Title: Do You Ever Get Weary?
Author: greymcdreamysgh

Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mer/Der
Summary: Meredith and Derek have been married for a few years, but lately the wedded bliss is nowhere to be found. They rent a beach house for the summer, away from the hospital and work and surgery, in an attempt to repair what was broken.
Disclaimer: I don't own Grey's Anatomy.

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source.

It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds;

it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." - Anais Nin

They were paying their hard-earned money to stay here.

That's all Meredith could think about as she inspected the filthy kitchen appliances. The people who were here before them could have at least left the house in presentable condition. She should have never let Derek pick this place without talking to her about it first.

As she eyed the dirt on the kitchen linoleum and the unvacuumed carpets, Meredith wondered what Derek was thinking when he chose this as the place where they were going to spend the next three months. The house was the quintessential beach cottage, but the upkeep indicated a complete lack of attention to detail, which seemed fitting for him these days, she thought as she rolled her eyes. In fairness, it wasn't all Derek's fault. What was she was thinking when Derek had suggested this to her? Initially, she thought about how they were both going to take three months off from work and why he even wanted to go in the first place, and she had written the entire ordeal off as completely ridiculous and impractical. But when he cornered her in their room one night after work, and explained to her why they had to go with more desperation in his voice than she had heard in years, she agreed to it.

Soon after they decided to go, however, she relegated this trip to the back of her mind and left the details to Derek. It was an admitted oversight that she was currently regretting as she looked around and saw that the house was nowhere near in order. Tucked away in a remote section of coastal Washington hours away from Seattle Grace and their regular lives, this house had the potential to be quaint. It was oceanfront, painted with a coastal color scheme, and had a balcony overlooking the water. There were several steps leading up to the front door, and they had private beach access through another door in their kitchen. Upstairs were two small bedrooms, painted in soft pinks, yellows, and greens. It would have been wonderful if the owners had only thought to clean it after their previous renters, a group of over-privileged kids celebrating their high school graduation, had left.

Though the house was cute, it was quite small, Meredith noticed as she walked around to get acquainted with her new surroundings. After years of grunt work, she was finally starting to make really good money, and of course he hauled in millions. They could have rented a mansion for the summer if they wanted to, but Derek, who hadn't minded living in a trailer for months years ago, undoubtedly chose this place for its charm.

Eyeing the luggage that was quickly piling up at the front door, she sighed and realized that unpacking would take at least the rest of the day. She carried a portable bedrail upstairs along with a set of sheets and busied herself making up the twin bed in one of the two bedrooms. She smoothed the pink sheets over the mattress and slid the bedrail in place, leaving the favorite mangy teddy bear by the pillow. She still had the other bed to make, bathrooms to sterilize, and groceries to buy but she took a break, perching on the end of the bed. With her elbows on her knees, she let her head slump forward to rest in her hands. She pushed her hair back and sighed, glancing at the teddy bear wistfully.

"Meredith," Derek called as she heard the screen door slam shut.

"Up here," she replied.

Heavy footsteps trudged up the stairs, followed closely by a set of lighter ones. He peeked into the bedroom and dropped an overstuffed bag on the floor with a loud bang. Meredith quickly straightened up, the hint of annoyance crossing her features but saying nothing. "This is the last of the bags," he said. "Emily's stuff. Everything else is downstairs."

"That's fine," Meredith said. "Where is she?"

"I had her right behind me. Bean?" Derek called.

A little girl, hopped up on the adrenaline rush that came with new surroundings, flew into the room as fast as her feet would carry her. She had kicked off her shoes about halfway through the car ride, so she padded barefoot across the hardwood. Her tea-colored curls were pulled back into loose pigtails and her dress already had spilled juice down the front. Her deep blue eyes, the ones that gave her away as Derek's, lit up with excitement.

"Em, you want to test out your new bed?" Meredith asked, patting the mattress. She swung her daughter up onto the mattress and let her lie down in it. Emily immediately reached for her bear, a ratty old brown thing with the fur around the ears loved off. Emily had had this toy, which everyone simply called Bear, in her possession since she was two days old and it had never left her in the almost three years that had passed since.

With Emily in her sight, Meredith turned to Derek. "This house has to be cleaned, and I'm going out for groceries."

"Ok," Derek replied.

"I mean, really, Derek. You could have picked a place that didn't look like a cyclone had come through," she said. Emily got up and, holding Bear by the ear, started to jump on the bed. Meredith reached out absently to steady her, as her gaze remained fixed on Derek. "This was supposed to be relaxing."

Derek simply looked at her for a moment. His eyes didn't betray any feelings of hurt, but they didn't speak of love either. He seemed more confused than anything else, maybe a little lost too, or like he was looking for something. He cleared his throat, "I'm going to take her to the beach, maybe burn off some of that energy."

"Em, Daddy wants to take you to the beach. How does that sound?" Meredith asked.

"Mommy, you come too?" Emily asked.

"No, Mommy has to go buy some food for us to eat for dinner," Meredith replied. "Daddy's going to take you and then I'll see you when I get back. Is there anything special you want to eat?"

"Berries!" Emily squealed.

"Ok, berries it is. Come on, crazy girl," Meredith said, taking Emily's hand and helping her jump down from the bed.

"Bean, should we go down to the water?" Derek asked, taking her up into his arms. She nodded excitedly and he smiled, touching his nose to hers briefly. "Meredith, you'll get everything?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I'll be back in an hour or so. Can you have the fridge clean for when I get back?"

"Sure," he said, as he disappeared down the steps with Emily.

For a few moments after Derek left with Emily, Meredith remained seated on her bed. She tucked Bear close to Emily's pillow, smiling wistfully as she remembered. At first the toy had dwarfed the five-pound, three-ounce Emily. Too quickly for Meredith, though, Bear had become easily portable for her, something that she held by the ear while Derek rocked her to sleep. She sighed and smoothed the sheets down once more before leaving the room.

Retracing the route they took to the house, Meredith easily found the local grocery store. The summer had barely started and since it was the middle of the week, the traffic was light. Meredith could only assume that weekenders would start filling the town as soon as tomorrow, but for now, she relished being by herself and taking her time.

She was used to doing all the shopping in the hour she could squeeze out of her schedule. She was used to rushing. Now that she had no place else to go, she wasn't quite sure how to slow down. When she and Derek first started living together, Meredith wrote out a list of what to buy every week in an effort to get the domestic thing exactly right. Going through the aisles and putting the weekly staples in her cart had become routine long ago. The list had become more of a mental reminder, something she could scroll through in her head to remind herself that Derek always wanted muesli and Emily liked strawberries but not raspberries.

She thought Derek had said something about barbequing, either that he wanted to try it or he wanted to order take-out. It was one of the two and Meredith had no idea if the house even had a grill, but she picked up chicken breasts and hamburger meat anyway. Derek had a one-track mind once he got something in his head.

Eggs, bread, milk, and the only juice Emily would drink all piled into the cart as Meredith forced herself to take her time going through the store. She looked around at the few other customers, and couldn't help but notice that she was the only young person there. It seemed like most everyone who stayed here in the off-season was retired, old ladies shuffling along in orthopedic shoes and pastel sweaters. These people could stay here and do whatever they wanted for as long as they wanted. They had no jobs, no obligations, and here she was, tied down to Seattle in every way imaginable with the long hours, the husband, and the baby. Somehow, she had agreed to give it up for three months.

That's why she initially thought Derek had lost his mind when he suggested this, begged her for this. She remembered asking him how he expected her to leave work for months, and better than that, how did he plan on handling leaving the OR for that long? She had to admit she was a little surprised when Derek had looked her in the eye, as serious as she'd ever seen him, and told her that the OR was always going to be there.

It was easy for him to say that, she thought, since he had already had so much more time than she had. After the roughest intern year Seattle Grace had seen before or since, Meredith had tried to put all of that behind her and continue on with what would hopefully be a much less dramatic residency. When she started her second year, she felt more like herself than she had in months and it showed; she outshined nearly everyone in her program, except for the friendly competition from Cristina. She was insightful, diagnosed quickly and correctly, and remained sharp under pressure. Her cuts were clean, her sutures neat, her hands deft. She flew solo for the first time in her second year, only on an appendectomy, but still. Over the years, she had pulled ahead of the pack, drawing so many comparisons to her mother, something that she didn't mind so much anymore.

She could still remember in as much detail as if it had happened yesterday the night that multiple traumas came in from a car accident. She had assisted Derek on a complex procedure for a man whose head went through his windshield. Hours later, they had collapsed into the on-call room, high on the thought that they had saved his life, and fallen asleep wrapped around each other. In the morning, he whispered "Marry me" in her ear.

The wedding had been a simple affair, but then again, Meredith had never been the kind for a big to-do. She wore the white dress and picked out the colors for the bridesmaids' dresses, the flowers, the tablecloths, and the cake frosting anyway, even though quite frankly, she thought the amount of prep work going into this wedding was a little ridiculous. Six months later though, Meredith couldn't make it through the vows without crying, when Derek promised in front of everyone she knew that he would never leave her.

Emily hadn't been part of her plan, at least not for quite some time, but when the stick turned blue she had felt at the same time giddier and sicker than she did after five tequila shots. She had everything from the debilitating morning sickness, fatigue that trumped anything she felt while she was an intern, and enough strange cravings to make Derek almost as nauseous and tired as she was. Despite a toned down schedule and the best medical advice on record, Emily arrived a month early - tiny, wrinkled, and red, but healthy. Though she had the swollen ankles and the stretch marks to prove it, the pregnancy hadn't seemed altogether real to Meredith until the nurse placed her daughter in her arms. Derek brushed a few sweaty strands of hair off her forehead and kissed her, teary-eyed. Then it became real, so real in fact that it was terrifying. Between the crying and the wobbly head with the vulnerable soft spot and the gangly limbs that she could circle entirely with two fingers, this perfect child should have never been entrusted to her care. On that first night, when her friends had left and Derek had fallen asleep in the chair next to her, Meredith nuzzled Emily close and promised her that she might not be perfect, but she would always try.

It got a little less scary after that, and Meredith and Derek both tried to learn as they went along. Even as a baby, Emily seemed patient with the long hours Meredith worked and her inexperience with kids. She rarely cried, except for the month or two when she was teething and screamed almost nonstop, and the gummy, drooling smiles were the best welcome home Meredith had ever received. Though she had no one to go to for advice, Meredith loved Emily more than she thought she could love anyone and that was enough to get her through everything she didn't know. The soft weight of her daughter against her chest at the end of the day and Emily's fingers clutching her hair as she slept was so blissfully comforting.

As soon as Meredith had told Derek she was pregnant, he had immediately swooped in as the kind of superman he liked to be. He massaged every ache and fed every craving, and coached her through a difficult labor like a champ. He could often be found sitting up nights with Emily reading books and talking to her. When she was ten months old, he dressed her in full Yankees gear and took her to her first baseball game. He savored being her father, and wondered what he'd done to deserve such a remarkable daughter.

At first, he'd been the one to cut down on his hours. While Meredith adored Emily, it had always been her intention to work and after eight weeks of maternity leave, she was anxious to get back to the OR. Derek, who had waited fifteen years to be a father, didn't mind slowing down and working half days for awhile.

Meredith wasn't sure when it happened exactly, when their lives had become predictable and monotonous. If someone had told her during that first year with Derek that they'd ever become predictable, she would have laughed, but secretly longed for a little stability. Somehow, after they had both gone back to work, after Emily's first birthday, her life with Derek had become routine. She did what she always intended to do and focused with newfound dedication on her career, finally choosing neurosurgery as her specialty. Even as a resident, she gave him a run for his money, but rarely scrubbed in beside him. Not many cases required two neurosurgeons at once. Logging long hours in the OR was exhilarating for her, but she managed to make it home in time to snuggle with Emily before bed…most nights, she admitted to herself reluctantly. Some nights, however, she'd push it a little in the OR, and rush to make it home, but Emily would already be asleep in Derek's arms. The looks he gave her on those nights curled around her insides and squeezed hard enough to make her nauseous.

There were plenty of nights though that Derek stayed on-call at the hospital, plenty of times when he'd forgotten something important. One night, when she was sick with a bad head cold, Derek scrubbed in on two craniotomies that could have waited until the next morning. When he saw her the next day, the image of her stuffy nose and sound of her congested breathing the morning before came rushing back to him, and he kicked himself for leaving her alone with Emily overnight. He'd never forgotten her birthday, but for their third wedding anniversary, Meredith reminded him that morning that she had something special planned for him. After work, Meredith dropped the baby off at Izzie's house, and cooked dinner for two (ok, Izzie helped with that too). She finally got a frantic phone call from him when eleven o'clock rolled around to let her know that multiple traumas were coming in and he'd see her in the morning. He made no mention of happy anniversary or sorry I won't be there, and the food got cold and the lingerie went unworn.

Meredith remembered everything, but had problems following through. Derek, on the other hand, just never seemed to remember anymore. Communication had always been an issue, and it was always on Meredith's list of things to work on. Somehow, just when she finally felt she had that part of it down, the other end of the communication line broke down. They forgot to talk and forgot to play. Somewhere along the way, Derek forgot to hold her at night while they slept.

Meredith sighed as she pushed her cart into one of the check-out lines and began piling her groceries up onto the conveyor belt. That was another thing – at some point, a long time ago, this vacation would have seemed exciting. Three months alone with Derek in a beachfront cottage would have seemed unabashedly romantic. They'd play with Emily on the beach and help her collect seashells, and once they fed her and got her to bed, there'd be candlelit dinners and cuddling on the porch while they looked at the ocean. There'd be sex every night and bubble baths and red wine.

Before, it wouldn't have seemed completely daunting to spend three months alone with her husband and child in a beach house, away from their friends and the hospital and surgery. Meredith wouldn't have worried about how they would possibly fill the empty space and the lulls in conversation. She wouldn't have had to worry because the distance that existed between them now had never existed before.

Admittedly, they rarely fought, and Meredith had always thought of that as a good thing, but now, as she stood in this strange grocery store, she realized it was because they rarely talked. He'd tried to tell her that in April when he suggested this trip, and she hadn't really listened. She laughed to herself now at the irony of it all.

"Are you here for the weekend, dear?" the elderly woman ringing up her purchases asked Meredith.

"For the summer, actually," Meredith supplied.

"Oh, how nice!" the cashier said appreciatively. "Where are you from?"

"Seattle," Meredith quickly replied. "My husband and daughter…we're renting a place for the summer. Taking off work, you know. Family time."

"Oh yes, we get a lot of families here on vacation. You'll have a wonderful time. You young people are so busy these days. I'm sure you're looking forward to slowing down a bit. This is just the place. Family is so important. Sometimes people forget that, you know."

"Yeah," Meredith murmured. "Well," she said, shrugging her shoulders, "That's why we're here."

While the cashier scanned her dozens of items at the register, Meredith thought back to that night and what Derek had said. She had come in after a brutal thirty-six hour shift at the hospital and Derek had already tucked Emily in for the night. They went into the bedroom and Meredith started to peel off her clothes, sticky and wet from the rain she had to walk through to get to her car. She sat on the bed and shucked off a pair of jeans and a sweater and he just stood in front of her watching her undress. Don't even think about it, she had told him. She had just worked for a day and a half straight and was exhausted and in no mood. She expected some sort of cocky response about how good he was and how the Meredith he knew was never too tired for that, but what she got instead was something entirely different. Meredith, he had said, I think we should go away this summer.

She laughed and told him fine, to pick the place and she'd take off work for a week. It sounded like a good idea; they could take Emily on her first vacation. No, he'd said. He wanted to get away from Seattle, with her and Emily, for the whole summer. He wanted to go somewhere far away where there would be no work, no distractions, nothing but the three of them for three whole months. Meredith simply looked at him and gave him a short little trill of a laugh. She didn't gratify his suggestion with a legitimate response. She got up to get pajamas out of her dresser, and he'd stopped her, made her look him in the eye, and repeated himself. He added please to the end of it this time. Meredith had spouted off every single reason she could think of about why they couldn't go, the chief resident race being one of them, but after a moment or two, he cut her off.

She didn't realize until he kissed her that she couldn't remember the last time he had done that. Not like that at least. The thought of that startled her into listening, and she stopped fighting the idea and let him explain himself. He could feel them drifting apart, he told her, and he didn't want to throw Addison in her face, but the same thing happened in that relationship and he'd be damned if he was going to make that mistake again. He told her that he refused to let it get that bad, but he could see it coming if they didn't do something. He told her he missed talking to her, really talking to her about things other than daycare schedules and electric bills and even surgery. He missed making love to her, and feeling like he wanted her more than anything else in the world. He told her he resented the way things had become, and that he wanted to try to fix this before it got to the point where they couldn't anymore. Please, Meredith, he'd finished. And she agreed.

When Meredith arrived back at the beach house, the speech he gave her on that rainy April night faded to the back of her mind. Instead, she thought about the next three days, which would undoubtedly be filled with tedious cleaning and unpacking, trying to get this house in a livable state. More than that, she thought about the upcoming three months, during which she had voluntarily taken herself away from everything. She stared at the front door of the house, grocery bags in hand, and thought about why she willingly took herself away from the hospital for weeks. Chief resident would be decided in a few weeks, and by leaving, she essentially took herself out of the running. She cursed Derek for knowing that and still begging her to do this, and she cursed herself for agreeing to something so stupid. It was already done, Meredith mumbled as she let herself in and started angrily slamming the groceries around on the counters. Derek hadn't wiped down the inside of the refrigerator and God only knew what was in there before.

She slid open the back door, the one that faced the ocean, with every intention of bitching at him that she had only asked him to do that one thing. The words stopped short in her throat though when she saw Derek and Emily playing on the beach. He gently tossed a ball to her, but she was still too young to coordinate herself to catch it and throw it back to him. Instead, the ball landed a few inches in front of her feet and she picked it up, throwing it as well as she could in Derek's direction. It didn't make it even halfway back to him, but she tried. Emily ran towards him as fast as she could, her ponytails slipping loose and her arms outstretched, shrieking with delighted laughter. Smiling, he let her catch him and tackle him. His shorts and polo shirt were covered in sand as he fell to the ground and she jumped on top of him. She splayed her hands across his chest and screamed when he gripped her under the armpits and tossed her playfully into the air. He set her back on the ground and got up, letting her begin the chase all over again. He let her run around for a minute, and when she ran into his arms, he gathered her up and swung her around. He held her with both hands and blew a raspberry on the back of her neck, tickling her while careful to step around the sandcastle that they had built while Meredith was gone.

That was why, Meredith realized, as she watched the two of them play. Yes, she had thought about the surgeries she'd miss and the opportunity to be chief resident that she would effectively give up if she left. All of that had definitely crossed her mind in April, and all of those reasons were the ones that constantly made her feel like an idiot for being here. But her rationale suddenly became clearer as she observed carefree, innocent Emily playing in the sand with her father. When Derek had hinted at distance, perhaps even divorce, her mind had gone to Emily, and she knew the reason she'd told Derek to go ahead with this lay with her. As soon as Emily wrapped her hand around Meredith's fingers, and her heart, as an infant, Meredith promised herself that this beautiful child would never experience what she did. She had agreed to this much more for Emily's sake than for her own.

She let the two of them continue to play, uninterrupted, and she turned around and walked back into the kitchen to start cleaning and stocking the refrigerator. She couldn't be everything the way she had always hoped she'd be able to be, the way she knew Derek and Emily needed her to be, but she did promise Emily that she'd try.