The sunlight slanted, butter yellow, over the tall buildings to create golden pools on the sidewalk. People walked past in purple shadow only to be lit for a moment in warm, hopeful bursts. Spring was arriving in that instant, and Meredith felt lucky that she could witness it with the warm breeze on her face. She thought back over the last five years and wondered when she had last enjoyed the feel of the new spring sun. Her usual haunts in the building, the places she spent quiet moments with files and paperwork and journals, were all windowless. They gave no clue whether it was midnight or noon, whether it was raining again that day or windy or sunny. She had spent her entire adult life walled in, ignoring the world around her, and she took a deep breath to mark the moment she decided that she wasn't going to do that anymore.

It took Meredith two days to find an apartment, walking around with a real estate agent until she thought the woman might resign in protest. She was very specific about her budget, an amount carefully calculated from the numbers on her bank statements. She was also particular about the necessity of living near the hospital. She settled for a small, slightly shabby fourth floor apartment two blocks away from the emergency department's doors. She had taken a liking to the tall windows that lined two walls of the main room, a living space with kitchen attached. Meredith did not like the feeling that she had no idea what she was doing as she walked through apartments with the increasingly-less-friendly woman who was desperate for her commission. She had no furniture, and if she had she wouldn't have known whether it would all fit in the tiny space. Between the windows and the price, though, she made her decision. There were two bedrooms, so it would have to do. No one would need to sleep on the couch she didn't yet own.

Meredith had considered asking Cristina Yang if she needed a roommate. When she had arrived that first night, not wanting to go home and face the foreboding silent rage of her mother and the consolation of her father, she knew it would never work. Meredith had to dig the couch out from a pile of unopened mail, then clear a space on the floor for her things. The apartment was not so much dirty as cluttered, and it smelled stale more than anything, but she shivered when she noticed the brocade curtains, the plush wool carpet peeking through the old takeout boxes, and the carved wood arm of the couch she would be sleeping on. The rug alone worth more than what she made in a month, but it lay stained and forgotten under years of neglect. Someone had decorated the place, someone had cared, but that person wasn't Cristina. It came down to the fact that Meredith had one real friend, and she wasn't about to risk losing her again over spring cleaning.

It took two days to find her new apartment and one evening for her to box up her belongings and stuff it all into the back of her sedan. As she stood in the middle of her old room, academic trophies on the shelves, certificates crowding the walls, pictures of her school friends tucked into the mirror frame above her dresser, she suddenly wanted to leave as much behind as she could. She didn't want the dust of all those years settling on the window sills of her new home.

She had spent the morning going over the numbers, the lines of her budget nearly memorized by now. She was lucky that for so many years her parents had provided for her without a second thought. Her paychecks, meager as they were, had hardly been touched by cafeteria meals. She filled the passenger seat of her car with department store bags. She looked from where she was sitting to where it was parked, the poor thing sagging a little lower to the ground than usual, burdened with all her earthly belongings. Sheets, towels, curtains, all different than what she was used to, nothing the same color gray as her scrubs or the sophisticated neutrals her parents had paid someone to decorate their house in. Their house, Meredith thought, not mine.

"Meredith?" Derek said from across the table.

She sat straighter, startled, her eyes meeting his. He was sitting with her at the little outdoor cafe table she had picked, his glass of ice water sweating, smiling indulgently. She felt a pang of guilt as she noticed that the navy sweater he was wearing was far to warm. She should have warned him. She rubbed her arms with her palms. The short sleeves of her light blue shirt weren't quite enough now that she sat, finally at rest. A moment ago he had asked her how her day was. It was a more complicated question than he thought.

"Fine," she said. It wouldn't do to repeat her long internal monologue about leases to him.

"I haven't seen you," he said. "Have you been avoiding me?"

"What?" Meredith asked, "I haven't-"

"I would understand, you know," he said. "You said to play it by ear."

"You said that," Meredith corrected.

"Right," he said. "I could help, if you were trying to avoid me. I could send you my schedule, we could draw up boundaries in the hospital."

She wasn't sure what to say until she looked up and saw his smile. "You think we need boundaries?" she asked.

"If that would help you," he said.

"If I drew these lines," she said, "you wouldn't cross them? Not even if I asked?"

"Do you often have moments of weakness?" he asked.

She laughed. "I'm not telling you," she said.

He took a drink from his glass, drops of water pooling between his fingers. "If we're dividing things up then I call the roof," he said.

"The roof? With the helicopters?" she asked.

"I like it up there," he said. "It's quiet, great view, hardly anyone comes up." He wiped his hands on the cloth napkin in front of him. "Except of course for the helicopters."

"What about when I need to meet a trauma?" she asked. "Your roof could really do a number on my career."

"An exception, then," he said. "You need a place too. Where should I stay away from?"

"You want me to tell you?" she asked. "How do I know I won't find you there, looking for cute girls?"

"Have you ever seen me looking for cute girls?" he asked.

"Were you not doing that at Joe's?" she asked.

"I was getting drunk at Joe's," he said. "The cute girl was a bonus."

The waitress came by, took their lunch orders, then hurried back inside the restaurant. They were too late for lunch and far too early for dinner, but when Meredith had called Derek had been stuck in the Skills Lab with a group of interns.

"So these lines," he said, "are they imaginary, or do I need to get you a marker?"

Meredith had the strangest desire to reach over the table and drag him across the table to her. She wanted to forget food entirely. She wished she had thought of that when she had dreamed this afternoon up.

"How long do you have before you're needed?" she asked him.

He raised his eyebrows. "I can make all the time you need."

Meredith rolled her eyes. "That's not it," she said. When he stared at her she said, "I mean, that's not why we're here."

"You're good," he said. "I would have said yes anyway, but you're good."

"I gathered from our previous-" she struggled for a phrase that could be said on a Seattle sidewalk on a spring afternoon, "-extracurricular activities that you work out."

"You're observant too," he said.

"We're friends, though, right?" she asked.

"I would use different words but yes, Meredith, we're friends." He leaned back in his chair, studying her. "What do you need?"

Meredith thought of how her arms ached after carrying the few boxes from her bedroom to her car, how she had to refuse three different men who had offered to help her with her legion of bags in the mall parking lot. "Do you see that car over there?" she asked. After he turned and nodded she explained. "That's all my crap. I would appreciate it if you would help me get it into my new apartment."

Forty minutes later her stomach was almost painfully full and she was unlocking the door to her new home, Derek behind her, his arms wrapped around a large brown box. On his second trip, as she stacked her folded scrubs on the living room floor, he remarked that she hadn't mentioned just how many flights of stairs were involved when he agreed to this. She, of course, wouldn't have needed his help if it had been on the first floor. They argued, smiling, until he walked out the door again.

She came to some realizations by the time he was finished. She needed furniture, but now she was seeing how impossible it was going to be living even a short while without it. She called the furniture store and persuaded them to come as soon as they were able, using the promise of an obscene tip to her advantage. Derek sat in the middle of her living room floor, the empty boxes stacked along the wall next to him, his damp shirt dripping onto her hardwood floor. She thought of just how much nicer he would look relaxing on a couch. She also needed dishes, as became apparent when he asked about a glass of water and she realized that she didn't have one. He smiled at her and went to the sink, sticking his head under the faucet to catch cold water from the tap in his mouth. Her third thought was that she needed to go to the grocery store for detergent because just after she offered to wash his sweaty shirt she realized she could do no more than give it a rinse then get it good and dry, which would be only marginally better than when she had offered.

When she realized her error she told him, but he obligingly pulled it off anyway and she didn't bother to protest. It was funny how little things mattered when faced with a partially-clothed Derek Shepherd. She was, honest-to-God, entranced with the way his chest was sprinkled with dark hair, how it condensed along the mid-line, how that line stretched down across his firm abdomen and dipped below the waist of his pants. Meredith had seen plenty of male chests before, had in her career seen just about every part of the human body in so many different states so many times that there should have been no wonder left in normal human anatomy. Still she admired, from feet away, the plains and valleys of his damp flesh. The admiration came with the realization that she could have seen this very body anywhere, on a gurney or in the OR or in a dark, quiet office, and it wouldn't have held any wonder for her if that body didn't belong to Derek Shepherd.

She shut herself into her tiny laundry room. She didn't bother turning on the light, instead turning and feeling for the washer, tossing the shirt in and spinning the dial to an unknown setting and pulling the knob. She let the sound of rushing water drown out the panicked drum of her heart. Meredith was in trouble. It was something she should have been thinking about her job or her family, but instead she was most concerned with the trouble of falling for Derek. If it had been someone else, some other attending, it wouldn't have trumped all the other problems in her extraordinarily confused life. The trouble was uniquely him, his nearly dissolved marriage, his position as primary professional frustration of her mother, his hospital nickname of "Bad Shepherd" that was having a hard time dissipating even though there was no other Shepherd to compare to anymore. She pressed her back into the cool door. She was a surgeon, so she knew that it wasn't the problem that mattered, but how she dealt with it.

Derek was lying on the floor when she came back out. "Hey," she said, sitting beside him.

"I don't think I ever want to get up," he said.

"That could be a problem," she said, looking down at him. "You have a job."

"Which is why I have a pager," he said. "If they need me so much, let them call."

Meredith laughed. "Thank you for emptying my car. I wasn't sure I was going to make it after I spent the last twenty-four hours filling it up."

"That's what friends are for," he said. "Why move, though? You should be looking for fellowships by now."

"It's complicated," she said.

"Which is why you have your friend spread out on your floor, listening patiently." He folded his hands under his head and did a very determined-looking impression of contentment.

"Fine," she said, sighing. "I was living with my parents, now I'm not."

"That's very sudden," he said.

"It may have to do with jumping in on your surgery. Not to mention giving away the Humpty Dumpty my mother basically gift wrapped for me." She watched as his eyebrows raised. "So I took the opportunity of a few days off and made a change."

"So the fact that I'm on the floor has nothing to do with your couch waiting for me in a moving van around the corner?" he asked.

"No," she said.

He closed his eyed and groaned dramatically. "And I was looking forward to that."

"I have one," she said. "I mean I'll have one soon, or-"

"Hold that thought," he said, getting up.

He poked around the apartment until he found the door to the bathroom and disappeared inside. Meredith listened to the unfamiliar thumps and sighs of the empty space, the sound of him making himself at home, if it could really be considered a home yet.

After a rush of water and far too much silence he poked his head out. "Are you aware of what you have in here?" he asked.

"It's a bathroom," she said.

"With a claw foot tub," he said. "I'm tempted to move in here myself."

She stood and walked into the bathroom with him. "You would give up the trailer for this?" she asked, looking with him at the deep porcelain basin.

"It's tough," he said, "but I can't make a decision based on looks alone."

He turned the tap, his fingers in the stream of water, and steam started to rise from the tub. Meredith had spent every moment since she had walked out of the hospital in a bubble, avoiding anyone who might want to weigh in on her change of heart, her rash decisions. She hadn't seen anyone she'd known since Cristina left late that first night for a trauma. Cristina wasn't someone who asked a lot of questions, but Meredith had left as quickly as she could in the morning in case she came back. She did not want to blurt out all of the nonsensical things that had floated in her head all night, slowly coagulating and forming timelines all the way through the pale dawn. She had walled herself off with the determination that she would do this, and now here was this man laying out towels from her tiny linen closet for them both, and she wanted to know if he thought she was losing her mind, or if instead she might be a little like him.

The water was hot as it closed around her calves, and she lowered herself slowly, knowing that where he sat he would be watching her, anticipating the electric contact between their skin. The thought of his eyes on her shot heat into her belly, her thighs pressing together as she sat between his legs. He began to wet her hair, his hands smoothing it down her back. She closed her eyes as she heard him squeeze her shampoo bottle, the low hollow sound it made, and then his fingers were in her hair, working her scalp, running down to the ends. She tried her best to lose herself in the feeling, to not think of the last few days, of where she was, of everything she still needed to do.

"Derek," she said softly, her eyes still shut.

He hummed a little acknowledgment, his palms cradling the back of her head as he worked his fingers toward her temples.

"I have a sister," she said.

His fingers stilled. She told him all of it, her mother's rage and the banishment from the hospital, the impossibility of finding an apartment, the solitude of life outside work. She told him about Thatcher and his life after her and what her sister was like. She told him what she planned to do and then she grew silent, waiting for a witty comeback, a joke, anything.

"You weren't avoiding me," he said quietly.

"No," she said.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know if I'm about to make a huge mistake."

He pulled his hands from her hair and she turned to look at him. "I think you have to try," he said. "I don't think you would forgive yourself if you didn't after coming this far."

She leaned back against him, her lathered head nestled in the little hollow under his collarbone. "It's what we do, isn't it? We're the kind of people who want to help."

She could feel the low hum he made vibrating in his chest. He ran a hand over her shoulder, warming her. Suds ran in tiny rivers down his chest and into the water, forming little white islands that she pushed around with her fingertips.

"You can't stop thinking about it," he said, the words rumbling through his body and into her own.

"It's all I've done," she said.

"Do you want me to give you a ride to the hospital?" he asked.

"Yes please," she said quietly to the bubble islands.

"On one condition," he said, his wet fingers on her chin, drawing her face around to look at him. "You have to invite me back." His face widened with a conspiratorial smile. "I can provide all sorts of services."

She splashed him, a little wave of water that fluttered against his chest. "Services?" she asked, laughing.

"I could carry up your groceries, make dinner, fix your toilet. I could move your furniture" he said, "once you actually have some." He dodged the next splash that had been aimed at his face.

"Soon," she said. "I'll have furniture soon, and you can be the first to see my decorating failures."

"We should get going, then," he said, nudging her shoulder. "You don't want to be late."

Though the emergency entrance was only two blocks away she couldn't risk her mother seeing her, not yet. It would be impossible to tell if the department was slow and she could slip through unnoticed, or if they would be swamped and she would get flagged down to assist, even in a rumpled sweater and jeans. Instead she let Derek park in his regular spot, much closer than she could hope as a resident, and led him to a service door that fed directly to one of the back stairwells. It was one of the little shortcuts and tricks discovered during residency to cut seconds off the frenzied jog demanded by the job. She was lucky that it was still unlocked. It was a real security problem to have an unattended door that opened straight into the heart of the hospital, but Seattle Grace had never had need to worry about things like that.

He left her in the stairwell with a quick kiss, the hair just above his collar still damp as she worked her fingers through it, off to change back into scrubs. She jogged up the stairs, stopping at the top to peer through the little window in the door, then walked quickly down the hall. Evening had just begun and the floor was quiet, or as quiet as it ever was. She could hear the beep of monitors as she walked, patients slipping into sleep after a day of eager interns bursting through their doors and nurses poking and rolling them. The last door on the left was closed. Meredith let herself in and shut it quietly behind her.

"You look better," Meredith said, walking over to the bed and reading the monitors.

"I bet," Lexie replied, her eyelids drooping with sleep. "I don't know how, though, since I can't take a nap without someone crashing through here."

"One more night," Meredith said. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Do I have a choice?" Lexie said, her voice flat and caustic. "I just want out of here."

"We can do that." Meredith sat on the edge of the bed.

"I don't have a lot of stuff," Lexie said. "I was staying with this guy, and I crashed wherever. I have a couple bags there, if he didn't throw out my stuff thinking I died or something."

"We'll go get them," Meredith said.

"All I need is a couch, maybe borrow some books if you have them," Lexie said.

"A bed," Meredith said, "and a bedroom." She paused for a moment, taking in her sister. "You like to read?"

"It's just about the only thing I'm good at." Lexie said.

Meredith knew her time was running out, that she had to leave if she wanted this to go smoothly. "When did they say they would discharge you?"

"Jackson said he would be in right after rounds. He also wants you to call him." Lexie said. "Is there something going on there?" Her face brightening slightly, "I know you're all like, super busy, but that guy is pretty hot."

"What?" Meredith asked. "No. Nothing is going on."

"Too bad," Lexie said.

"He probably just wants to talk about your case," Meredith said. "He seems a little attached."

Lexie grunted, unconvinced.

"I need you to be ready tomorrow morning," Meredith said. "We're leaving as soon as they will let us."

"Hallelujah," Lexie said, her voice back to the monotone rasp Meredith was getting used to. "See ya tomorrow, sis."

Meredith heard the door open behind her. Of course a nurse would come before she could make an escape. If she left immediately, though, she could be out of the hospital and back in her barren apartment by the time her mother learned of her presence. Before she could get her hopes up, however, she was frozen to the spot by the sound of the end of days itself speaking to her rigid back.

"I need to speak with you, Meredith," her mother said, her voice cool and controlled. "Privately."