All Along The Watchtower – Part 20.1 (Loud and clear, pulls you near)
Author's Notes: I'm behind on my feedback replies. Thank you, as always, betas and feedbackers :) You guys make my world go 'round! This chapterlet is one of several (maybe 7, depending on my muse) that will compose chapter 20. By popular demand, I'm releasing this chapter in shorter pieces as I write it. I hope to have the next piece of the whole done by next week, but we'll see how that goes. Since I don't have a convenient separation like I did with Chapter 18 (ie, Day 0, 1, 2, etc), I've named each section by pulling from lyrics of a song called Neon Lights, by Natasha Bedingfield. I hope you all enjoy this! There is a bit of angst in this first part, but overall, it's been a pleasure to write, and a nice change of pace from recent chapters (read: it's got lots of fluffy goop, too).
"Punch buggy yellow, no return!" Meredith blurted, and she jabbed Derek in the arm. She zipped past the cheerful yellow Volkswagen plodding along in the slow lane and spread the distance between them.
Silence spread in the car cabin between them for one second, two, and she could have kicked herself. What better way to startle a man who was easily startled than to yell in a cramped space and then hit him? Derek had about zero tolerance for loud noises, sudden movements, or any combination of the two, which was something she found perilously easy to forget after having developed years worth of habits around him. Except he didn't flinch this time. She'd gotten used to watching him with a lump in her throat as he resettled his jumbled, tattered nerves, and she didn't see that behavior, now, out of the corner of her eye.
Torn from his commune with the dreary road ahead, he rubbed his arm and turned to face her. "Hey," he said, the word stretched out by bewildered indignation. He frowned, and he looked across the parking brake at her as though she'd grown another head, or maybe two heads. Or maybe some wings and a tail. She snickered. She hadn't socked him that hard.
"Have you never played that game before?" she said as her eyebrows tipped upward.
Trepidation overcame her playful grin when he didn't answer right away. He had four sisters, and he'd gone to the beach every summer with them. He'd said so. How could he have four sisters and not know the punch buggy game? Even she'd picked it up, and she'd had no one. She'd learned it on a school field trip to the zoo, of all places.
"I've... played it," he said. "Just not..." His eyes trained on the yellow Beetle in the rear view mirror that was quickly becoming a speck on the horizon. "You cheated."
"What? I did not cheat," she said. "There was a yellow one, and we just passed it."
He shook his head. "It was a new one," he said. "You can't count the new ones."
"Why not?"
"Because you can't!" he insisted. "Those are the rules."
"Well, if we only count old ones, we'll never see another one," she said. "Weren't they discontinued over thirty years ago? You weren't even a teenager yet when that happened!"
He scoffed, though his lip twitched with the hint of a smile as he stared at her. "Are you calling me old?" he said in a rare bit of self-deprecation.
He had a decade on her. The age difference wasn't something they discussed very often because, really, to her, it didn't feel like any sort of issue. She loved him. And he knew that.
"No," Meredith said evenly, "I'm merely saying that cars aren't typically on the road for... gee... decades. They're not like people."
He shook his head. "Such a pessimist."
"Well, have you seen one recently?" she said.
He shrugged. "I can't say I was paying attention," he said. "I haven't exactly played this game in a while."
She sighed dramatically as she fell into the familiar, comfortable role of teasing him. Playing. "So, you're one of those people who has no fun," she said.
His eyebrows raised. "Excuse me?"
"No fun on road trips," she said. "I bet you don't even allow bonus points for Karmann Ghias."
"Bonus points?"
She nodded. "Those are worth ten because they're rare."
"I think you're making this up as you go along," he said. "Karmann Ghias aren't Beetles. Are we going to count Rabbits, and Golfs, and all of those?"
"No," she said, heaving another sigh. "Two points for old ones, including Karmann Ghias, and one point for new ones. No Rabbits or Golfs. It's 1-0 so far, my favor."
"Fine," he said, surrendering. "But that won't last."
She flashed a competitive grin at him. Her fingers squeaked as she wrung the leather steering wheel. She thought she'd found something to pass the time. Something fun. Except the engaged, lit expression on his face evaporated as the odometer crept up another mile, two, three.
He propped his head on the side window of the Cayenne and resumed the intense brooding she'd just tried to crack open like a nut. She zoomed along in the left lane a good nineteen miles over the speed limit. The road wasn't crowded. They'd beat rush hour out of the city. No other Volkswagens came along. Not even one that wouldn't count, like a Jetta or something.
They'd been on the road for about forty minutes. They'd left from the hospital as soon as he'd finished with Dr. Wyatt. They'd passed the turnoff for Sea-Tac as they'd looped around. If they'd been able to travel in a straight line, Lake Cushman was, really, only about fifty or sixty miles away. But Seattle, surrounded on three sides by water, posed a rather annoying obstacle. There were no roads as the crow flew between them and the lake. They had to drive around all the water, first down the 5, and then back up on the 101 in what looked like a big horseshoe when the route was drawn on a map. The trip burgeoned to over two hours and thirty minutes, that way. About 110 miles.
The ferryboat to Bremerton wouldn't have chopped off that much time, if any, given the wait times and the length of the ferryboat ride, so they'd opted for simplicity. Well, she'd opted. She should have known something was wrong the second he hadn't fought tooth and nail to take the ferryboat. He'd just nodded and shrugged at her logic, and let her do her thing. You're the native, he'd said. With her busy schedule, she hadn't seen him much that week, didn't have much of a barometer on his mood. She hadn't registered his response as a clear funk until later.
The day had been gloomy, at best, thus far. Overcast without a hint of sun, but not raining or drizzling or otherwise precipitating. Deep, verdant greens spread to the left of the roadway across rolling hills, and then in the distance stopped short at the snow-capped, craggy mountains, Mount Rainier among them. To the right, the plant life spilled away gradually into water. The vast but somewhat random elevation differences in just a few short miles always made her breath catch. Derek's, too.
He'd commented any number of times since he'd moved to Seattle on how much he loved the way civilization seemed to stack on itself like a haphazard pile of building blocks, instead of like Manhattan, which was flat, flat, and more endless flat, the only things towering being buildings. Anywhere in Seattle or the surrounding suburbs that you could stand, there was pretty much always more up, more down, and lots between. Two-dimensional skyline pictures didn't do the city justice in that way.
But Derek had been quiet for the forty minutes they'd been on the road. He didn't comment on the mountains. He stared at the road, not as somebody sightseeing, gaze flicking to passing sights, but as somebody engrossed in his own head. The horizon pinned his gaze, and it didn't shift. He barely even blinked.
Cool air whooshed from the vents. Something in the trunk wobbled back and forth. Maybe, his fishing poles or something. He'd packed a lot of fishing junk. The radio whispered a hint of... Layla, the Eric Clapton version, barely audible above the hum of the engine and the sound of the wind buffeting the car. She pulled into the slow lane to let somebody crazier than her pass in the fast lane, and she sighed. This was their vacation. Their first vacation. Nothing had even happened yet. Why was he broody-faced already?
"Derek, are you okay?" she said.
His gaze didn't shift. "I'm fine."
"Because you seem fine in the sense that you're totally not," she countered.
"Hmm?" he said without moving.
"You. Monosyllabic and glower-y," she said. "We don't have to play the game if you don't want to."
He tore his gaze from the road, and for a moment, she saw confusion slide across his face. Like he had no idea what game she meant. Her body tensed. She couldn't help it. Dissociation, she heard Dr. Wyatt say. Was he dissociating? She hadn't seen that sort of behavior since... since he'd gotten clean, not that she'd been around him all that much since then. But... Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
"It's not the game," he said at last.
Not, What game? Or, We were playing a game? She relaxed a little. "Do you miss the dog already?" she said, grasping at straws. Derek and Samantha were practically attached at the hip. Wherever he went in the house, the dog was there. They'd left Samantha in Lexie's care. Lexie had been more than thrilled about it.
Don't worry, Lexie had said. I'll be sure to walk her four times a day, and I'll play with her as much as she wants, and-
Well, don't spoil her or anything, Meredith had replied, a wry grin on her face. She'll swindle you for all the dog treats.
Of course, not, Lexie had replied, her skin blooming red, and then she'd dissolved into smiles and sighs. You're going to a cabin on the lake alone together. For a wholeweekend. That's so romantic!
"I don't miss the dog," Derek said, interrupting Meredith's thoughts. "I..." His voice trailed away, and his gaze shifted to the road again.
"What?" she said.
For moments, he didn't speak. She tried to keep her eyes on the road, which was frustrating, because she wanted desperately to watch him, instead, to try and interpret the minutiae that might give her a clue about his mood. "I don't like this," he said at last.
She swallowed. Dread washed over her. "The trip?"
He shook his head. "The Paxil."
"Oh," she said. "What don't you like about it?"
He shrugged, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I feel really lethargic."
Relief replaced dread. That would explain the fact that he hadn't been his usual chatty self. It would explain, really... everything. "You should give it more of a chance," she said. "The somnolence is supposed to go away after you get used to it. A few weeks."
"I know that," he snapped. Discordant energy clotted in the car. She bit her lip. He sighed. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice lower-pitched and tingeing on hopelessness. He took a deep breath and blew it out. "Sorry."
"It's okay."
"Stop saying it's okay for me to yell at you," he said. "It's not okay, Meredith."
"Yeah, well, me yelling back at you whenever you make a cross remark or whatever isn't going to help, either," she said. "We both know why it's happening. You're getting help. I'd rather just let it go."
He ran his fingers through his hair once. Twice. He sighed again, more agitated. "I'm already ruining this."
"Already?" she said, raising her eyebrows. Her heart clenched. "What do you mean already? You were planning on ruining something?"
Silence. He opened his mouth and closed it. The car rumbled as she zipped along in the gloom. At last, he said, "Planning implies intentional sabotage."
"Fine," she said. "What are you expecting to ruin?"
More silence. He shifted to fiddle with the air vents and then the door lock before answering, "I'm worried about the side-effects." He stared at the road. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. His skin was pale, and the cloudy gray outside darkened the circles under his eyes and turned his irises a stormy, dark blue.
"It's okay if you sleep more," she assured him. She'd expected it, even. She knew how SSRIs worked. "That won't ruin anything. I brought a couple books."
"I don't mean the sleep, damn it," he said. "I mean... the other stuff."
"Oh," she said with a sinking feeling. Other stuff. She ran through all the side-effects in her head, trying to pinpoint potential 'other stuff'. There was only one side-effect on the list that would get Derek this bent out of shape so soon, and it would explain the moping.
"I feel like I'm trapped," he confessed.
She blinked. "Why?"
"Being with you is..." He ran his left thumb along a crease in his frayed jeans. "It's the only thing I enjoy anymore. If that goes away, I don't know what I'll do, but..." He blinked as he watched the road. Blinked, blinked. A glassy, watery coating filled his eyes, but they didn't spill over. His fingers scrunched, pulling up tents of loose denim in his hands. "But I really want to feel better," he said, his voice soft and cracking, as though he were ashamed to admit it, but he'd been broken past his capability to tolerate.
A lump formed in her throat. He had been. Broken. He was frightened, and seeing things that weren't there, and nervous, and stressed, and... That's what the drugs had been for. The Percocet. To fix something he couldn't tolerate by himself. At least, she understood it, now. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to feel better," she said, her voice soft. "I want you to feel better, too. I want that a lot."
He swallowed. "But what if we can't have sex anymore?" he said, his voice thick with emotion.
She wanted to stop the car. She wanted to pull over, stop the car, pull him into her arms, and just... sit. Breathe. Remember they were alive. She didn't mind if they couldn't have sex for a while if it meant he would be okay. Surely, he knew that. Didn't he? He must. The urge to pull over became an overwhelming, consuming need. As an outlet, she settled for grabbing his hand. She gave it a squeeze that he reciprocated, though not as strongly.
"Do you think... anything has changed yet?" she said.
He shrugged. "I don't know. We haven't really had much time together to find out since I started taking it."
Which was true. She'd worked 6:00 AM on Monday to 6:00 PM on Tuesday, 6:00 AM on Wednesday to 6:00 PM on Thursday, and then 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM that Friday. She'd seen him awake all of three hours since the Sunday before. She'd arrived home on both Tuesday and Thursday evenings exhausted, and she'd been in bed by 7:30 PM, sound asleep. He'd cooked her dinner both evenings. Chicken mixed with vegetables the first night, and some sort of casserole thing the second night. She could recall the warm smells of roast chicken and fresh baked bread as she'd walked through the door both times. She'd been a bad, horrible, inattentive wife, and she hadn't really chatted with him about anything, let alone whether the Paxil was working its magic yet, but she figured she had a good excuse, what with cramming her schedule full so that they could fit in this weekend. She had thanked him for dinner both times, at least.
"Well, do you want sex?" she said.
He pulled his hand free from hers, wiped his face, and stared at her. "Like, now?"
"Yes, right now," she said. "Can you imagine yourself having sex with me?"
"In the car?" he said, his voice tinged with a hint of uneasiness, as though he thought she expected him to get ready and take her right then.
She shrugged. "Anywhere."
"I can always imagine sex with you," he said.
"But do you want it?" she prodded. "Like want, want it? Or is it more of a insert tab A into slot B and win sort of imagining?"
"I'm..." He swallowed. He stared at her for an interminable moment, like he was trying to kick start behavior he knew should be there, but wasn't. She felt it. Him staring. Intent. Intense. To the point that, even though she watched the road and could only glance at him in small, too-short intervals, she felt her skin heat with blush, and her lower body tightened as she imagined what he might do to her after staring at her like that. He'd push her against the side of the car with a thump. He'd be hard, and ready, and he'd devour her. She blinked to push the enticing image away and glanced at him, expecting him to have a similar fantasy written all over his face. But he didn't smirk, and he didn't have that cheerful peeling-your-clothes-off-with-my-eyes countenance that she'd grown to love. He looked... disturbed. And then his shoulders crumpled. "No, I don't want, want it," he said, "But maybe I'm thinking too hard. I mean..."
"Derek," she said. She reached across the car and touched his arm. "It's okay."
"It's not okay," he said as he shrugged her off. He shook his head. "It's not okay. I need to want sex."
Her heart clenched over the fact that he was so twisted up in knots about this. She switched gears when she saw she wasn't making any headway in improving his outlook. Maybe, there was more to this anxiety than lack of wanting. Maybe, he'd noticed something physical already.
"Have you had an erection since you started taking it?"
He blushed, and he looked at his knees. "Not this morning."
But he'd had nightmares last night. Not horrible ones, but... bad. He'd muttered in his sleep, and he'd tossed and turned. The sheets had stuck to his sweaty skin, and she'd had to fight him for them in a perpetual tug of war. He'd groggily told her he'd see her later and that he loved her as she'd slid out of bed that morning, which meant he'd been sort of awake already, if not fully aware. She doubted very much when he'd eventually crawled into the bathroom that morning that he'd just lapsed out of REM sleep, which was when nighttime erections typically occurred in men.
"How about earlier this week?" she prodded. "Anything?"
"I... Yes. One. But that was..." He ran his hands through his hair, agitated. "That was days ago."
"Have you... tried by yourself?" she said in what she hoped was a gentle tone.
The red on his face deepened into scarlet. "In the shower this morning." His look darkened. "Nothing happened."
"But weren't you already upset about this by then?" she said.
He didn't answer.
She imagined the stressful pressure that he put on himself alone might have been enough, emotionally, to make him choke. "Maybe, you just need some help getting into the mood. Kissing. Touching. Something slow and fun," she said. "It might be different when we're naked. Does it really matter if you're not ready to strip me every time you look at me, as long as we can get going when we're both ready?"
"But I always..." he stammered. "I mean..."
"Or, maybe, you're worrying yourself in freaking circles, and the Paxil has nothing to do with it."
He took a deep, shaky breath, and he laughed, but the laugh wasn't happy. "I know this is stupid," he said.
"It's not stupid."
"It's stupid," he said. "I worry about stupid things, and I can't make myself stop."
"We're on this trip to relax," she said.
"But you made it about a weekend of sex when I'm not even sure I-"
"When did I make it about a weekend of sex?" she said, interrupting him as a sinking feeling overwhelmed her. He did think she would be upset if they couldn't. She rewound frantically in her head, trying to think of when she might have said something to give him that impression, but she couldn't think of a single moment, or a single word.
"You said forty-eight hours. Uninterrupted." His temples danced as he clenched his jaw. "And I just started a huge daily dose of a medication known for quashing libido, and for causing erectile dysfunction and ejaculatory problems."
She frowned. "Did I ever use the word sex to describe this weekend?"
"No, but we did before when we talked about wine country," he said.
He sounded so lost. She reached across and rubbed his thigh in what she hoped would be interpreted as reassurance. She closed her eyes. Just for a moment before fixing her gaze back on the road.
You want to go away with me this weekend? he'd said.
Why would I want to go away with you this weekend? she'd responded.
Because of this.
He'd kissed her. Again and again. He'd been the one to make it about sex. All sex. Nothing but. In order to lure her into saying yes, he'd done that, because that was all she'd permitted him to do with her, then. Have sex. Of course, he would have framed it that way.
But the sentiment had perpetuated when she'd brought it up again.
You almost died, and we've never even left Seattle together. We've never left, Derek. We haven't done anything, and we should.
For sex? he'd said.
She'd steered him away from the idea, sworn she'd be happy doing anything at all with him, but that made two times his knee jerk interpretation had been sex. Of course, he would have connected the dots the same way, this time, particularly when she'd regurgitated the same words. Again.
Forty-eight hours. Uninterrupted.
"Derek," she said. "When I said uninterrupted this time, I meant uninterrupted. As in, I get to be alone with you, my mostly healed husband, for forty-eight hours, and there will be no guns, no hospital crap, no roommates, and no near death whatevers."
He sighed, and he gave her a frustrated look. "That sounds like sex to me."
"Only because you're a freaking letch," she said with a snort. "I want to relax, and pick baby names, or go for a scenic hike, or... just do... whatever it is you do at a cabin. I'm all for sex, but we could do the freaking crossword puzzle all day – you could even cheat – and I'd be happy."
"Oh," he said.
"I'm happy, Derek," she assured him. "And I want you to be happy again, too. If that means no sex for a while, that means no sex for a while, and that's okay. I mean that. Do you realize we've never even done this before?"
"Done what?"
"Spent this much uninterrupted time together when neither of us has been sick or hurt?"
Silence stretched as he considered that. "I guess we haven't," he said.
"I don't think we've ever even been in a freaking car this long."
"We have, too," he said.
"When?"
"When you drove me home from the hospital, and we got stuck in traffic."
"That doesn't count," she said.
He frowned. "Why not?"
"Because I was in the car," she said. She rubbed his arm. The soft hairs dusting his forearm followed her thumb, and she grinned. "You were on the planet Neptune."
He scoffed. "I remember most... some... bits of it."
"Name one thing."
"I'm your..." He paused, and he bit his lip in a ponderous expression that seemed so anti-Derek it made her want to chuckle. He gazed at her, and he offered a hesitant, "Um, I'm your arm?" as though he didn't quite believe what he was saying, and he thought, maybe, he really had been on Neptune.
She's your person. I'm your arm. Got it, he'd said with a laugh.
"Okay, fine," she huffed. "Fine, we've been in a car this long."
He smirked, and he crossed his arms in a haughty gesture. "Thank you," he said with a small nod.
The taillights on the blue car several lengths in front of her bloomed red. She gasped as she saw telltale lights flashing on the side of the road by the shoulder, and she slammed on the brake. Derek stuck his hand out against the dash to catch himself as she shaved 20 MPH off the speedometer in a matter of seconds.
She glanced at the parked police car as they passed. The policeman had already pulled somebody over. He sat in the front seat of his car, scribbling notes on a pad of paper while a depressed-looking blond woman sat in a pickup truck in front of him, her forehead on the steering wheel and her shoulders slumped. As soon as the flashing lights sprawled in her rear view mirror, Meredith jammed her foot on the accelerator and resumed her normal cruising speed.
"You know," Derek said as he resettled in his seat, "If you can see them, it's too late, anyway. If you're going to speed, you should commit."
"Shut up," Meredith told him. "I will rubberneck when I feel like it."
He snorted. "Yes, dear."
Another mile passed. He seemed lighter, now, that she'd told him under no uncertain terms what she expected from this weekend, as though the pressure had been lifted, which frustrated her. There never had been any pressure. He'd made up all the freaking pressure by himself. She wished he would have said something, instead of forcing her to pry it out of him. He did that. Assumed and brooded and internalized and-
"Hold up your pinky," she said in a flash of inspiration.
"What?"
They'd had a few mishaps on both sides over the years. Failures on her part. Failures on his. She knew he was capable of treating an event with good humor when he was in the right mindset for it. She knew it. If she could just... nip the bad thoughts in the bud?
"Just do it," she commanded.
"Okay..." he said, his voice wary. He showed her his pale hand. He had long, slender fingers, perfect for surgery and other precise movements. His pinky stuck up from his loosely formed fist, and she pictured him with a hoity-toity, British accent. Meredith, he'd say. I'd like a spot of tea.
She fought back a chuckle at the imagery as she curled her pinky around his. He dwarfed her. "We'll try sex if you want to try it, but I want you to pinky swear that if something happens, and we can't, you will not get upset about it," she said. She glanced at him. He looked... bemused. "Okay?" She turned her gaze back to the road. "I don't want my forty-eight hours to involve you being all dark and broody-faced about a problem that isn't even a problem. This is our weekend, and it should be fun."
He made a soft noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, buried under pounds of restraint and the rumble of the car's engine. "Dark and... broody faced?" he said.
She ignored his maybe-mirth. "Pinky swear, or even if you want to, and even if I want to, nothing happens this weekend," she said. "We'll be celibate. Like monks or... other celibate people."
"Celibate? Monks?"
She nodded. "Yes. You won't get any if you don't swear."
His pinky shifted. She tightened her grip, not that she could tighten her pinky all that much, but... it was the thought that counted. "That's... cruel and unusual," he said. "Our first weekend alone together, ever, and you want to make it celibate?"
"I mean it," she said. "I'd rather chop out performance anxiety altogether than deal with it in flagrante."
He chuckled. Outright. "And you're very bossy."
"Yes. Yes, I am," she said. "I keep you in line, remember? And you haven't sworn yet."
"I swear."
"Pinky swear!"
He sighed. His pinky squeezed hers. "I pinky swear, Meredith."
She raised her eyebrows. "Swear what?" she prompted.
"That I won't get upset if I can't-"
"If we can't," she corrected.
He rolled his eyes. "If we can't have sex."
She nodded. "Okay, then," she said, satisfied.
"Are you going to ask me to put it all together, now?" he said.
"Shut up," she said.
He sighed. "Yes, dear," he said, his mock-weariness making her feel gooey and warm inside, though she didn't reply.
She couldn't stop herself from smiling as the normality of it, of Derek being Derek, consumed her. Every so often, he would remind her that the man she'd fallen in love with was still there, trapped, but there, waiting to break out from under if he could just get some relief, and she cherished those moments. He was playing, which was what she'd been trying to instill since that first yellow punch buggy. He was playing, and joking a little, even after a discussion about potential mechanical failures during sex, and... that was good. Right?
Yes, that was good. Weight lifted from her body as she pushed the car through the miles. They could do this. Have a vacation. A full forty-eight hours of no doom, gloom, or personal injury, even if things did go belly-up in the sex department.
Silence stretched. He shifted. "Can I have my pinky back, now?" he said, his voice soft.
"I guess so," she said with a smile. She relinquished her grip, and he pulled his hand away.
He sighed, and he leaned back in his seat. "Hmm," he said. "I don't think I've pinky sworn since I was..." His voice trailed away. He shook his head. "I don't even remember."
"Megan Swift," Meredith said. "Second grade."
He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. "Oh?"
She nodded. "Yep," she said. "I wanted to make sure she'd pay me back my lunch money."
"You pinky swore over lunch money?" he said.
"Yeah, I..." She searched her memories as she watched the road. "She needed to pay for..." She scrunched her nose. She remembered her friend. Brunette. Always wore her hair in a curly, twisty ponytail with a pink ribbon that spilled down her back. She'd been short for her age. A stick, like Meredith. She could feel the money exchanging hands, but the memory stopped there. "I don't remember. I do remember my mother wouldn't give me any extra ever, though, no matter what the reason, which is why I needed the pinky swear. My mother said I needed to learn to budget, and if I couldn't budget, I could starve."
"But... you were seven," he said. "Six?"
"I was eight, I think," Meredith said. That had been at the tail end of second grade. Her teacher had been Miss Finch, an elderly woman who'd never married and never seemed to leave the school.
Derek shook his head. He looked horrified. "That's..."
"How I grew up," Meredith said. She shrugged. "So?" She rubbed his arm. "Spill."
"Spill what?"
"Pinky swearing," she said. "When was your last?"
"I really don't remember," he replied.
She grinned. "Must not have been a worthy pinky swear, then. Pinky swears are supposed to be big things, you know."
"Really," Derek said, a playful look on his face. "And you're the expert?"
"Yep, I am," Meredith said. She splayed her palms and spread them midair for emphasis. "Big things."
He snapped his fingers. "That was it," he said.
"What was it?"
"Amelia," he said. "She made me pinky swear to help her with her science fair project that year. I thought it was stupid, but I humored her. I..." His mirth fell away like shattered glass. His expression flattened as he presumably dipped further into the memory.
"What is it?" she said.
"The year before, I blew her off," he said.
"Derek?" she prodded.
He shook his head, swallowed, and wiped his face with his hand. He took a deep breath. "Sorry, I..." he began, only to fade out again.
She touched his leg. "What, Derek?"
He stared out the window into the gray and rolling green beyond, expressionless. He blinked. "The year before. That was when Dad died," he said, flat again. Sapped of emotion. She'd seen him do it before. I was fifteen when my dad died, he'd said. I was there. Like he was reading a list. Like he needed to separate himself from the event in order to process it.
"I blew Amy off to help some girl I knew at school," he continued. "I got beat up for my trouble. Dad came home from the store to lecture me, and he made me go back with him afterward with Amelia to make up the time he'd lost by coming home. Two men were in the store arguing at the cash register with Peter when we got there."
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. This was the most he'd ever told her about it. Ever. She swallowed as her eyes watered. "Peter?" she said, trying to keep her voice even. She tried not to imagine his younger self walking into his father's store, one foot in front of the other. The little bell over the door would have rung, and he'd have smiled at this Peter person-
"Dad's clerk," Derek said. "He was young. In his early twenties. He died, too."
She squeezed Derek's shoulder.
"I'm... okay," he said. He shook his head as if to clear it. "I haven't thought about that in... a while."
"You don't look okay," she said, her voice soft. Or, he did look okay. If one were to call this strange emotionless demeanor okay, which it wasn't. It wasn't okay for a passionate person like Derek to be dead like this.
He frowned at her, swallowed. "I tried to stop the bleeding, but I couldn't. He showed me how, but I think it was just to distract me from realizing he was dying."
"Your dad?" she said. "Or Peter?"
"Dad," he said. "Peter was already dead."
She hadn't realized he'd seen two people murdered, not one, or that his dad had lingered long enough to speak to Derek at all, let alone to provide supervision over his own first aid. That seemed, in her mind, worse. Worse than if it had been quick, with no suffering. Sort of like she felt about her mother. Wasting away. Not knowing who she was half the time.
He held out his hands, the heel of his right palm pressed downward as if to show her how he'd tried to staunch the bleeding, and she watched his younger version in her head, holding closed a gaping, bloody wound. Where? If his dad had been speaking, but had still died in front of Derek before help had arrived despite pressure on the wound... she guessed the liver. Or bowel. Both were very ugly wounds. Wounds a fifteen-year-old should never see.
"The light in his eyes just... went out," Derek said, his face blank, but his words thickening with grief, "And then Amy was screaming, and screaming, and-"
She gave his shoulder a shake. "Derek," she said, a lasso back to the present. As vivid as her own imagining, his had to be worse. Visceral. He grunted as she shook him, and then he blinked. He looked at her.
"That's why I became a doctor, you know," he said baldly.
"Because of your dad?"
"He bled out right underneath me, and I didn't know how to fix it. I wanted to be able to fix it." He sighed. A dark expression overtook his face as the last of his enforced detachment faded from sight. "I wanted to save people."
"You do, Derek," she said. "You save lots of people."
He shook his head. "Not anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't save anyone, anymore," he said. "I just do budget work." He said the word budget as though it were synonymous with cancer or plague. He made a deep sound in his throat. An ugh. Sort of. He blinked, and his dour expression bled away. He gave her a guilty, soft smile, and the jagged pain in his eyes lessened. "Can we change topics?" he said, his voice thick with emotion. "This is not a relaxation subject for me."
"Sorry about the pinky swear," she said.
"You didn't know," he replied. "I didn't even know until I thought about it. It's okay."
She bit her lip as she watched the dreary road. The clouds far beyond had a thick, almost black quality to them, and the air between the clouds and the earth was misty, moving blue. Rain ahead. In a disorienting, shimmering wall. They were driving right into it. The radio station they'd been listening to started to hiss and crackle with static. They still had a few minutes before they drove into the cloudburst, though.
"I'm glad you're in my car," she blurted.
I'm glad you're in my bathtub, a ghost of her past echoed.
As soon as she'd said it, she blushed. He looked at her. "It's your car, now?" he said, confused.
"No, I mean..." She sighed. "I mean I know the road sucked, but... I'm glad it brought you here. To me. In the... In the car. Your car. Not my car."
That sounded even worse. She'd tried. She'd tried, damn it, and now her freaking face was on fire. He stared at her. She wrung the steering wheel with her fingers. "That was... like criminally corny," she said. Why did nobody ever shut her up? "Sorry."
He shifted in his seat. The leather squeaked. He pressed his shoulder into the back of the seat, and he faced her instead of the road. He grinned at her, and he reached across the parking brake to stroke her cheek. She smiled. "It wasn't, Meredith," he said, and he seemed... pleased. Pleased that she would say something like that, even if it was ascorny as a freaking bowl of popcorn. "I'm..." He swallowed "Likewise." He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She fought the urge to close her eyes and lean into the touch. She had to watch the road. Freaking... Watch. Watch, the road.
"I'm glad you're in my car," he said, his voice soft as he twisted her words back on her.
She felt his gaze on her. The air smelled wet and earthy with the coming rain, and she inhaled. Her nose crinkled. She didn't know when or how it happened, precisely, but one moment, she was fine, and the next, her stomach lurched.
"Oh," she said.
His eyebrows raised. "Oh?"
"Oh, I need to pull over," she said as her throat thickened with nausea.
"What?" he said. "Why?"
She didn't even try to explain as she yanked the steering wheel hard to the right, pulled into the slow lane, and then out of traffic. The wheels of the Cayenne had barely stopped moving as she clawed at her seatbelt, almost fell out of the car, scurried to the wet grass beside the road, and heaved until it felt like her stomach had popped loose from her innards. "Oh," she moaned. She held the back of her palm to her mouth as she leaned over in the grass. The smell of vomit made her heave again.
The sky overhead seemed almost black with oncoming rain. Not yet, but soon. Wind buffeted her small body. Goosebumps crinkled her skin as the chilly air gripped her. His car door opened slowly. She lost track of him after that while her gut quivered, and then his warm palm pressed against her back. He rubbed her in slow, comforting circles.
She wiped her lips and stumbled away from the chunky puddle in the grass she'd created. She curled into his arms as she swallowed away the remains of her nausea. She grimaced as she pressed her face against his soft, blue shirt. Ugh. Bile burned her throat. Now, she needed a freaking toothbrush. And some mints. At least her stomach felt good as new, now. Not even a flip or a flop of a flip-flop told her she'd just barfed. She didn't even know what had triggered that one, but whatever it had been, it was gone.
She'd puked. All freaking week. In the morning. In the afternoon. At night. There'd been no rhyme or reason to it, and definitely no schedule. Morning sickness was such a freaking misnomer. She wanted to hit whoever had come up with the term for misleading the masses. She wondered if the schedule thing had been a crazy fluke. A crazy fluke she wished she could return to, because that was so much better than this random upchuck of the day.
"That was not on schedule," he said softly.
"Thanks," she said between gasps as she recovered. "Thanks for observing that."
His embraced tightened. "I thought you only puked in the morning?"
"Apparently I puke whenever, now!" she said. "I don't know. I've been puking all week."
He kissed her forehead. "Give me the map."
"What? No."
"Give me the map, Mere," he said. "I'll drive."
"I thought you were sleepy."
"I'm not sleepy," he assured her.
"You said specifically that you were sleepy," she said as they shuffled back to the car. "You used the word lethargic."
He chuckled. "Well, I'm awake, now," he said. "There've been like a thousand conversation points since then. Plus, you just threw up."
"Well, I'm sorry my vomit ruined your would be nap," she snapped. She wiped her mouth again, trying not to grimace at the acrid taste lingering in her mouth.
"It's not. It didn't. I meant..." he stuttered, and then he relaxed as he found his words. "I mean you're pregnant. You threw up because you're pregnant with our child, and that's..."
She looked up at him and grasped the look on his face as he searched for a word. He had a wide-eyed look of awe to him. Like he'd forgotten something monumental, had just been reminded of it, and it... staggered him. Like the enormity of it was a hulking boulder he couldn't hope to wield in his hands. "Really neat?" she said with a smile, finishing his sentence for him when he didn't.
The wind buffeted them. She stood in the shelter of his taller figure. He stared down at her. His blue eyes were bright, and they twinkled. He kissed her on the forehead again. "Yeah," he said, his voice rough with emotion. But... good emotion.
She surrendered the driver's seat to him without further protest. He glanced at the map and at Richard's directions to see where they were going as he settled himself into the seat. He had to crank the seat back several inches and adjust the steering wheel. He looked at her with a cheerful shrug as if to say, What? You're very tiny. He turned the key in the ignition. The car rumbled to life. He stared in the side and rear view mirrors, back and forth, like a windshield wiper, decided it was safe, apparently, and the car kicked to life. Inertia pushed her back against the seat.
Within moments, he'd settled the car back into a steady pace, about ten miles per hour slower than her habitual speed, but that was okay. She leaned back in the seat and let herself relax. She'd been go, go, going all week, and now she wasn't going, and it felt... nice.
They hit the rain they'd been approaching within moments. A raindrop plinked on the roof of the car. Once, twice, and then the whole car sounded like it'd been swallowed by an ice shaker, forever doomed to make martinis or something. Derek flipped on the windshield wipers, but otherwise paid the storm no mind. It was Seattle. It freaking rained. All the damned time.
She watched his profile in the darkening cabin. He was driving. He hadn't done that in a long while. His attire was the epitome of vacation and relaxation. He wore stonewashed, thready jeans that had seen better days, old, beat up cross trainers, and a dark but threadbare navy shirt that brought out his eyes. He'd gotten his hair cut recently, but the length, she thought, was perfect. He had just a bit of wavy curl at the end, a hint of disarray that needed taming. He'd shaved that morning, so the skin on his face was mostly smooth. Almost perfect for kissing.
Static filled the cabin. He frowned at the radio dial and shifted to a new station.
"You're looking at me," he said.
She shrugged. "You're my husband, and you're sexy. I like looking."
"So, it's a good look," he said, "And not a Derek is a ticking time bomb and might freak out on our first vacation look."
She would have kissed him were it not for the recent vomit. She settled for stroking his shoulder. "Definitely a good look," she said. "No time bombs. Though, I was a little worried before we got the sex stuff worked out."
"I'm okay," he said, his voice soft. "Thank you for... Thanks."
She smiled. "I know." She squeezed his shoulder and settled back in her seat to look. His lip twitched with a pleased grin. "Our first vacation is going to rock, you know."
He glanced at her. His eyes glittered in the dim light. "Oh, will it?" he said.
She nodded. "I have it on good authority."
"Good," he said. "I could really use a rocking vacation right now."
"Well, you'll have one," she said. She grinned. "Guaranteed."
"Hmm. Will I catch fish?"
"Yep," she said. "Dozens."
"Will my wife join me in the boat?" he said. The hope in his voice made her smile.
"Well, she probably won't fish. But she might come along."
"Hmm," he said. He nodded, a pleased look on his face.
She wrinkled her nose. The radio station he'd flipped to was... not good. Some... country thing. He hated country. She despised country. He must have stopped when he'd hit identifiable noise instead of static. She jammed her thumb on the power button, and the weak strains of twanging guitars faded into the thunderous rain pounding on the roof.
"So, what do you think?" she said.
He glanced at her again. "About what?"
"Do I get credit for going camping with you on this rocking vacation?" she said.
He snickered. "Meredith, I love you. I do," he said. "But this is not camping."
She folded her arms over her chest. "It is, too," she said with a pout.
"It's not in a tent, and there's working plumbing."
"But there won't be any Internet," she countered.
"That's... sad," he decided. He shook his head as he mock-pondered her shame. "That's sad that you think camping is the mere absence of Internet."
"What? We turned our phones off. We didn't bring any laptops. Our beepers are at home in the bedroom. We're driving to the middle of nowhere-"
"Lake Cushman isn't the middle of nowhere," he interjected. "It's Lake Cushman."
"Thank you," she said. She kissed his temple, recent vomit be damned. "That's helpful information."
He didn't seem to mind. "Well, it's not nowhere," he said with a frown.
"It's way more nowhere than I'm used to," she said. "I grew up in Seattle and Boston, you know."
"Brooklyn and Manhattan. I win."
"You do not win just because you're from New York," she said.
"I do, too. It's New York. Manhattan counts quadruple."
She giggled. "But Karmaan Ghias don't count for ten?"
His fist jabbed her shoulder lightly, and she jumped at the unexpected contact. A little shriek fell from her lips. "Punch buggy red. No return," he said. He looked pointedly at her. "And, oh, look. It's an old one. That counts for two, so I'm ahead. 1-2, my favor." He grinned as he turned back to the road.
Her mouth tumbled open, and she gaped as she watched a rusted, tomato-colored Beetle putter behind them in the right lane. The hood had been patched with gunmetal gray. "That's..." she stuttered. "That's..."
"An old one," he said again, as if to rub salt in the wound of her defeat.
"You're mean," she said, staring with incredulity his shit-eating grin. How the hell had he whipped this whole thing around on her? "You're a mean, mean man."
He snickered. "I gave you a full twenty seconds to notice it," he said.
"How am I supposed to notice a car when I'm looking at you?"
"I don't know. Should we give me a handicap?" He waggled his eyebrows at her. "I am pretty hard not to stare at."
She snorted with laughter, and then she jabbed him in the arm. Hard. His whole body swayed in the seat with the impact, and he grunted. "Hey, what was that for?" he said. "I said no return!"
"I'm taking out a loan against future sightings," she grumbled.
"A punch on the basis of a car you haven't even seen yet? Seriously?"
"Yep," she said. "And I'm allowed."
He laughed. "You are, are you?"
"I am. And don't you dare give me a lecture about slippery slopes."
"Bossy."
"You said that already."
"It's true, though," he said. "Bossy. Bossy from Boston."
She rolled her eyes. "Whatever, Mr. Manhattan."
"McBossy," he retorted.
"I'm not calling you McDreamy just because you McNamed me," she said. "And since when do you McName people?"
"I don't know." He shrugged. "Since now?"
"Well, stop it. It makes you sound like Cristina, and that's just weird. You two exist in separate spaces in my head, and you're threatening my reality."
He shook his head, amusement lighting his face. "I love you," he said.
"I guess you can keep talking, then."
"Good," he replied. "Because we have at least another hour to kill until we get there." He glanced at the clock on the dash, and then the odometer. "More like an hour and a half."
She grinned. "License plate game?"
"If we must," he said with a mock-weary sigh belied by his smile. "At least it's less violent."
"Oh," she said. "Oh, pull over."
He frowned. "Again?"
"Yeah. Just... Pull over!"
He barely had time to stop the car before she darted into the pouring rain. Her feet slipped and slid on the wet shoulder. Pavement became gravel became slick, muddy grass. Rain plastered her shirt to her body as she slurched through a sucking puddle. Then she threw up, and the last of her lunch emptied onto the ground.
The rain slamming down on her stopped its assault. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him standing there, holding an umbrella over her. She straightened. Her stomach roiled. She leaned over and barfed again. Right by his feet. She grabbed his shirt to keep her balance. At least he didn't flinch or move. When she'd finished, she trembled, and her stomach hurt. What the hell was causing this? Maybe, something she'd eaten disagreed with her. There'd been no smells to set off this or the last barf session. None that she'd noticed, anyway. She wanted to go back to the schedule.
"I'm sorry," he said softly over the rain, and he pulled her into a tight hug under the umbrella. He guided her back to the car, and he held the umbrella over the gap between the car and the door while she settled herself back in the seat. He didn't move until she'd closed the door.
She spat water from her lips and wiped the raindrops out of her eyes, shivering. The rain thundered on the roof. It made a steep crescendo as he opened the driver side door and he resettled himself to drive. When he closed the door, the thunderous pounding muted. He turned the key in the ignition, aimed the vents at her, flipped a switch, and then adjusted dials on the dash. Blowing, frigid air became warm. Soothing.
"Thanks," she said. She closed her eyes, ready to go again, but he didn't move the car. She felt his gaze on her. "I'm okay," she said.
"Do you still feel nauseous?"
"No, it's sudden, and then I puke, and then I'm fine," she said. "It only sticks around if I try not to throw up."
"Oh," he said.
He sounded really concerned. She couldn't decide whether that was adorable, or whether he deserved to suffer for this. This was his super-powered bully sperm's fault. Right? She cupped her hands over her stomach. The churning stopped after a few moments. Sort of like a switch had been thrown. One moment, sick as though she'd been on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic, braving fifteen feet swells. The next? Dry, solid land, and not a single twitch or quiver. She sighed and let her hands slide lower. Underneath her belly button. Warmth seeped through her shirt as she pressed.
Baby, she told herself, hoping the new life below would hear. If you could settle down this weekend, that'd be nice.
Nothing answered, of course. She sighed.
"It's really okay," she assured him. "Keep going. I want to get there."
He stared at her. "Are you sure?"
"Mmm." She nodded. "Keep going. I'm fine, now."
A chuff of air released from his mouth. He shook his head, and the car started moving.
"What?" she said.
"You really are very bossy," he said.
"You love me for it."
"Hmm, I do," he agreed. "So much." The delight on his face made her shiver. She wanted a toothbrush. And she wanted the cabin. And then she wanted him. Badly.
"Me, too," she said, hypnotized.
He snickered. "I'm glad you love yourself, Mere. That's important."
"Just shut up, and drive, jackass," she snapped, but she couldn't keep the grin off her face.
"Fine, McBossy," he replied. "But when we get there, there'd better be some sex."
"I just threw up next to your shoe, and you want sex?" she said.
He nodded. "Attempted sex that I won't get upset about if it flops," he assured her with a grin.
"I'd say your libido is still pretty healthy."
He laughed. "Sex? Please?"
She smiled. "I think that can be arranged. After I find a toothbrush."
"Good," he said with a nod. "I want my newest pinky swear to get a work out."