterback blitzing days. It was a movement that, for Derek, had always meant pain. And landing on his back with the breath knocked out of him. Wheezing. With veritable cartoon stars circling lazily overhead. Mark had always been bigger.
Derek, stop falling over. People on the football team don't fall over unless I slam into them. You're not helping me practice.
That... That wasn't... That wasn't slam... Slamming?
No...I'm not trying to kill you, man. I'm trying to practice my lunging.
See? This? This is why... This is why I swim.
Swimming is for pansies.
You say that, now. Wait until... this summer... Ow. Wait until this summer when I'm a lifeguard saving helpless babes in bikinis.
Dream on, man. I get cheerleaders year round. Now, get up.
Damn it, Mark, I just caught my breath.
Get over it, man. State finals are in two weeks!
Derek shifted backward in a reflexive but trained maneuver, quickly enough to make his ankles protest as they caught his balance for him and wailed at the injustice of the abuse. The flutter of startle pulsed into a fully accelerated throb as Mark feinted forward with a grasping claw for the chart Dr. Bailey had given Derek. "You don't want a scalp laceration, do you?" Big. Big person. Big person who liked to tackle. Derek flinched, only to flush with embarrassment as the movement stopped short of its prize, and Mark grinned like a little kid. His juvenile expression screamed, "psyche!" But it was enough.
Enough to loosen Derek's precarious hold on anything resembling okayness.
Derek clutched his fingers around the chart, trying to ignore the pain as halted circulation left his knuckles whitewashed and bloodless. His heart, still thumping over the sudden, startling intrusion, refused to calm. He swallowed thickly against his tongue, but he wouldn't allow himself to close his eyes and recover. That was a sign that he wasn't fine. And he was. He was fine. And he could do this. He could do a medical case easy enough for an intern barely out of med school. He fucking could. And he could deal with Mark. He'd grown up with Mark. Mark hadn't grown up. It was a simple act of using his memory. He could do that. A single moment of sensory overload was not going to send him to his knees. He wouldn't let it.
"You never volunteer," Derek snapped, his emotions suddenly crackling like a livewire. He could do this. He could. He could be a normal human being again.
"See?" Mark said, the corner of his lip twitching. Annoyed. He was annoyed. What right had he to be annoyed? Because Derek wasn't playing? They'd just barely gotten to the point where they could talk without yelling. That didn't fucking warrant playing.
Did it?
"My services were long overdue," Mark continued.
"Right," Derek replied. "I don't need a babysitter."
But Mom said you're not supposed to be out here. It's cold.
I don't care what Mom said.
But you were just at the hospital cuz you were too hot.
So, being cold should be good, then.
But... If you can get too hot, I think you can get too cold. Right?
Dad's the best doctor in the world. And he didn't tell me to stay inside. I don't care.
Dad's dead, Derek.
Go away.
No. What're you making?
A snowman. Or a fort. Or maybe both.
Okay. Can I help?
Yeah.
Mark's eyes narrowed, and his shoulders straightened. He seemed bigger as he unfurled himself from his slouch, a slouch that hadn't been obvious until it was missing. Before Derek stood Mark from the tips of his toes to the crane of his neck, straight and pluming. Like a preening peacock. "You know, Derek," Mark snapped. "Just because my life happens to intersect with yours today doesn't necessarily make it about you. I'm volunteering in the clinic today. Get over it, man."
Derek narrowed his eyes in return, trying to ignore how much larger his opponent was. Mark had always been bigger. There was nothing new there. And Derek refused to be intimidated. He refused to be sick. "Mark..." he hissed.
Mark crossed his arms over his chest in a defensive posture. The muscles of his forearms and biceps rippled with tension. He opened his mouth to reply, but the words that sliced the air between them were the human equivalent to machine gun fire.
"Do you fools need to take this outside?" Dr. Bailey snapped.
Derek frowned. "No."
"Good," Dr. Bailey said, all friendliness gone from her tone. She gestured with a flick of her palm at the room around them. "I don't know if you two noticed, but we have no spare beds today, and the waiting area is stuffed. I damned well don't need to be wasting my time stitching up your sorry asses when you clobber each other for the sake of testosterone."
"Sorry," Derek replied, unable to stop the smile that ripped across his face. Dr. Bailey was yelling. At him. Dr. Bailey was yelling at him, and she didn't care that she was yelling, or that it was at him. "We'll be good," he added as a hint of his usual snark limped back into to the fray like a long lost sparring partner.
His lips twitched. Mark stared at him like he was high on something. Derek didn't care. The smile stuck, and Mark deflated from his threatening posture as he wheeled around to face Dr. Bailey with Derek, shoulder-to-shoulder. She glared, silent, eyebrows raised, her neck craned back to meet their eyes. Mark, whose expression switched to one of conspiratorial, eye-sparkling glee, grunted when Derek slammed his elbow into Mark's ribcage. "Yeah," Mark said, quickly recovering. "We'll behave."
Dr. Bailey's eyes widened. "You'd better behave," she snarled. "You're grown men, not a pair of two-year-olds fighting over a stupid matchbox car. Now, go do something productive like heal someone. Or get out of my clinic."
"Yes, Ma'am," Derek said. Out of the corner of his eye, Mark gave a jerky salute and pulled one of the three remaining charts from the stack without further complaint.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
I nearly broke my brain trying to get this part written. Please feedback if you have the time :)
~~~~~
The water spread out like a gray, glass sheet. Slivers of broken, white surf exploded in a spray of froth and foam, only to disappear when they slipped back into endless, choppy murk. Chill buffeted his cheeks as he stared along the gray horizon line. Distant, low-hanging nimbus clouds formed a second dark line, and the deep blue of rain formed a wet, misty sheet between them. The rain hadn't reached Seattle yet. But it was coming.
He blinked, wiping his face with his free hand, clutching his warm coffee mug in the other. If he watched the horizon line, he was okay. He was riding the ferry into Seattle. The smell of oil and flames, the wailing cries of search and rescue sirens, and the roar of controlled panic had long since passed into memory. His fiancé was very much warm, alive, and smiling as she rested against the crook between his shoulders, her thin, strong arms wrapped around his midsection, hands clutching at his coat. He was on his way to work for the first time in eight weeks.
By all means, he should have been ecstatic.
And he was. As long as he looked at the horizon line.
If he put his head down, he became aware that his body was moving. Up and down. Up and down. Subtly. And that drew his attention to the twisting gnarl of his stomach, which had been coiling into tighter and tighter knots ever since he'd woken up. The closer to the ferry's destination he found himself, the more his body protested.
He hadn't been able to eat breakfast. He'd stared, uninterested, at the bagels Meredith had bought the day before, unable to think of them as food. Unable to think of anything as food.
No breakfast.
He leaned back into Meredith's arms and stared. The horizon line was flat and calm and wet. And he was all right. He clenched his free hand around the railing. The chill metal served a sharp contrast to the warm coffee mug in his other hand. Cold, dried, bumpy paint scraped against his palm as he twisted his grip.
He was on his way to work for the first time in eight weeks.
"Derek, if you're not ready to go back yet..." Meredith whispered into his neck as if she'd read his mind.
Water slapped against the side of the boat as the ferry sliced through the Sound. He closed his eyes, letting the wind whip against his skin. "Mere..."
"I mean just because Burke and Cristina are out on their honeymoon, and Dr. Krycek is on maternity leave, it doesn't mean..."
"Mere, I'll be fine," he assured her. "Really. I'm going to have to go back sooner or later. Neurosurgery is down three with me, Dr. Krycek, and Dr. Shriver. I need to..."
"You need to," Meredith agreed with a definitive nod as he turned to face her. "Because you're bored, and going crazy, and tired of being not okay, and I... We're not going to be like that? Right? We're not."
"Like..." His voice trailed away, and he squinted at her, wondering when she'd made a left turn in the conversation and how he'd missed it. "What? Mere, what?"
Her eyes widened. "Mother hen," she blurted. "Bad. Bad, bad, bad. I'm stopping, I swear."
"Meredith, what are you talking about?"
"Cristina and Burke!" she exclaimed.
"What?"
"It's just... They hid it," she said. "When Burke wasn't ready. His hand shook, but he did surgeries anyway. And then they didn't talk, and Cristina was a wreck and forced to eat cereal. And then they were getting married. And then Mama was glaring, and it was just... She has to be happy, Derek. She has to..."
"Okay, Mere? Meredith. You're..." He paused, growling in frustration. He usually had a much easier time getting a read on her, even when her words weren't making that much sense. But now? "You're losing me, here. I really have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sorry." Which made him feel slow and inadequate, but he held on anyway because he had a feeling this was one of those sink or swim moments. He clutched his hands around her shoulders and stared at her. The coffee mug dangled precariously.
"It's just," she said, sighing, "I want her to be happy so bad, and during the wedding, she looked like she wanted to strangle something."
"I did sort of notice that," he replied.
He looked down at his hand, imagining a wedding ring sliding over the left ring finger, piloted by her thin, arching fingers. He'd exchanged rings once before. The metal had felt gelid against his skin. Nerves had robbed him of his body heat and the sureness of graceful, deliberate movement. The gold band had slipped over his knuckle and settled, wrapped around his skin, a promise for a long, long future that, sadly, hadn't been fate's plan.
That would be the difference, this time. There would be no nerves. And it wouldn't be a promise. Promise implied there was a chance it could be broken.
It wouldn't be.
"I wonder where Mama was," Meredith mused.
"I don't know, Mere," he said, shrugging. "I didn't ask."
"Maybe they had a fight. Before. About... Where she would be. And that's why Cristina was mad. Maybe."
"Maybe."
"We're not going to be like that, though," she said.
Meredith stared at him, her gray eyes hooded with such a serious look of consternation it disturbed him. She didn't make it a question. It wasn't one. But her tone quivered, and it tore at his heart that she still had moments like this. Moments where she wasn't sure. Even tiny ones.
If there was one thing in his life he was sure about, it was this. Them. And he wished it was a feeling he could share like a piece of bread, or an extra kernel in a popcorn bowl. Here, have some. Sureness. I'm overflowing, and it tastes delicious.
Certainty wasn't like that, though. For her. She couldn't pluck it from other people who were ripe with it. She needed her own garden, and she had one, slowly healing. Anger spiraled through him as he imagined all the reasons why it needed healing. Thatcher walking out. Ellis giggling in a closet with another man. Derek Shepherd, telling her he had a wife.
Moments like this made him want to scrape and claw and kick and shout. Nobody deserved it, least of all her, and the fury over the injustice and his own stupidity always made him tremble. Instead, he channeled all that fire, and he kissed her until the world around them peeled away. He wasn't on his way to work for the first time in eight weeks, they weren't on a boat, and he wasn't nauseated with nerves about whether he could, or should. He was Derek Shepherd. Able-bodied at sweeping his fiancé off her feet. Able-bodied, strong, and certain.
She tasted warm and bitter like his coffee, but he didn't care. Warm and bitter was perfect. Her lithe fingers clutched the lapels of his dark coat and yanked him closer as her weight sagged, nerveless. He dipped forward against her backward arch, the palm of his free hand in the small of her back, and held them both up.
"Absolutely not," he stated, brushing her swollen lips with his before pulling away. Close, but far enough away for some perspective, he could still count her freckles, not that he didn't already know how many there were. He'd counted them a thousand times. He could see every line and follicle and blemish. Her lashes brushed low against her cheeks. He gripped her chin, hovered nose-to-nose, and breathed her in. He brushed his cheek against her own and settled against the softness of her earlobe, his nose buried in the loose strands of her hair. Lavender. Heat. Even in the chill, despite the wind and frothy, choppy, nauseating water, she warmed him and made the world go still. He told her, low and thrumming and sure, as he slid his arms behind her waist and pulled her close.
"Meredith," he continued, wishing he could hear her heartbeat over the roar of everything else, "When we walk down that aisle, or meet at city hall, or elope in Vegas, or step over a broomstick, whatever you want to do, it's going to be because you're ready, and you want it. And if you're not ready? We won't. Simple as that. I'm happy to be with you. The rest is just details. You said yes. You said yes, and you meant it, even if you're not sure when or where or how, and that means more to me than any pomp and circumstance."
Her eyes narrowed, irises twinkling even in the gray. "I love you," she replied, though the statement had the lilt of a comma but at the end, and he wasn't sure he liked it.
"I love you, too," he said.
"And I love your family," she continued.
He nodded. "Our family."
"Our family," she amended. "It's just..."
"Just what, Meredith?" he prodded.
"Promise me we're not going to be robbing any banks? Please?" she said, her voice tiny, hopeful. "Because I'm so far in this at this point that if you asked me to, I would, and I... You're not the best about telling me when you're strapped for cash or whatever, and it could be just... I don't ever want to be like them. Like Cristina and Burke. She's my person, and I love her, but yesterday? Yesterday, she scared the ever-loving crap out of me. And I don't ever want to be her. Ever. I'm done with dark and twisty. I'm so freaking done."
"What?" He blinked. "Mere, I... What?"
She sighed. He watched the frustration clamor across her gaze, sparking like firecrackers, and he felt a mirror of it collecting in his gut. Pop. Pop. Pop. Get with it. Why can't you understand her today? Was he really that slow? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Something made him feel like he should know what she was referring to. A wispy ghost of something, a thought, a smell, a taste, stuck in the back of his head.
Bank robberies. Which isn't really the point. It's just that she was jogging, and...
Meredith's fingers scraped lightly down his neck in a petting gesture robbed of affection by need. Need to make him understand. She pulled him out of drifting, and he saw that need flare in her eyes. "If you're not okay, promise you'll stop without me having to drag you?" she clarified. "And that you'll tell me? You're so much better, Derek. You're so, so much better. But you're not... You're not..." Okay.
You're not okay.
He sighed. Reality crept back, and the boat started to rock again. The chill wind slapped away the feeling in his skin. He was going to work, and he was vastly not okay. Everyone would know it. Everyone he hadn't wanted staring at him while he was bedridden, doped, shaved, and naked. They'd be staring, now. Staring while he calculated dosages, tried to read charts and answer questions, tried to act human when he still felt strange and foreign all the time except when he wasn't thinking at all, or when Meredith had taken the world away for him.
"I know, Meredith," he said. "I'm... But if I wait until everything is in tiptop shape again, I won't be working for months, still, or... never. And I need to work Meredith. I love to fish and relax and hike. But I'm just not built to do it twenty-four seven. I'm a surgeon. And I'm going crazy."
"I know," she said. She leaned into his space and assured him, "It won't be never."
For a long moment, he couldn't take his eyes from her. From her certainty. Her confidence in him. Ripe like red delicious apples dangling from a tree in May. And he knew innately why he couldn't fix things for her, because now? Now, she couldn't fix things for him. He could reassure her over and over and over. He could be certain until the world ended. And she would find comfort in the fact that he was so sure. She would find comfort, but she wouldn't find her own certainty unless it stemmed from herself.
You're broken. And you're not ready.
He leaned into her and sighed. Her tiny body felt so fragile next to his. Fragile and his. He sniffed, blotting the world away in the darkness of her hair. Her scent. Her. The roar of the ferry underneath his feet seemed distant, but it was there. A roar. Underneath. Malevolent.
"Sometimes, it feels like it," he confessed. "I still feel so retarded sometimes, it... I'm scared. I have to work, Meredith. If I don't start working again..."
You might always be broken. You need to not be broken.
She frowned. "You're not re..." she said, unable to finish the word. "You're not."
"I have to think about thinking. And I have to... What if people think I'm..."
"They won't. You're eight weeks out from surgery to repair a traumatic brain injury. A traumatic brain injury, Derek. Nobody will think..." A sigh puffed past her lips. "Nobody expects... It's not..." He watched the way her lips curled as she stumbled over reassurances, the way her eyes shifted, and the soft movements of her skin. "But you have to... If you're not okay? You have to stop and admit it. You can't just... be Derek-y about it. You can't. Your body wants you to go slow for a reason."
"I know. I promise," he said, feeling better as he watched her body relax. He'd won something in that moment. Won something with her. And that felt... Good. Even in the stumble and churn of everything else. "And we'll never be them, Meredith. Not ever. I'll page you if it gets bad. I swear."
"Okay," she replied, smiling deeply at him. "Okay," she echoed herself, distant and quiet. She left his embrace and approached the railing to stare at the choppy gray. Her lithe fingers tapped the railing, and he found himself settling next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder, to watch the stormy horizon. If he watched the horizon, he didn't feel sick.
"We're commuting together, you know," she said, her voice quiet against the breeze and the roar and the waves.
He turned to her. If he watched Meredith, he didn't feel sick either. "We are," he replied. He took a sip from his coffee mug. Bitter warmth snaked down his throat and didn't quite settle. He grimaced. Bad idea. He counted her eyelashes until he felt steady again, and she waited, as if she sensed his difficulty.
"On a ferry," she said once the world had re-settled. "We're commuting together. Like a couple that works together."
"Meredith," he said with a laugh, enjoying the roll of her name against his tongue. "We are a couple that works together. We sort of always have been."
"But we're commuting together," she said. "And that's..."
He grinned, inching against the railing until his shoulder made her body slant. He couldn't get closer, so he wrapped his arm around her and she rested there against his body. "Yeah," he replied. "It is."
"I like it."
"Me, too."
They settled. She watched the choppy water for a moment. He watched her.
"Do you think they're having fun?" Meredith mused. "In Hawaii?"
"Burke and Cristina?"
"Yeah."
"If I was in Hawaii with the woman I love, I'd be happy," he said. "And I'd be having fun."
"They have to have fun," she said, turning to peer at him. "Right? In the moments we're not there watching them? I mean... They can't possibly..."
"I'm sure Cristina had reasons for saying yes, Meredith," Derek assured her. "She's too..." He searched for a word, trying not to get frustrated when it wouldn't come. Too... Self-assured? Bossy? Definitive? Abrasive? None of those were quite right.
"Yeah," Meredith agreed despite his faltering speech, as if she knew what he was trying to say before he did. He sighed. "We'll have fun wherever we're going," she added.
He closed his eyes and imagined the roar of the waves underneath them as the soft roll of surf in the distance. "Somewhere with a beach."
"Definitely somewhere with a beach," she replied.
His balance shifted when her hip bumped into his. She slid along the railing, her forearms brushing the cold, painted metal. The small, pink tip of her tongue slipped out between her lips, her skin flushed, and he watched the twinkle in her eyes as he caught himself from falling on his ass.
"The boat," she said, her voice quivering with laughter. "It's choppy."
"Really?" he said. "I hadn't noticed."
He bumped her in return, and she shrieked. He felt dozens of gazes shift to them in response to the flailing commotion, but he didn't care. He kissed her, and in the distance, he heard a haze of clapping and whistles. "You're right," he murmured against her skin. "It's choppy."
Her fingers slipped through his hair, and he sighed, his hand clenching around his coffee mug. He supposed it was good. That he had the coffee mug. If he didn't, he'd have had two hands with which to ravish her, and nothing to keep his flagging sense of propriety in check. It wouldn't do to sweep her off her feet, only to spill coffee down her pants or something. Then again, her shirt was white, and it would probably look quite delectable when it was wet and sticky. He halted a growl before he made it, instead forcing his mind back to things like talking. And thinking. Talking and thinking.
Both were admirable endeavors.
"How hopeful are you on a scale from one to ten that we'll even make it out of the bedroom on our honeymoon?" he asked, woefully unable to make the talking and thinking about anything of substance.
"Hmm," she purred. Her index finger traced the bump of his scar, which was buried underneath an inch of thick, raven-brown hair. "Nine."
"Wow, nine?"
"Yeah. You promised me sex on a balcony overlooking the beach."
"Oh, right," he said with a sheepish snort. "Well, discounting that."
Her lips flattened into a wide, lazy grin, and her eyes went glassy as her focus lost him and found someplace else. "Zero," she replied, and he fought the urge to die a lazy death as she twisted her fingers through his hair, over and over and over. He loved having his hair back. He really did.
"Hmm," he considered. "I don't know whether to be pleased or intimidated."
"Oh, like you actually planned on playing tourist with me?"
"Could be fun, you know," he said. "We could use a real camera this time. See the sites. Add to your knickknacks."
"We could," she agreed with a little nod. "Where do you..." Want to go?
"No idea," he said.
"Me either."
"We have time," he said. "It's only September."
She grinned, turning back to watch the water. "We do."
The rest of the trip passed in quiet. Their breaths traded in the silence, and they stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, watching, waiting, his nerves held hostage in the warmth of the moment.
He was on his way to work for the first time in eight weeks, but it didn't matter as the ferry finally found its port. It didn't matter as they wandered down to the car. It didn't matter as she drove them out of the canopy of the boat and into the new splatter of rain. It didn't matter as she found a parking spot, and it didn't matter as she asked him one last time if he was sure. Because they were commuting. Like a couple that worked together. On a ferry. In a car. And it was so perfect it made him ache.
It wasn't until he found himself standing alone in the attendings' locker room, his fingers slipping against the plastic wrap that hugged a newly sterilized pair of navy scrubs, that he realized just how thoroughly he'd lied to himself. To Meredith. The chains around his thumping heart and worried thoughts shucked away with hollow, rusty clinks, leaving him almost breathless with the uncertainty. He threw the scrubs packet on the bench. His fingers trembled as he tried to enter the right locker combination.
Page her if it got bad. It was already bad. The nerves she'd robbed him of had returned on stealthy feet, piling in his gut like worms, twisting, quickly enough that he didn't notice until they were overpowering. A thin bead of sweat trickled down the small of his back, slow and creeping, like a bug. He tore his fingers through his hair, resisting the fluttery impulse to pace, pace, pace.
His locker door flung open with the strength of his yank, and he found himself staring at things he hadn't laid eyes on in months. From the hook on the right wall hung his white lab coat. In the maze of long neglected folds and twists of fabric, he could just make out the blue cursive embroidery on the pocket that bared his name to the world. Dr. Derek Shepherd. On the left wall hook, his stethoscope hung precariously, swaying in the aftershocks of his intrusion. His battered black cross trainers sat on the overhead shelf, their laces a spill of tangled spaghetti. A collection of disorganized junk sat at the bottom in a pile. Papers. Notes. Socks -- some dirty, some not. A pen. A few other odds and ends. A small photograph of Meredith the size of an index card hung against the rear wall, glossy and hard to see in the dark, but there. Meredith didn't know he had it. Usually, it hid behind his coat, invisible to any questioning eyes. Her gray eyes peeked at him as he swept his shaking hand against the coarse white fabric of his lab coat and removed it from the hook, replacing it with his black duster.
He was at work, and there was no going back, now. People would know. Dr. Derek Shepherd was a little bit broken. Or maybe a lot. He wasn't quite sure.
He sat against the bench and pulled clean, navy scrubs up his legs, sighing at the soft feel of them against his skin. It was the first time in his life that they felt... wrong. Like a butterfly crawling back into the cocoon. Wrong. Unnatural. He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready to... Was he?
He leaned forward and sighed into his hands. His hands. He could hold them still, direct them to do precise movements. He still had his physical finesse, which made his mental stumbling seem so much more pronounced. He could grip a scalpel and draw it down a plane of flesh. In a perfect world, that was fine. He was a surgeon, and he was ready. He could cut just as adroitly as he'd always been able to. But what about a flat line?
He closed his eyes, listening to the distant whine of shrieking monitors. A heart stops. Ask Dr. Derek Shepherd for the precise dosage of epinephrine or the voltage needed on the defibrillator?
He couldn't do it without tearing apart his brain piece by bloody piece, rifling desperately for an answer that laughed at him, making faces just beyond his reaching grasp. Patient's weight? Patient's age? Patient's... what? What had he been hunting for?
Bleep. Dead. I think that was enough electricity to kill a horse.
He wasn't clueless. He was just being blackmailed by all the fucking clues. We'll let you know the answer if you beat the inside of your skull to a frustrated, bloody pulp, first, and not a moment sooner.
And what about the stretch of moments? That eleventh hour, eleventh in a long procession of painful moments? He cut beautifully the first time. The second time. The third time. The fourth. Maybe even the fifth. By the sixth repetition, asking his fingers to do something so precise began to hurt. Not his fingers. But his eyes. His pupils wouldn't want to wind into sharp pinpricks of focus anymore. His mind. The space behind his nose would begin to throb. He would stare and blink and force himself steady, try to keep everything sharp and clear. But then a pin would drop, a sheet would rustle, a clock would tick. Maybe a spoken word would wrap around his neck like a noose.
It didn't matter. It happened when he was repairing his fishing poles. It happened when he was fixing doorjambs. It happened when he cut up fresh salmon for dinner. And it would surely happen if he were to cut into someone's brain matter. Dr. Derek Shepherd would look up whether he wanted to or not.
Bleep. Dead. Did you mean to cut that artery?
He could think when he wasn't pushing it. Any sort of pressure brought him crumbling into frustration. He'd had Meredith test him with some of her intern flashcards and an egg timer, and he'd felt like a bumbling fool by the end. Slow and stuttery and stupid. He still knew the answers. They were all there. But when did a surgeon ever need the answer eventually? A surgeon needed answers now. Now, now, now.
And he couldn't do it. He knew he couldn't. People would notice as soon as they started grilling him. They would know he was damaged. He never wanted anyone to look at him as that guy who used to be really smart. That guy who used to be capable. That guy who needed a few extra seconds.
What the fuck had ever possessed him to come back so soon?
He needed to not be that guy. The guy who used to be really smart. The guy who used to be capable. The guy who needed a few extra seconds.
He couldn't stay at home in the trailer anymore. He couldn't stare at the lake and think forever, no matter how slow his thoughts were. And he couldn't listen to another one of Meredith's bright-eyed, cheerful stories about how fascinating her day had been, moments that made him want to hug her and hurt her all at once, because he was supposed to be there, too. In those stories. He was supposed to be there.
He was a surgeon. And he needed to do it again, or he'd go crazy. He'd seen far too many people rot after a brain injury, seen far too many people let themselves get frustrated and just... stop. Stop living, convinced they couldn't do things anymore, convinced they'd never heal. Some really didn't heal.
But he wouldn't be one of those.
He wouldn't.
Right?
Right.
"Hey, Shep," Dr. Lewis said, his tone deep and thrumming, as he stepped out from behind a row of lockers. "Really good to see you back."
Derek nodded and smiled, watched the world tilt as the friendly slap to his shoulder sent his limp, nervous body reeling. He swallowed around his tongue, which felt too thick. Too thick to form words, and so he settled for just the smile and the nod, hoping nobody would think him rude.
He thought about visiting the Chief. He thought about it. The Chief knew he was coming back to work today. The Chief had been the one who'd called him to subtly hint that with Dr. Burke gone and neurosurgery down at least three very good surgeons, the hospital was woefully understaffed.
But right then, right at that moment, he didn't think he could stomach a spiel about taking it easy, a spiel that would emphasize his reduced hours, the fact that he was banned from anything involving a scalpel. And the Chief would. He'd do that. Because he was nosey and intrusive, and when it came to Derek and Meredith, he never seemed to recognize personal boundaries.
Derek stood, brushing his sweaty palms against his scrubs. He pulled his jacket on and hooked his penlight and stethoscope inside his breast pocket. The Chief could find him if he wanted to talk logistics about running the neurosurgery department, or signing off of disability leave, or any of the numerous things that didn't involve asking Derek how he felt or if he was really ready.
He tore through the halls, feeling the rushing heat of roaring blood overwhelming the skin on his face. Every time he passed someone in the hall, they would look up and smile and give him a huge welcome back greeting. A greeting that he didn't want. He didn't want to be an event.
It made his hair feel too short and stupid. It made him wonder if he was still walking a little funny. It made him want to avoid talking, because if people were already scrutinizing his presence that much, surely, they would notice he was very slow on the uptake. Rapid-fire subject changes flummoxed him, even with Meredith, though she took great care to never make a big production out of repeating herself or clarifying the babbling brook of words that sometimes spilled from her lips.
He arrived at the haven of his office, panting at the exertion of dodging everyone and everything possible. He slumped against the door as he shut it, trying to ease the thump, thump, thump-thump-thump of his heart as he hovered in the darkness. His fingers found the bridge of his nose, and he rubbed his grip up and down his skin, trying to ease the tension. When he opened his eyes after a long, quiet set of minutes, the room felt cooler against his skin. His heart wasn't outpacing the tick of the analog wall clock. His limbs felt a little less shaky.
He flipped the lights on, and everything spiraled out of his control again.
He let his gaze linger on his diplomas hanging from the wall, trying to ignore the rest of it. And then he sighed, letting the stale air of his office fill his lungs. Familiar. Even this far away from patients, the sharp scent of antiseptic managed to work its way through the air vents. The manila scent of paper laced underneath everything else drew his gaze to the desk. Dustless and clean despite his long neglect of it. The paperwork he'd left for himself before his departure for Connecticut still sat a foot high in his inbox. After he soaked that in, he let himself cope with the rest of it.
Balloons. Streamers. Cards. Get well. Welcome back. Flowers. The You're-Really-Sick fairy had vomited all over the room.
He sat at his desk, letting his fingertips brush along the cool grain of wood. In the soft light, it gleamed, and he could see a vague ghost of his outline in the lacquer. His hair stuck up, straight and scattered. It was too short to weigh itself down against his scalp. Too short for the mop of curls he was used to. He drew his palms back against his scalp. His hair flattened and sprang back up, and all the gesture did was remind him his skull wasn't an even curve anymore.
He could feel it. The piece of bone Dr. Weller had carved out of it and wired back on. There was a slight depression that would probably remain for years. The soft gnarl of his scar left a knick in the skin. He wondered what Meredith thought of the lack of symmetry when they made love, and she tore at his hair. She never mentioned it.
Really, aside from her self-proclaimed tendency to mother hen every once in a while, she ignored his illness. Ignored it in a way that was somehow mindful of it, but never focused on it. He never felt scrutinized with her. And he never felt oddly overlooked. She was considerate in a way that didn't make him feel overly considered, but she was never oblivious when he needed a break or a moment or... something. He was all right with that. When that was the only fanfare he received, he could be sick, and it didn't bother him so much.
The get-well cards and smiles and welcome backs and staring. Those bothered him. And then he couldn't be sick. It was unacceptable. Which only drove the frustration deep into his gut like a serrated, twisting knife. It was unacceptable, but there was absolutely nothing he could do to fix it except wait. And hope. And be sick.
He stared at the door for a moment. Then he picked up the first card, feeling more like it was a bamboo shoot under his fingernail than an expression of sympathy. The nurses. Smiley faces. Hearts. Loopy signatures. Get well! Hope you're feeling better! Come back soon! The next card was from the neurosurgery department. All of his employees except Dr. Weller had signed it. More of the same. Get well, get well, get well.
Get well.
Had Meredith known about this? He wondered if they'd tried to ambush her at work with all of this stuff, stuff to take home to him. He doubted she would have felt comfortable throwing out all of it. It wasn't hers to throw away. Well, it was. But she was Meredith, and it probably wouldn't have occurred to her that the concept of his stuff and her stuff, as far as he was concerned, was sort of melding into a vastly more amorphous their stuff. But she knew him. And he also doubted she would have brought it home for him had she known. But she wouldn't have left it... Like this. On display. Everywhere. Obtrusive.
He bopped a few of the balloons out of the way. They'd sagged as the helium had slowly left them, and they hung low in the room. But he didn't want to deal with them. Not right then. They settled against the far wall as their lazy dance slowed and stilled.
He reached forward and pulled his stack of paperwork to the center of his desk, sighing. Charts. Proposals. Budgets. His head was spinning by folder number three, barely an hour later. The text started blurring in and out, and the space behind his eyes began to throb as he forced himself to read and write and focus. Focus. FOCUS. He leaned forward on the desk, plunging his elbows against the hard wood, and jammed his fingers against his eye sockets, trying to relieve the pressure, but nothing helped. Nothing would help.
Broken, broken, broken.
He slammed his hands down, almost reveling in the pain that shot up to his elbows, distracting him from the mess in his head, and he wheeled his chair back, standing up. He'd always been shitty at paperwork. Always. He hated it even when his head wasn't pounding.
It drove him out, out, out, like a guilty spot. Out of his office. Back to the wolves.
Still overwhelmed with the urge to duck and cover, he found himself in the gallery, watching Meredith performing a simple laparoscopic gallbladder removal. It was. Simple. Barely a forty-minute procedure, if that. The gallery was empty, which made him sigh with relief. The surgery wasn't exactly a complicated, groundbreaking, or interesting one. Interns were, no doubt, out hunting down the fascinating and bizarre. Cardio, neuro, plastics. Flaming hearts. A pickaxe in a brain. Cheerleaders with burns on their asses. Not gallstones.
But Meredith was flying solo, which wasn't so simple. Not for a brand new resident. He watched her fingers, watched the subtle way her body shifted as her arms moved. She was wearing the white scrub cap he'd bought her. The one with the sprawl of lavender sprigs. Tiny, leftover curls and twists of sun-kissed hair poked out at the nape of her neck where the cap ended in a graceful purple tie. He found himself leaning forward, elbows pressed into his knees, a small smile lazily stretching across his lips as he lived vicariously through her, imagined his own hands doing the work of hers. She really would make an excellent neurosurgeon when it came time to commit to a specialty. She had the finesse and the focus and the drive to be brilliant.
When she finished, she looked up and caught his eyes. Even despite the mask over her mouth, he could read the smile bursting across her face from the way her gray irises sparkled and the subtle wrinkles of skin around her eyes. After a cute little wave that had everyone looking up at him, she turned back and wandered out of the room to scrub out, and he found himself wandering again, no interest in watching the scrub nurses sterilize the room for the next procedure.
It was replaying Meredith's surgery in his mind, over, and over, and over, that finally drove him out of his anxious funk and pushed him to be productive despite the claw of worries in his gut. He wanted it. He couldn't cut, but he wanted to do something. He could still be a damned doctor. He could. And the prospect of going back to his still mountainous pile of paperwork sent a warning pulse of throbs through his head.
The clinic bustled with activity. Every single bed had someone in it. Dr. Bailey stood at the center desk, shuffling through a pile of charts with a deep frown on her face. Something drew her attention up from her notes, and her gaze found him, standing, sheltered in the shadow of the doorway. Half in, half out. Unsure. Hesitant.
"Well," Dr. Bailey said, "Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to pick up a chart and help?" Her words were shocking and sharp, though her gaze was soft and warm, as though she were trying to come off prickly as always, but, really, was just happy to see him.
He stood in the doorframe, unmoving, muscles clenched and stiff. "Hi," he said. He felt heat rushing to his face. Hi. Hi? That was it? That was all his battered neurons could come up with? Hi?
Walk. Walk into the room and be a doctor. Be a cocky, know-it-all surgeon. Walk. He forced himself toward the desk. He tore his fingers through his hair as he came to rest against his elbows next to her and leaned. "How can I help?" he asked, forcing the words past his seizing lungs and vocal cords.
Dr. Bailey smiled again. She held four charts off the desk for him in a fan of yellow. "I've got a broken toe, a scalp laceration, the stomach flu, and mild abdominal pain that might be appendicitis. What would you like?" she asked. Her voice was deep and meaningful, full of honey rich intonations and seriousness, as though the cases she'd offered him included a cordotomy, a hemispherectomy, an undiagnosed brain tumor... Her brown eyes peered at him, irises ticking back and forth as she took in his expression and catalogued his reaction. To her, it didn't matter. Every patient, from one with a splinter to one with a sucking wound, was important. She wasn't just trying to bolster his feelings of self worth.
"I'll take the scalp laceration. She's hot," said a familiar, deep voice. Derek looked up, clamping down on the little flutter of startle that gripped his heart. Mark had pushed through the doors like a wraith, unseen, and he was close and breathing and abruptly hovering there in Derek's space.
Mark made a grab for the second chart from the left, but Dr. Bailey yanked it away and handed it to Derek while she glared at Mark. "We don't take patients because they're hot, Dr. Sloane," she growled. "What are you doing here? We didn't call for a plastics consult."
Mark shrugged. "I'm volunteering," he said with a Gallic shrug. He settled into a relaxed pose, breathing for a moment, and then his body flashed forward in a movement reminiscent of his quarterback blitzing days. It was a movement that, for Derek, had always meant pain. And landing on his back with the breath knocked out of him. Wheezing. With veritable cartoon stars circling lazily overhead. Mark had always been bigger.
Derek, stop falling over. People on the football team don't fall over unless I slam into them. You're not helping me practice.
That... That wasn't... That wasn't slam... Slamming?
No...I'm not trying to kill you, man. I'm trying to practice my lunging.
See? This? This is why... This is why I swim.
Swimming is for pansies.
You say that, now. Wait until... this summer... Ow. Wait until this summer when I'm a lifeguard saving helpless babes in bikinis.
Dream on, man. I get cheerleaders year round. Now, get up.
Damn it, Mark, I just caught my breath.
Get over it, man. State finals are in two weeks!
Derek shifted backward in a reflexive but trained maneuver, quickly enough to make his ankles protest as they caught his balance for him and wailed at the injustice of the abuse. The flutter of startle pulsed into a fully accelerated throb as Mark feinted forward with a grasping claw for the chart Dr. Bailey had given Derek. "You don't want a scalp laceration, do you?" Big. Big person. Big person who liked to tackle. Derek flinched, only to flush with embarrassment as the movement stopped short of its prize, and Mark grinned like a little kid. His juvenile expression screamed, "psyche!" But it was enough.
Enough to loosen Derek's precarious hold on anything resembling okayness.
Derek clutched his fingers around the chart, trying to ignore the pain as halted circulation left his knuckles whitewashed and bloodless. His heart, still thumping over the sudden, startling intrusion, refused to calm. He swallowed thickly against his tongue, but he wouldn't allow himself to close his eyes and recover. That was a sign that he wasn't fine. And he was. He was fine. And he could do this. He could do a medical case easy enough for an intern barely out of med school. He fucking could. And he could deal with Mark. He'd grown up with Mark. Mark hadn't grown up. It was a simple act of using his memory. He could do that. A single moment of sensory overload was not going to send him to his knees. He wouldn't let it.
"You never volunteer," Derek snapped, his emotions suddenly crackling like a livewire. He could do this. He could. He could be a normal human being again.
"See?" Mark said, the corner of his lip twitching. Annoyed. He was annoyed. What right had he to be annoyed? Because Derek wasn't playing? They'd just barely gotten to the point where they could talk without yelling. That didn't fucking warrant playing.
Did it?
"My services were long overdue," Mark continued.
"Right," Derek replied. "I don't need a babysitter."
But Mom said you're not supposed to be out here. It's cold.
I don't care what Mom said.
But you were just at the hospital cuz you were too hot.
So, being cold should be good, then.
But... If you can get too hot, I think you can get too cold. Right?
Dad's the best doctor in the world. And he didn't tell me to stay inside. I don't care.
Dad's dead, Derek.
Go away.
No. What're you making?
A snowman. Or a fort. Or maybe both.
Okay. Can I help?
Yeah.
Mark's eyes narrowed, and his shoulders straightened. He seemed bigger as he unfurled himself from his slouch, a slouch that hadn't been obvious until it was missing. Before Derek stood Mark from the tips of his toes to the crane of his neck, straight and pluming. Like a preening peacock. "You know, Derek," Mark snapped. "Just because my life happens to intersect with yours today doesn't necessarily make it about you. I'm volunteering in the clinic today. Get over it, man."
Derek narrowed his eyes in return, trying to ignore how much larger his opponent was. Mark had always been bigger. There was nothing new there. And Derek refused to be intimidated. He refused to be sick. "Mark..." he hissed.
Mark crossed his arms over his chest in a defensive posture. The muscles of his forearms and biceps rippled with tension. He opened his mouth to reply, but the words that sliced the air between them were the human equivalent to machine gun fire.
"Do you fools need to take this outside?" Dr. Bailey snapped.
Derek frowned. "No."
"Good," Dr. Bailey said, all friendliness gone from her tone. She gestured with a flick of her palm at the room around them. "I don't know if you two noticed, but we have no spare beds today, and the waiting area is stuffed. I damned well don't need to be wasting my time stitching up your sorry asses when you clobber each other for the sake of testosterone."
"Sorry," Derek replied, unable to stop the smile that ripped across his face. Dr. Bailey was yelling. At him. Dr. Bailey was yelling at him, and she didn't care that she was yelling, or that it was at him. "We'll be good," he added as a hint of his usual snark limped back into to the fray like a long lost sparring partner.
His lips twitched. Mark stared at him like he was high on something. Derek didn't care. The smile stuck, and Mark deflated from his threatening posture as he wheeled around to face Dr. Bailey with Derek, shoulder-to-shoulder. She glared, silent, eyebrows raised, her neck craned back to meet their eyes. Mark, whose expression switched to one of conspiratorial, eye-sparkling glee, grunted when Derek slammed his elbow into Mark's ribcage. "Yeah," Mark said, quickly recovering. "We'll behave."
Dr. Bailey's eyes widened. "You'd better behave," she snarled. "You're grown men, not a pair of two-year-olds fighting over a stupid matchbox car. Now, go do something productive like heal someone. Or get out of my clinic."
"Yes, Ma'am," Derek said. Out of the corner of his eye, Mark gave a jerky salute and pulled one of the three remaining charts from the stack without further complaint.