Meredith is spacing out by the third-floor nurses' station again.
It's not spacing out as much as she is being overwhelmed by sense and memory.
For the longest time, when this happened to her, it was about Derek. Her widow's heart would seize up thinking she saw him in the corridor or whenever she vividly remembered his eyes smiling at her across the pillow. The sharp pain of those moments dulled over time, but never disappeared; it became a sort of dull ache.
She feels just the slightest bit guilty that when this happens to her now, Derek is the furthest thing from her mind. She's having thoughts– intrusive, day-derailing thoughts that are keeping her from being fully plugged into conversations. Even work-related thoughts are getting derailed, and that hasn't happened since the early years with Derek.
She's chewing on the end of her pen, staring at Andrew DeLuca while he does paperwork.
She's amazed, actually. It's rare you can stare at someone this long and not have them do something that would embarrass them if they knew. By now, anyone else would have picked their nose, bit their nails, or made some face, and the spell would have been broken.
But Andrew is all focus and drive. And that's what's really getting her going. He's dedicated, and hardworking, and intelligent, and handsome, and kind, and absolutely amazing in bed.
She can't look at him without thinking about his breath against her ear while they are both seconds from orgasm and he quietly moans her name.
She can't look at him without thinking of when he took her while she was doing the dishes after dinner, resulting in one smashed plate, a pile of pasta on the floor, and a small hickey on the back of her neck that made ponytails out of the question for three days.
She can't look at him without remembering when they were driving to her house after work and didn't make it all the way there, because before they could, she slammed on the brakes, pulled the car over into an loading zone, flipped on the hazard lights, and jumped him right there in the passenger's seat.
"Mere. Earth to Mere." She looks up from her zone – she'd done it again – to find Alex standing in front of her. "The Waverly kid? Have you had a look at his chart?"
Meredith snaps back in. She remembers reading it, she knows what to say. She tells Alex what she was thinking, and Alex agrees with her on a plan of action. By this point, Andrew has finished whatever it is he was working on and is walking toward the nurse's station. Watching him walk would probably put her back into the zone, so she snaps her head down to browse the file she was looking it.
"Hey, Chief," he says, and Alex says hey back. Meredith knows that any curtness, any bluntness, any attitude on Alex's part is just residual shame; it's nothing Andrew should take personally, and bless him, he doesn't seem to.
Andrew and Alex hold a conversation for a few moments, and before Meredith re-enters the zone, she decides to get up and head to the coffee cart. She's seeing Andrew tonight, and she needs to concentrate.
As she gets up, she smiles at him; not a secretive smile, not an ear-to-ear grin, but an acknowledgement that she'd seen him. That's one of the best parts of being with Andrew: the near-constant communication. Physical, emotional, verbal – she feels like, issues with his father aside, that they are constantly communicating. It's new for her, which makes it both overwhelming and scary, but it's also helping to bind them together and scratch open parts of herself that she'd thought she'd buried with Derek.
All of her previous relationships – even with the love of her life – were characterized by miscommunication and things left unsaid. She knows that these men had their shortcomings.
She knows she does too. She's more emotionally open than she used to be, but she knows she has more to learn.
Andrew, on the other hand, has different shortcomings – he has a tendency toward impatience, he insists on telling her every single part of his day (she vacillates between finding it sweet and finding it endlessly irritating), and he's so damn cocky – but he talks. He listens. He looks. He stares. He texts. He calls. He touches. He tells her everything, no matter how mundane.
So she goes about the rest of her day, knowing she will at one point get a text from him asking how her day is going. She might run into him in the cafeteria while she's eating lunch and he'll ask after Bailey's cold or Zola's homework. She'll do her work, and he'll always be communicating.
So when she leaves work to go pick up the kids from daycare and their after-school activities, she's surprised to not have a text from Andrew asking about their plans for the evening. She figures he's in surgery, or busy with patients, or working in the lab, so she lets it go. She helps the kids with their homework, reheats something Tanya put in the fridge for dinner, and gives Ellis a bath before she thinks to check her phone again. Still nothing. This is extremely unlike him, but somehow she doesn't feel worried.
After tucking Ellis in and making sure Bailey and Zola are heading for bed, Meredith takes her youngest as inspiration and goes to draw herself a bath, thinking about the tightness in her upper back from a long surgery yesterday. She's in her robe, about to untie it, when a thought strikes her.
It is incredibly weird that she hasn't heard from Andrew.
She shoots him a quick text, asking if he's still planning to come over tonight.
She feels a little bubble of anxiety forming. Communication has not been their issue. She's been thinking all day about how great it is that they do communicate. Could she have fucked up something so simple?
Before she gets to deep into the anxiety bubble, her phone buzzes. He's about to be on his way. Meredith exhales, not realizing how shallowly she's been breathing for the last few minutes. She goes to the tub and begins to fill it, adding lavender and bergamot.
He comes to the door just as the tub finishes filling, and Meredith runs down to answer it – messy hair, bathrobe, and all. His expression is unreadable and she's still not sure what's going on.
"Hey," she breathes as she opens the door.
Andrew makes his way through, backpack in one hand. "Hey." He seems tense, maybe angry, but also maybe just stressed. Meredith isn't sure how to get through to him.
"Are you okay?" She's looking at him, and he's having trouble meeting her eyes.
He launches right in, which Meredith appreciates. No dancing around the subject – he's upset and he wants her to know why. "I didn't walk over to you earlier to talk to the Chief, Meredith. I walked over to talk to you, because I was having a shitty day, and then you got up and left." Meredith's stomach sinks a little bit. Her coy smile didn't communicate what she wanted it to.
"And then, I didn't hear from you all day. I know, it's usually me, but I would have loved to hear from you. Just once. Nothing crazy."
She knows she's new at this. She and Derek had two volumes – quiet and full blast. Arguments were always full blast. Love was always full blast. She's not accustomed to someone who's on a broader emotional spectrum.
"Andrew, I'm sorry. I'm – not great at this," she says, by way of an explanation.
"I know. And I don't want to be clingy or smothering, I know you have a life. I know you have to take care of more than just yourself." He exhales and grabs for her hand, and meets her eyes. "It's okay that you're not great at it, but I kind of… want more?" Meredith's chest squeezes a little bit and she feels the panic rise. "Not a lot more. I know I talk a lot and I'm always in my feelings, and that's not you and I wouldn't want it to be. And you don't have a ton of space and time for me, so maybe I shouldn't want anything, or I shouldn't ask. But I care about you, Meredith, and I want this to work."
"So what do you need, Andrew?" She doesn't mean to sound angry, or petty, or mean. It hurts her – maybe more than she would think – that he feels like she isn't there for him, so she honestly wants to know how to do that. Cece was right that she needed to open herself up, and Meredith is starting to realize that she didn't just mean in terms of experiences and emotions. She meant open to change. She needs to avoid the stagnation that threatened her life as a widow – she could win all the awards, raise amazing kids, and be happy, but she was at constant risk of being the same person she had been since Derek died – emotionally stunted, closed-off, afraid.
She needs to evolve, and she knows this. And Andrew is pushing her to. And she doesn't hate it.
He strokes over the knuckles on her hand. "Just… be there more? For me? I feel weird always being the one texting or calling."
Meredith nods. "Happy to."
"And no more Cheshire-cat smiles at the nurse's station without actually talking to me."
Meredith laughs at that. "You might actually like my reason for that."
Andrew cocks an eyebrow. "Really, now?"
"Really," Meredith responds. "I was thinking about that time in my car in that loading zone on Mercer Street, and I knew if I stared at you any longer, or started talking to you, I wouldn't get any work done." She looks up at Andrew and the tightly-knit brow has been replaced by a smirk.
"Dr. Grey, are you telling me you weren't being entirely professional in the workplace?"
Meredith grins. "Dr. DeLuca, I was not being at all professional. And in the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I was also thinking about that time by the kitchen sink."
Meredith hears a low groan from the back of Andrew's throat as he backs her into the wall of the foyer. His backpack drops from his hand and his hands come up to Meredith's waist as he furiously kisses her.
"Oh, and Andrew," she breaks in, pushing lightly on his chest, "I was worried about you, so I drew us a bath."
"I should make you worry more often," he purrs, pressing kisses to her neck.
Meredith is loath to pull away, but knows it's a temporary breach. She takes him by the hand and leads him up the stairs to her bedroom, where she pulls off his clothes and unties her robe. He reaches for her, but she's serious about the bath. She watches him, all muscle and sun-kissed skin and firm, straight lines, as he gets into the tub, and she follows after.
He's reclining against the back of the tub, and she's in his arms against his chest. She hears his heartbeat under her and feels the stress and anxiety seep out – both from herself and from him.
She thinks about what he wants. She needs to be there more. So, she figures, there's no time like the present.
"How was your day?" Andrew's head is tilted back and his eyes are closed, but she sees the ghost of a smile.
"You don't ask me that all that often," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
"Well, I'm being here," she responds.
So Andrew tells her about his day – the patient he lost in the ER, the argument he had with another patient's parents, and the experiment in the lab that he screwed up for the fifth day in a row. Meredith takes this all in, knowing that, mostly, Andrew just needs to let it out. She rubs her right hand over his chest as she talks, enjoying the heat and the firmness and the closeness. The water is rocking them lightly, and she's enjoy the slip and slide of her skin against his.
Despite their confrontation before – minor as it might have been – Meredith feels a sea change, or something close to it, in their relationship. The needs they've discussed until now have been sexual. Emotional. Personal. They haven't been things required of the other person.
Andrew felt comfortable asking her to give more. She felt comfortable offering it up to him. She's marveling, much as she did before, at the symbiosis and balance and ease of this relationship, and how these things are helping her evolve.
Andrew's finished talking about his day, and he asks about Meredith.
"Well," she begins, quietly, "mostly, all I could think about was you."
Andrew laughs, a low rumble she feels as much as hears. "Tell me more."
"Remember when you pushed up against me while I was doing the dishes? You stripped my pants and underwear down in two seconds flat and were inside me after five. I almost blacked out, you made me come so hard." Meredith hears a sharp intake of breath. "I just kept thinking about that, and how good you felt, and how loudly I screamed when I came." Andrew moans, and she knows she's getting to him. "Well, you wanted me to communicate."
Andrew lifts her up, stands, and carries her to the bed. "Meredith Grey, your communication skills are unparalleled." And those are the last words they speak before tumbling into a pile of wandering hands and mouths, of slippery skin and sharp cries.
Meredith knows the Derek-shaped hole in her heart will always be there. She will always miss him, love him, and cherish him. But now she knows – her caring, her love, her needs did not die with him.
She looks up at Andrew as he presses into her, fingers wound together against the bedspread. Her heart is cracked open, but rather than bleeding out, it's taking it in – love, joy, pleasure. She feels her heart clench as he looks at her, worshipfully, lovingly – and feels warmth spread through her. She feels the delicious friction when he weaves a hand through her hair and her back arches to meet him.
It's several hours later, when they're thoroughly spent and relaxing on the bed – her propped up on her elbow, him facing her with his head resting against her hip – that she realizes her day-derailing thoughts aren't the problem she thought they were.
The problem is, she thinks she might be falling in love again.
And worse than that, she might want to.