All Along The Watchtower – Part 9
Author's Notes:
Thank you so very much to everyone who has taken the time to post feedback. Seriously, I get behind on replying a lot because there's so many of you, but I adore each and every piece of feedback you all post :)
I'm participating in the Dempsey Challenge this year on October 2, and 3. I'll be walking the 10k with several friends. You can find more information about donation on my live journal. To get there, just click on my profile and visit my homepage. If you choose to donate, please save your email receipt. I will be doing a raffle and an auction later to reward the people who have donated, and the winners will be able to send me fic prompts, which I will attempt to write to order. Stay tuned for details, but don't let that stop you from showing your support now :)
When Meredith walked up to the house, the sky had darkened a little from its afternoon azure brilliance into early evening hues. She leaned back her head, inhaling the temperate breeze. The sun had been out all day, only half-obscured by a sky pocked with dark, heavy clouds that spoke of rain. Not a single drop of rain had fallen. No drizzle mist had hovered in the air. Sometime soon, the rain would come. It always did in Seattle. But not today.
It figured that would be the day she had to return to work instead of spending it with Derek.
The dim foyer greeted her with silence. She didn't call out as she put her purse down by the door. A line of white illumination framed the underside of the kitchen door.
No lights glowed in the dreary living room. The couch had been torn apart. The cushions against the back of the sofa had been avulsed and lay strewn on the floor. Derek lay along the length of the couch, pillows heaped up under his torso and against one side. She could see the curly mop of his dark hair, piles of fluffy blankets, and the frills of her favorite pillowcases sticking out, but that was it. An empty glass sat on the coffee table. No plates or food. She frowned, wondering why he hadn't gone upstairs if he'd wanted to lie down. Surely, Mark would have helped him.
You'll get through this. And so will he.
Something twinged in her heart, and an unseen force pulled her toward the room. She thought about sitting down and watching him for a while. At the last second before the living room, she veered. He slept. He lay still, breaths inaudible. The sound of the door unlocking hadn't woken him up. He clearly needed the sleep, and she didn't want to chance rousing him like she'd done the day before with that stupid kiss.
She went into the kitchen. Mark sat at the dinette table, a sprawl of papers and notes fanned out in a semi-circle around him. He wore a beat up pair of jeans, fluffy white socks, and an old, scruffy, black t-shirt. He scribbled something against a yellow pad, and then flipped the page. Brightly colored MRI scans shimmered under the glare of the overhead light.
"Hey," she said.
Mark looked up from his work. "Grey. How was your first day back?"
"Fine," she said. "How is everything?"
Mark glanced behind him, in the direction of the living room and Derek, as though he could see through walls. "He's slept almost all day. Every once in a while, he asks for water." He glanced at his watch. "I made sure he took his pills at 8, 12, and 4, just like you said."
She flopped down into the seat across from Mark. He stacked his notes and pushed them to the side. She sighed. "He didn't take a walk or anything?" she said.
"Nothing," Mark said. His eyes creased with concern. "I think yesterday really fucked him up."
"He needs to start walking, soon," Meredith said. "Real walks. Not laps in the house..." Her voice trailed away when she thought more about it.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember, tried to picture him in her mind's eye. He spent anywhere from half to three-quarters or more of his day sitting around, either sleeping or vegetating, and he'd never gone outside to sit on the porch swing. All his physical activities had been limited to things he could do indoors. Stairs. Laps. Small chores. He'd never even looked out the window wistfully that she'd seen.
Wrong. It all seemed wrong. Derek loved being outside. He loved nature and woodsy things and sitting in the fresh air. He loved wide open space. He loved rain and mud almost as much as sunshine. The Seattle weather had never once been a source of melancholy for him, not like with a lot of the new transplants from other areas of the United States that weren't so freaking rain-happy. But now that she thought about it, really thought about it, he hadn't been outside, excluding the car trip home, since before he'd been shot. He'd spent nine mornings in the hospital and another four at home, and he'd never said a word about being cooped up.
"I don't think he's been outside, Mark. At all."
"I noticed that, too," Mark said. "I thought about suggesting it today sometime, but..." He shrugged helplessly.
"Yeah, I know," Meredith said. "Thank you. For staying with him."
Mark gave her a small smile. "Sure," he said. The chair squawked as he pushed it back. "Have you eaten yet?"
"No."
He raised his eyebrow. "Hungry?"
"Completely famished, actually," Meredith said. "I haven't eaten since... I haven't... Um. I think I had breakfast."
"Didn't you leave when it was still dark out?"
"Well, fine," she said. "I had coffee. Coffee is breakfast sometimes."
Mark shook his head and went to the refrigerator. The appliance hummed as he opened it. She twisted around, trying to see. He pulled an ugly green Tupperware bowl off the top shelf and removed plastic wrap covered with thick condensation. Water droplets fell to the floor as he carried the bowl to the kitchen and tossed the plastic wrap in the trash.
"Listen," he said as he put down two plates and scooped... something reddish and goop-y. His shoulders shifted, but his wide body blocked her view. "I know that you're in a bad spot. You don't have any sick leave left. You used up all your un-categorized leave already-"
"I saved one day for emergencies," she said.
"Right," he said. He put the first plate in the microwave. The machine beeped as he tapped the cook time onto the key pad. She finally got a full glance at the cold plate. Spaghetti. Her stomach growled. Mark must have made it sometime that day, because she couldn't recall seeing any pasta in the fridge yesterday when she'd rummaged for dinner prospects. "But my point is," Mark continued, "You don't really have leave, and you can't afford to take off anyway, or it'll set you back even further."
The microwave hummed, and the pasta inside popped as heat zapped it into submission. "I've taken off a lot of time," she said. Bombs, appendicitis, a liver transplant, and dying once had not been good to her. Meredith remained in a constant state of amazement that nobody had held her back a year on her pay scale. Yet.
"Right," he said, nodding. "And Derek told me about the crappy schedule you're trying to shoulder."
"It can't be helped," Meredith said. "He needs somebody here in the evenings and stuff. I can't just leave him alone for thirty-six hour shifts when he can't get into the shower or go up steps or pick up anything heavy by himself. And I-"
"How about you go back to your regular schedule, so you can have days off during the week, and I'll take my un-categorized leave now, and stay home with him?" Mark said. "I haven't used any of mine yet. I've been helping Seattle Presbyterian with its overflow."
"Mark," she began, but the microwave dinged and cut her off.
He pulled a fork from the drawer for her and placed the steaming plate in front of her. "Parmesan?" he said.
She nodded, staring down at the reheated pasta. The noodles looked a little desiccated, but he'd made food. And she needed food. He put down the cheese container next to her and returned to put his plate in the microwave next. He turned toward her as the microwave hummed. She dumped a heaping pile of grated cheese on her plate and ensnared a clot of noodles with her fork.
"I have a lot of leave banked, too," Mark continued as she stuffed herself. "I can stay longer if it's needed. I don't mind. I'll clear out on your days off and when Lexie's here, if she wants."
"But-" she muttered around a mouthful of spaghetti. The sauce was some sort of mushroom concoction. She couldn't taste any meat. Mark had probably made it with Derek's healthy sensibilities in mind. But after hours and hours of not eating, she'd take anything. A small, pleased moan displaced her voice, and she chewed and chewed and then shoveled another bite.
"Look," Mark continued, "I know I'm probably not your first choice for mature and responsible, but he needs someone here, Meredith." The microwave dinged, and he pulled out his plate. He sat across from her. "He shouldn't be alone, whether he needs help with anything or not. I've never seen him like this. Not even after Mr. Shepherd died."
The men who shot my dad got away.
Her stomach churned, and she put her fork down. "I talked with Dr. Wyatt today," she said, and she looked at her lap.
Mark took a bite of spaghetti. "The shrink?"
"Yeah."
"About Derek?"
"Yeah."
He swallowed. With no precursor, no lead up, nothing, he stared at her, took a slow, deep breath, and said, "How bad is it?"
She bit her lip when she realized Mark had been as worried, if not more so, than she had been.
"She said he's got acute stress whatever," Meredith said. "It's like the precursor to post-traumatic stress disorder, but it won't necessarily develop that far. We're supposed to let him talk if he wants, but not push him if he doesn't. Don't let him isolate himself or wallow. Spend time in the same room even if we're not doing anything with him. Um..." What else? "Offer love and support. Encourage him to make choices. And..." She bit her lip, trying to remember it all, but it got tangled in her head, somewhere between the thought, Derek is hurting and sick, and her mouth. Dr. Wyatt had said so many things. Meredith's lip quivered, and she wiped at her face. "Let me just get the packet that explains it all," she said. Her voice cracked and died.
She pushed away from the table and retreated to the foyer before Mark could say anything. She glanced into the living room. Derek hadn't moved. He remained a quiet lump under heaps of blankets. This far away, she couldn't hear him breathe, and with that many things resting on top of him, she couldn't see his chest rise and fall either. The quiet stillness unsettled her, and a small voice in her head whispered dead. Dead. He's dead. The inexplicable force pulled at her again, but she denied it. He needed rest. She refused to wake him up, accidentally or not, for her own peace of mind. She wasn't clingy. She wasn't five. It wasn't like somebody had taken her special bear away. She could function. She could.
Her fists clenched. She forced herself back to her objective, and she retrieved the pamphlet from her battered purse. Assault Victimization, the paper said in big bold letters, and there was a tacky picture of a gun, a knife that looked more like a giant sword than anything else, and a baseball bat on the front. The words inside were what mattered, though. The words that spoke regretfully of Derek with every syllable. Her thumb brushed the soft paper. She stood, unmoving, staring. The paper crinkled as her fist squeezed.
Victims may be fearful of a repeat incident, however unlikely.
That's what the pamphlet said, somewhere in the spill of warnings about all the other awful feelings that might surface as the result of nearly being killed. She bit her lip and opened the pamphlet. She scanned the page, and she found that sentence, stuck in the middle of the rest. The words blurred. Before, she'd lost that warning under the riptide force of the rest of all the badness. It'd seemed innocuous compared to the other scary things. Sort of a duh.
But Derek didn't go outside.
Her fingers tightened, and her breaths shortened into stabbing pants of grief. He locked doors. Loud things and strangers scared him. He didn't go outside. Puzzle pieces snapped into place. She sniffed. The wet sound of fluid in her nose crackled in the silence. She forced herself to plod back into the kitchen where Mark sat, waiting for her. He'd finished his spaghetti.
"Here," she said, her voice rough and weary. She foisted the paper at him, hands shaking.
She watched Mark's eyes zip back and forth as he read. After a few minutes, he came to a stop. He hunkered low in his chair, and a dark, foreboding hint of violence crossed his face. He jammed his fist against the table in a repeated, frustrated venting of energy. The wood rumbled softly. "Fuck," he said. "I wish..." he began, but his voice trailed away.
"Somebody tried to murder him, Mark," she said. She collapsed back into her seat and sighed. Murder. The word made it sound so much more... More. Don't let him isolate himself. "You should stay," she said. "It would be good for you to stay."
Mark put the pamphlet down. "Thank you," he said.
She finished her spaghetti in silence, throat raw. Mark made no mention of her sniffling. She never used to cry so much. Now, her tear ducts felt like infinite buckets of rebelliousness. Like, once she'd gotten past internalizing everything bad that happened to her, now she couldn't stop letting it all explode out of her face.
"This sucks," she said as she put her fork down. She sighed. "This really, really sucks. We were supposed to be okay, now. He's alive. I thought that was all I wanted. It is all I wanted. Just... I don't know."
"Yeah," said Mark.
She stood and took her plate to the sink to wash it off. The sound of rushing water filled the empty space in the air. She took a glass and filled it. It almost slipped from her wet hands when the kitchen door swung on its hinges, and Derek lumbered into the room.
"Hey, man," said Mark. "There's some spaghetti in the Tupperware thing on the counter if you want some. Your favorite sauce and whole wheat noodles."
Derek looked awful. Dark, fleshy circles hugged his eyes. He'd lost weight, maybe fifteen pounds or so since he'd been shot, evident by the angular, gaunt appearance of his face, and the way his t-shirt hung loosely against his torso. The hair on his head stuck up every which way. Thick stubble carved a dark swath against his too-pale face. His glazed stare didn't really see much. He didn't say a word in response to Mark. He headed for the sink where she stood, pale lips parted like a man staring at an oasis in a drought. She held out the glass she'd filled for herself. He took it, grunted some sort of word at her, maybe thanks, maybe hi, maybe just urgh. He eyed the bowl of leftover spaghetti on the counter, but didn't move to serve himself any. He went to the table and sat down diagonally from Mark, and then he nursed his water like it was a glass of scotch or something.
She dished him a plate and heated the spaghetti. She didn't care if he wanted it or not, didn't care whether he'd chosen not to eat, or instead just existed on a distant plane so far removed from earth that he'd seen the food, but hadn't really seen it. She would try. She would try to get him to consume something. She watched as he blinked, disheveled and half-awake, over the table. She filled a new glass of water for herself and sipped, waiting for the microwave to finish.
"You alive?" Mark said. He laughed, but the awkward attempt at levity fell flat in the silence.
"Define alive," Derek said.
"I'd say if you need a definition, you're probably alive enough to count," Mark said.
"Hmm."
The microwave beeped, and Meredith brought the plate and a fork to Derek. "You should really at least try to eat something," she said as she set the plate down and pushed his water glass aside. "Please."
She sat down next to Mark, across from Derek, and bit her lip. She didn't want to sound mother henish. She didn't. She also didn't want Derek to starve himself to death while she smiled and tried to ignore the fact that he wasn't eating enough.
At first, when she'd brought him home, she'd thought when he hadn't finished the sub she'd ordered, it'd been a fluke born out of the fact that he'd been near collapse with exhaustion. But then she hadn't seen him finish anything the rest of the weekend, and that was assuming he ate something at all. He skipped meals, sometimes even breakfast, which felt weird, considering what a poster child he was for breakfast being the most important meal of the day.
Derek looked at the plate. He didn't protest. He didn't say he wasn't hungry. He took two tiny bites and chewed, the expression on his face dead of any interest or enjoyment. Like she'd reminded him to comb his hair or something instead of keep himself fed.
"How was work?" he said.
"Um," she said. Didn't do anything productive. Looked up articles about PTSD. Had a rather long chat with a shrink about you. Said chat disturbed me so much I lost track of the rest of the day. Figured out you developed agoraphobia or whatever in the space of days because Gary Clark decided to murder you instead of deal with his freaking grief appropriately. "Fine."
He took a third bite. "Fine?" he said.
"Being back was weird," she amended. Damn that word. Fine. She couldn't use it anymore. "The place is just dead. And quiet. No elective surgeries, just emergencies. And since people aren't coming to our ER voluntarily, we're limited to what the paramedics bring in, which isn't all that much, well, not much surgical. Mostly jerks who called 911 for stubbed toes and runny noses or whatever."
"Oh," he said. "Doesn't surprise me."
At least she didn't feel particularly bad about wasting her day on non-work things. There hadn't been any real work to do. Her fingers clenched as she watched him take a fourth bite. He seemed to be perking up a little. Maybe he'd just been groggy from sleep. Or maybe she was just hopeful.
He glanced at Mark, and his gaze dropped to the pamphlet on the table. She held her breath. Derek didn't ask about it, didn't even seem to notice the stupid pictures of weapons on the front. For the first time, she wanted to cheer at how catastrophically the painkillers had screwed up his detail orientation. Though, she wondered, if maybe it would be good for him to read it. To help him make sense of himself, so he'd know he wasn't alone. That other people went through this often enough that law enforcement had tacky but informative pamphlets.
Fifth bite. He'd cleared a fourth of the plate. But his spree ended, then. He put his fork down and gulped the remains from his glass of water. When he finished, he stared at her. His lip curved into a small, hesitant smile. "Hi, by the way," he said, and she melted.
"Hi," she said. She grinned back. "More alive, now?"
"Yeah. You're home early."
"I left early," she said. "Twelve hour shift today. I wanted to get home at a reasonable time."
He'd been in the chair in their room when she'd left. Her shrill alarm had jarred her from a sound sleep so early that the morning had still seemed like night. The new chair had worked well to save him from midnight jaunts, it seemed, though, it had been odd to wake up with him to the left of her, sitting, instead of to the right, lying down, or gone. At first, in her not-sentient-yet confusion, she'd seen the blurry outline his knee in the corner of her eye and jumped. Nearly fallen off the bed. He'd blinked at her, all bleary and groggy, and then he'd drifted off while she'd forced herself into the shower.
"I know you left early," Derek said. "I was sad."
"Sad?"
He gestured at Mark. "Being helped into the shower is much more fun when the help is sexy."
"Hey, I'm sexy," Mark said. "I can't help it that you're blind to my hotness."
"I'm stoned, not drunk. I'm perfectly capable of discerning ugly."
"That hurts, man," said Mark. He patted his chest over his heart. "I'm hurt."
Derek snorted. A wince creased his features, but the expression of pain faded in seconds. "I think I win in the hurt department. Don't even try me there."
"Fine," Mark said. "But you blow at racing cars."
"Racing fake cars," said Derek.
"Whatever. You still suck."
"I'm surprised you can even remember who won."
"I did," said Mark. "That's my story, and your memory is too shitty to say otherwise."
"So," Derek said. "What you're saying is that I won."
"Nobody is saying that," said Mark. "Least of all me."
Derek smirked and didn't reply. The little energy he'd managed to conjure bled out of him over the course of silent minutes. He slumped forward and put his face in his hands, yawning. A small sliver of worry jabbed her heart. He'd been awake for thirty minutes. He'd slept all day. Even taking his surgery into account, he shouldn't be that exhausted after doing such a great impression of a slug all day.
"Mark and I talked a little," Meredith said. She swallowed. Derek would take this badly. She knew it. But... "I'm going to go back to my regular schedule, and Mark's going to stay here for a week or two." Let him make decisions wherever feasible. "Is that okay with you?"
Derek raised his head. His dark, hopeless eyes stared at her. In the wan daylight, his irises seemed almost black. "Okay," he said.
"Really?" The word popped out before she could stop it, and she resisted the urge to cover her mouth with her hands.
"You want me to argue?" Derek said. "What good would it do?"
Silence stretched between them. Derek pushed back his chair and eased into a crooked standing position. "Are you going back to sleep already?" Meredith said.
He clenched the back of his chair, and his knuckles turned sickly white. "I'm tired," he snapped.
Mark rumbled as he cleared his throat, stood, and gathered up all his papers and notes. "I'm going to go home and start packing some things so you two can talk, and then I'll head into Grace for my shift," he said. "I'll be back in the morning before you leave for work, Grey."
Derek watched him go, silent, brooding. When the front door slammed shut, Derek sighed.
"I really think he should stay," Meredith said, "But if you're categorically against it, say something. You have a say, Derek. Your opinion matters. I don't want you to feel like it doesn't."
He stared at his hands. "Maybe I can't get into the tub or carry things or drive or..." His voice fell away, and he swallowed. He drew in a wet breath. "I can take care of myself for a few hours. I can be left alone. I'm not some delinquent puppy."
"I know," she said. "Getting Mark to stay with you all day has nothing to do with that. If it were that, he could stop by over lunch and be done in an hour, and I would stay on my twelve hour days so you'd have somebody here every night."
He looked up. His desolate stare made her chest tighten. "Then why?" he said.
"Because I love you, and I don't want you to be alone right now," she said. "That's all."
She watched him, watched the edges of his expression soften. "Oh," he said. He swallowed, and she kept watching as he tried to compose himself again. He failed. His eyes rimmed with red, and he looked away.
She leaned across the table, face resting on her palms. "Derek, do you want to be alone?"
That question seemed to catch him off guard. He blinked. She bit her lip. He wasn't crying, but he was close, and all she really wanted was to close the space between them and wrap herself around him. "No," he said. He ran his fingers along the edge of the table, following the wood grain. "I don't know. I want..." His voice trailed away, and he closed his eyes. "I don't know."
She frowned. "What were you going to say?"
"If I told you the entire list of what I want, I'd just be whining, and I..." His fingers clenched. He scraped at his face with his hands, sniffed, and his skin reddened. He pushed away from the table, and he took his plate to the sink, where he scrubbed the uneaten spaghetti into the garbage disposal with an old, dirty sponge as he blinked furiously against tears he didn't seem to want. He flipped the switch, and the disposal growled to life. He sponged off the remains of the spaghetti sauce with all the violence he could manage, and then he loaded all the plates into the dishwasher. The dishes clanked.
When he finished, he stood at the sink, staring. She went to him and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. "Top of the list," she whispered. "What do you want?"
"I can't even narrow that down," he said darkly.
She cupped her hands over his trapezius muscles and squeezed, obliterating tense coils of stress. He leaned into it. She rose to her tiptoes, and she kissed the side of his neck as she punched fingers deep into the knots in his back. She'd looked up a list of stretching exercises to help him, but most of them assumed the person doing the stretching had full use of his chest muscles and arms for support, and Derek didn't. There had been a couple, though, that had looked promising. One he could do by himself. Two he would need help with.
She kissed him, and then she went back to the dinette table. She pulled out his chair for him well away from the table. "Sit," she said. "I want to try something. It might make you feel better."
He didn't ask her why or what. He sat.
"Spread your legs," she said.
A small chuff of air fell from his lips. "Are we doing something naughty?"
"You wish," she said. "Seriously, just spread your legs."
He did as she asked, a curious look on his face. "Okay," she said. "Now drop your arms between your knees. Don't hold onto anything, just let your arms hang." He did. She touched his stomach with one hand and the small of his back with the other. Warmth soaked her palms through his shirt. He inhaled. His skin twitched at her light touch. "Curl over my hand, don't bend at the waist, and just... ease forward or whatever. Go as far as you can go."
He didn't have much flexibility anymore. He didn't make it very far. His breaths sped up as he pushed her hand forward with his stomach. His abs tightened. She rubbed his back. She felt him tremble under her palm. "Does it hurt?" she said.
"No," he said. "No, it's..." A soft sigh fell from his lips. "It's good. It feels good."
He did that same stretch four more times. Each time, he dropped lower. "Okay," she said. "Now, lie on the floor on your back."
"Here?"
She shrugged. "It's clean, and it's hard. It'll work."
"This really sounds like something naughty," he muttered.
"Because you have a dirty, dirty mind," she said, grinning.
Lying flat proved difficult for him with no support on a hard floor that would hurt if he let himself collapse to it via gravity. After he sat down, awkward and stiff and moving poorly, she held his shoulders, and he tipped backward, surrendering his weight to her hands. She slowed his descent. When he lay flat, resting in the space between the counter and the table, he looked at her, eyes glazed with painkillers, and something sharp stabbed her heart. The kitchen floor flashed immaculate white, and her fingers slicked with blood.
You don't get to die.
She flinched, and she focused on his chest. He wore a dark gray shirt with a high collar that hid his incision and the bullet wound from view. No hole in the shirt. No blood. He didn't pant with agony.
"Are you okay?" he said.
"Fine," she said.
She splayed her palm against his breastbone, brushing the soft cotton of his shirt. Her fingers roamed across his damaged pectoral. The scab from the bullet wound made what had once been marble smooth dented and imperfect. Marred. Reflex almost made her ask if it hurt, but he moved, a whisper in the silence, and put his palm over hers in an echo of what he'd done when he'd been shot, and she'd been trying to stop the relentless tide of his blood. But there was no blood. His skin wasn't cold or shivery or slick with sweat. He felt warm. Warm and dry and living.
"It doesn't hurt unless I'm breathing hard, you press down, or I stretch my left arm weird," he said. "I'm okay."
She stroked his shirt as he breathed, relaxed, not clipped with pain.
"I see things sometimes, too," he said when she didn't speak.
A lump formed in her throat. "Like what?" she said, but he looked away and wouldn't answer. She didn't press the issue. The refrigerator hummed. Birds chirped outside. He lay on the floor, breathing, not hurting, not bleeding, and she soaked in all the things that told her Derek wasn't dying. He'd been shot, but the pain he experienced now was just an echo of then. A memory. Something long past and gone. Real, but not real now.
He rubbed her arm with his thumb, and then he relaxed against the floor, resting his hands at his sides. "Have your way with me," he said, his voice soft and tired, but she heard a spark. A spark of the Derek she knew. Her Derek. Just waiting to ignite. His eyelids lowered, and he watched her through his eyelashes. The corners of his mouth twitched with the hints of a smile.
She snorted, and forced herself to the present. "Put your knees up." He did as she asked. With this exercise, he was supposed to pull his legs toward his chest with his arms wrapped under his knees. He wouldn't be able to do that, so she would be his arms, she decided. "I'm going to pick up your legs. Relax. And tell me right away if it hurts, okay? It's not supposed to hurt."
"Hmm," he said. He closed his eyes. She knelt at his shoulders, her kneecaps pushing into his trapezius muscles to the left and the right of his head. She rose as high onto her knees as she could go, and she leaned forward.
He laughed. Really, clearly laughed. Like a bell. His body tensed as he winced with the backlash, but the look in his eyes made her quiver. No sparkles. Stupid painkillers. But the skin around his eyes crinkled, and she couldn't see a single hint of sadness or anger or anything bad anymore. He was looking at her, and he was happy. "In what universe is this not naughty?" he said, staring at her crotch.
"Shut up," she said. "I'm helping you."
"Oh, I agree. This is definitely helping."
She laughed as she reached under his thighs. She looped her arms. At first, he didn't budge when she tried to pull back his legs. "Relax," she said.
"I'm stuck, helpless as a lamb, in your game of dirty twister, and you want me to relax?"
"Well, close your eyes and pretend I'm Mark or something."
He made a disgusted sound. "Please, don't say that when my face is inches from your-"
"Relax, damn it," she commanded. She pulled, and his weight came with her. She eased his knees toward his chest, and she lowered herself to the floor behind his head as his muscles extended as far as they would go. He inhaled, and a soft moan fell from his lips as she held his knees for him. She watched as the tears he'd held back earlier overflowed. "Does it hurt?" she asked, and she bit her lip.
"No," he said, his voice wet and thick. "No, it doesn't hurt."
After twenty seconds, she rose up and lowered his legs to the floor with care. He rested for thirty seconds, and she repeated. He didn't make any more jokes. He lay with his eyes closed, his expression sublime, even as tears leaked down his face. She repeated that stretch eight more times.
"Okay," she said. "Same thing, sort of, but we're going to the side. Stay flat on your back."
She scooted across the floor away from his shoulders to his legs. She touched his knees and pushed him to the left. He didn't need encouraging this time. He tilted his legs to the side. His right hip came off the floor. She stopped when his breaths jerked to a halt, and he made a small sound of discomfort. "Too much?" she said. "Keep your upper back flat. Only your hips should be moving."
"A little too much," he said, his voice clipped and tight. She eased up, and he rested, sort of tilted, sort of stretched. Tension bled away from him. "Better," he said.
She kept forgetting that his flexibility was crap right now. He hadn't done much physical activity in weeks. His muscles had gotten used to stiffness and pain and overuse in the same position for hours and hours. She wished she'd thought of this earlier. Stretching exercises for his back. He couldn't run or lift weights or do any of the usual things he did in the gym with Mark, but he could at least do this. Natural instinct after a serious injury was to curl up and hibernate forever. But studies had shown that movement and exercise after a trauma was what sped healing. Dr. Altman had given him a list of stretching exercises that would help his arms and chest, which he did, but none for his back. She'd also enrolled him in physical therapy, but that didn't start for another two weeks. They'd wanted to give his sternum a chance to heal more before putting him through anything overly strenuous.
Meredith repeated that stretch to the left, going a little further each time for four more times. Then she switched to his right for another five.
When she finished, she watched him. He relaxed his knees and lay flat. Eyes closed, he didn't move. He'd cried steadily since that second set of stretches, but somewhere in the course of the third set of stretches, the tears had petered and then stopped. Wet tracks glistened against his temples, and small patches of his hair above his ears had gotten soaked. She licked her lips. "There are a few more we can try, but that seems like a good start. I think. Do you think?" When he didn't respond, she leaned forward. "Did you fall asleep?" she whispered, peering at his relaxed face. She stroked the skin above his eyebrows and teased her fingers through the hair over his forehead.
A lazy smile curled at his lips. "No," he said, his voice thick and low. "This is just the first time I've been on my back in two weeks, and it's been a modicum of comfortable."
"Oh," she said. She eased herself onto her side next to him and picked up his hand, worrying at the joints. "Well, do you want to stay here a while?"
He looked at her. "I just want my wife."
"Is that the top of your list, then?" She winked.
"Definitely," he said. "Thank you for helping me narrow it down."
She grinned. "Well, you have me, now. And with this new plan with Mark, I get days off here and there, and I can stay the day with you every once in a while instead of just being here for a few hours before you crash for the night."
"That's true," he said. He smiled as he tilted his head to look at her. "I'm glad you'll get days off. You need days off. You shouldn't have to work every day just to take care of me."
"See?" She returned his grin. "It's all about me, me, me. It has nothing to do with you. I want my breaks. I need my freaking beauty rest or whatever."
He laughed. Even despite the clipped ending that sounded more moaning than laughing, the noise of it hit her eardrums like balm. "But I'm very important," he said. "How could it not have anything to do with me?"
"You're right," she said. "My mistake. It must be all about you."
His eyebrows rose. "You're admitting I'm right?"
She shrugged. "I guess so."
"I can't decide whether to file that under the benefits of being high and hallucinating, or under the benefits of being wounded and vulnerable."
"Maybe both?"
"Hmm," he rumbled. "It could be both. You might be banking on me forgetting this conversation ever happened while at the same time suffering from hopeless sympathy for me and my not-so-hidden pain."
She winked. "I guess you'll never know."
"That's mean, you know," he said. "Leaving me wondering."
"Doesn't the mystique add to my sex appeal? I thought men liked a little mystery."
"I prefer open books," he said, and then his gaze shifted into gleeful realization that he'd been given an opening. He leaned into her body. "How about a story?" he said, his eyes inches from hers.
"This again?" she said.
"Well, you can't hardly expect me to believe you were born, stole hair dye, and then came to Seattle Grace, where you fell head-over-heels for the sexiest neurosurgeon on the planet."
She laughed. "I don't know. Can't I?"
"Remind me not to ever let you play connect the dots," he grumbled. "The sheer weight of your failure at it might cause you to implode, and then I'd miss you."
He flopped against the hard floor. "Any suggestions on how to get up?" he said, his voice wry. "You seem to be an expert at naughty twister."
She moved back behind his shoulders. "Do a sit up. I'll push you. Don't pull with your arms."
"Hmm," he said. "So very bossy."
But he did what she said to do. Under his own steam, he rose to a 45 degree angle. She shoved him up the rest of the way with a grunt. Once he'd gotten into a sitting position, he managed the rest on his own, albeit slowly. The stretching might have made his back feel better, but he still wasn't moving all that well. As he stuttered to his feet, he groaned, and it took him a while to straighten out.
She watched as he shuffled to retrieve his empty glass, and then he refilled it under the rushing faucet. He gulped until the water disappeared. The corners of his mouth dripped, and he wiped them off with a paper towel. She glanced at the window. Daylight had waned considerably into dusk since she'd come into the house, and the overhead light in the kitchen did much more to illuminate the room now than it had when she'd entered. Slivers of pink and deep hues of blue stretched across the sky outside the window, highlighted with the deep greens and spruce colors of the treetops.
"Let's take a walk," she said. "It's really nice out today."
His fingers squeaked as he clenched his glass. The apprehension slathered all across his face made her ache. "Since when do you walk for fun?" he said.
"I walked with you," she said. "We've walked. With Doc. I thought that was fun."
"Meredith..."
You have to let him heal at his own pace, but you can't let him wallow, either.
"If you take a walk with me, I'll tell you a story," she said. "A short walk. We'll go slow."
"But I'm in my pajamas," he said.
His meaning was clear. A trip up and down the steps would wear him out. He thought he'd found an out. She considered offering to bring down some clothes for him, but decided against it. Help emphasize to him what he can control, rather than what he can't.
"There are some clean jeans in the dryer." She pointed toward the utility room. "You can grab those if you want."
"But..."
She shrugged. "No walk, no story. But it's your choice. We could watch a movie or whatever. You pick."
"It's getting dark," he said.
"It is," she agreed. "But it's not like I live in the middle of nowhere. The streets are lit."
He peered at her, suspicion carving his expression. "How good is this story?"
"You'll have to come along to find out."
He shifted on the balls of his feet, agitated. She wanted to tell him nothing would happen. That he'd be fine. But she thought letting him know she'd figured out his fears might make his anxiety about them worse. It would embarrass him that she'd noticed. He put his empty glass in the sink and sighed.
"Fine," he said, and he shuffled out of the room, muttering, "But this had better be a damned good story," as he went.
She grabbed a water bottle from the fridge while she waited. She didn't expect them to go far or to walk for long, maybe twenty minutes at best. He was at the point in his recovery where he should be managing about two fifteen-minute walks per day. He tired in the space of strides. He would probably sweat a lot, even if they went slow. She pocketed his Percocet bottle and her cell phone, not wanting to risk anything, and waited by the door for him as the clock ticked the evening minutes away. The pinks in the sky turned deep, fiery purple, and what had been blue before sank into a vivid blue-violet. Dark indigo. His favorite. Stars twinkled in the eastern-most part of the sky.
"I'm ready," he said, startling her from her reverie.
His soft, stonewashed jeans barely hung onto his hips without slipping down, emphasizing his unhealthy slimness. He'd put on his black cross-trainers, and he wore the same t-shirt he'd worn with his pajama pants – the dark gray one with the high collar.
She pushed open the storm door and stepped onto the porch. Her keys jingled as she fumbled to cram them into her pocket without spilling his pills everywhere. Cool air kissed her skin. The disappearance of the sun had chilled the earth considerably, but she wasn't cold. Just uncomfortable. And she imagined she'd warm up in a bit once they started moving.
He didn't pause on the threshold, and he didn't seem overly concerned about standing on the deck. His feet thumped as he shuffled around her. She didn't lock the door, but she did make sure it closed, and then she turned to follow him down the step and down the walk to the sidewalk that ran along their side of the street.
She wondered if maybe she'd gotten it wrong. Maybe his extreme indoor dwelling had just been coincidence. Maybe he'd really just felt so awful that he didn't want to waste effort going outside. Maybe. Except he gave his game away as she watched him. His nostrils flared, and his eyes had a wide, alert look to them that defied all the drugs in his system. He hunkered down, hands crammed in his front pockets, and he watched everything around him as though it were something dangerous, or something dangerous might be lurking behind it.
"Which way do you want to go?" he said when they reached the sidewalk.
She shrugged. "You pick."
He looked both ways down the long sprawl of uneven sidewalk. Either direction took a long time to reach a corner. He turned left. He moved, exaggerated and slow, his lips pressed into a firm line. She kept pace with him, careful not to let her strides escape her careful control. She didn't want to get ahead of him or make him feel like he held her back. She strolled, peering at the trees and the parked cars and staring at all the houses dotting the streets of her quaint little neighborhood, just enjoying being with him. A breeze ruffled her hair.
"I was fourteen," she said as they ambled along in the dim light.
"Another story from your tame beginnings?" He sighed. "When do I get the good stuff?"
"I wasn't tame."
"You were too tame to dye your-"
"Shut up, or I won't tell you anything," she said.
"I think you'll tell me regardless."
"Oh?" she said. "And what makes you Mr. Entitlement?"
He stopped and peered at her with an irresistible expression of innocence. She melted against him. He slipped his left hand loose from his pocket, and he wrapped his warm arm over her shoulder. "Because I'm wounded and vulnerable?" he said.
She laughed.
A man passed by them on the walk, and Derek stiffened to the point that his tension looked painful. He yanked his arm away from her and bolted to the side of the walk. "Excuse me," said the man. He wore a briefcase and hat and a snappy suit, and his heels clicked on the sidewalk as he tore past them at a good clip. His tie flapped, and he had crisp, white hair that made him look sort of like Colonel Sanders or something. Derek huddled at the side of the walk, breaths frozen in his chest.
Meredith waited while he collected himself. Red blush sprawled across his face in the twilight. She rubbed his arm. His skin trembled with disquiet under her palm. He closed his eyes. A car rumbled past, and he froze again as the sharp headlights illuminated him with piercing brilliance. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and he grimaced, distress pouring from his frame. Worry squeezed her heart. Maybe this had been a mistake. Maybe she'd pushed too hard.
"Derek," she said, her voice low and soft. She glanced backward. They'd made it all of two house-lengths, but some was better than nothing, and she didn't want him to upset himself needlessly. "We can go back inside. I'll finish the story. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pushed."
"I'm fine," he snapped. "I'm..." He took a deep, forceful breath that made him wince, and he plodded forward, slow and steady. "I'm fine." A hedge that hadn't been trimmed clawed at his shirt, and he shoved past it, his breaths picking up as he forced some momentum into his pace. Dry leaves and debris dirtied his shirt. He swept his hands across his torso, and the leaves sloughed away in a fluttering, crackling cloud.
She bit her lip and matched his strides. Doubt chipped away at her like a tiny icepick, but she forced herself to ignore it. Let him pick, she told herself. If he wanted to keep going, they would keep going.
"You know, it's been nearly two weeks," she said, continuing their conversation. "You can't keep using the wounded and vulnerable thing forever."
He glanced at her. "Well, I'm using it now."
"So, when's the cutoff between wounded and vulnerable and only slightly busted?"
His breaths buffeted the air. Small, glistening dots of sweat collected at his brow. "I think I'm entitled to a wide array of adjectives before I get from wounded and vulnerable to only slightly busted."
"Like what?"
"Well, I'm working on throbbing and enervated right now," he said. "I'm sure there's more, but-"
A woman passed by on the opposite side of the street. He didn't halt his forward motion, though his gaze chased her progress until she'd disappeared from sight, and he didn't speak. The sky darkened to the nighttime purple that spoke of light pollution. Meredith slipped into perfect tandem with him and wrapped her arm around his waist, relishing the feel of his body against hers, moving, pushing, working.
"I really love you," she said, her words cutting through the silence. "Thank you for walking with me."
"Hmm," he rumbled. He moved with singular, focused purpose. Walking forward. He swept his hands back into his hair. His hair slicked back, shiny and damp, and he panted. She glanced backward. They hadn't gone that far.
"Are you okay?" she said.
He stopped at a thick tree and leaned, hands scrabbling over the damp bark. "I think your mother bought a house on a hill on purpose," he said, his voice shaky.
"Yeah," she agreed. "She was planning to sabotage your convalescence before you'd even met Addison."
She glanced backward. The incline was hardly worth mentioning. The street rested on one of those pernicious hills that didn't feel at all like a hill until you'd gone a mile, looked back to try and figure out why you'd started sweating buckets, and finally noticed the shallow-but-steady gradient behind you. They hadn't gone a mile yet, but he wasn't fit.
Derek resumed, his pace slower than before. "Well, she did hate me, and I'm very likeable," he said between pants. "There must be more to it. Was she psychic? Maybe she saw me coming."
"I don't think my mother was psychic," she said. "You're that likeable, huh?"
"Yes, very."
She pushed the water bottle at him, and he took a sip and then a gulp, and she felt his body loosening up in her grip. Another car passed, and it didn't seem to faze him beyond a small twitch that ran down his frame.
"I don't think anybody is likeable enough to chip through the Ellis Grey wall," she said.
"You know, if I hadn't passed out from resecting that woman's bowel later that day, I bet I could have," he said.
She snorted. "Really."
"Oh, yes."
"With what?" she said. "Your endless charm and wit?"
"Oh, yes." He nodded. "Those." He swiped his hands through his hair, flattening more of it to his scalp, wet and slick. Salty beads of perspiration dripped down his face. "Given time, I can make anyone like me. Unless it's Cristina. She's a tough nut to crack."
"You don't like her, either."
A low hanging branch swept over them. They ducked, and the branch clawed down her back. He grunted, but the noise clipped off as he pulled more air into his lungs. They turned the corner, and she bit her lip.
This part? This was definitely a freaking hill. She'd thought, when she'd suggested this trip, that he would turn around at the stop sign and walk back the way they'd come, not keep going around in a counterclockwise lap. But he didn't turn around. He pushed forward. She glanced at her watch. They were inching toward fifteen minutes, but the sheer determination in his gaze kept her from protesting. Let him pick, she told herself. Let him pick. Let him pick. She let the mantra flow in her head.
"Well, she started it," he said.
"That's mature."
"What?" he said. "She's very grouchy. A normal person would have fallen to my expert and likeable wiles. It must be her fault."
"You're very confident about that."
"What can I say?" he said. "I'm a likeable guy."
"And an ass."
He grinned at her. In the darkness, the street lights made his eyes glitter. "But a likeable ass," he said.
"I do like your ass."
She slipped her hand into his back pocket to warm up her knuckles. His muscles flexed as he walked, and she squeezed him. They kept moving as a smirk slanted across his face. She rested her head against his shoulder. They plodded, interlocked.
"My first real walk after a gunshot wound, and you're feeling me up," he said. "You're a very naughty woman."
"What's naughty about it? I like feeling you up. And I'm allowed."
"Oh? Not that I'm complaining. I like the touching. More touching, I say. But I don't think I ever got that memo."
"Post-it provision. I can feel you up whenever I want now because we're married. It's totally kosher or whatever."
"Is that how that works?" he said. "Hmm." He took another sip of water. "So, I'm here. I'm walking. And I'm letting you feel me up in public. When do I get the rest of my story?"
"I was going to wait until we were finished walking," she said.
"Oh, no," he said. He stopped. "No escaping later when I'm too tired to care. Story, now, or I'm not moving another step."
With his momentum lost, his body swayed, and he swallowed. He stumbled to a no parking sign and wrapped his arms around the post. He made a sick noise deep in his throat as he tried to catch his breath.
She touched his back. His shirt had soaked through, and his muscles shook. "Derek..."
"I'm going around the block. I can make it. I just need a minute."
"Derek, please don't kill yourself for this," she said. "This was great for a first expedition."
"I'm okay," he said. He tilted back his head and took a swig of water. She watched his Adam's apple roll down his throat. A drop of sweat meandered down his skin, broken into tiny, shimmering pieces by his stubble. "Please, just tell me the story," he said. "You were five, and what happened?"
"Fourteen, Derek," she said. "I was fourteen."
"Right," he said. " And?" He left the safety of the signpost and moved like somebody had recorded him in freeze frame and was stepping the video forward bit by bit with the remote. She glanced ahead. They'd almost made it to the top of the hill. If they could hit that corner and turn left, they'd be going down, and he would get relief. The water bottle crinkled as he squeezed it. He didn't take a sip. He dumped a bit of it over his forehead and spluttered. He slicked the moisture back with his hands, leaving his face glistening, and his eyelashes thick and damp with a latticework of water between each hair.
"During homecoming, my first year at high school," she said. She patted his back and held his waist to give him support. "Some seniors held a bash. I went. There was beer there. And some other stuff."
"Other stuff?" he said. His mouth hung open as he sucked in air. "Like what? Apple juice and cookies?" He smirked at her despite the weariness gripping his features.
She laughed. "Stop interrupting, or I'll never finish." She closed her eyes and sighed with relief as they rounded the corner and gravity helped instead of hindered. He stopped struggling with every step and breath, and his pace picked up. Just a bit.
"Sorry," he said. "Please, continue. Though, I'm going to lodge a complaint later if this turns out to be a bad story. You made me take a walk for this. I was expecting drunken girl-on-girl with Sadie or something."
She snorted. "What is with that, anyway?"
He sipped the water and held out the bottle for her. She took a sip as well. Heat radiated from his skin in a wavering aura around his body. All she had to do was hover next to him, and she felt warm.
"What's with what?" he said.
"Why do guys always pant over lesbian sex?" she asked. "You'd think it would be kind of a duh that lesbian sex means no male participation. It's the biggest cock block in the history of vanilla porn, isn't it?"
He stopped, and he looked at her as though she'd asked him to explain why 2+2 equaled 4, or she'd questioned some sort of universal law like gravity or something. "But it's hot," he said.
"Thanks for articulating to me the meaning of testosterone," she replied. "Able to leap tall piles of logic in a single bound."
He grinned. "Well, it is."
"Hot?"
"Yes, very," he said. He walked. "So, did you?"
She followed. "Did I what?"
"Have girl-on-girl with Sadie?"
She snorted. "I refuse to answer that."
He laughed. "So, you did?"
"You're really kind of incorrigible, you know."
"I'll take that as a yes," he said.
"Damn it! You, shut up," she said. "Just shut up, so I can finish!"
He raised an eyebrow. His gaze roamed from her head to her toes in a lascivious appraisal. He stopped at her breasts and inhaled, an appreciative, quirky grin pulling at his features, and then his gaze dipped lower. "Finish what, exactly?"
"Damn it!" she growled.
He leered. "I have a good mental picture to carry me through this, at least," he said as they rounded the third corner. Steep downhill morphed into a downward slope that seemed almost flat in comparison, and Derek had to work again to move.
"I was fourteen."
"You said that already," he said. "You were describing this supposed other stuff."
"Right," she said. "Weed, okay? And I think I had too much. Or maybe it was the alcohol."
"Oh?" He grinned. "Why's that?"
"Because I woke up naked with a dirty condom on my thigh, and I don't remember it, but I mean, I..." her voice trailed away. His grin faded, and he came to a wobbly stop by an overhanging mailbox with a little red flag. He leaned against it, frowning. He took several breaths before he found his voice.
"You said nobody ever did anything to you," he said, his voice low and dangerous.
She quirked an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"You don't count date rape as something?"
"It wasn't rape," she assured him. "I remember starting. I didn't say no, and I could have. I just... The rest is gone."
"I shouldn't have teased," he said in a soft voice. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she said. "I had a sucky lead-in. You couldn't have known where I was going with it. That was my first time."
He pulled her against his body, and he kissed her ear, and then her temple. "I love you," he whispered against her ear. His panting slowed as he rested, palms splayed against her back, and she couldn't help but close her eyes and relish the warmth and the solid safety of his arms.
His sweat dripped all over her, but she didn't care. She didn't care at all. Her fingers scrunched his damp shirt, and she nosed into his shoulder, breathing. A strong musky odor wafted from his skin from all the exertion, but he didn't stink. He smelled masculine and safe and sweet and hers. This was a more heady version of the scent he left on pillows and sheets and things that he wore, and the familiarity of it made her muscles relax and give way. She swayed on her feet, and he held her. His muscles trembled, too, and she tried to stand up, tried to take her weight off him. She wanted to collapse, though. She wanted him to pick her up in his arms and not let go. In his arms, people like Gary Clark didn't exist. She'd be happy forever. And nothing seemed scary or bad.
Derek was her drug.
The night around them hovered in silence, save for an undulating chorus of crickets and other creep-crawly things. The birds had gone to sleep. The brief burst of people on the sidewalks and cars in the streets seemed to have calmed as everyone arrived home for dinner. Lights from windows glowed, leaving squares of bright illumination against black, amorphous lawns.
He kissed her again, full on the lips, and she lost the world as his tongue stroked hers. The dark, green, dimly-lit neighborhood bled away into nothing but a sense of flesh and heartbeats. Her cheek rustled against his shirt, and she listened to the air as he drew it into his chest, long and slow.
"I hate that you grew up so fast," he said. "Even if it wasn't rape, you didn't deserve that."
"Yeah," she said as they disentangled. "But learning to have casual, drunken sex paved the way to meeting you, so I can't entirely regret it." They headed for the last corner. Almost home. He moved sluggishly, and he lost his breath again in the space of strides.
"We still would have met," he said. "And I would have noticed you without the one night stand."
"You think so?"
"You're noticeable, Mere, and I really needed somebody. I was..." His voice trailed away, and he didn't finish his thought. He blinked, and he swiped his hands against his forehead, brushing back more sweat. His chest heaved, and he tripped a little. Pain leaked into his gaze, and he made a small sound. She handed him the water bottle, and he took a long swig that emptied the bottle. The plastic crinkled in his hand.
"Almost back home," she said.
He made no indication that he'd heard her. He pushed forward, lips set in a line of concentration.
"I was fifteen when my dad died," he said as they passed the second-to-last house on that street. "I was there."
He'd said it like he'd been reciting what kind of sandwich he'd ordered for lunch. No inflection whatsoever colored his syllables, but the tone sounded rehearsed and perfected through countless repetition. I was there. It wasn't a big deal, and I'm not upset. I was there. She halted, and he didn't notice until her palm didn't move forward with his. Their arms stretched, but she didn't let go, and he shambled to a stop when his elbow locked. He looked at her. When she didn't budge, he backed up with wobbly steps.
A lump formed in her throat, and the dark smudged as she blinked. You never told me that, she wanted to say. Not once even hinted. Anger squeezed her breaths tightly in her chest. She'd been such a freaking moron. Maybe he would have told her if she hadn't blown him off for her own problems that night. Idiot. Freak. Emotionally-stunted dumb ass.
She swallowed, and she wiped at her eyes. "I hate that you grew up so fast, too," she said. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah, well..." he said. He blinked and sniffed and looked away.
"Do you think about him a lot?" she asked. She wrapped her arms around his waist and stood in his space. She rubbed her palms up and down the curve of his spine. His soaked shirt stuck to her palms, but she managed.
"More lately."
"Was he a doctor, too?"
"No," Derek said. "He owned a hardware store."
She blinked and reddened. He'd told her his dad owned a store when he'd first told her about the murder. And what doctors owned stores? Who had the freaking time? "I'm sorry, that was a really dumb question. I'm being a mor-"
He put his thumb against her lip. "S'okay," he said. He breathed against her, and she felt his weight drag on her shoulders more and more as the seconds passed.
"Are you doing all right?" she said, which seemed to snap him back into himself. He pulled away like he'd been stung and started moving, his expression unseeing as he shuffled. His cross-trainers scuffed the sidewalk. He'd stopped picking up his feet more than a centimeter or so, and the soles dragged against the pavement.
When they rounded the last corner, they were back on her street, back on that evil sort-of hill. He lasted about three meters before he veered, suffering. He stopped against a chain-link fence and closed his eyes, recuperating by a bright neon-and-black beware of dog sign that seemed to be a lie at the moment. The windows in the house behind the fence remained pitch-black, and no barking pierced the nighttime silence.
She stroked his chest while he tried to recover some wind, feeling particularly useless as he glanced in the direction of their house. She watched his dark gaze follow the line of sidewalk between them and their driveway, and his expression caved into hopelessness. She thought about telling him to sit down while she brought the car, but she imagined getting into and out of his big SUV or her Jeep would take just as much out of him as walking the remaining house-lengths.
He leaned his head back. His Adam's apple poked out as he swallowed, and his mouth lolled open. A thin, shining column of spittle stretched from his lower lip to his upper. He licked his teeth and cleared it away, and he clutched her shoulders with shaky hands while he struggled to breathe. "God, I'm tired," he said.
She squeezed him. "We're almost there," she whispered. "A few more houses. You can make it."
They covered the rest of the distance in silence. He walked like he couldn't convince his legs to work without devoting all his attention to them.
They made it. She held her hand against his waist. He leaned more and more against her body until she felt like a doorjamb holding back a storm door on a tight, squealing, pressurized hinge that wanted to close. He pressed her against the door frame, his body trapping her. She fumbled with the door, trying to keep from falling victim to his gasping, then dying, then deadweight, and they stumbled inside. His feet clipped the threshold with jarring whacks. He stopped, inches inside the house. She wrestled with him to get him out of the path of the door so she could get it closed. She slammed shut the door, panting, and he sat down in a boneless heap on the floor, his back sliding down the frame as she flipped on the hallway light.
Sweat plastered his hair to his head, and his complexion turned sallow. He brought the back of his hand to his mouth, and he gagged against his skin. His torso jerked with the spasms, and his face creased with agony as he tried to hold down bile and the little he'd managed to eat.
She ran for the kitchen without pausing to ask him if he was okay or what was wrong. One look, and she knew what was freaking wrong. He was undernourished, overheated, and exhausted, and she'd let him do it. She'd just let him because he'd hugged her and teased her and acted tired-but-fine, god, damn that man.
She grabbed a box of Wheat Thins from the cabinet over the sink, a bottle of water from the fridge, the hand towel from the dishwasher, and a trash bag from the roll under the sink. She returned in under a minute, and she skidded to her butt beside him on the welcome mat. She jammed her hand into the cracker box and pulled a handful loose. She shoved them at him. Cracker bits spilled all over the floor and over his sweat-soaked jeans.
"Put something in your stomach," she said.
After he'd eaten five or six Wheat Thins, she pushed the fresh water bottle at him, and he drank gulp after gulp. He put the bottle down by his left hip after he'd swallowed his way through over half of it, and he leaned into her shoulder, breathing noisily, almost desperately.
"Better?" she said. She wanted to yell at him. Wanted to hit him. Why did he do this to himself?
"Yeah," he croaked. He inhaled with a wet, sick-sounding sniffle.
"Do you want some Percocet?"
He nodded. She liberated a pill from the bottle in her pocket, and she gave it to him. He chucked the pill into his mouth, picked up the nearly empty water bottle, tipped his head back, and swallowed. He blinked as he brought his head down. She gave him the hand-towel, but his hands rested in his lap, and he didn't lift it to wipe his face or anything. He rested, silent, eyes closed. The sweat dried over the passing minutes, and shivers tore up and down his body. At least he hadn't needed the trash bag.
She didn't have the heart to say a word or scold him despite her fury. He was a grown man. He didn't need a mom right now. He'd worked himself to the point of throwing up. He'd collapsed in their foyer by the door on the hard floor, as though his options had been to sit down or fall down, and he'd been given no other choice. She doubted very much that his body wasn't already doing all the yelling for her, and she didn't want him to feel embarrassed or guilty or inadequate. She just didn't want him to kill himself trying to prove to her or Gary Clark's ghost, or whoever he seemed to need to prove himself to that he'd healed.
She rubbed his shoulder. "I'll be right back, okay?" she said.
He didn't answer.
She stood, and she left him, only intending to be gone a moment. He needed a towel at the very least, but as she wandered to the utility room, inspiration hit. She grabbed two full-sized bath towels. Then she went to the fridge and pulled out some of the fresh peaches and strawberries she'd bought when she'd run errands the day before. She washed the fruits under the faucet and piled them all in a big bowl. She scooped the remaining leftover spaghetti from the Tupperware container on the counter top to a fresh plate, and she heated it. She rummaged for napkins and a fork. When the microwave beeped, she powdered the pasta with a dusting of Parmesan. She stuck her tongue through her lips as she tried to remember exactly how he liked it. They didn't eat spaghetti much. She thought she'd managed a good approximation. Arms laden with towels and dishes, she walked back through the hallway to the front door.
He didn't look at her, eyes dull, as she waddled toward him with her bounty. He didn't ask questions, didn't indicate that he'd noticed her presence. She put the pile down by the far wall and brought towel number one with her as she sat down by his side. "Can you get your shirt off?" she said.
When he didn't budge, her eyes pricked, and she wiped at her face. When he's not paying attention to the world, he's not hurt or frightened, Dr. Wyatt had said. He's created a safety zone for himself. And he'd needed to go there. Again.
She touched his face, palm against his skin. Damp stubble and skin rasped against her fingertips. "Derek," she whispered as she stroked him. "It's okay. I know it hurts and you're tired and it sucks. I do. But you have to be here and not there. Please."
He looked at her, toward the noise, but his stare tore straight through her body to some distant point beyond. "Huh," he said, monotone and distant. He blinked, eyes glassy and soulless. She watched herself reflected in his unblinking pupils, a pair of itty bitty Merediths who both looked like they were well on their way from sadness to worry. As long as he becomes responsive when you stimulate him, I don't see a reason to worry.
She pushed his shoulder, digging her nails into his skin through his shirt. "Snap out of it, Derek. Seriously."
He blinked and blinked again, and she sighed with relief as she watched focus return to his gaze. "What?" he said. He swallowed, and he glanced at their surroundings with an odd expression of disorientation. A full sweep, ending with the floor under his legs, and the cloudy fog quality of his stare sank into depression. He looked away, and he sighed. He'd tried to be human again, tried to take a walk and not be afraid and enjoy some time with her, and he'd been slapped down for his trouble. She read his thoughts sprawled all over his face.
"I know," she said. Her eyes stung. "It's okay."
He didn't reply. He shivered. "Take your shirt off, Derek," she said.
The crushed quality of his forlorn gaze lessened. He didn't smile, but amusement made his lip twitch. "Naughty wife," he said, his voice soft with weariness.
"Derek, you're exhausted and soaked," she said with a snort. "This is hardly about sex."
"You say that now," he said. He leaned back against the door and closed his eyes. With a rush of effort, he swung his torso forward with a force that made him grunt, and he pulled at the shirt from behind his head. The shirt came up over his head. Gravity pulled him back into the door, and he rested, unmoving, shirt stuck around his arms and upper torso, as though his reserves had been spent.
She pulled off the shirt the rest of the way for him, and she wrapped him in the thick, fluffy towel. She tossed the shirt, and it landed in a sopping pile further into the foyer.
"That's bad for the floor," he said.
"I don't care about the stupid floor," she said. "I care about you."
She dragged her pile of stuff closer. She put the second towel beside his hip, and she put down the plate of spaghetti and the bowl of fruit and the fresh bottle of water.
"What's all this?" he said.
"Hallway picnic. You need to eat more. I tried to leave you alone. I swear I did. But you're shucking weight like yesterday's socks or whatever."
He stared at his lap. "And fainting."
"Well," she said, "To be fair, that seemed more like enforced sitting than fainting, and it was after doing way more exercise than you should have ever attempted. But you need to eat, whether you're hungry or not. Maybe set an alarm for yourself. Or don't let yourself have a pill without a snack. Something. Anything. Anything, Derek."
He swallowed, and his eyes watered and rimmed with red.
"Derek, you're hurt. You're depressed. I get that it's hard to remember to eat sometimes." She sighed as darker twists of memories clung to her consciousness. "I've been there, and I understand. You can't really pull any dark-and-twisty on me that I haven't done myself, or thought about doing, so I get it. Just..."
He clutched the towel. "He took from me, and I never..."
She stroked his body through the towel. "I know," she murmured. "I know."
A deep-cherry blush cut a swath across his face and his throat. His eyes creased, and his lips pressed into a thin, colorless line. His temples fluttered under his skin. Anger forced his breaths into tight funnels of air. "I want to have sex with my wife," he said. "I want to walk up steps and take showers and lift things without you fucking helping me. I want to sleep in my own bed for the whole night. I want to not hurt. I want to be able to walk on the street without wondering if the stranger walking across the way has a fucking gun. I want to stop seeing him over my shoulder and in the mirror and when I wake up and in my dreams and everywhere. And I want to be able to get through an hour of my life without feeling like this."
"I know," she said.
"I hate him, Meredith," he said, his voice low and scratchy and clawing against the deepest, darkest point of his vocal registers. "I hate him for doing this to me. I'm not me. My body isn't mine anymore. He stole that. He stole everything from me. I want him to die, except he's dead, and I can't..." His body shuddered. "I can't make this stop. It won't stop, and I need it to stop."
She swallowed against tears. "He didn't steal me, Derek. I'm here. I'll always be here."
He looked at her, panting, fury leaking from every pore. The towel made a stiff tent around his body as he pulled it as hard as his arms would let him pull. A whorl of ugly, black emotions swirled around him like a storm cloud. Lightning strikes of pain smashed into her in the grips of that horrible, ugly gaze, but she forced herself to look him in the eye and say it again.
"I'm here," she repeated.
He looked at her, and the expression on his face crumpled. He blinked, and tears streaked down his blush-blotched, mottled skin. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry. I know. I didn't mean to-" He thunked his head back against the door and stared, hopeless, at the overhead chandelier. The fight and grief bled out of him, leaving beaten, tormented remains behind.
"I know what you meant," she said. "It's okay." She pulled her arms around his shoulders and tilted him against her. He didn't protest. She stroked his wet, sweat-soaked hair, and he rested in her arms.
"Why did he do this to me?" he said.
She didn't answer. She closed her eyes, and she lay her cheek against his head. "Life sucks sometimes."
A wry laugh choked off in his throat. "Understatement."
"Life sucks a lot sometimes?"
"Hmm," he said. "Better."
"Life is the suck by which we measure all other suckiness?"
"Such a poet," he said. "Thank you."
"For what? Being the thesaurus of suck?"
"No," he said. "Just... Being you. Being here. I'm sure I'm fantastic company."
"Derek," she said. "I can honestly say there's nowhere I'd rather be right now. Fantastic company or not."
"I don't know," he said. "I hear the Bahamas are quite nice this time of year."
"I'm sure they are. But I'd rather be here."
He sighed and pushed himself up with a wince. He settled the towel over his shoulders and let go with his hands. He took the plate of spaghetti and started picking at it. He made a face, disgust curling back his lips.
"Cold and yucky?" she said.
He nodded.
"You need to start liking cold food," she said. "It's what real doctors do."
"I think it's only what you do, Mere," he said. "I'm quite certain we neurosurgeons prefer heated items."
She chuckled and took the plate back to the kitchen to reheat it for him. When she returned to his camping spot in the foyer, she found him tearing apart a peach. He stared blankly down the hall, toward her, but not at her. The fruit splurched as he sunk in his teeth, and wet dribbles coursed down his stubbly chin. She put the warm plate on his lap and sat back down, squeezing his knee for balance. She glanced in the fruit bowl and saw a tiny pile of strawberry leaves next to untouched fruit. He'd eaten a couple while she'd been gone. A couple, but not many.
"I stopped at Pike Place for those," she said. "Are they good?"
"They're great," he said, his voice muffled around the peach, but flat. Unenthusiastic. He sucked on the fleshy part of the fruit, and then he rested, eyes shut, holding the peach in his hand over the plate in his lap. Peach juice dripped onto the pasta, leaving wet pockmarks in the Parmesan. Minutes passed, and he didn't move.
"Your spaghetti is going to get cold again," she prodded. "And very peach-flavored."
He looked at the plate in his lap and sighed. He took another bite of the peach, and he chewed and chewed and chewed. When he swallowed, he stared at the remains of the fruit like he'd just climbed Mount Everest and had been asked to climb it again.
"They're not good, are they?" she said.
"Nothing tastes good to me," he said. "I'm just not hungry."
Despite his words, he kept working on the peach, taking bite after disinterested bite. When he finished, he dropped the wrinkled brown pit back into the bowl with the other fruit skeletons. She grabbed a strawberry, and he started to work on the spaghetti plate. The strawberry burst in her mouth, little flecks of seeds and juice and grainy bits crushing under the force of her jaw, and she moaned as the sugary sweetness swept over her taste buds. When her eyes opened, she found him staring at her, an amused, ghost of a grin tipping the corners of his lips upward. His fork hung midair, a swirl of noodles clinging to the tines.
"Thief," he murmured. "What if I was saving that one?"
"I'll show you a thief," she said. She reached across his lap and nabbed his water bottle. She took a long, gulping sip.
He grinned, but he didn't try to take back the bottle, and she deflated a little. Not playing. He usually played. She frowned as she watched how much he economized his movements. How tired he looked after every swallow of the spaghetti. She put the water bottle by his hip in case he wanted it, because she didn't think he would ask if he did.
He finished off the entire plate, wiped his face with the towel, and sighed. He leaned against the door and looked at her, his eyelashes low over his eyes. The dark circles under his eyes seemed fleshy and bad and he looked... Wasted. Thrashed. Done. His breaths rose and fell in his chest, soft and even and slow. He looked full, at least. Stuffed, actually. For the first time in weeks. His stomach curved under the towel.
"Do you want to go upstairs and sleep?" she said.
He didn't move. "I'll just sit here for a while," he said, his voice soft, but the desolate look in his eyes told her what he didn't want to say. He wasn't sitting there because he wanted to do so.
She kissed him. "That's fine. We'll stay here then. You owe me a story, you know," she said.
"Why?"
"Because I told you one."
"But I walked around the block for that one, and it wasn't even about lesbian sex," he said. "I'd say we're even."
"Well, I'll tell you another after you tell me something," she said. "It's only fair that this be an even exchange. Maturity-challenged Meredith for Manhattan Derek. I want to hear the stories, too."
He closed his eyes. "Rain check?" he said, his voice distant and faint.
"Sure," she said. "I like just sitting here with you."
"Hmm."
His head tilted forward, gradual at first, gaining momentum, but he picked himself up at the last moment before his chin collapsed against his chest, and he blinked, recovering, eyes bleary. He scrunched the damp towel against his naked skin. She stood and went into the living room to retrieve a pillow and the winter afghan for him.
She returned just in time to see him snap his neck back and blink as he tried to stay awake. "Here," she whispered, holding out the pillow and the blanket for him. He muttered something, and he didn't reach for them. She didn't understand the words.
She kicked away the picnic towel and the fruit bowl and all the refuse, and she put the pillow on the floor beside him. She unfurled the afghan, and she tried to take his wet towel away, but he clutched it. "M'cold," he mumbled.
"Derek," she said. "Derek, wake up just a bit for a second."
He blinked. "M'awake," he assured her.
She felt a wispy grin crack her frown in half. "Sure, you are."
She pulled at his towel, and he let her take it this time, his grip slack. She wrapped the afghan around his naked, shivery torso. She settled on the ground, her back against the door, and propped the soft pillow against her thigh. She wrapped her arms around him, and she pulled him to the floor. He made a noise of surprise, but then he settled on his back, padded by the pillow, his wet head cradled in the crook of her thigh and her abdomen.
"But we're on the floor in the foyer," he said as his eyelids drooped lower and lower, and he didn't pick them up again to blink. The glassy crescents of his eyes disappeared. His arms fell to his sides.
"It doesn't matter, Derek," she said. "Just sleep. We'll move in a little while when you feel better."
She lifted up her shirt a few inches so he could soak up some of her body heat. She stroked his sweaty hair as his muscles went slack. His bent knees flattened as his cross-trainers skidded across the floor boards with a slow chuck-chuck-chuck into final collapse. His feet hit her purse and shoved aside a small side-table, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
"Can' tell me this isn' naughty," he slurred, half asleep. Conscious support left his neck, and his face tilted into her jeans and bare stomach. His nose pressed into her abdomen. He took a deep, sighing breath against her skin.
"Only in your twisted male mind," she said.
"Takin advan..." he mumbled, but the syllables fell away. His mouth lolled open. Hot, even breaths buffeted her skin, and he slept, safe and solid against her.
