Author's Notes: This is a 3 part fic inspired by a fellow Grey's fan, who wanted to know just what happened after Derek showed Meredith his trailer. I hope you enjoy it!


The man she had grown to know as Derek Shepherd, snarky, arrogant, and unflappable, abandoned her that night. The Derek she knew took her hand, walked with her through the wet grass, and guided her with certainty onto his deck. But his presence flagged. A straight-lipped expression of worry cowed his definitive that's-all-you've-earned-for-now grin. Her Derek Shepherd departed, and in his place, he left a man who lacked humorous commentary, sexual innuendo, or words of any kind.

He was a stranger.

Her heart began to thump at the peculiar shift in his temperament. This wasn't normal. Not normal at all. Derek Shepherd, if-you-know-me-you'll-love-me, couldn't even fake humility.

She'd thought.

He pulled the screen door outward. The hinges squawked, disrupting the soft lament of nighttime crickets and fauna. She became intensely aware of how much space he gave her, and instead of stepping over the threshold, she watched him.

He fidgeted, looking in every direction but at her. First, his free hand straddled his pocket. Then he touched his face, swiping at some unseen disturbance near his nose.

As she drowned herself in his apprehensiveness, she had the sense that she danced on the head of a pin. He was expecting her not to like his home. To cut and run now that he'd laid himself bare for her. Why?

"I know it's not much," he said.

Not much, she wanted to scoff. He might not have a house, but it was a lot of freaking land. He had room for just about anything. Hell, he had room for a pony. Two ponies. A herd. All he needed was a fence to keep them in. How was that not much?

She searched his face. His stark, blue stare wandered across her features. Not much. He meant it. She sensed no effort to downplay anything. He truly thought... not much. Was he used to the comforts of excess money? Or was this some sort of wacky, I'm-the-provider, machismo apology. He thought she should have a beautiful, big house, and he couldn't give her one right now.

The idea was both flattering and infuriating.

Who was this man?

A mind's eye incursion of a loin-clothed Derek, thumping his chest with a growl, drove her lungs to expel a giggle. His body stilled like prey caught knee-deep in predators, and she rushed to shove her outburst back into the horrible mental cave from which it had come.

"Sorry," she muttered. "It's just..."

He watched her, waiting for her to continue, but she couldn't find words. Instead, she reached for him, her fingers brushing the lapel of his shirt in what she hoped would be interpreted as quiet reassurance. Then she took a deep breath and drove herself into his domain.

Shafts of moonlight slanted through the windows, giving her a vague, silvery outline of the space before her. He came into the room behind her, flipping the light switch as he passed the threshold like a wraith.

The intrusion of soft, yellow light sliced through her head, starting at her pupils. She blinked, more from the shock of change than the sharpness of the light itself. She blinked again, aware of his body just behind her, and focused. Assessed.

Her gaze followed the left edge of the trailer, past the wooden table and padded bench seat, through the short hallway that had to be no wider than her hips, give perhaps a foot, and into the rumpled but made bed situated at the back. The pillows sat on top of the bedspread, which was a utilitarian, solid something-color that she couldn't quite identify under this lighting except to tell that it didn't quite match the sheets. Typical guy.

The picture in front of her seemed normal, at first. It did.

And then it didn't.

The nerves she had barely subdued erupted. Who was this man?

"You actually live here?" she blurted.

Who are you?

Silence stretched for a long march of moments before his lip twitched. "I told you it wasn't much," he said, his voice flat. He smiled, but his gaze seemed dejected, and she realized what a crushing blow she must have just dealt, begging to see his house and then saying something so callous. That wasn't how she'd meant it at all.

"No!" she said. "No, it's not that. It's not that at all. It's a beautiful home. It's just..."

She padded forward, her lips parting. The air in the small cabin smelled of lemon Pledge. She ran her index finger across the cool surface of the table by the door. An echo of her skin trailed behind in a line of condensation, but it evaporated quickly, leaving the surface plain and untouched.

Sterile. That was the word she looked for.

He had fewer material possessions on display than a monk would. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. No napkins or newspapers strewn on the table. No pictures hanging anywhere. No knickknacks. No spare watch on the nightstand by the bed. He didn't even have salt and pepper shakers. Surely, he must have salt and pepper? Or a pair of goofy dice over the rear view mirror?

Anything?

The lemon Pledge scent reminded her of a hasty run through with a rag. Got to show the girlfriend some sort of cleaning skills, right? Her frantic thoughts struggled to stuff some logic into the situation, and she imagined him shoving heaps of unsorted clutter into bags and hiding them so she wouldn't think he was a slob. Trailers had luggage compartments, didn't they?

Maybe.

"It's just that it's..." She struggled to say something. Anything.

His eyebrows crept upward expectantly.

"Well, it's empty."

A wry, whuffing breath escaped his lips, and a hint of the usual twinkle in his eyes returned. He sighed. Relief? "Well, I did just move here, Meredith," he said.

Her heart thundered in her chest. He had just moved there. He had. But something screamed at her. It just wasn't normal. This wasn't normal. Had she fallen for an ax-murderer or something? Was this an elaborate setup? She'd trusted him, and he'd lured her there to... to do...

His arms wrapped around her waist, and he pulled her up against him, resting his chin against her ear. God, his body was warm. She relaxed against him, arms resting over his. How could he do that with just a sigh and the warmth of his skin?

"I am not an interior decorator," he rumbled against her ear.

Damn it, Jim. I'm a doctor, not a...

She couldn't help it. She laughed and tilted her cheek against his neck. The sharp prick of five-o'clock stubble didn't even bother her. She kissed his jawline, relishing the sweet salt taste. "Well," she relented. "I guess that's true."

The inner cabin began to haze as she relented further, tasting him deeply. He kissed her and kissed her again, and she fell into the motion of raking her fingers through his hair, grinding against his body. The air around them hushed, like the muffled stillness after a fresh snowfall. His soft, insistent panting buffeted her skin. The slip and slide of their lips gave the intervening silence a rhythm. Percussive, almost.

If he was an ax murderer, she decided, then at least she was sure to die in ecstasy. Though, she wondered where he would even hide an ax. There was no clutter. Nothing.

The thought came to her, errant, unwanted, and she murmured, "Where are all your boxes? In storage?"

He stopped with a frustrated half-sigh, half-moan. His forehead met her own and rested there. She stared into his eyes and watched passion melt into turmoil.

"Not exactly," he said. His torso heaved less and less as he caught up with himself.

"What is not exactly?" she asked.

He gave her a quirky smile, but the expression didn't reach his eyes, which seemed dark and... snarly somehow. His frame shuddered as he took a deep breath, but the whole motion seemed stilted and tense, and he didn't answer her question.

"Would you like some coffee?" he asked, his voice rough with something that wasn't lust. Or was she imagining...

The question resurfaced, wrung her out like an old dishrag. She kneaded her fingers together, overcome with nervous energy. Who are you? Except, somewhere in her mental tangle, her train of thought jumped the tracks at a particularly twisty section and found a new direction. No longer who are you, but...

What happened to you?

Bile caught in the back of her throat when she realized that this question, this was the one she should be asking. What happened to you? Why would a man in his late thirties, a well-established brain surgeon of world renown, suddenly uproot himself from a lucrative private practice in Manhattan after having been there since his residency? Why would he be in a bar the night before his first day of work, nursing a single malt scotch, and why go home with the first girl he could get drunk with?

Why would he run?

What happened to you?

"I'm sorry," she said as she sank into the bench seat by the table. "I'm being freakishly nosy."

He laughed, then, though he seemed cautious. "It's all right. Coffee?"

"Is it decaf?"

"Sure."

His fingers danced across the cabinets, and she couldn't help but stare intently, waiting for the compact world behind them to be revealed to her. A whisper of sound heralded the door as it panned open. She caught a vague glimpse of white, a cereal box perhaps, and a smaller row of little bottles. Spices? Perhaps he had salt and pepper after all. Just hidden.

Did he like to cook? She'd never asked. They rarely spent a day together where one or the other wasn't exhausted. They had sex, and they slept. They did not have dinner.

"It's not what you expected," he said as he scooped some ground coffee from a small paper bag. The bitter, warm scent of it tickled her nose.

She steepled her fingers. "I didn't expect anything, Derek."

"This place," he said. He paused mid-scoop, and his gaze wandered. "It's quiet. I needed..." She watched his lips form a word he didn't say. The moment stretched before he blinked, and, re-animated, began to move again.

She realized they had never actually had coffee before. Breakfast coffee, yes, but that accompanied groggy consumption of cereal. Well, at least groggy on her part. He always seemed chipper. Freaking morning people. Regardless, morning coffee wasn't social coffee. It was sustenance coffee. It was I-need-it-or-I-can't-function coffee.

This was talking coffee. The kind you invited a boy up to your room for when you wanted him to stay the night and couldn't quite muster the nerve to explain that the invitation was really a superfluous bullet point on the way to sex. Right? This didn't feel like a bullet point, though, nor did it feel superfluous.

She knew now that he liked horrible music, a boring book, and the color indigo. He liked to fly fish, and he had a slew of relatives. Infinite more things than she usually knew about her sex partners. Anything more than zero would be infinite.

The world blurred into a series of taps and shuffles and clinks as he replaced the filter and dumped the coffee into a tiny coffeemaker on his counter top. He turned, smacking his hands together as if to say, "Well, dirty work is done," and leaned back against the counter top, the backs of his elbows propping up his upper body in a haughty, slanting pose.

His face time with the cabinets while he'd been making coffee had apparently been enough to melt the unexpected, dour tension out of him, leaving her with relaxed perfection. She couldn't stop her eyes from roaming from booted toe to khaki-hugged hip. The tails of his shirt peaked out from underneath his dark, wool sweater.

Jesus, but the man could work a lean.

She licked her lips. "That's a cute coffeemaker."

"Cute?" He glanced at it with a frown. It burbled. "Don't call it cute! You'll hurt its feelings."

"I'm surprised a Manhattanite like yourself didn't splurge on an Espresso maker," she said.

He snorted. "I'm not sure an Espresso maker would fit with the closet-on-wheels motif."

"I like the trailer."

"Hmm," he purred. "It's rustic."

"And it's you."

He pondered that for a moment, as if surprised by her observation. His head tilted. His eyes closed. He listened. She listened, too. Listened to the world outside. Crickets, monotonous and symphonic all at once. Twigs snapping in the distance. A breeze whispering through the clearing. The lamentation outside narrowed in focus to the rush of blood in her ears and the sound of her heart. Beating.

His eyes wandered open as if he woke from dreams, only to find himself still languishing in one upon awakening. "I guess it is me," he murmured.

She caressed the buttons of her white coat, undoing them one by one. Rolling her shoulders, she pushed the garment back against the seat to free her arms. Her heart flipped at the way he watched her, expression hooded and desirous, the way he committed the lines of her body to memory, the way his devoted attention declared her a shrine. He watched her like she was the only thing in the room worth watching at all.

Her voice cracked at first, and she had to clear her throat. "Do you like to cook?" she managed.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I like to grill," he clarified, and her mind's eye scolded her for not paying better attention. A grill. He had a grill by the door outside on the deck. Of course he liked to grill.

"I'm not very culinary," she confessed.

His lip twitched. "I'd expect that from anyone who can be content with cold pizza for breakfast."

"I don't bake or cook or... I make cereal," she rambled. "Sometimes."

He laughed. "I know."

"It gets boring. Cereal, I mean."

"I know."

"You might have to feed me in the future."

He shrugged, his expression of mirth deepening. The subtle lines around his eyes creased further, and he gave her what felt like his first real smile since they'd come in. "I know," he said.

She snorted. "You know a lot of things."

"I do."

"I bet you don't know what I'm thinking," she challenged him.

The coffeemaker sputtered and hissed as the last of the water went through the percolator, and he blinked as if torn from a reverie. He turned to the machine and poured the coffee. She stared at the table as he set a steaming Space Needle coffee mug down before her. Wet, warm air curled upward from the cup in a slow coil, caressing her face. She inhaled deeply, relishing the scent of the beverage.

"You're thinking you must be crazy," he said as he filled the void across from her at the table. His fingers clutched around his own cup, he took a sip from his coffee. His lip curled, he winced, and blew softly over his mug, dispersing steam.

She leaned closer, fingertips brushing her cup. "Why am I thinking I must be crazy?"

"You're here, aren't you?" he said. He winked and took another sip only to grimace. "And it's certainly not the coffee that's keeping you."

"I like your trailer," she replied, daring a sip of her own. Bitter, acrid warmth hit her tongue, and she grimaced. At least it wasn't too hot. Her tongue remained unscathed. "I hate your coffee, but I like your trailer."

He nodded. "It is very bad coffee, isn't it?"

"It is."

Silence stretched between them.

He leaned back in his seat, resting his palms behind his head, and he contemplated her for what seemed like ages, contemplated her with the oddest expression. He seemed uncharacteristically lost at first, lost, mapless, wondering where he was going.

"I haven't done this in a long time," he confessed.

"Done what?"

He stared at her for a long, quiet moment, his face unreadable, and she found herself imagining what he might say. Lived. Loved. Taken a girl home. Had bad coffee. She didn't know for sure. Couldn't know. She wondered if, perhaps, she'd found somewhat of a kindred spirit. A commitment-phobe, knocked unexpectedly off his perch as a free agent by someone who should have been part of only a single night of his life.

Perhaps.

She watched him as he tortured himself with another sip of coffee. And another. He said nothing, gave her no clues. She watched his hands as he slipped them back over his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair. He always seemed to do that when he thought about things. Toiled with his hair. She liked it, because it meant she could watch his hands. He had such beautiful hands. Long, graceful fingers. Perfect for holding a scalpel.

Perfect for touching her.

Perfect.

"Thank you for bringing me here," she said.

He quirked a patented grin, and the space between them clicked. His personality settled like fog over the Sound after a storm. Quiet, but dangerous. Thick, unmovable, except on his own terms. He'd found familiar territory. Derek Shepherd, he was. And he could certainly romance a woman into bed.

His presence crackled against hers like a broken wire flirting with water. Little zaps of energy popped in the inches between them. She wanted to touch him, if only for a thrill of shock.

"There is one very nice thing about being here instead of your place," he said.

"And what is that?"

"My roommates won't interrupt," he said, his tone low and whisper soft, pleased, like he'd caught his canary and was roasting it over a spit with glee.

"What roommates?" she said.

"Precisely. I'll have you know I'm kicking myself."

Her heartbeat thrummed. "For what?" she asked, but the question was more rhetorical than anything. She knew.

His elbows slid forward on the table. The cushion at his back moaned. His pupils seemed to swirl, black fathom upon black fathom. She saw her blushing face reflected in each one as a milky, translucent ghost.

His palm brushed her cheek. "Waiting this long to show you," he said. Then he leaned across the table and kissed her.

His lips tasted bitter, like freshly crushed coffee beans, but the salt and softness of his skin made what had been a horrible brew into something exotic and exciting. She closed her eyes, grip on her coffee cup forgotten. Steam from the cups wafted between them, but his warmth eclipsed it in the space between one roaring heartbeat and the next. Thump. Thump. Fire meandered along the skin of her throat, coming to a stop at the crook where her throat met her chest.

"How do you do this to me," he murmured, but it wasn't exactly a question.

She twined her fingers through his hair, arcing backward. "One thing, I do know," she countered.

"Oh?"

"You can't blame it all on me, Mr. If-You-Know-Me-You'll-Love-Me."

His breath stopped. Her breath stopped. Where had that come from? Why had she said that? The air snapped with tension, but he didn't ask. Didn't ask the obvious question, and so she didn't have to come up with an answer. Not yet. His skin shivered as though a humming current ran through it, and the two of them hung in stillness for one second, two seconds, three. A fourth ticked in her mental space, and then he started to move again, recovered, recovering.

"That wasn't my best moment," he admitted, and she let him tread away from that space. That dangerous space that stole both of their breaths away from them. It was fine, for now.

Fine.

"Kiss me, Derek," she commanded, and he gifted her with that rumble-y, sexy laughter she loved so much.

A smirk creased his features.

In a move that screamed expert premeditation, he took the coffee cups and dumped them in the sink.

Then he pounced.

In the space of heartbeats, she had his long, sinewy body against her. He pulled her from the seat and pressed her against the kitchen counter top. She pushed her hands underneath his shirt, felt the rise and fall of his abdomen as he breathed against her.

An erotic waltz tapped out the seconds. She shuffled left, and he plundered right. She shuffled right, and he pillaged left. A frenzied misstep, a collision of skin and groans and heartbeats, and the waltz became a crashing plunge. The room spun and tilted as he fixed the problem, flipping her around with a violent twist and a dip. The edge of the table reminded her spine of its existence with pain, and the breath flew out of her, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered except Derek, and a little pain was... Sort of a turn on. A razor sort of edge that she enjoyed dancing along, from time to time. Worth it. Worth it if he--nibbled her earlobe. His fingers tangled in her hair, in her shirt. He spread his right palm by her ear, fighting for balance, but his skin slipped with a squeak. His body collapsed against her as he lost his purchase, bringing him close to her, closer.

"Ow," he muttered, hot breath against her skin. "You okay?"

His weight against her lessened. The bitter scent of coffee pervaded, but she didn't care. Didn't care because of the way he stared at her. Hungry. Desperate. Wanting. She felt like his life raft in that moment, and she couldn't bring herself to care about anything else at all.

"Fine," she panted. "Your table..."

"Fine," he muttered.

Through the side window of his trailer as she lay on her back and looking backward, the dark, green wilderness beyond formed a peculiar horizon against the twisted gnarl of his hair below. He captured her mouth, drinking her down. Her knees found his hips. She drove herself against them.

His roaming hands stopped over her breasts. He fumbled. Ping. A button hit the table and bounced off into infinity, somewhere in the muzzy black beyond his body.

"Sorry," he said. His hands found another button.

"Whatever," she panted.

Ping. He breathed against her ear with a sound torn somewhere between laughter and moaning. "I'm usually very good with buttons."

"That one was loose before," she said.

The next three, he did manage. Barely. And then he graced her with another thrilling failure. Ping.

"I hope you didn't like that shirt."

"I'm sure you'll pay for it," she growled. She dipped her hands into his pants, underneath the waistband of his boxers, tangling her fingers in the hot forest of coarse, curly hair that wound a path from his belly button to his groin.

"Hmm. What kind of payment did you have in mind?"

He drove himself against her, shoving her body against the table with force enough to show her the electricity sparking between them. Stars. Pretty. "Mere," he blurted, more like a curse or a wild yelp or... He recovered, chuckling in her ear, and repeated her name more with amusement and awe than desperation. "Mere. Mere..."

She rubbed her thumb against the flat, brass button that promised to gift her with his body, and shimmied it against his skin to catch the lip of the button hole. Release. His zipper shrieked as she yanked it down. He sucked in a breath, so desperate and deep she thought he might collapse against her. His feet scuffed the floor as his powerful body sought traction.

She braced his hips with her thighs and dragged him against her, merciless.

"Expensive buttons," he muttered, hot and flushed.

She pressed the heel of her palm against him, rutting against his length from base to tip. His muscles strained.

"Jesus," he hissed, and her lips flattened into a grin. She kissed his throat. The stubbly space under his jaw. Licked the cleft of his chin. His lips. Wandered to his nose. He pressed against her, seeking more, seeking his fill, seeking something.

"Worth the price?" she whispered.

"Mmm." He kissed her. "Oh, yes." He tasted the line of her jugular, scorched her skin with his tongue. "Worth every penny."

His sweater, soft against her skin, had to go. She yanked at the hem, and he shifted against her. The garment flew through her blurry view field, off into that strange horizon. So, so fired. His shirt fell victim to the layoffs next, and he laughed and squirmed as she pushed each button free with meticulous care. They fought each other, fought like a pair of tornadoes, until his pants lay in a tangle at his ankles, and hers? Hers lay somewhere near his windshield after being launched there like a bottle rocket, though she couldn't quite recall who had thrown them. He fared far better with her bra than he had her buttons, unclasping it one-handed.

He nudged her legs further apart with his hips, mashing up against her. She feathered her hands at his sides, felt the ripples of his ribs as they expanded and collapsed with each heaving breath. The skin over his left hip slid under her palm, smooth, supple, and warm. She moved her hand between them, tracing the wiry hairs low, lower, and cupped him.

He sucked a breath inward, and his eyes flashed with wild, thoughtless frenzy.

"Derek," she panted. It was very hard to think as he dragged his body against her, kissing her throat, her chest, her stomach, and lower.

"What?" he muttered. His knees thumped against his carpet.

"Condom?"

"I know," he replied, his voice low, and thick, and rough. "In a minute. I'll get one in a--"

The room focused for a moment, and she felt like she were a rubber band, strung up and ready to fly. His palms spread her wide, slow, petting, and then he kissed her there.

She broke, moaning until her voice had wrung itself out, until she was hoarse with desperation. Her hands struggled to find anything to hold, anything to latch onto, and her toes curled against the lip of the table. He kissed her again, and what little was left of her thought processes screeched to a jarring halt. Her lower body tensed, and she choked. Her lips peeled back in a harsh grimace that probably looked like pain. But it wasn't pain. God, it wasn't pain.

She snapped up at the waist, driving into him. "Derek," she whined with what little coherency she could muster. "Please..."

Her feet slipped off the table as she twitched, begging for it. Her breath arrived in throaty, short gasps. He touched her until she felt as though she were wrapped in him, his musky, sweaty warmth all around her. They hadn't done this before. This was new. This was...

Falling.

She came undone, shuddering with the force of it. It. Him. And then she lay there, nerveless and spent. When she saw his face again, his eyes looked wild, pleased, and lecherous. "Now, condom," he stated. He shuffle-stepped out of the pile of his pants and his boxers and his other things.

"Okay," she murmured.

He enveloped her in his arms and carried her to the bed as she regained her senses, one by one. Sight and touch were the first to make a peace offering. Stars. Soft. He lay her gently against his bed, and she blinked, staring at the stars through his sunroof. Pinpricks of white light, distant through a brief hole in the clouds, twinkled in and out, shocks against a carpet of black sky. They disappeared as she watched, overtaken once again by what would soon be the pitter-patter of a rainstorm.

She knew her ears worked when she heard the drawer by the bed trundle open. The condom packet crinkled as he tore it open. He rolled it over his erection and turned. He was still quite ready, and she knew the rest of her body had started to work again when a sharp, green glow cast the space between them with ectoplasmic brilliance, because she found the strength to giggle.

"Glow-in-the-dark?" she said as she sat up. She brushed a sweat-dampened bang out of her eye. "Seriously?"

"They were on sale," he confessed.

"A condom sale?"

"Buy one box, get the next box free," he said. "I was feeling lucky."

"Lucky."

He smirked. "Yes, lucky. You're very good for my ego, Dr. Grey."

The sheets whispered as he moved toward her. She kissed him. "Your ego doesn't need any help, Dr. Shepherd."

"You'd be surprised," he told her, and then his voice dropped deep, low, and rumble-y. Each syllable made her insides quiver. Every grunt and every groan became like a purr. She caressed his skin, falling back against the sheets, head cradled by a pillow that smelled just like him, swathed in sheets that smelled just like him, cowed under the weight of this man. Derek Shepherd. Her Derek Shepherd.

She blinked as he eclipsed the sky above with the halo of his sex-wild hair and his flexing muscles. Her fingers wandered down his spine, coming to a rest at his ass. He kissed her lips until she felt swollen, abused, and loved to death all in the space of five breaths, and then he speared her.

She found home when his voice cracked, and he said her name like he was a man finding religion in the opiate haze of her sex. "Meredith." It was the first time she'd heard her name said like that, like he'd found her light, and it'd pulled him out of the deepest dark. She felt dirty and spiritual all in the space of one thrust, and lain to waste in two.

"Meredith," he said again. "I'm going to make you forget I'm glowing." He smirked, and she would have laughed, would have. But she was beyond caring about the glow, about anything beyond wanting to hear her name said again. Said like that. He pushed against her, and she moaned as he began to work in earnest, his breaths buffeting her body.

He kissed her. "Meredith," he told her.

And true to his word, he did make her forget.

*****