A/N: Not long since my last update, so I hope people got a chance to read it. I figure if I have a chapter I should just post it instead of waiting and potentially losing some creative energy. News items: I'm changing the rating from K+ to T, I fiddled with the summary a little bit so it looks a little less like 'Meredith and Derek never got together' and more like 'they did, just not in the way they did on the show'. Also I definitely think I won't be devoting a chapter to every single episode, especially because Addison won't be there to give a nice plotline. It's also less pressure on me to try and work everything in. Sometimes I feel like I'm neglecting the characters a bit because I focus on Cristina, Meredith, Derek, and Ellis. Let me know if you want some more of a certain character and I'll try to work it in! Thanks again for reviews and messages. They really make my day! 3
Chapter X: Yours Forever
Meredith remembers seeing her new home in Boston for the first time, either very early in the morning or late at night. It had been partly furnished, but the pieces were old and there were no curtains on the walls, only blinds. It was a good house, and would eventually be transformed into a place Meredith would call home until she went to college. She crawled onto a squishy brown sofa and watched through droopy eyes as her mother took inventory, went through the downstairs rooms, counting boxes. She then heard the heels of her mother's boots above her through the ceiling, and found the creakiness comforting in a way, because it reminded her of their home in Seattle. If she closed her eyes she could pretend they were back in the rainy city.
Meredith can't remember how long it was before her mother reappeared downstairs, but suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder and she was waking up, holding her arms out like a toddler, wanting to be held and too tired to realize that this was her mother, and she wouldn't be. Ellis told her that only one bed had been made up, and that it was time to sleep, so it must have been nighttime. She led her up the stairs and opened Meredith's suitcase, handing her a summer nightgown that Meredith changed into. The bathroom was across the hall, but there was no stool to stand on to reach the sink as she brushed her teeth.
"Mommy, I can't reach," Meredith said, her mouth filled with white foam. Ellis, still dressed, came to lift her up so she could spit out the toothpaste and splash her mouth with water, then set her down.
"Go on to bed," she said quietly, and watched from the doorframe as her daughter shuffled across the room to the unfamiliar bed in the new house. Meredith remembered that Ellis had already changed the sheets, so at least something smelled like home, a bit like lavender.
Mommy, where are we going?
Somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Outside, the sound of sirens. Through the blinds the nearby streetlamp bled through onto the wall and cast amber shadows in the room. The house seemed so empty, as if she were the only person on a queen-sized raft, honeyed glints dancing off the dark waves, a lighthouse behind her. And a slight air of mourning from the doorway where she thought she saw her mother leaning, looking as if she'd lost something.
"Mommy?" Meredith asked the wide water around her.
"Yes?" Ellis said, although she didn't move. Her voice was scratchy.
"When can we go home?"
Ellis crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed to take off her shoes, then lay down with a sad sigh. Meredith sat up, her hair messy from the flight, the drive she'd slept through, and the restlessness that was currently making it impossible to sleep.
"We're not going back. This is home now."
Meredith turned and curled into her mother, unconsciously draping her arm across her. Ellis stiffened for a moment, then relaxed as she heard her daughter's breathing slow into an even rhythm. She watched in the darkness as the girl's little fists relaxed. Suddenly a memory rushed to surface inside her. A baby hand, the tiny fingers curled around her own long index finger on a rainy Autumn morning. Those same hands a year later, clasping tightly onto hers while she took her first steps. Two years old, a tiny burn on her palm that had made her cry. Four years old, a chubby hand taking her mother's pulse with a plastic stethoscope, babbling, and Ellis calling Thatch to take her away, she needed time to read the latest Lancet. Five years old now, six in November.
December is making Meredith tired. She could blame it on the long shifts at the hospital, or getting older, or cafeteria food, but, honestly, it's the amount of sex she's having. The problem is that before, during, and after the act itself she couldn't be happier so, honestly, she's the one to blame. And Derek. Whatever they are together, because they still haven't talked rules. Maybe they should make rules, like he said. But, honestly, rules tend to make things complicated and concrete. She doesn't like rules.
Cristina bursts into the on-call room and flips on the light, closing the door behind her.
"Get up."
Meredith opens her eyes but doesn't move, instead fixing them angrily at Cristina. "I was sleeping."
"You were not sleeping. Sleeping people don't wear shoes," Cristina says, a hand on her hip.
"I was thinking," Meredith hisses. "In the dark. With my shoes."
Cristina rolls her eyes. "About what?"
Meredith crosses her arms. "Nothing. Why are you here? Why do I have to get up?"
Cristina sits on the edge of the bed. "Because of Burke."
"Burke? Did he page me?"
Cristina rolls her eyes again. "No, not Dr. Burke. Burke. The one I'm sleeping with."
"Oh. Burke. So?"
"So, I think he thinks we're dating, or something."
Meredith blinks. "Okay. Why are we freaking out?"
Cristina sighs in exasperation. "Come on! Despite the whole 'attending with intern' thing, he's trying to be all caring and dinner date-y, and it's weird. It's weird, right?"
Meredith, still laying down, nods. "Very weird."
"Is Shepherd boyfriendy?"
Meredith shrugs. "I think he tried some kind of wooing technique before we got together. But we kept putting it off and finally jumped the gauntlet, so it didn't matter."
"'Gauntlet?'"
"We had sex."
"Right." Cristina gnaws a nail. "So a date before sex is the courtship phase, then sex happens, then…what's the purpose of dates after you start having sex?"
Meredith shrugs again. "To remind each other you're not in it just for the sex?"
"What if I'm just in it for the sex?"
Meredith finally sits up, her dull headache coming back with the motion. "We're surgeons. We don't date. Not officially. For a date to happen you both need time off, at an appropriate hour…it's much too stressful. A date for me is getting to operate with Derek."
"What if you're operating with Burke?"
Meredith chuckles. "It's not a date. We're not sleeping together!"
Cristina smiles. "Ah, the romance of surgery. Forceps, Dr. Yang."
"Suction, Dr. Grey."
Her pager beeps and Meredith reaches down to pick it up, glancing quickly at the name. Cristina's eyebrows go up questioningly.
"I think I've got a date," Meredith says, sticking her tongue out.
Cristina sighs and takes Meredith's place on the bed when she gets up. "Enjoy it."
Meredith shakes off the sleepiness of eleven PM and heads to the pit, where she finds Joe, the man who poured her tequila in the beginning of her internship when she still had the energy to go out after a shift and drink. A group of hospital staff are hovering outside his room, all worried about their favorite bar-owner.
"What's going on?" she asks, and takes the chart Derek holds out. She flips it open and skims. "Joe collapsed?"
Derek nods. "Hit his head pretty hard, too."
She looks up. "Well, is he gonna be okay? Does he need an operation?"
"Operation? Yes. Okay? Hard to tell. Basal artery's blown up like a balloon, subarachnoid bleeding, aneurism the size of a golf ball."
Alex looks up from behind the nurses' desk where he's been lounging, keeping a lazy eye on the pit. "Not gonna clip that without magic fingers," he says.
"Or a standstill operation," Derek says suddenly. Meredith is fully awake.
"You're doing a standstill operation?"
Derek nods. "I'd like to try. But first I need some additional patient history, overnight labs, and a cerebral angio." Alex stands up, startling the nurse beside him, and looks at Meredith as she takes Joe's chart.
"I'll get patient history, you get the angio, meet back here in thirty?"
Meredith smiles. "How long are you covering the pit, Alex?"
"Off at midnight." He looks at Shepherd, back at Meredith, back at Shepherd. "Come on, Shepherd, she gets all the good surgeries! Put me on the case!"
Shepherd looks amused. "Karev, work on history and labs. Meredith, get that angio. If you want to stay after your shift, Karev, you're in."
Alex does a victory fist pump as Shepherd walks away. He pats Meredith on the back, making her laugh. "Grey, tomorrow we are going to kill a man."
After managing to catch four hours of uninterrupted sleep -alone-, Meredith reports back to the pit to talk Joe through a landmark operation along with Alex, Dr. Burke, and Dr. Shepherd.
"It's the location of the aneurism that makes it tricky," Shepherd begins.
"Your body temperature would be lowered cool enough to protect it from any damage and stop the heart," Dr. Burke adds.
"Which stops the blood flow to the brain, which reduces the risk of a rupture," Shepherd says. "I'll have forty-five minutes to clip the aneurism-"
"Before I step in and get the heart started again," Burke finishes. Alex does another tiny victory fist pump next to Meredith that is hidden behind Burke's back. Meredith smirks.
Joe looks significantly confused. "Wait a minute. You want to freeze my body, drain my blood, and stop my heart?"
"And bring you back," Shepherd says confidently.
"In under forty-five minutes," Joe confirms.
"Right."
"If you go over forty-five is it free?" he asks.
"No," Alex says suddenly.
"Dr. Karev," Burke says patiently, "you can go handle the pre-op labs."
Alex nods and picks up Joe's chart, heading to the nurses' desk again for the proper forms.
"Grey, go with him and make sure he doesn't screw anything up," he adds.
Four hours into the surgery and Shepherd steps back from his microscope.
"That's all I can do for now," he says, and takes a deep breath. Meredith sees that he's tired. Derek, like Alex, has forged two shifts together, only he's the one operating with the pressure of a clock pushing him forward.
"All right," Burke says. "Let's start cooling him."
She and Alex help the O.R nurses cover Joe with cooling blankets and bags of ice to facilitate the lowering of his body temperature. Meredith looks up to the full gallery and sees Cristina looking on, eating a granola bar.
After just ten minutes the room is colder, and Meredith bounces on the balls of her feet next to Alex, trying to retain a bit of warmth. She sees Shepherd's eyes crinkle in an amused smile as she does it. While they're waiting for Joe's body to reach the correct temperature the O.R becomes a somewhat social setting. Even Shepherd and Burke are talking, and Alex leans slightly towards Meredith.
"So, what is it with you and Shepherd?"
She looks up, surprised and caught. "What do you mean?"
Alex shrugs. "It just seems like he, I don't know, he gives you all the good cases."
Meredith rolls her eyes. "I was on call."
"Still."
"There's nothing going on, Alex."
He laughs quietly, yet their conversation is completely concealed from the rest of the chattering room by their masks. "Whatever. Just…be careful."
Meredith scoffs again. "You be careful, or I'll dunk you in one of those ice bowls."
"Body temp is at sixty degrees," the anesthesiologist announces, and the room quiets immediately, although there are some chattering teeth behind them.
Burke approaches the patient. "Okay, Joe," he says. "Time to die." He begins to clamp the various tubes coming from Joe's body to stop blood flow. The heart beat slows, then flatlines.
"All right, we've got forty-five minutes, people," Shepherd says, and a scrub nurse starts the clock.
Everyone is in a good mood by the time the surgery is done. It went well and was an overwhelming success. Joe is going to be all right. As they're scrubbing out, Shepherd waits for the rest of the team to leave before watching Meredith grab a bar of surgical soap and unwrap it, completely oblivious to his staring. He loves how clear and sharp her eyes are during surgery, and how gentle they can be out of it, the hint of strawberry hair by her ear, the delicate sweep of her jaw.
"You're pretty after surgery," he says, yawning.
She glances at him and scoffs. "You're not. Your eyes are bloodshot. You need sleep."
He nods. "Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. I've been off since yesterday, and now I'm gonna go home and sleep until someone hits their head on something."
Meredith dries her hands and throws the paper towels away. "You know, I'm off, too. And my roommates aren't off, which means my house is empty. And my house is a whole lot closer to the hospital than your trailer."
"Dr. Grey, is this an invitation?" he asks in a whisper.
She smiles tiredly. "I think it's an offer of convenience more than anything."
The drive home is bright, with the morning sun hitting every storefront and windshield and bouncing back to their eyes. Derek tries to cover his and look at her CD collection at the same time while Meredith focuses on driving.
"Find anything you like?" she asks. "I'm sure there are some very embarrassing college purchases in there somewhere."
He holds one up to squint at. "Bob Dylan. Approve. Radiohead…eh. Fiona Apple, unsurprising." He digs back to the end of the row. "Here's something. 'Our Mix Tape' with a heart drawn on it?"
Meredith laughs. "Oh, that's from Emily, a girl I lived with in med school. A bunch of us rented this horrible apartment and threw stupid parties where we played the same songs every week. I think we were too tired to care."
Derek moved to put it in.
"Oh, don't put it on. We're almost to the house and plus, I don't need to be reminded of those dark years."
"Please," Derek says.
"No!" Meredith insists. "Besides, look, here we are." She pulls into the driveway and puts the Jeep in park. She leads him inside, both of them sleepy. "I can't promise how safe it is in here."
He looks at her worriedly. "Safe?"
She shrugs. "Izzie's trying to make it all homey but George did break a lamp in the living room last week and we can't find the vacuum cleaner."
"What are all the boxes?" Derek asks, suddenly more awake, peeking in one of them. Izzie had tried to stack them neatly at one corner of the living room, but that stack had soon morphed into a makeshift table, and the boxes lining the staircase were just…there.
She shrugs again, yawning. "Just my mom's old stuff. Come on." She holds out her hand, and he takes it. The stairs creak as they walk up, and she kicks aside a pile of dirty or clean laundry by the top of the staircase.
"It's like a frat house, but with nice furniture," Derek observes.
"I'm taking that as a compliment," Meredith mumbles, struggling to take her shoes off and stumbling into her room. "In here," she says, and he follows, watching as she shrugs out of her jacket and begins to take off her jeans.
"Meredith," he begins, "I'm really-" but he doesn't finish his sentence as she pulls on sweatpants and throws her bra and long-sleeved shirt to one side of the room. She goes to the bed, half dressed, and picks up a ratty Dartmouth shirt, pulling it over her head and shaking her hair free from the neckline.
"There's no way you're getting into my pants until we've both slept for at least four hours," she croaks from the right side of the bed, already burrowing into the covers.
"Thank God," he exhales in relief, getting undressed and crawling into bed beside her.
Hours later in the quiet afternoon she rolls over to find him already waking up, she's missed the smell of a man in her own bed. She notices the shadow that's beginning to cover his cheeks and jaw but says nothing, telling him with her fingertips across his face how she feels, then leans up to kiss him, laying her smooth cheek against his rough one. He'd slept without a shirt, and she moves to run her palm across his chest, kissing his ear, his throat.
The arm around her reaches for the hem of her shirt and tugs at it, and Meredith happily obliges, sitting up to pull it off and watching his eyes when they fall on her chest, his expression better than any mirror. They still haven't said anything, and she doesn't want to break the silence so she shucks her sweats and underwear and climbs on top of him, grateful for his grounding hands on her, the heat of his palms. She leans down and he tilts his face up to her as if he were trying to kiss the sky, her hair falling like a gleaming tent around their faces.
How different it was to be with him. With other men she'd always been the moon and them the sun: they could give her their warmth or withhold it, pursue her or forget her. Derek sits up as they kiss as if she was the source of light. Strange —she doesn't feel the impulse to show off for him. Ellis always scolded her for her tendency to let emotions cross her face. "One attracts others with mystery," she said, "not by turning one's pockets inside out." Perhaps that's why Meredith tries to let her eyes be the pools her feelings swim in. Derek treats her as if she were as mysterious as a hidden spring. She loves seeing herself through his eyes. Everything around them seems to shimmer in the dream light. She feels drunk on it.
"I'm dizzy," she whispers. He holds her head still and kisses her swollen lips.
This time it's slow, maybe the afternoon has something to do with it -its apparent tranquility, their solitude in the large house, the absence of sound except their breath echoing each other, his groans, her gasps with a note of music behind them. Oh, the bliss of that hour. They are naked with their feelings, stopping and starting again, then laying wearily in each other's arms as the light in the room fades.
In another life this would be the time she'd sit on the windowsill and smoke a cigarette like the girl in a film noir, blow rings into the six PM deep winter. Instead she leaves him half-sleeping and showers, letting the warm water run over her eyelids. Derek joins her after a moment and it's all business, no soap games, her shift begins in one hour and her roommates are finishing theirs. He dresses quickly and glances in the mirror, taller than her while she brushes her teeth. He frowns at his five o'clock shadow.
"I think it's sexy," she says, her voice low and scratchy.
"I think you're sexy," he says, and she rolls her eyes, brushing through her wet hair.
"I think we need to get out of here before George and Izzie's shifts end so I can drop you off and they can take the car."
He waits while she dries her hair and gets dressed in the same jeans and a different color shirt, then is rushed out by her into the Jeep. They drive again in silence, less tired but more relaxed. Meredith looks in her rearview mirror and Derek steals a glance at her, then looks out his own window.
"So, we talked about making rules."
She looks at him carefully. "You talked about making rules."
He smiles. "What sort of rules?"
She shrugs. "Rules. I don't know. You mentioned rules, now come up with some examples."
"How about calling you my girlfriend?"
She looks at him again. "Would that make you my boyfriend?"
He nods. "If it's in the rules."
She snorts. "So, no one can know we're together, and yet I'm your girlfriend."
He nods again. "In principle, yes."
"Rule number one: I'm your girlfriend but will not be referred to as such in front of any coworkers or in the workplace in general?"
"Agreed. Rule two: see rule one, replace 'girlfriend' with 'boyfriend'?"
She nods. "Okay. Rule number three: no sex eyes at work?"
He shakes his head. "Can't agree. Sex eyes are my specialty. I give good sex eyes."
She clicks her tongue. "Rule number three: no special treatment."
He shrugs. "No special treatment, agreed." A pause. "You once told me you run. You run away when things get complicated. Rule number four: no running."
Meredith puts on the turn signal and its ticks seem loud. "No running," she agrees gently.
He smiles contentedly. "There you go. Rules. That wasn't hard."
Meredith drives a bit, finds her old parking spot, and parks the car. "No, not hard."