Title: Keeping The Faith
Author: Sara and Lizzie
Rating: T for language, and sex
Disclaimer: Sigh. We own our personal anatomies. That's all.
Summary: After the prom, Meredith runs outside, and promptly gets kidnapped by someone with a grudge on Dr. Shepherd. When she is recovered, much chaos ensues as Addison finds out all that's been going on behind her back.
So this is finally updated. And it's angsty. Basically, Meredith and Derek are going through something bigger than they can comprehend. They've just been through hell, and the only way they can heal themselves is with each other, but that's hurting them too. And Derek really means it when he says he loves her, but he just cant bring himself to be the guy who leaves his wife for his mistress. So it's angsty.
'Forever and a day' is new. Look for more updates. As always, REVIEW.
"I'm willing to break myself
to shake this hell from everything I touch,
I'm willing to bleed for days, my reds and greys,
so you don't hurt so much."
-Something Corporate
"You're here." Meredith said, sounding dazed and stupid as she watched Derek ambled up and sink down next to her on the porch.
"I'm sorry." He said, his blue eyes blazing.. "I had this dream, and I needed to see you…." He trailed off slowly, and reached down. He took her small hand in his, and locked their fingers.
"What are we doing?" she asked him. "We're out of control, Derek." He stroked her hand with his thumb and looked at her.
"I need to know how to leave her." He said. "And God, I wish I could figure it out."
"Don't know how to, or don't want to?" she asked, her voice meek, and quiet.
"Meredith, I love you. I love you in a way that just takes over me. I just don't know how to obliterate eleven years."
She nodded, and he pulled her close to him, and kissed her softly. He kissed her down into a horizontal position, and pulled at the ties on the scrubs she still wore.
A million things raced through her mind. It was so wrong. He was married, she was still dating Finn, they were on her porch. But she didn't care. None of it matter when she could feel him inside of her. And she could. Literally and figuratively.
There was desperation in the way they held each other there, on her porch. They clung to each other hard, so hard she didn't know where she stopped and he started. It was still pitch black outside, and she could see stars.
She hated that these perfect moments were tainted by how wrong it was, and how cheap she felt. She looked up into his eyes. "Tell me you need me." She whispered. He told her. It wasn't enough.
"Tell me you love me." She gasped. He looked right into her eyes, and it was almost too much for her.
"I love you." He said. She raised her mouth to his and kissed him, and closed her eyes to fight the tears she felt coming. She knew that he meant it, and that was damning, no matter how glad she was that it was true.
They sat on her porch for a long time after it was over, as the first rays of sun started to peek over the Space Needle. After what could have been a few hours or no time at all, he checked his watch.
"Your shift?"
"Six."
He smiled. "Come on. Breakfast." She shrugged, and followed him to his car without arguing.
He eyed her over plates of French toast, smiling tentatively at her, working up the courage to say things.
"What?" she asked, taking a sip of coffee and cutting French toast.
"This is all so…intense." He said.
Meredith nodded. "I'm still waiting for you." She said, sensing he wanted confirmation.
He nodded back at her, and they finished eating in silence. Meredith felt like the walls were closing in on her. Sex at the prom, that was a mistake, a cross roads. It should have been the turning point or the end, and it was neither.
This was no longer just a mistake, it was an affair. They were sneaking around, they were having illicit sex. But it was so much more than that. They were saying things. He told her he loved her, for Christ's sakes. They were confessing things to each other.
It was deadly. Sitting across from Derek Shepherd, eating French toast and drinking coffee? She felt more comfortable, more perfect than she did anywhere else. But it was deadly. He said he was going to leave her. But what if he didn't?
She'd be her mother. And that would kill her.
"Seriously?" Izzie asked. "You came to work with him? Isn't that a little bit risky, Mer? I mean, with the wife and all?"
Meredith shrugged and picked at her salad. "I don't know, Iz."
Cristina took a bite out of her sandwich and grabbed a chip off George's plate. "It sounds like he wants to get caught. It'd be an easy out. Getting caught is a forced confession. Hell of a lot easier than owning up to being a McBastard."
George nodded empathetically, shooting pitying glances at Meredith. "I'm sure he's going to leave her. Really. He wouldn't….not again. It's going to be fine."
He shook his head with conviction, like he had just solved the problems in the Gaza Strip, and smiled reassuringly at Meredith. She smiled weakly back and looked around the table. They was all giving her that look. Even Alex, who had been silent, was giving her that look.
That pitying look. Poor, dirty mistress Meredith is going to get screwed all over again. She didn't want to see that look. She got up and walked away, leaving her uneaten lunch and her lab coat sitting at the table.
She strode through the hospital, looking for some quiet place to be alone for just a little while. Some place where she could breathe, for just a moment. On call rooms were out, she had slept with Derek in most of them. She couldn't face an exam room, or a lounge, or even the bridge, despite how much she loved the windows.
She was striding and looking down, watching her feet move methodically. "Whoa." Came a sickeningly familiar voice. Meredith's head snapped up and she instinctively tucked a few strands of hair behind her ears.
"Dr. Shepherd." She said.
"I didn't see your car here, Dr. Grey." Addison said, smiling. "I thought you wimped out on your duties today."
Meredith shook her head. "No, I uh, I like them. The duties. I came to work with…" Her pager beeped, interrupting the stunted, awkward conversation before it could go any further. Meredith checked it, and it said nothing except for 'roof'.
She waved in the air awkwardly and smiled at the wife of the man who said he loved her. "Duty calls." She mumbled, heading quickly in the opposite direction.
When she burst onto the roof, there was no chopper with a trauma patient or an organ. There was just a tall man with thick dark hair standing, looking out over the city. She made her way over to him, and stood next to him wordlessly.
"I'm sorry." He said. "That it's taking so long."
"It's okay." She said, even though it wasn't. "She was your family for eleven years. I'm giving you a moment."
He shook his head. "It's not that Meredith, it's just…"
"That."
He shook his head adamantly. "It's not. I can't explain it, I don't know how. The words, they get…"
"I know."
"You're still waiting?"
She sighed heavily, and slipped her hand into his, letting the wind whip through her hair. "I'm still waiting."
The day flew by after that. She scrubbed in on a surgery with Bailey, did the post op notes and what felt like a thousand sutures, and before she knew it, her shift was over. She trudged into the locker room, and her fellow interns stopped talking the minute they saw her come through the door.
She didn't say anything. She would talk about herself too, if she were one of them. "We're going to Joe's." George said. "You'll need a ride?"
She shook her head. "I'll walk over. I need to think or something."
She watched them leave, changed slowly, and walked over. Slowly. She didn't know why she was dragging. But she dragged anyway. She dragged into Derek outside the bar. He pulled her over to the side of the building and she leaned against the wall.
"You look catatonic." He said simply.
She shrugged. "I feel like I'm watching this happen to someone else."
Finn Dandridge strolled up to the Emerald City Bar. It was a hospital hang out, but he went anyway. His conversations with Meredith over the past week had been brief, and completely unrevealing.
Something happened with Derek. That much he could sense. But she wasn't saying a word. She wasn't talking about the abduction either, and he needed her to let him in if they were going to have a chance.
Somewhere in his heart of hearts he knew there was no chance. She was destroying them, probably on purpose, and in his heart of hearts he knew why. But he ignored it all. He sauntered up to the entrance, but got distracted by voices as he stretched out his hand to pull the door open.
Something made him walk around the building and focus on the couple against the wall on the other side. They were kissing, deeply, like it was the only thing they could possibly do. The woman broke away.
"Derek, we shouldn't." she said. "I don't want her to find out by catching us in the act."
"Do you have to bring Addison into this?" He asked, leaning down to kiss her again. Finn felt like someone punched him in the stomach. Meredith. Derek.
Meredith looked like she was going to pull away, but instead, she gave into it. She put her hands on his cheeks and broke away. "Derek, how much longer?" she asked. It was quiet, and Finn had to strain to hear it.
"I'm doing the best I can." He heard the doctor say in a strained voice. "I love you Meredith. You know that. It's just so complicated."
Finn walked back to the entrance and entered the bar. He didn't need to hear her say it back.
When Addison clicked into Joe's several minutes later, Derek was seated at a table by himself, a large glass of amber liquid between his hands. She frowned at the miserable look on her husband's face and approached the table hesitantly.
"That's a lot of scotch." She said lightly.
"I'll need it." Derek said, downing the remaining contents of the glass in a single gulp. Addison sat down, her concern face on, and Derek stood up, unable to stomach it.
"You want a drink?" he asked.
She smiled. "Ask Joe to make me a cosmo." When he set it down in front of her, she didn't drink immediately like he did.
"Bad day?" she asked.
"Long day." He answered.
"You left this morning." She said lightly.
He nodded. "Lots of paper work. Chief needed a consult. There was a lot going on."
She smiled. "You should get some rest, Derek." She advised. She would have said more, but the sound of flesh slapping wood distracted her. Her perfectly plucked left eyebrow arched over her perfectly made up eye.
"He looks angry." She said. Derek turned around to see who she was talking about.
Finn.
"What the hell is this, Meredith?" Finn hissed from his seat at the bar. "Tell the truth."
She looked down at the glass in front of her, and couldn't even bring herself to drink it. She met her boyfriend's eyes and looked at him for a long time without saying anything. She took a deep breath.
"Taylor, the man that…" she nodded over that part. "He had me on his boat in the harbor. Derek was the one who came and got me out of it." She said, choosing her words carefully. "Ever since then, things have been complicated between us."
"And complicated means making out against the wall of a bar?"
"You saw that." She said. It wasn't a question, merely an ode of defeat.
"He's a married man!" Finn hissed angrily, trying to stay quiet.
"I've been sleeping with him." Meredith said before she could stop herself. "He says he loves me. He says he's going to leave her." Even to her own ears, her voice sounded hollow and numb.
Finn slapped his hand on the bar. "The hospital prom. You did sleep with him."
"I'm so sorry, Finn."
He shook his head and threw a twenty onto the bar. "No. You made your own bed. You lie in it." He said, stalking away. Meredith glanced behind her, to where Addison was placing a perfectly manicured hand on Derek's arm.
She picked up the shot glass and tipped it back, emptying the entire contents down her throat. Right. She had almost forgotten. Blissful numbness was only a bottle away.