Author's Note: So "Step by Step" was going to be a oneshot, but then the awesome reviews happened, and I felt the inexplicable urge to reunite Derek and Cristina in awkward conversation. Now, I'm thinking it might consist of three parts. Maybe more, depending on what the characters have to say about it. Thoughts?
SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
Derek Shepherd had come to a conclusion. Here, now, staring at the ceiling and absently stroking the tiny figure curled up against him, he'd come to a conclusion.
Sex and mockery was good.
He hadn't initially felt that way. Initially, he'd done the he-man thing and been frustrated by the lack of instant gratification. Because, really, the initial introduction of sex and mockery had meant that he didn't get the relationship. That she didn't want to give him the relationship.
He'd been hurt, and frustrated, and reluctant. He hadn't wanted to settle for anything less than what he felt he deserved. He'd been going for the gold with the infamous locker room speech, and he'd gotten the consolation prize instead, so he'd made a few mistakes and gone on a date in the spirit of licking his wounds.
Going on a date had been a bad idea, but he wasn't entirely sorry he'd done it. Going on a date had inspired him to accept sex and mockery. Going on a date had inspired him to add conversation to sex and mockery. And Derek really, really liked conversation.
Yesterday, conversation had inspired a small, but important discussion about the half sister. Today, conversation had inspired an equally brief discussion of his dead father. It had been a fairly morbid conclusion to their amazing on-call room sex, but his impromptu confession that he missed his dad had inspired Meredith to lean forward and kiss him gently on the jaw, and that attempt at consolation had made him feel a lot less alone.
Of course, he hadn't really started to love conversation until this evening, when "conversation" had become, "Derek, it's really late. Why don't you just stay here tonight?"
So there he was, staring at Meredith's ceiling, rubbing his fingers up and down her left tricep and smiling into the dark.
Sex and mockery was good, but sex, mockery, and conversation was amazing.
Of course, sex, mockery, and conversation meant that he hadn't planned on staying over. Sex, mockery, and conversation meant that he was content and comfortable and not lonely for the first time in ages—but he still couldn't sleep. Because sex, mockery, and conversation meant that Derek had agreed to spend the night without earplugs. And the euphoria inspired by sex, mockery, and conversation had meant that this thought hadn't occurred to him until his not-girlfriend was in full freight-train form.
He stifled the chuckle that threatened to escape as she choked on a snore and snuggled closer to him.
He really, really didn't want to get out of Meredith's bed. Not after it had taken her so long to invite him into it. Unfortunately, he had an early surgery scheduled, and he needed enough sleep to be functional. He didn't have his earplugs, but he was hoping against hope that a strong dose of Benadryl would cause enough of a stupor to make him blissfully unaware of Meredith's lung capacity.
He knew the Benadryl was downstairs in the medicine cabinet. He was just having trouble summoning the strength to leave her side long enough to retrieve it.
Come on, Shepherd. You'll be gone for five minutes, tops. She's dead asleep. You'll be back in bed before she even knows you left.
At long last, the need to do his job well outweighed the fear that she'd wake up and deny him further access. With a snail's speed, he disentangled his limbs and hoisted himself off the bed and into a standing position. It took him the allotted five minutes just to reach the foot of the stairs. He heaved a sigh and padded towards the kitchen, his bare feet slapping quietly against the hardwood floors.
To his surprise, the kitchen light was already on. He glanced down at his watch in confusion.
2:00 AM. Which intern—no, resident—could possibly be up at this hour?
He silently hoped it was Alex Karev. Karev was far less likely to rope him into a coherent conversation.
He turned into the kitchen and groaned inwardly when he saw Cristina Yang in sweats, slumped over a steaming mug on the counter.
"Dr. Yang," he mumbled lowly in greeting, trudging deliberately towards the medicine cabinet.
"Shepherd," she returned quietly. Her tone was noticeably absent of its usual edge.
He told himself firmly that he didn't care. One look in her direction, however, and his brow was furrowing of its own accord. He gave a cursory glance at her mug and decided to make lighthearted conversation.
"Warm milk?" he remarked with a smirk.
She shrugged, but her eyes didn't move from the counter. "Couldn't sleep," she replied noncommittally. "According to wives' tales, this is supposed to help."
He retrieved the Benadryl with a small, self-satisfied smile and moved to pour himself a glass of water. The pill slid easily down, and he turned back to face her, leaning against the counter and resigning himself to another few moments of unexpected company.
"You know," he commented wryly, "it also helps to sleep in your own bed."
She snorted indignantly, but she still refused to meet his eyes. "You're one to talk," she shot back.
It was a retort typical of Cristina, but the absence of malice made Derek deeply uncomfortable.
Despite the fact that she was Meredith's "person"—or, perhaps, because of it—Derek had never been on good terms with Cristina Yang. Ever since he'd given Meredith the opportunity to scrub in on Katie Bryce's surgery, Dr. Yang had looked at him with either disgust, indifference, or a combination thereof, and the frank, condescending, accusatory tone she took with him reminded him eerily of Miranda Bailey. Eventually, he'd just come to accept that, regardless of how hard he tried, she would never like or respect him. He didn't like it, but he'd learned to live with it.
Derek had never been on good terms with Cristina, but he knew her well enough to know when something was wrong, and he couldn't, in good conscience, leave the kitchen while Cristina was still staring forlornly at the spider burners.
"Look," he began tentatively, gripping the countertop in something that felt a lot like fear, "I know we're not really friends or anything, but…" His apprehension faded, and he peered at her with obvious concern. "Are you okay?"
She gave him a "smile" in which nothing but the outermost corners of her mouth moved. "Fine."
His frown deepened. "Are you sure? I can go get Meredith…"
She leaned forward and heaved a sigh, and Derek was almost positive that he saw something break inside of her.
"Don't," she said quietly. "I'm not... It's…" She trailed off for a moment before standing up straighter and fixing him with a determined, blank gaze. "I come here sometimes, when I can't sleep."
He cocked his head gently to the side and smiled softly at her. "Me too," he confessed with a chuckle.
She pursed her lips and stared at him for a moment, her expression unreadable. He began to wonder if he'd said the wrong thing. Then her gaze returned to the spider burners, and her forehead wrinkled in distaste.
"Look, we're not friends," she said sternly into the milk. "You have absolutely no obligation to stay down here and psychoanalyze me. I'm fine. I'm just tired. We're all tired. I don't need you to baby-sit me while I drink my milk. I'm not four."
He nodded slowly, and his expression grew empathetic. Her rigid posture, her independence, her stubborn insistence that she was fine, her prickly demeanor in the midst of emotional turmoil…it all reminded him very much of Meredith. Before, he'd always seen Cristina Yang as something of a machine, but now she seemed almost vulnerable.
"I know," he told her softly. He poured himself another glass of water and hopped up on the counter, but his gaze never wavered.
Cristina began tracing the rim of her mug delicately with her index finger. For a moment, they sat in silence, and the tension hung thickly in the air.
"You know," Derek said finally, "when Meredith broke things off, after the…your, um…" He coughed, suddenly unsure of what to call Cristina's botched nuptials. "Wedding" suddenly seemed very inappropriate.
"Disastrous not-wedding?" Cristina supplied with a bitter chuckle.
Derek's cheeks flushed shamefully. "Yeah," he agreed quietly, smiling nervously at the linoleum. "When she broke things off after the not-wedding, I went almost a week without sleep." He shook his head incredulously at the memory. "I tried to tell myself it was sporadic insomnia, or an abundance of adrenaline, or…anything, really…but the truth was that I didn't really know how to sleep without her."
Silence.
Derek shifted uncomfortably against the cabinets. He wasn't sure he'd ever actually admitted any of that out loud before. It made him feel almost naked. And Cristina gave no indication that she'd actually heard him.
Suddenly, baring his soul to the hospital employee who hated him most seemed like a really terrible idea.
Cristina cleared her throat softly, breaking the silence and sending Derek into a mental tailspin. Oh, God, she's going to tell me off. Or, worse, she's going to laugh at me for being pathetic.
"I trashed Burke's apartment."
Derek glanced up in surprise, and Cristina let out a small, strangled sound that could've been a laugh.
"He used to keep it seriously clean. Immaculately clean. He has all of these steel kitchen appliances and all of this furniture from Ikea with right angles and crap, and he organized his books using the freaking Dewey decimal system." She shook her head incredulously. "There was never a speck of dust anywhere. He could've performed aortic valve replacements on his coffee table."
Derek winced slightly at the thought of Preston Burke cracking someone's chest open in his living room.
"He used to clean up after me. Then I felt bad about it, so I started folding my clothes and throwing away my trash and putting food back in the cabinets." She snorted. "But then he left, so…I trashed the place."
She glanced up and shot him something very close to an impish smile.
He smirked and shrugged. "He deserves it."
"He doesn't know," Cristina retorted ironically. She glanced back down at her mug for a moment, and re-assumed the sardonic expression to which Derek was accustomed, tilting her head curiously in his direction.
"I let his mother shave my eyebrows," she informed him, matter-of-factly, "and he left me at the altar anyway."
Derek's eyebrows met just above the bridge of his nose, and his lips parted slightly as he tried to figure out what to say to the broken woman in front of him.
Cristina shook her head disgustedly. "Look," she snapped at the stove top, "I know you like to give her shit for being dark and twisty or whatever, but the truth is that you've fucked her over a lot in the past year and a half, and she stuck around anyway." When her chocolate brown eyes met Derek's indigo orbs again, her features were pinched in a glare. "She'd shave a hell of a lot more than her eyebrows for you, Shepherd."
He nodded slowly, fearfully. "I know."
Cristina's eyes blazed threateningly. "Don't ever make her miss you."
He gulped, and Cristina's expression softened as she went back to staring at the mug of milk in her hands.
"Because she needs her sleep," she continued quietly, but firmly. "And…well…missing people sucks."
Derek smiled softly and dropped his gaze to the floor in a rare moment of modesty. While Cristina wrapped her lithe fingers around the cold mug, Derek drained his water and dropped the glass into the sink with a clatter.
"Cristina?"
She glanced up expectantly, and he smiled sadly.
"For what it's worth…I hope he develops chronic insomnia."
The left corner of her mouth curled in an appreciative smirk. "Thanks." Unfortunately, the heartfelt moment dissipated almost immediately, and her sour expression returned. "But Shepherd…if you breathe a word of this to anyone, ever, I'll tell them you were having Benadryl-induced hallucinations. And if you even think about hugging me, I'll tell them that you tried to grope me in my sleep."
He let loose with a loud, relieved laugh. "I would expect nothing less, Dr. Yang."
She smirked into the spider burners, and he slid off the counter and began the slow trek back to Meredith's room. Just as he was about to exit the kitchen, her voice stopped him.
"They're in her bathroom."
Derek turned around in surprise, confusion registering clearly on his tired, ragged features. "What?"
"Your earplugs," she clarified with a smirk. "They're in her bathroom. She keeps them on the top shelf of that cabinet behind the mirror. You should have a toothbrush and some toothpaste up there, too." When he didn't immediately respond, she crooked an eyebrow expectantly. "That's why you came down here, right? The snoring?"
His face broke into an impressed smile. "Yes," he replied, his voice conveying his surprise.
She nodded knowingly and swirled a finger in her milk.
"Listen," Derek began hurriedly, "th-thanks…well…thanks for…"
Cristina quirked an eyebrow in condescending amusement, and he let out the breath he'd been holding and allowed his features to relax into the smile that was tugging at his temples.
"Thanks for being there for her when I wasn't," he said finally, his face a mask of gratitude.
Cristina nodded curtly, but when she glanced back down at her milk, he could see her smile.
"You're welcome."
He nodded slowly, shot her another patented McDreamy smile, and turned back towards the doorframe.
"Shepherd…"
Derek glanced back over his shoulder, eyebrows raised expectantly, and Cristina wrinkled her nose.
"We might've had a moment, or whatever, but…this doesn't mean I like you. We're still not friends."
Her voice was cold and conclusive, but the corner of her mouth twitched in a telltale smirk, and he laughed.
"You say that now…" he murmured with a wink.
The steps were creaking under his weight before she could formulate a response. Later, when the milk had chilled, another set of snores began to echo through the house, and Cristina finally emptied her mug and made her way over to the couch. Then, for the first time in a week, she slept.