Derek couldn't take the nagging feeling of not being good enough for her. That had to be the only explanation as to why she wouldn't fully let him in, why she was so ashamed for people to know about their relationship. As he drove to the hospital at five in the morning after being kicked out of her bed, his brain scrambled in hopes of finding the answer.

He halfway listened to his ex-friend? go on and on about his addiction to Meredith Grey as he squeezed salty drops into his eyes in attempts to clear them enough to operate. It reminded him of the times when they were just getting to know each other, staying up all night having sex and leaving both of them zombily

the next morning. Back when him forgetting to grab her a spoon for a bowl of his muesli was their only issue.

One thing that his adulterous friend? told him made Derek ponder if there was a hidden truth to it.

"Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery."

Derek tried to ignore the fact that he was comparing his sexual activities with Meredith to one of a type of addiction, as erroneous as it was, and searched for the deeper meaning. The more he thought about it, the more he realized what he was doing with her was wrong. He knew what he wanted; a wife. Someone that wanted him. Meredith had made it clear that she wanted nothing other than a warm body to occupy her bed that she could kick out in the morning without feeling guilty.

Meredith's irksome conversation with Mrs. Burke, followed by an even less bearable dispute with the young woman who she was expected to call her a sister, left Meredith with a palate for only one thing; sex. She glanced at her pager as it buzzed in her pocket to see the name of the person she was looking for.

"Your timing could not have been more perfect. Where are we going?" Meredith asked with hopefulness as she peered around the wall and stood in the doorway of the room, not completely inside, but enough for him to know that she was there - sort of like their situation now.

"What do you mean where are we going?" Derek glided across the tight room in his spinning chair and stopped right in front of her eager body.

"You paged me, right?"

"I did…" Derek answered, still not sure what she meant.

"Good. So on-call room?" there it was again. All he wanted was to talk to her about his day, let her know that he spent a vast majority of it thinking about her, but all she wanted to do was get him naked.

He figured testing his luck wouldn't get him killed, and if it did it couldn't hurt him any more than she already was. "You know I was thinking maybe we could uh, go to the cafeteria. I thought you might be hungry."

There he was again, trying to get her to let her guard down and do couply things. How many times did she have to make it clear that there was nothing couply about their situation. She couldn't do couply. Not now, and if he didn't put an end to his charades...not ever.

"Derek, we agreed. "S" and "M" only." She reminded him and Derek repeated her phrase that he was sure she made up on her own and just expected him to know.

"Sex and mockery," she hoped he would get it through his thick skull and stop forcing her to keep repeating it. Meredith didn't want this. She wanted him, and right now this was the only way that she could have him. A relationship only meant room for failure and she couldn't handle the pressure of living up to his expectations.

Their playful banter that somehow managed to stay intact after all this time came to an end and she watched as he disappeared into the crowd of surgeons and nurses. His back being turned towards her made it impossible for Meredith to see his defeated expression, but the slump of his normally upright body language was a clue that something was up with him

She didn't have time to worry about him, she needed to get through the day and avoid any and all unnecessary conversations with -

"Lexie!" Meredith hid her lack of enthusiasm with a fake smile that she was hoping the pale intern wouldn't see through. After years of sitting through uninteresting dates, she'd grown quite accustomed to tuning out people when she didn't want to listen to what they were saying. As great of a skill as it was. Meredith couldn't seem to ignore the five words that her half-sister wouldn't stop repeating.

"We don't have the same dad," Meredith's voice was calm but frightening to the intimidated young woman. "You and I do not have the same dad. My dad disappeared when I was five years old and I never saw him again. Does that sound like that daddy you grew up with?" Meredith's point was made when her sister shook her head guilty. It wasn't enough. She'd already opened up the can of worms that Meredith preferred stay closed, but it was far past that point now. "I kicked a man out of my bed in the middle of the night. The world's most perfect man, who loves me. He's...him. And he could love anyone he chooses, but he chose me. I should be thrilled. I should be ecstatic that he wants to marry me. But instead I'm kicking him out of my bed in the middle of the night because I'm afraid that if I let him stay, I might just slip up and tell him how I feel. I might just let him know that I've been in love with him forever, and that that scares the crap out of me because nobody has ever made me feel that way before. I should be able to tell him, he told me. But I can't. Because if I do, If I tell him, if I put it out there that he has that leverage over me, there's a chance that he might just use it against me. And I can't Lexie, because our dad- my mother, everyone that I've ever...I can't let him love me. It doesn't take a shrink to figure out that the issue starts with the father that you claim we share. So please, stop trying to act like you know me. Or like us sharing a sliver of DNA makes us family, because it doesn't."

The innocent looking young woman didn't know what to say. Fortunately for her, even if she wanted to speak it wouldn't be to her sister as Meredith stormed off after unbottling the emotions she'd been keeping pushed down since Lexie's arrival.

Derek didn't know what he was doing. He knew that he wanted her, that she was the one for him, but if she didn't want him then there was nothing he could do about it. She wasn't ready, and a huge nagging chunk of him figured she never would be. He sat in the dark room alone with his thoughts, trying to figure out when everything got so screwed up. Why he couldn't seem to stay away from the woman that clearly didn't want him; at least not in the ways that he wanted her.

"I can't do it anymore Mark," Derek didn't have to turn and face the door to know that he was standing behind him with a concerned look on his face. "I can't keep at this. If she doesn't want me, if she doesn't love me. I have to let her go. Find someone that does," he admitted. Derek was finally accepting it.

"I know that I screwed up with Addison, and I don't expect you to trust me or...for us to go back to being the type of friends to give sex advice and adopt hamsters that die in a week, but I'm here for you man. Whatever you need, okay?" Mark pressed a comforting hand on his shoulder and Derek covered it with his own.

"I'm supposed to go to her house tonight. I don't, I want her, I do. I just can't-."

"Don't worry about it," Mark assured him. It didn't take him long to spot the blonde walking at a leisure rate with none other than herself going towards the elevator.

"Grey!"

"Hey, have you seen Derek?" he watched from the railings as she asked for him. Some weak mannered part of him felt something that he hadn't in a while when she said his name in search of him. It could've been hopefulness, but he wasn't about to go down that road with nothing to hold onto.

"Derek wanted me to tell you that he got pulled into an emergency surgery. He can't make it tonight."

"Oh, okay," the disappointed look in her eyes that he could sense from so high above was screaming at him to go down there, to make up some white lie about his patient doing a full 360 and not needing surgery after all. But then he heard the man who had just given him a speech about being there for him, despite their messy past. He couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but he knew when Mark Sloan was trying to pick up a woman, and that's exactly what he was doing now.

"Joe's?" he flashed his famous flirtatious smirk.

"No I'm, just gonna go," Meredith let him down easy and went on her way to the elevator.

"Derek couldn't take watching her leave the way that she was. He felt like he let her down and he couldn't, not after everything. He wouldn't admit that seeing Mark hit on her made him jealous and feel the need to reclaim what was his in a way that wasn't medieval, but he couldn't watch her go.

"Meredith!" he hurried down the stairs and stumbled beside her, every recurring thought telling him that it was wrong, that she would never change vanished from his mind the second her lips curled into a smile and her dough eyes entrapped his.