Author's Notes: This is the first part of a two part 'fill-in-the-blank' fic. It fits in with current canon. The first part falls between Before and After and An Honest Mistake. The second part will address the end of An Honest Mistake. I don't know my schedule right now, so I can't say when I'll get the next part posted. The title of this story is a song by Poets of the Fall that I found highly appropriate for this situation. The poem quoted is Robert Frost's Fire and Ice. I really hope you enjoy this story. I felt crazy rusty writing this, so it was a fun challenge. Thanks a ton to my beta readers :)
Seattle is to rain as the United States is to diversity. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... There are as many different kinds of people as there are raindrops. There are fat raindrops that multiply until a drizzle feels like god, or whatever, is dumping a pool on your head. There are thin raindrops that feel like the prick of a Novocaine needle, and they gang up until you're numb. There's sideways rain, vertical rain, diagonal rain. All kinds of rain.
Sometimes, when it rains too much, the water isn't rain anymore. The ground is so thick with the downpour that there's nowhere left for the water to go, and so it sticks around. It's a misty mess in the air, on your skin, clogging your pores, turning your spirit gray.
It's kind of like how sadness hits people.
For a while, you can shrug the gloom away. A smile, a hug, or a kiss from somebody you love, and melancholy has a chance to evaporate. But given enough time and enough persistence of the dreary, the weight bears down, and a comforting squeeze might make you burst, but nothing will take the tears away for long. They have nowhere left to go because the world around you? It's all wet.
I think that's why some people do strange, out-of-character things. Like move to Seattle. Or stop swimming in the Bay.
It's our way of revolution. We either find a way to leave the rain behind or we drown.
The Before
The windshield wipers take one last, futile swipe at the rain on the glass as the engine of Derek's Land Rover relaxes into silence. Derek doesn't look up at the sound of the familiar engine, or rather, the sudden lack thereof. He sits on the front stoop in the gloom, torn jeans (he has torn jeans?) revealing the pale caps of his knees and the wisps of dark hair that start again just below them.
Just a bit scrawny. His legs. But I don't care. I like the flaws. They make me feel like I don't have to remember I have a scar under my lip from when I was five and cut my face open on a rock after I fell off my bike. Or that I have split ends. Or that this job sucks the vibrancy out of my skin in a way that no fresh coat of Clinique can fix (not that I bother; what an exercise in futility). He makes me feel like I don't have to remember any of it. It's part of what I like about him. Part of what I love.
I blink, my teeth mashing my lower lip, but the pain is a mute sort, and I ignore it. Months. We'd been back together for months. You'd think I'd lose some of the nervous twitter in my heart whenever I find him still here, waiting for me to come off my shift.
I think maybe I'm still expecting the other shoe to fall. For this to be some sort of crazy good dream that poofs when my alarm rings. Maybe. I hate that I'm maybe expecting the worst because I don't want to be expecting it. Even if any girl in her right mind would be expecting it.
I love you -- love me back, or else! What if I find somebody else that'll give me all the crap I want from you faster than you will? I don't know if I want to breathe for you when you're drowning and your mother just died. Okay, so I'm paraphrasing, but only a little. Derek doesn't usually say 'crap'.
What kind of girl can listen to that stuff without warning flags popping up? The Derek Shepherd of now is a criminal commitment-phobe. We're running for the record of longest, ultimatum-free, steady relationship that we've ever managed, and he hasn't gone stupid once.
It's like riding up the first hill on a roller coaster. I hear the clank-clank-clank-clank. The car is jerking. The air is getting breezy. The sun feels brighter. I know I'm getting closer. I know I'm up high. Where is the fall? Where is that freaking shoe?
I can't help the foreboding whisper in my brain. Things are good. (They are?) What'll mess it up? (Fate.) Flight instinct makes me want to skitter away before the pain starts. I settle for gripping the steering wheel so hard my fingers ache.
He hasn't moved. Hasn't gotten up to meet me.
The ends of his unbuttoned flannel shirt hang over the lip of the top stair where he sits. Blue. The shirt. He looks good in it. When he's pulling a long shift, that shirt is the one I borrow/steal when I want to have a reminder of him next to my nose while I sleep. It's soft and old and lovingly-worn, and no amount of washing would ever erase the Derek of it. The Derek Shepherd of now. (Who is the Derek Shepherd of then? I thought I had an inkling, but it turns out he sings.)
He stares at the sidewalk leading up to the house, elbows-to-knees, head down, a slender beer bottle the color of burnt butterscotch clasped in his hands like an offering pointed at the horizon line. His dark hair curls over his forehead, loose and frizzy in the on-and-off rain of the day.
I raise my wrist and stare. Seven-thirty. We were supposed to meet for dinner a half hour ago. I called, but he didn't pick up. My stomach churns. Shoewon'tdrop, I chant in my head. Mantras help, sometimes. Shoewon'tdrop. Shoewon'tdrop.
We could go to Angelina's...
Seven?
Actually, I'll see your seven and raise you a cedar-seared salmon.
Angelina's doesn't serve cedar-seared salmon.
No, but I do.
You do?
I think I can arrange it.
What's the occasion?
Do we need to have one?
We... No. No, we don't need an occasion.
Good, because the only occasion I can think of is that we're us. That's a rather long-lasting occasion. And even I get bored of salmon.
When we made this date, it hadn't seemed so scary, but since then he's balked at crappy babies, ducked out on dates with me, left a flower petal behind (canceled romantic plans because why?), and stopped talking whenever I've entered the room. There's something wrong with me. I know it.
A car drives past, kicking up a wet spray behind it. The crackling sound of tires versus drenched pavement shakes me. I take a deep breath and force myself to get out of the car. (Why is this so hard?) "Hey," I call over the hood, my voice a forced chirp. I think it's more of a croak, really.
He looks up with dark, unblinking eyes as I circle around the front bumper. "Hey," he calls back. He doesn't smile, and he certainly doesn't mention anything about cedar-seared salmon. Instead, he turns up his beer bottle and takes a chug. His Adam's apple ripples down his pale throat. His lips purse. He swallows. For an instant, the misery is gone from his face, crushed by the sharp influx of alcohol, but then it's back. The pain is back, and he resumes staring into space. I wait for the drizzle to turn into a pour, because I remember the last time he looked like this, and it was pouring then. I left him then.
So prosaic.
As I get closer, my legs start to feel a bit like jelly, and I feel like I'm walking to my doom. There's a film across his eyes, glittering in the dim porch light, and as I get closer, I see his cheeks are red. The skin around his eyes is puffy.
Oh, my god, what's wrong, I want to say, but I also don't want to know, because I can't take the shoe dropping tonight. I don't want to know if I'm being an inadequate girlfriend. I don't want to hear about his expectations and how I'm failing to meet each and every one. If it's me that's wrong, I can't take it. I just can't. And I especially can't be the one who brought it up. So, instead of prying, I plop down next to him and hold my hand out.
He passes me the beer. I take a swig, praying for some courage. I haven't eaten since breakfast. All day, I've been hit with reminders that I don't know this man. Who he was. (You know who he is. Isn't that enough?) My stomach gurgles around the introduction of empty calories. I'm ready for salmon. Really ready. The alcohol will hit me fast. I hope.
"Why didn't you tell me you play guitar?" I blurt. It sounds horribly accusing, like I expected him to somehow laundry list his talents when I met him, and he failed. A lump forms in my throat.
The air around us is silent, like the moments after snow. I think someone somewhere is burning something. Woodsmoke tickles my eyes and makes me want to inhale just to soak up the scent.
Derek turns. Something dark churns in his eyes. A small sound crawls from his throat. I think he's going to cry. I don't want him to cry. I want to wrap my arms around him and make it okay for him. But I still don't know what this is about, and I can't bring myself to ask.
Beneath him almost crying, I can see only second thoughts. Third thoughts. Even fourth ones. He's having them. And he'll tell me. I'm sure.
Pathetic. I know.
"Saxophone," he replies. He presents his palm to me.
I raise an eyebrow as I relinquish the beer bottle. He writes songs and plays instruments, but he's never even hummed for me. I would distinctly remember musical notes coming from this man. A horrific flash snatches my vision away from me, and he's standing there, wrinkled, fat baby in hand. Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, he croons, and it sounds so perfect my heart hurts. The baby warbles in his arms.
I want your crappy babies.
(He says he wants them. But he looks like he's ready to jump out of his skin when I mention them.)
My throat dries up, and it takes two swallows to find my voice. "Guitar and saxophone?"
His shaky breath rushes over the lip of the bottle. The rim pops against his lips as he takes a swig. "Yeah," he mutters.
"But you don't have a guitar. Or a saxophone. I saw all your stuff when you moved in. We went through it. Box by box." (Why do you do that? Accuse?)
His torso shudders. Heat radiates from him. I want to hug him, but it's a trap. It's a trap, I know it is. I can't do it. If I hug him, the shoe will drop. It will.
"I'm sorry," he says, his tone dire, as though it were his last confessional, and my world sinks into a puddle around me. Why would he be apologizing unless he means to--
"If you'd rather go out with your friends, it's fine," I snap. "I'll just have some cereal and go to bed."
The darkness in his eyes is replaced by a slow-burning fire. Anger, maybe. I don't know. Something awful. His knuckles turn white, and his skin squeaks against the beer bottle as he grips it. A deep breath unfurls him from his hunched posture, and then, if it were possible, he curls inward even further. He sets the bottle on the stoop with a clank, and his face disappears as he mashes it into his knees.
I can't help it anymore. My hand finds the small of his back. I wander in circles there. He's so tense he's shaking. Or is he really crying, now? I can't see his face. I have no idea. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know anything except that he's sorry, he's probably giving up on me again, or having second thoughts or whatever, and I've never even heard him sing Mary Had a Little Lamb.
He leans in to my touch as though it were something magnetic. He sighs. He pinches his nose, and I hear a wet sniffle. A deep, rough sound of pain racks his throat. His face is at my neck, and somehow, just like that, I'm holding him. I have no idea what to do. I sit there like a catatonic freak as he relaxes into me. My hand roams along his spine like it's been programmed for it, but the rest of me is just... shut off.
"You're my friend," he says, each syllable hitting my neck, his tone rumbling against my chest, but I feel like I'm far away, like I'm part of some near-death-experience light-in-tunnels staring-down-on-myself... Thing. Staring down on myself while I'm catatonic.
All I can come up with is, "What?"
"They're not my friends," he says. The words are sighs, lost in the roar of the rain as it picks up again. "You're my friend."
He's so close to me, but I'm still, I'm drowning. I blink. His fingers tighten over my clavicle, and all I can do is breathe. He smells clean and spicy. My head tilts, and the vision in my left eye blurs as his soft, raven-brown hair obstructs it. If this were sex, I'd wind my fingers through his hair. I'd grunt and push against him, maybe moan his name. He likes it when I do that. But this? I have no instinct for this.
Stop crying. Women who cry get nowhere in this world except laughed at by misogynistic men.
(Do something.)
"But you play guitar," I babble. He twitches in my arms as though I'm lashing him with a whip, and I can't help it because I don't believe. When is the shoe falling, damn it? "And saxophone. And you sing." (They know all about that.) "And I don't--"
"Did you expect a recital?" he growls.
"I would have liked to have known that you--"
"I don't play," he says. "I don't sing. I did that for Addison. She made me a fool."
I've learned my lesson. He leaves these words unspoken, but I hear them in the sudden bedlam of my racing thoughts.
The rain pounds the pavement, but we are quiet. Breathing. It hurts. The lump expands in my throat again, and this time, there's no swallowing it away. It swallows me instead. My eyes sting, the world blurs, and I can't hold myself still. My arms tighten.
I've learned my lesson, he says with silence. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Wasn't that my whole mentality going into this thing? This man in my arms won't sing for me because... I'm me. I've left him before. I'm the day his music died. Or something. I've killed Mary Had a Little Lamb for our crappy kids. Oh, god, I'm a lamb-killer.
My hand finds his temple, and I trace a lock of his hair from roots to ends. I've left him before, and he's left me, and we're two peas in the same freaking pod. We're both waiting for the other shoe. He won't sing, and I won't do anything at all unless he pokes me into it with a cattle prod.
"Derek, I..." My voice is tiny enough that I lose it somewhere in the fray. I hate it. Hate. Which is probably why it refuses to come back to me.
A sigh heaves through his frame. "I'm so tired," he whispers. "And I want--"
His fingers tighten, and I sit there, Rubik's Cube one square from solved. And I want a vacation? Want a nap? Want... "Dinner?" I supply weakly.
He moves, and I'm not holding him anymore. He stares, blue eyes black in the darkness, a black that's churning, wild, deep, endless. He wants. He wants. He wants... I want to give it to him, whatever it is.
"I think I might be facing a malpractice suit," he says, enunciating as if he expects me to think he's speaking Russian, or something dead. Like Latin. (Doctors know a lot of Latin... I should know this.)
I'm sorry. Just a bad day all around, I guess.
He's looking at me like he was then. He wants. He's pleading. And what I said that last time? It wasn't enough. Instead we shifted to me and forgot about him. He didn't sing. But he did dance. He looked like a fool, but he danced. For me. Because I needed... How could I forget that moment?
I cram the words where I ask him to explain his predicament back down my throat. "I'm sorry," I whisper instead, though I know it's not enough. I still don't know what else to do, but at least I've met what few expectations he might have.
(You can dance, too. He won't mind if it's klutzy. He's got no room to talk.)
"I nicked a woman's aneurysm with my scalpel, and now she's... I can't fix it. Meredith, I can't fix it at all." His lower lip quivers.
They don't tell you when you become a doctor that it's going to be like this. They don't tell you that you're going to lose more patients than you save. Sixteen. I'm sick of the death.
"Get up," I tell him, my mind made. I can do this. He showed me how. "We'll dance it out."
The skin around his eyes tick, and I think I see a spark. Something. "Meredith," he says, and all I can read from his tone is incredulity. He's incredulous, but he still says my name like he's praying at an altar. Heat lashes down my neck at the thought.
"Come on. We're dancing," I say. I grab his hands, pulling as I flail up the steps backward, and he has no choice but to come with me or let me fall on my ass.
We pull away from the rain, under the awning. The wet wood of the porch thumps under our feet as we stumble toward the door. I want to take him inside and flip on the radio, but with him? With him, for some reason, staying outside in the rain seems like the thing to do. He likes being outside.
I run my fingers up his arm. They touch his skin, fleet over his watch, find the cuff of his shirt, and slip under. He's warm. And soft. And I love him.
"There's no music," he says, eyes glittering in the dark.
"You're the musician," I counter. His perplexed expression flattens into something stony, and so I don't press it. Silence stretches between us as my mind races. A sliver of panic carves runnels into my determination. I need something slow. I need...
My hand hits the radio dial on the way to work. A car honks, probably because I looked away from the road too long and started to swerve. Crap, crap, crap. I'm going to be late. "Good morning, Seattle," says a tinny voice as I force my eyes back onto the road.
"Put your brave face on," I mutter as a tune comes to me, and, oh, how appropriate it is.
"What?" he whispers into my hair.
"It's just a song," I say. I take the lead, and soon we sway in a standard box step, no music to be had, though in my head, I'm wailing to myself in horrible key just to get a beat.
He's not used to being led. (Of course not. He's Derek.) He steps on my feet at least twice. It doesn't matter. I stare at him, and I want nothing more than to be stepped on for the rest of my life if it means we never move from this porch. The cool mist of air fogging from our noses melts away, and we're caught in the moment between one pair of breaths and the next.
The black stubble carpeting his face and the deep circles under his eyes make him look like a war victim, but it's like he's been given morphine, and what was once a mortal wound seems like something I could maybe fix with my scalpel. His warm hands flex, he takes a step closer into my space, and then he is my space. He's it. He looks at me like I'm the moon to his tide, pulling, inescapable, forever. When he blinks, a fat pair of tears escape into gravity, but he laughs. It's a small chuckle. Barely cogent. But it's something, and I feel like I'm almost there.
(I can't believe you were expecting this to be hard...)
He puts his scratchy chin against my forehead. A weary sigh blows over the top of my head. Rain thunders down onto the awning overhead, but it's distant behind the sound of his heartbeat. I'm in his arms, and he's not so sad anymore. I want this moment forever. I wish I could wrap it up and put it in a box to give myself for Christmas every year. I did it right. I did...
"I need to shave," he says, and the spell is broken. The semi-laugh he gave me before seems exuberant in the light of this joke that and flails and dies like a shot deer between us. His body quivers, as if laughing reminds him he was upset bare moments ago, and he has no right to laugh. No right at all.
A huge sigh heaves through his frame. The heavy breath of it hits my ear like a gust across a lonely graveyard, and I think maybe he remembers the world outside this porch. He feels small in my arms already, but he's shrinking. Tension leaks back into his frame as one by one, his muscles return from the haven I tried to build, and I still can't find words. I can't find anything that might make it better, and the longer I am quiet, the more futile I feel.
He recedes into his shell like a turtle, content to hurt alone in his fortress of bone.
I kiss his jaw, trying to draw him back to me. (You're losing him.) "I'll let it go this time."
"The Chief made me go home," he tells me. His voice catches. "He said I couldn't come back until I've been off for eight hours."
"Do you want to sleep?"
He swallows. "I don't think I can."
"Let's just stay here for a while."
He looks at the space I'm in. "Okay."
I resist the urge to hop and wave my arms. I'm right here, I want to scream. I'm here. Why did you leave me here? A churning coil of worry forms in my stomach. My intestines are a twist of snakes, and my teeth clench as I try to keep them down. (You can't dance this away.)
He's gone, and I wonder what to do. I'll think of something else. I have to think of something else. We stay interlocked until my fingers are numb from the cold, and the thundering rain has again eased into a drizzle.
(You picked a crap time to get optimistic.)
I want to say something. It'll be okay. Everything is fine. But it feels fake. Malpractice suits aren't something to fake fine. They're serious. And he'd just think I'm patronizing him. I don't want to patronize him.
I just want to give him what he needs, and in that desperation, I find no words at all.
I pull him against me, desperate to regain traction. "I wouldn't really call this dancing anymore," I tell the soft fabric over his chest. As I smirk (fake), some of his shirt travels up with my lip. I slip my hands beneath the waistline of his jeans and rest there against his glutes, skin to skin. I flex my knuckles. His skin surrenders to my touch, but only so much before muscle refuses to let me press any further.
"What would you call it?" he says, but his voice is distant. My failure cuts me like a blade.
"There's no music," I babble. "We're not really moving anymore. I think it's called hugging."
His arms tighten, and he shakes himself from his dark place long enough to stare me down. The self-pity in his gaze staggers me, but he holds me up. "Is that your expert opinion?" he says, and not for the first time, I wish the arrogance and the mocking and the snark would bite into his tone again. Without it, his voice is raw with hurt and doubt, and I would let him tease me for hours if I thought it would fix things.
I nod. "It is."
He nods with a finality that scares me. "Hmm," he mutters, and he rests his chin against me. We sway like we're still dancing, and he runs his hands along my skin, but he's gone. He's in my arms, but he's gone, and I want him back. If I can't get him back from something like this, what kind of future do we even have? For richer, but not for poorer, because poorer makes me an impotent wimp? No. I can't do this again. I can't be an inadequate freak.
"I went to therapy," I blurt. He stills. "I got all whole and healed because I went to therapy."
"What?"
"It's not your fault or anything," I rush to say. (Stupid. He'll think it was his fault anyway.) "I just... needed help. My mother..." He's so still I can't hear him breathing. He doesn't move. He's a steel pylon in my arms. Tension locks his joints. Why won't he breathe? I swallow. "I really needed help," I whisper into his neck.
His voice is dark and angry. "I made you--"
A wad of unadulterated rage tightens in my fingers, and I shove him hard enough that his steel pylon sways. "Derek, stop it," I snap. "Just stop. I just meant... You can't bottle things up. You can't be your own private island, or you're just going to stay broken... Please, I'm here. I'll be here. I'm not going anywhere. Talking to me or whatever is not going to turn you into something less. I want to help so bad. Please, just tell me what you need, because I want to give it to you."
He flexes his muscles as he stares at me in silence.
"Please," I repeat. Something hot snakes down my cheek. I raise my hand and swipe away the offending tears. "Please, I have to help."
I want to slap myself for crying on him. This is not the way. He's going to think that's his fault, too. And then I want to slap him instead. He thinks everything is his fault, and it's freaking infuriating. That's the problem with Gods. They're omnipotent, so when things go wrong, it's their fault. Stupid surgeons. Stupid men.
Stupid Derek. I shove him again, not that it does much to make me feel better. My face is hot, and my breaths wrench my frame as I pant. My vocal cords feel raw, though I've barely said a word. My jaw aches from clenching it.
Stupid, stupid man.
Stupid.
I hate him. (Love him.)
The silence stretches into minutes. I'm almost ready to give up (no!) when he sighs and wraps me in his arms. His breaths are shaky, and he's definitely sniffling now, but I can't see his face anymore because he grips me so tightly I wonder if I can breathe. I can. My hands snake up his back. I can't think of anything to say except, "I'm here." The dry rush of fabric as I rub his back shoves aside the whisper of the rain and the passing cars and the world. "I am," I say. (You are.) "I'm here."
What surprises me is when he replies, his voice small and weary. "I know."
I feel like he's given me something. A small part of himself that he keeps in a box that he doesn't let anybody else see. It's the part of him that let him breathe when his father died. It's the part of him that let him flee when Addison broke his sense of self-worth. It's the part of him that keeps him believing in silly things like miracles even after another patient flat lines. It's his.
And now he's given it to me for safekeeping.
"God," he moans as he trails past my ear with his lips. "I need you, Mere." His tone glides over his lower registers, and I feel his voice more than hear it, like he's picked up a feather and brushed me with it head to toe. His knee tangos with mine, forcing me to spread my stance wide for him, and in two shuffling steps, he has me up against the siding by the door. The air whooshes out of me as the thud of the impact rattles my frame, reminding me that I'm alive. That he's alive. Somewhere in the march of syllables between us, he's taken the lead, and now I'm the lamb.
I want to give him what he needs. I need it, too.
I rub my knee against his hip as I tilt my head to the side, breathing, breathing him. "Inside?"
"Yeah," he agrees.
The world tilts as he takes me up into his arms. He whisks me through the door, and I'm enveloped with warmth. The house smells distantly of cleaning products (Izzie hasn't cooked lately), but they're dwarfed by the hint of alcohol and aftershave. (Derek.) The steps inside the house stumble past, but I don't laugh. I'm tiny, but one-hundred pounds is still one-hundred pounds.
Things slow down as I stare up at him from our bed. Our bed. He moved in months ago, and it's ours. Ours. (Why did you never think of that before?)
I brush my hand over his cheek. His stubble is like sandpaper against my palm, but I don't care. It reminds me that he's real, he's mine, and he's here. His hot breath snakes down my wrist, and then I'm lost in this. What we have. I don't know why I'm ever frightened.
It seems silly to have ever been frightened when I'm trapped in this moment. Heat coils around our bodies and between, but his touch makes me shiver as though I'm glacier-touched. His kisses take my breaths and turn them into fire. I'm ice imprisoned in a furnace, flames licking at a snow bank. A war of opposites.
(Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice.)
Sheets move, a satin slide across my skin. Clothes hit the floor. It's a kaleidoscope of need, and I'm riding around on one of the slivers of color in the fray, jagged edges of red slicing me open, until I'm nowhere and everywhere at once.
(From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.)
Begging, begging, I'm begging him. (Please.) He spears me in a single thrust as my hands twist through his hair, clawing. I want. (Please.) We fit, but he only settles for a moment before desperation overcomes. With one look, his desire tears me open. (Please.) His hands have found the headboard. It gives him leverage. My legs squeeze his waist.
(More.)
He groans, and then he's running me through. Over and over and over, building a space for himself in my chalice. My fingers chase down his slick back. I squeeze, and I pull him into me, again, again, again, and I want nothing more in that moment than to pull him into me until there's nothing left. Until there is no me or him, just us, a single island in the chaos of this life.
He takes me to the end in a torrent of earthquakes. His roar of triumph is lost in the rush that takes me down into the whorl of colors that we built together. I am split open, falling, dying. Done.
As he collapses next to me, panting, spent, and slick with sex and sweat, I settle against him, and we relax in the dark. My nerves buzz and spark. I'm warm and loved, whole and healed, and I hope I've done this for him, too. Made him a small oasis in the tumult. I would say something, but all I can think is to hum a little tune against his ear as his breaths space out and even into sleep. What surprises me, though, is that he joins me. Barely noise, more a mumble, but the notes are clear.
It seems Mary had a little lamb, after all.
We discover this fact, and then we dream together.