Disclaimer [before I forget, I'm sure you already did]: I don't own Grey's Anatomy, its characters nor the poem and the song mentioned below. No surprise there, uh?
You know, many of you told me to keep writing more post episode one shots, and with the (justified) lack of Meredith and Derek in the last episode, this came out. It's nothing special, and probably quite similar to last week's Baby Will Be Fine, but since I seem stuck on a roadblock for Hope, at least you can still pass some of your time with my writing.
Now, before you read, go open YouTube and find Big Black Car by Gregory Alan Isakov and put it on. It set the mood for this one shot. And no, the title doesn't come from that, it's from a poem by Bill Winchester, a poet I discovered on Tumblr (brightlightsloudnoises). Sue me. His words are so raw and real that as soon as I read the poem I added right below this AN, I immediately thought up something MerDer related. Could it be the coffee intake of these past few days? You're the judges of that. Caffeine is surely to blame for my eventual mistakes ;)
Enjoy!
empty beds
there's not a switch
but they'll tell you that there is
and they'll agree that tv, drugs, and seclusion
won't do it,
that those are only temporary fixes
they say that it's inner peace that will do it—
meditation, positive affirmations, the destruction of the 'self';
a reuniting with what was here before us
I generally agree but
at the end of the night
when I face a bed that is empty,
that didn't used to be empty,
I find it hard to believe
Bill Winchester
Empty Beds
"'Night Mama."
Zola's voice is heavy with sleep, her eyes closing almost as if by closing the book, Meredith has ticked a switch. In a moment, the brilliance and the sparkles of Zola's tired eyes are hidden from the world, as the little girl falls asleep with a barely hidden smile on her lips.
The house plunges into silence then, a silence that feels so heavy it almost chokes Meredith. It surely chills her to the bone.
It's one of the perks of the house in the woods, really; it's why they picked that exact spot to stay for the rest of their lives. After a day spent in a buzzing hospital, the hum fades away as soon as you pass the cluster of trees, you turn forty degrees west, and then nothing gets to you anymore.
Except that now the silence is deafening and self-imposed.
Her and Derek barely exchange a few pleasantries in front of the children or Amelia, the most pointless small talk ever invented, or the vital information they have to share not to go both pick up the kids from daycare, or remain without milk.
They talk at work, when they are put on the same case. Residents have learned never to page them together though, and if Dr. Shepherd is uttered next to Dr. Grey, it's usually Amelia Shepherd they are talking about.
Honestly, Meredith likes Amelia, and not just because she makes the best waffles Meredith has ever tasted. Amelia is probably the only Shepherd that gets her. And maybe Amelia is the only Shepherd Meredith gets, because even her children's behavior sometimes escapes her. They're definitely their father's kids through and through when they want to go against her.
She smooths down the covers next to Zola one last time, leaving a soft but lingering kiss on the crown of her head, savoring her sleepy mumble as she burrows into the covers and relaxes completely, slumber claiming all her senses.
She leaves the room a little reluctantly and decides to move next door to check on Bailey, savor a little more time with the kids, take away a little more time of awkwardness with her husband.
Bailey is asleep on his stomach, his diapered bottom sticking in the air, his cheek scrunched up against the mattress in a position that looks anything but comfortable. Yet, he's still clutching his little bunny to his chest and snoring lightly.
Derek always says he's her carbon copy, after all.
Meredith tries to move the boy a little, push him to curl up on his side, and Bailey grunts and wriggles his fingers, gripping her t-shirt in the process. Now he's basically hanging onto her mid-air, and she has no idea how to put him down again.
Maybe she doesn't really need to put him down.
She carefully steps towards the rocking chair in the corner, and slowly sits down. Bailey's deep blue eyes meet hers for a second. He smiles, then his eyelashes flutter close once again.
"Shh, sleep time, Bay." Meredith murmurs in his ear, and she's sure the vibrations of her chest are more soothing than her voice.
He's a big boy now, he barely fits in her arms in a newborn cradle, and she kind of misses when he was a lump of a baby that stayed put and never slept during the night. That way she could have an excuse to avoid Derek and work and people.
Except, she needs to cure death by tomorrow, and she has no time to slack off now.
"Growing up is awfully tiring, Bay. Do that as later as you can, for your sake."
Bailey doesn't stir at all.
She can't delay the inevitable anymore, she knows, because at this point she can safely shift Bailey from her arms to his crib without waking him, and it's the perfect timing to get into bed.
Bailey looks like Derek when he sleeps; the two of them manage to pull off the same sweet faces when they dream.
When she makes it to the master bedroom, it's barely nine thirty. Derek is nowhere in sight, and the moon casts a pale glow over the room, defeating the warm neon light.
It's early to be crawling into bed, but the exhaustion of a month of forced silence sometimes has the best of her.
She's about to tuck her tired bones under the covers when she hears a door clicking, and she stands up to see if it's Derek who has made it home and is going to sleep in the guest room.
Not like he can sleep there, since Amelia is still living with them, but maybe he's too drunk to remember. She did come home drunk once or twice in the past month.
It's Amelia instead who's dragging her feet through the threshold, launching her shoes into the room without a care in the world.
"Hey," she greets tiredly, nodding noncommittally.
"Long surgery?"
Amelia hums, leaning against the frame, a slow smile spreading on her face. "You know, your sister and my brother were operating together again today."
"That's not a sentence, that's a twist of the tongue." Meredith wrinkles her nose, grimacing.
"Ha, it's the reality you're carefully avoiding, not a twist of the tongue." Amelia laughs, but Meredith can't bring herself to do the same.
"Can you blame me?"
"Since my brother has turned into an asshole?" Amelia grins. "No, not really. Though the house of silence sometimes is nice to come back to." She shrugs, a small smile still playing on her lips. "Weird, but nice."
Meredith has no idea how to reply to that.
"The rugrats?"
Meredith finally smiles genuinely. "Just fell asleep. Though Zola might require a story from her Aunt Amy tomorrow night."
"I'll be happy to deliver. She has the stubbornness of a Shepherd, that's for sure."
Meredith agrees wholeheartedly, except she's assimilating a few Grey qualities too, since her stubbornness is legendary, maybe even more so than Derek's. It's one of the main reasons she butts heads so often with Derek. The kids are bound to pick up on that, not just the most innocent of swear words that sometimes escape their lips.
"I think I'll head to bed." Meredith announces, not really knowing how to go from there. "If you see Derek..."
"Yeah, I'll mediate." Amelia agrees, a flicker of pity in her eyes. They are becoming pathetic, that's probably true.
The door of Amelia's room closes quietly, as Meredith leaves hers ajar, arguing with herself it's for the kids. There's always that nagging worry in the back of her head when she's home and he's not, that somehow his car is wrapped around a pole and once again their last kiss is a fading memory.
She barely has the time to lie down once again, before her phone buzzes on her nightstand. She stretches to retrieve it, and sees a message from Derek.
'Craniectomy ran late, lots of complications. I'll be home in an hour tops.'
She sighs in relief.
Yet, when she attempts sleep, it never comes. His side of the bed has often been empty in the past few nights, but just knowing that they were under the same roof was enough to quell her insane worries.
There might not have been many words spoken between the two of them, but there were looks and gazes that left very little to the imagination. There were the daily gestures that spoke of a well-built routine, like picking up two mugs when pouring the coffee in the morning, or handing out the other's toothbrush and toothpaste if they casually went to bed at the same time, these gesture that gave her comfort and grounded her, fighting or not.
They are living together in this weird limbo where they pretend the other does not exist and despite all the crap, Meredith cannot say she has stopped loving Derek. She has no idea where Derek stands, but she surely would never deny her love for him, despite the circumstances. He makes her mad and livid and she'd crush his bones one by one some nights, but she still loves him.
She has no idea why nor how, but she loves him.
The stillness gnaws at her chest, text message or not. She closes her eyes and breathes, trying to loosen her muscles, to lessen the weight oppressing her chest, but it seems useless. She settles for listening to the kids breathe through the baby monitors; first the heavy breathing of Zola, her body now sprawled on the entirety of the mattress like a starfish, then Bailey's low snoring, his belly rising and falling evenly, the bunny now settled above his head, one of its paws resting on the boy's forehead.
It's been thirty four minutes since the text message, and Meredith is almost tempted to stand up and forgo sleep until Derek comes home. She can worry even if they are living like mutes. She decides to let her mind wander to the very few happy moments they have shared together in the past month.
There was that wide smile when Bailey attempted to stand up and fell on his butt, or that time when Zola brought home a drawing of their family and Derek had tears in his eyes. There's that shoulder squeeze when she was telling Amelia about the child that died on her table after a car crash a couple of weeks ago. That soothing, firm hand squeeze when she told him about her relation to Maggie. The hair smelling he does when they take the kids to daycare sometimes. The hand on her lower back when she attempted to cook some pasta under Amelia's guidance and he leaned over to inspect the pot. The twinkle of his eyes. The sound of his laughter, even if it's not directed at her. His leaning. Him.
When the bedroom door opens, she'd gladly punch him in the face for making her worry, but she recognizes it might be perceived as a little too extreme of a gesture. She limits herself to a long once over of her tired husband, her gaze meeting his for a long minute.
All of a sudden, whatever they have going on doesn't matter: they are home. A long lost feeling of completeness settles in their chests, warming them up.
They both blink, and the bubble pops.
Derek sighs loudly, his eyes smiling for his lips, his blinks slow and steady, tired after the long day, before he disappears into the bathroom.
On another night, he'd come closer, kiss her lips senseless, then they would end up naked under the sheets, celebrating his surgery and the fact that even tonight, his car is in the garage and not splattered against a brick wall.
"Did the kids go down okay?" instead is the only thing that comes out of his mouth when he gets back.
Meredith swallows thickly and nods, curling up into a ball, blinking away her tears. She promised herself she would not cry and cave, but at night it's always tougher to stick to her plans. Her inhibitions are gone, and her bed is too often too cold.
Derek peels off his sweater, unbuttons his pants and his shirt, strips off his socks and wears his pajamas, his movements calculated, once more slow and steady. He oozes tiredness.
"Thank you for the message. The 'I'm going to be home late' thingie." Meredith blushes at her verbal oversharing, regretting the lack of filter that overcomes her past six in the afternoon.
Derek gives her his signature hum she can't understand without seeing his eyes. Still, she has missed the hum. "I'm sorry I forget about that sometimes." His voice is gentle, low, soothing, much like his eyes meeting hers for a second.
"It's okay."
Derek shakes his head, and she has no clue what it means.
She swallows thickly when he sits on his side of the bed, hesitating, his whole body coiled like a spring, ready to bolt, ready to be kicked out. Usually, he leaves her be on his own, and on the nights he actually collapses in bed before her, she never kicks him out. Yet, he thinks that maybe he already belongs on the couch, or one of the rocking chairs in the kids' rooms. It happened more than once that she found him asleep in Zola's room, the girl curled up against his side in the crook of his elbow, or in Bailey's room, with the little boy draped on his chest.
"Lay down," she orders, her voice a little more firm than she intended to be.
Derek obeys, their backs separated only by a couple of inches of mattress, the bed suddenly warmer as he curls up into his own ball of avoidance.
It's hard to avoid your spouse when you're sharing a bed though, and they feel the other's presence almost as if they were draped all over them.
Derek's breaths are the first to even out, but Meredith can't seem to fall asleep.
"Goodnight," she whispers into the night, not even knowing why she did that.
He does reply, but it's nothing she could have predicted. "Goodnight Meredith. I love you."
"I love you, too."
Her voice shakes when she says it back.
Her eyelids finally droop, and his voice repeating on a loop in her head lulls her to sleep.
She's not surprised when the morning after, the first thing she can feel is Derek's hand firmly holding hers, their bodies now barely a few inches apart as sleep has pulled them closer and closer.
She's glad their hands still fit like the very first day.
Well you were a dancer, I was a rag,
the song in my head, well was all that I had.
Hope was a letter I never could send,
Love was a country we couldn't defend.
Big Black Car - Gregory Alan Isakov
A bit experimental like usual, not much dialogue, but what could you expect from the house of silence? I had a million things to write here, maybe even a million and one, and then when I reread it after the binge writing session of last night, it was okay just like this. No more references to Maggie and Ellis and childhood crap, no more Amelia, no more of the kids or Meredith or Derek. This was enough.
Now, this Baby Bailey is completely fictional, since they haven't shown him in a while, so I hope I got him right, even though he was sleeping most of the time.
Okay, listen to the song, read Bill Winchester's poems, let me know how much you loved/hated this little story. I hope it will at least be enough for the next Grey's-less two weeks. Keep calm, that sooner or later I will be updating Hope too. It's not as easy as it sounds to still be creative after more than 70 chapters, folks ;)
Have a great day!
Irene