When the sun sets on Kauai, it drops like an egg yolk being cracked into a bowl, and daylight turns into dusk in minutes.
It's quiet here at Thanksgiving. He likes that now. He hated it when he came here as a kid, knowing that Derek was back home eating pumpkin pie and pissing off his sisters while he was ignored on a beach without friends during the day and left by himself half the night.
He can remember watching the waves one night, rolling onto the shore right outside his parents' five-star beachfront hotel room. The moon was shining and the white tips of the waves crested into horses, whole herds of them charging out of the ocean. He can remember smiling at them. If someone – a teacher, a book, Derek (because Derek could be relied upon at that age to come up with girly crap and usually at the most embarrassing moments) – had told him white horses galloped in the water in Hawaii he would have dismissed it with some kind of smart-ass remark and a bunch of shut-down feelings. Seeing it for himself, though - without the hindrance of other people's words or uncomfortable, fake emotions - was kind of cool.
Lexie would probably call it magical.
Tonight, drinking cold beer after a long, lazy afternoon of sex and naps, on a similar hotel beachfront (except now it's the two of them, grown-up and in a present that insulates him from the past), he tells her. She's the only person he's ever told. She breathes out "Wow," as she sees them too, then reaches across, cups his face in her hand and kisses him. Holding his hand as she watches the waves, she points out this and that and her pleasure unobtrusively blends into his memory and rewrites it as something shared and yet still exclusively his. He presses her hand against his lips. In this moment, if it's possible, he loves her just a little bit more.
It rains a lot on Kauai, especially at this time of year. Showers fall two or three times a day and on the first day she laughs, perplexed why a man who dislikes rain so much would choose this place for a vacation.
"It's different than Seattle," he insists.
She looks down at herself and at the wet drops soaking her bikini and sticking to her plumply before they spread and run down her skin, then rolls her eyes. His eyes follow the same path hers made across her body and he smirks at the clinging wetness.
"Wait," he says, then takes her hand and pulls her into a kiss. When they break apart, the rain has stopped and her skin and her bikini are drying, the water evaporating in the soft, November warmth.
The weather charms her, interweaves in her senses with their intimacy, and she returns to him for another kiss: her lips soft against his, his tongue warm in her mouth, his hand on the small of her back. When they break apart again, she's completely dry.
"See?" he asks. She smiles; he brushes her face with his hand; she never wants to forget this.
"Next time it rains," she says, "let's have sex on the beach."
It's hot this afternoon and Lexie is spreading towels, rubbing on sunscreen, with one eye on Mark returning to the shore from his swim. She loves it when he gets out of the water, dripping and gorgeous; loves watching his muscles as he walks across the pale sand, his eyes fixed on hers, then dipping to her breasts, her stomach, her legs and then back again to her face. He can make love with his eyes almost as well as the real thing.
Along the beach, people are taking surfing lessons. Just beginners, lying on their stomachs, but it thrills her. She had forgotten how much she wanted to try it.
When she was five, her family went on a rare summer vacation. On the beach one day, that morning's sand castle finished, waiting for her parents to take her in the water, she wandered away attracted by a row of surfboards pitched into the sand. They were so colorful, so sharp and streamlined and so invitingly smooth, she couldn't resist touching one. She didn't know what happened; she was so small and she had only touched them lightly, but somehow the one she touched knocked against the one next to it and then on down the line in a clattering cascade of blue and red and green. The sight transfixed her, partly from fear at what she'd done, partly from fascination. Then her mother's voice broke in.
"Alexandra Caroline Grey!"
Lexie glances at her, waiting for the rest of the telling-off and the solution to the mess she caused, because her mom is always practical and kind, even in the worst moments. But her mother's trusted expression changes to a "No!" and before Lexie can wonder why, her thighs erupt with the pain of a hand slapping her hard.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? You stupid girl!"
She bites her lip, trying not to cry, eyes still fixed on her mother for some kind of rescue.
Susan gathers Lexie's hand in hers. "Daddy's tired, sweetie," she says, shaking her head at Thatcher, who snorts and trudges off through the sand, carrying a quietly crying Molly in his arms. "It was an accident. He knows that. Just wait – we'll get him to buy you an ice cream."
"I'm sorry." Lexie's lip trembles. She's not comforted. She didn't mean any harm and her legs sting. "I didn't know they'd do that. I just wanted . . ." But she doesn't really know quite what she wanted because, whatever it was, it's all gone wrong and all she wants now is her mom.
"I know, Lexie," Susan sighs. She pulls Lexie against her side and strokes her hair.
She trails a cube of ice down his chest, following it delicately with her tongue. She's propped against him, his arm around her waist, his fingers lying on her hip. He's half dozing, half enjoying her touch, but then his hand stops hers and, under it, she feels his breath go still for a moment before he speaks.
"It's better with you," he says. "Everything's better when it's with you."
He lets go of her hand and she continues her exploration, drifting lower, kissing his stomach. "It is," she says. She lifts her head and smiles. He makes her brave, he has since the first day she talked to him, and she's going to go for it. It's a small thing in reality, but a big one in her dreams. "You know what?" she says. "Tomorrow, I'm taking a surfing lesson."
Lexie's sleeping. After sex, as long as he's holding her, she's quiet, drowsy, content. Unexpectedly without words. Sometimes she even falls asleep before he does, and he likes it; likes the feel of her in his arms and space she makes where it's safe to think and remember.
"Dum dum dum," Mark sings menacingly in Derek's ear. "Dum. Dum. Da-dum." Pause. "Dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum —"
"Mark, stop that!" Mrs. Shepherd says not quite sternly, stifling a laugh at her son's expense.
Derek just looks out the window. He's been in a shitty mood the whole entire car ride.
"There's sharks, though, right?" Mark insists, totally over-excited at the prospect of a real vacation with the Shepherd family.
On the beach, he starts singing the theme from "Jaws" again, but shuts up when Mr. Shepherd raises a warning eyebrow in his direction.
"It's Cape May, not Amity Island," Mr. Shepherd says. "The water's fine, Derek. Just swim already." He winks at his wife and briefly takes her hand. "Go see to the girls, Carolyn. I'll look after these guys." He goes into the water and begins a slow breaststroke, pretending to mind his own business while subtly keeping an eye out for the two nine-year-olds in his care.
"Race you!" Mark shouts and runs full speed into the water, sending it splashing around him, then hurls himself into the waves and starts swimming as hard as he can, assuming Derek's following him, but when he looks to the side, he realizes he's alone. Treading water, he turns around and sees Derek wading slowly away from the edge, with the water now just below his waist. He has his back turned to Mark, watching his sisters paddling further along the beach. And Mark gets an idea – a bad one, sure, but just too good to pass up: he swims up behind Derek, grabs him by the legs and pulls him under the water.
Derek kicks and struggles and when Mark lets him go, they emerge, Mark laughing and Derek yelling, spitting out swallowed seawater and royally pissed.
"I hate you!" Derek shouts, his face screwed up with bitterness and the urge not to cry.
Mark splashes water in Derek's face; a gesture of what he thinks is conciliation, but Derek clearly doesn't agree. "Aw c'mon. It was funny. After all the shark stuff."
Derek splashes him back, but it's vicious, he's not playing. Then he stomps out of the water, cursing when its pull against his legs prevents him from getting away as fast as he'd like.
Mark follows him. Back on the sand, facing each other, Derek refusing to meet his eyes, he mutters, "I'm sorry, okay?" Really, he doesn't think what he did was all that terrible, but he wants to make it better anyway.
"I don't care," Derek spits. "I don't care if you're sorry. I don't want you here." He glares at Mark with dark, resentful eyes. "You're only here because my mom made me ask you."
"Derek Shepherd!" Mr. Shepherd hollers from around twenty feet away. "For your sake, buddy, I hope I heard that wrong."
Mark doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what to say and Derek, latching on to Mark's silence and determined to defy his father in the time he's got left, lowers his voice and carries on with his attack.
"My mom feels sorry for you. I heard her tell my dad. But this is my family . . . not yours. And I don't want you here."
"Jeez, Derek, I said I'm sorry," Mark attempts to sneer. "It's not my fault if you're a baby." His world just fell apart, but letting on to Derek would make it even worse. He shrugs and walks away down the beach to find somewhere to sit by himself. He doesn't cry because . . . well, he doesn't cry.
When Derek joins him later, he's barely moved a muscle.
Finally, Derek says something about not meaning it, that he asked his mom if Mark could come with them, not the other way around, and that he's his best friend and it's more fun with him here and not just his stupid sisters.
Mark restates his opinion that Derek is a baby, adding the ultimate insult that he is also a girl, and then nudges him playfully and grins. Making up doesn't really make him feel better, but he doesn't have much of a choice. Derek is his friend; Derek's family is the only one he's got that's worth anything so, yeah, he doesn't have a choice. Derek never actually comes out and says he's sorry; but five minutes later they're wrestling good-naturedly on the sand.
His and Derek's vulnerabilities always did have a way of intersecting at the point where they were guaranteed to hurt the most. Ironic how nothing changes much in thirty-odd years.
Except Lexie.
The fistfight was never really about her and had been coming a long, long time. But her name was pretty much the last thing he said before Derek threw the first punch and, when he hit Derek back, he felt like he was standing up for something. Something good.
In a world that includes her, he fits. He will never apologize for that and he will never apologize for her.
She stirs in her sleep and burrows back against him, reaching by instinct for a fragment of extra closeness between them. Mark lifts her hair and kisses her neck where the dark hairline tapers into wisps. She's happy. So is he. It's the last thing he thinks before he drifts off to sleep.