"Ugh, today was exhausting," Cristina groaned as she took the seat next to Meredith at the bar.
"How was today different than any other day?" she asked as she threw back another shot of tequila. It was only her third, so she had a while to go before she was drunk.
"It wasn't," Cristina muttered. "I'm just saying that along with every other day, today was exhausting. But hey," she continued, "I should feel grateful." She slapped Meredith playfully on the back. "I'm not the one McDreamy's got on scut monkey patrol."
Meredith grimaced at her. "You know, every good thing is worth working for. Sooner or later I'm going to get to scrub in on something major and then you'll be jealous because you'll be the one on scut monkey patrol and I'll be deccanulating a heart."
Cristina snorted. "Unlikely."
While the two interns were downing their respective drinks, Derek took one step inside the bar and groaned. "What is she doing here?" he whined to Mark.
Mark glanced in the direction Derek was looking and laughed. "You can't expect her to stay that annoying little fourteen-year-old forever. She's old enough to drink now."
"I know, but why is she here?" he groaned. "This is my bar, my hangout, and she's ruining it for me. Why does she have to ruin everything?"
Mark rolled his eyes. "Derek, contrary to popular belief in that tiny little brain of yours, you do not own this bar. Meredith has the right to hang out here if she wants."
"Why are you taking her side?" Derek demanded.
"I'm not taking her side. You're just being a jerk. Apparently, keeping Meredith Grey on scut monkey patrol isn't enough for you; the great Derek Shepherd himself wants to sap every amount of pleasure from her life she has left."
The guilty feeling returned. Derek was about to ask his best friend if he thought he was being to harsh on his intern, but when he turned, he found that Mark was no longer there. Instead, he went sauntering up to the bar, cavalierly taking the empty barstool next to Meredith. He watched as his best friend struck up a conversation with his childhood enemy.
He was so taking sides.
"So, Meredith Grey outside the hospital," Mark said playfully as he ran his finger over the rim of his glass of scotch. "This is a first. You look completely bushed. What's it like being everyone's bitch?"
Meredith grimaced at him. "Hell. But I bet you already knew that."
Mark chuckled. "I did indeed."
Joe poured her another tequila shot and Meredith downed it immediately. "As I recall, you were the one that asked me to get a venti frappuccino for you this morning, so you have no qualms whatsoever in making me your bitch too."
He shrugged. "When in Rome—"
"Ah, Dr. Grey," Derek greeted in a pleasant voice. A groan escaped Meredith's throat while Cristina just smirked. "Fancy seeing you here."
In a perfect world, she would have been able to say exactly what she wanted because the two of them were no longer at work. In a perfect world, there would be clearly drawn lines between the hospital and the outside world. But it wasn't a perfect world. And because it wasn't a perfect world, Meredith couldn't tell Derek to shove off and leave her alone. So she settled for a very dry nod after downing another shot.
"Hey guys!" Izzie greeted as she entered the bar. She took the stool next to Cristina and ordered a beer. Then she saw Derek and her smile was immediately replaced with a frigid, very composed expression. "Hello, Dr. Shepherd."
Derek sighed. "Izzie, how long have we known each other?"
She didn't say anything in reply. Instead she turned her attention to Meredith, who just threw back more tequila. After a quick glance at the number of overturned shot glasses, she gave her best friend a wry smile. "Starting early, aren't you?"
"Is that straight up tequila?" Mark asked in amazement.
"Yeah," Izzie said after a swig of beer. "She's hardcore."
Derek shook his head. "I don't think you should. You have work in the morning."
"Why does it matter?" she asked bitterly. "I can still go on coffee runs and fetch labs and do rectals with a hangover."
Mark chuckled, then turned to the bartender. "Hey Joe. Can I get two scotches, single malt? Thanks."
Cristina and Meredith glanced at Mark. "Two drinks?" Cristina asked. "At a time? Wow, you're looking to get wasted."
"Actually, one of those drinks is for me," Derek piped up. Joe slid them from the other end of the bar and they each caught one.
"Aw, how sweet! You're buying drinks for each other," Izzie sighed. "Rock that rainbow power."
Mark grimaced at her. "What happened to that annoying little freshman girl that was obsessed with me so many years ago?"
"She went to med school," Meredith rasped as she wiped the corners of her mouth on the back of her sleeve.
"Okay, this is getting a little too nostalgic for me," Cristina declared. "I'm going home, because I actually have more to do than just attending to code browns." She shot Meredith one last smirk, slid off her barstool and walked out the door.
Izzie took Cristina's abandoned seat and nudged Meredith with her elbow. "So guess what Dr. Burke let me do today!" she declared happily as she started shelling some peanuts.
"Spit shine his shoes?" Meredith asked sardonically.
Izzie stuck her tongue out at the halfway drunk intern like a petulant five-year-old. "No. He let me scrub in on a valve replacement! How cool is that?"
Meredith's face broke into a forced smile. "Congratulations! That's so awesome!"
Unfortunately, an almost lifetime of friendship resulted in the fact that Izzie could tell when Meredith was forcing. Izzie's excitement changed to disappointment and annoyance. "By all means, don't get excited on my behalf."
"No, that's not it," Meredith insisted. "I really am happy for you. I am. I'm just…I guess I'm just jealous too. That you're doing surgical things and I'm…well, I'm not."
Izzie's cool expression melted into a sympathetic smile. "That's not your fault." She shot a glare at Derek, who was all too aware that she was semi-indirectly telling him how she felt about the whole thing.
"Hey, Mark," Derek said very loudly, as if he wanted the whole bar to hear. "Remember that time senior year when Meredith made out with you underneath the bleachers at homecoming?"
The flush that had been slowly building in Meredith's cheeks due to all the alcohol was completely gone. Mark had the decency to look a little sheepish, but he shot a look at his best friend. Izzie was shocked. "Wait…" she said very slowly. "That was the day after I told him I liked him!"
Meredith whipped her head around and widened her blue-green eyes in a silent plea. "Izzie—"
"You made out with the guy that I had a crush on the day after I told him?" she accused, looking and sounding very hurt.
"Izzie, look, I was drunk—"
"So that's where you were!" she shouted, fully realizing the truth of what had happened that night. "You said you went to the—you knew! You knew that I had told him beforehand and you made out with him anyways? And you got drunk without me?"
"Izzie, I'm sorry!" Meredith exclaimed miserably. "I'm so sorry! I don't know what I was thinking, I swear! I was drunk and he…he was just sort of there."
Izzie's eyes narrowed. "You made out with him because 'he was just sort of there'?"
"You've gotta believe me, I never meant to hurt you."
"I'm going to go home," Izzie said coolly. "I'll talk to you later." And with that, she slammed a ten on the bar, slid off the barstool, and exited the building.
Mark turned to glare at Derek. "Way to be an asshole, Derek."
The asshole in question merely shrugged with a sheepish smile over his face. In another moment, a fist came flying at him. "Seriously?" Meredith shouted. "Seriously?"
"Ow, hey!" Derek said, holding up his arms in defense from the tiny woman's attack. In all honesty, she couldn't possibly cause him any harm, with her tiny, ineffectual fists, but it was the principle of the matter. "What the hell—stop that!"
"I can't believe you!" she shouted. "It's not enough that you've got me running my feet off everyday for diaper changings and dry cleaning pick-up duty, but you have to go and get the one person who sympathizes to hate me because of some stupid drunken decision from freshman year?"
"Oh come on, Meredith, it's not like you didn't see this coming," scoffed Derek. "You didn't think I'd let you get away for all those stupid pranks you pulled when we were younger, did you?"
"Derek, that was high school," she growled. "This is the real world now, like you said. Who kissed who doesn't matter anymore, remember?" She pulled a twenty out of her purse and slammed on the counter. "Joe? Could you call me a cab? I'm going home."
Derek watched the slightly inebriated intern get off her barstool with some difficulty, feeling a pit of uneasiness in his stomach, and the uneasiness did not bode well with the guilt. Mark glared at him one last time before taking the girl by the elbow and leading her to the door. He watched his best friend and his worst enemy exit the bar, afterwards sighing and taking a large swig of his drink.
"Sounds like there's a lot of history between the two of you," Joe remarked as he replenished Derek's glass.
The doctor sighed and took another sip. "Yeah…well, more like a lot of hate."
"You know," began the bartender in a very sage voice, "sometimes the least likely people end up as friends. Sometimes as more than friends."
Derek turned his head and glared at the bartender in disbelief. "Joe, this woman ruined my childhood by simply existing. What makes you think we'll even get to the friends point, much less anything more?"
Joe shrugged his shoulders and continued wiping down the counter. "Just a feeling. But hey, what do I know? I'm just a bartender."
Joe's words were still ringing in Derek's ears the next day at work. He had been watching Meredith Grey run around like a little ferret as usual, but not with the usual satisfaction. For some strange reason, the only thing he felt was a pull of something unknown whenever her sparkling blue-green eyes narrowed in disgust, or whenever her delicate eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
Then sometimes, whenever she laughed, she would light up the room with a radiant smile. She didn't laugh very often, considering what she had to do, but whenever she did, the sound sent tingles down his spine. He didn't understand what it was, but he knew now that Meredith Grey was no longer that scrawny little stick from so long ago; she was a woman now.
"Meredith?" Cristina whispered, trying not to look up from the post-op notes she was writing. "Why is McDreamy staring at you?"
Meredith looked up, and McDreamy was indeed staring at her. In response, she narrowed her eyes and shot him the dirtiest look she could, but it didn't seem to faze him. In fact, she doubted he noticed at all. "I don't know," she whispered back, a little weirded out by the intensity in his blue eyes.
Cristina snuck a glance and smirked. "He looks like he wants to eat you."
Meredith grimaced at her friend. "That's disgusting."
At that moment, Izzie breezed by, a stack of charts in her arms. "Hey, Mer, can you put these away for me?" she asked briskly. "Thanks."
"Iz—" Meredith began, but she was cut off.
"No, Mer. You don't get to talk to me until I forgive you."
As Izzie walked off, George and Karev came up to Cristina and Meredith. "What's with Dr. Model?" Karev asked, staring a little too intensely at Izzie's retreating back.
Meredith rolled her eyes. "Don't call her that," she snapped, knowing exactly how sensitive Izzie was on the subject. "And she's upset with me."
"Why? What'd you do?" George asked.
"It was freshman year!" Meredith burst out in frustration. "I made out with Mark Sloan freshman year underneath the bleachers at homecoming when I was drunk. Izzie had a thing for him and I knew it and…I was just…I was just being a bitch."
Karev raised his eyebrows. "How did she find out?"
Meredith rolled her eyes. "Stupid Dr. Shep—"
"Dr. Grey," Derek said as he walked up to the group. George and Karev stopped leaning against the counter and Cristina coughed. Meredith blatantly ignored the fact that he existed; he was the reason why she and Izzie were currently not talking.
"Dr. Grey," he said again. She knew he was watching her intently, waiting for her to look up, and it was only out of obligation that she, with a tired sigh, looked up at him. "Dr. Scheer has a tracheotomy this afternoon, and he wants an intern watching. Would you like to scrub in?"
Meredith looked like she didn't quite believe what was going on. "Excuse me?" she asked very stupidly. Cristina's pen was no longer moving; instead, she was watching, waiting in anticipation to hear Meredith's response.
"Would you like to scrub in?" Derek repeated very slowly.
Meredith's eyebrows shot up. "Okay, Dr. Shepherd. What's the catch?"
He sighed in exasperation, beginning to regret that he even suggested it. "There is no catch. My colleagues seem to think I'm being too hard on you, and you're going to have to learn something at one point or another, because this is a learning hospital. So are you in or are you out?"
She still didn't look as if she quite believed him. He sighed again and said, "Okay, look. I'm trying to make it up to you for putting you on scut monkey patrol and making Izzie upset with you, okay? That's my ulterior motive. Are you happy now?"
She observed him a little while longer, but then she shook her head. "No. I have a lot of work to finish up here. Why don't you let Izzie do it?"
Her friends' jaws all dropped open when they heard the words coming out of Meredith's mouth. In all honesty, Derek was surprised as well, but he simply nodded and let it be so.
A/N - Okay, so I know that Derek's been a total dickwad and that he really needs to get over himself, but you have to realize that Meredith made this guy's childhood absolute hell. She did everything in the book and then some. So this is a really intense, deep-seated hate that they have going on. Or is it hate...? LOL, if you want more, check out my blog!
As always, be sure to review!