The secret to revealing anything at Grey Sloan Memorial was timing. Having talkative kids sometimes put everything about your life on the fast track, but the multi-level after-school program they'd introduced—she owned the hospital, she could use it to placate her daughter—was still new. The staff hadn't really integrated, and the surgical staff didn't have many kids as old as hers. But Tuck Bailey Jones had been being a good egg. He and Joey volunteered with the upper-level group. His fondness for Zola, and her hero worship of him, had been generally unaffected when their mothers were at odds—If you asked Miranda, she would've given a sermon on separating the personal from the professional. Like many children of devout doctrine followers, Meredith had come to understand that that was absolute bullshit.
She could just hear Tuck saying, Hey, Ma, L'il Miss Zola—a nickname that her daughter had recently started pretending to despise—told me something interesting today. Too bad it's none of our business.
You're right, it's not….All right, better tell me. Wouldn't want some secret of Grey's to blow up in our faces again.
That all-too-possible situation was why when they were sharing the elevator Monday afternoon, Meredith took a chance. "Did I ever tell you my best friend in college was named Tucker?" There was, she calculated, a ten-percent chance that the reply would be "Why do I care?"
Miranda's tone wasn't nearly as dismissive as it would've been when Meredith thought of her as the Nazi—but she wouldn't say it was totally engaged. "You did not."
"Didn't think so." The names that came up here had always been tangentially related to her mother's legacy, or the broken family it left her with. Even Sadie entered her orbit via her father's investment in Ellis's research. "We met on a first-year hiking trip, and ditched it for a DOMA protest."
"Pah. Already taking on fights that weren't yours. Why am I not surprised?"
The elevator passed the third floor. Meredith eyed the emergency stop. No. She didn't need to make this into a huge, emotional thing. "It was my fight. I wasn't dating anyone at the time, but…It was. Is. My fight."
"I see."
"And not in an 'A' stands for ally! Straight in the Gay-Straight Alliance kind of way. The allies always ended up being queer, ever notice that? Tucker used to take bets on when someone hanging out 'cause they were an "ally" would come out. Usually he had to split it with me, because I'd have inside information. We always—"
"Meaning what? You seduced the girls and struck out with the boys?"
"A couple of times." Meredith didn't let herself shrink at the threads of judgement in Miranda's tone. During her intern year, she'd been hyperaware of it, played into it, even—that made it easier to dismiss, while staying hyper-aware of any other criticism her mentor sent her way. She wasn't the worst of the slut-shamers at the hospital, by any means; she'd deny it entirely, if pressed—but I'd prefer it if folks didn't think they needed to make their bedroom business public.
Was that why they'd never had this conversation? Possibly. Meredith had dealt with the assumptions about bisexual women's promiscuity the same way she'd dealt with her mother's worst aspersions; she'd accepted them and doubled down.
"Someone's attraction to me wasn't really an accurate means of assessment, though."
"No?"
"Miranda. I am telling you I'm bisexual. So, no, whether or not one of my fellow horny college students had joined the Rainbow Alliance before they decided to hook up with me or not did not give me a firm handle on their sexuality."
"Too many girls looking to experiment?"
Meredith tightened her grip on the bar across the back wall. She wasn't sure when she'd grabbed onto it, but her knuckles were white. Had there been a period when the questioning ones were shoved her way? Yeah. Had she fallen for the occasional straight girl, or been disappointed by a guy who ended the night with Tucker? Sure. But she wasn't letting them use her. Not the way Miranda was making it sound.
"I did have relationships back then. Friends. Classes. Exams. I didn't spend all four years drinking and screwing anything that moved. Not that there's anything wrong with that."
"Mmm. I didn't think that, Grey. I've been your boss multiple times. I've seen your transcripts. Majored in Cognitive Neuroscience. Minored in Women's Studies. Three years of Italian. Did language study in Siena. You took French in high school, but you didn't use it to test out, which makes me think either you're shit at it, or you were looking for an excuse to travel. One class on Native American history. Had most of your pre-med requirements done before the gen-eds, but all the Humanities classes made it harder to get your letters of rec for the medical school, am I right?"
"How'd you…?"
"I went to Wellesley. You think I didn't take every interesting class I could, knowing I'd be narrowing my focus with every step over the rest of my life? I came this close to switching majors to Media Studies."
The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open. Meredith followed the other woman into the basement hallway, her mind already on getting Ellis into her jacket—she hated covering up her butterfly dress—and when Miranda stopped and turned, they almost collided.
"How else did it work?"
"Huh?"
"The betting. How'd you get your insider information, if you were such a discerning romantic."
"I never said…." Meredith lifted a hand to run through her hair, but she'd braided it in her office that morning. All she could latch onto was the handle of her bag. "A lot of the school came from the Eastern Seaboard, or eastern Canada. Ten percent from Massachusetts. Not Boston-proper, like I did. They were from McMansions in the suburbs. You could fit the actual population of Boston's high schools into TD Garden, and that's if…." Miranda shifted her weight, and Meredith cut herself off. There was almost nothing that gave her the ability to stop herself from rambling more reliably. "Anyway, it became common knowledge that my mom wasn't around during breaks."
"Meaning you hosted the house-parties, Ms. Beantown Bigdeal?"
"Hell no. As difficult as she was to live with, I wasn't going to give her a reason to kick me out. That's what I'm getting at—I knew when they came out, because I was the back-up plan."
"Oh." Miranda's eyes went round along with her lips, and Meredith relaxed a little, though the leather strap of her L. tote was still biting into her hand.
"I didn't use the information without consent," Meredith added, though she didn't know why that would matter, now. "That's what I was…if we got a head's up, Tucker and I took the kid out to celebrate. Introduced them to Northampton's queer scene. Sometimes, though, it went badly enough that they never told anyone else."
"I can imagine."
Meredith sucked the inside of her cheek, blocking any retort that would come out more harshly than she meant it.
"How many….How often did someone actually end up hiding from Ellis Grey in your apartment?"
"I wasn't exactly keeping records, but…Dartmouth is known for being LGBT friendly now….then…hard to judge, but we were there. Actually, I heard there was a surge while I was in med-school. The '4s. but that was the joke…four out during orientation was a lot. Anyway. Of the people who told me what they were planning, and followed through…two-thirds? Three-quarters? I don't think there was a break without at least one, not counting Tucker, and a few couch-surfers who never went home if he could help it. Even split between Christmas and summer.
"It varied as to whether they stayed. Some parents didn't take it well, but got over themselves quickly. Once or twice, maybe, leaving was an over-reaction. Not that I'd ever say it. Better safe than sorry.… I hated it for them—Having a family, and then losing it? Seemed worse than not having it at all."
"You—"
"Ellis, Thatcher, and I were a family unit. That's as close as it got. She married him to be married. Until I saw the certificate, I always thought…." She shrugged off the shotgun wedding story she'd always told herself. It still made so much more sense, down to her mother's belief that her pregnancy would be draw Richard across the country when she wasn't enough on her own. "To me, it seemed worse, and…. It wasn't as if I minded the company."
Miranda's face shifted, softening possibly more for her than it had in several years. "No, I can't imagine you did. Things would've been easier for you if you were an introvert, wouldn't they?"
Meredith's lips parted, letting out a peal of laughter instead of words. "Yeah," she said, drawing the word out just long enough for it to crack. "They would've. I never thought of it that way."
"Glad I can still teach you something, occasionally." She smiled, her expression still soft. Any uncertainty Meredith had had about Miranda's acceptance was gone. She couldn't be angry that someone had slipped into old habits before remembering that they'd been doing more harm than good. "I don't mean to pry, you know that, but did your mother—Did she react poorly to you…coming out?"
I really do want to know you, Meredith.
"Oh, no. I mean, I don't know. There's a lot she didn't know. About me. So, no. That I know of."
Miranda didn't tease her about the way she tripped over her words. Instead, she nodded, her brown eyes holding Meredith in place when her legs were starting to vibrate with the desire to run. She tried to satisfy it by taking a step to the side. If she got to the center, her kids would take care of the rest.
"Hold on there, Grey," Miranda grasped her forearm, her soft fingertips brushing her wrist. "Meredith. I… Thank you for sharing this with me."
Another burst of laughter built up in Meredith's chest. One of her maladaptive coping mechanisms. She'd had so few of these genuine, by-the-book discussions that she'd believed they belonged to the land of pretend, and pretending was for girls who simpered after men, searching for validation. She didn't know how to react to sincerity, even from someone who she viewed as an authority, regardless of their current receptive positions. She'd been able to counsel all her classmates through disastrous coming outs not because she'd been in their position, but because she hadn't. She hadn't scrutinized the scales and made the wrong choice. She didn't represent something fundamentally irreconcilable with any specific worldview. All she'd ever done was exist, and yet she'd suffered an equally major rejection. She was proof that they weren't going to bleed out; that this pain was survivable.
They thought that she'd built up scar tissue over the years. She hadn't. Every metaphorical injury she incurred hurt as much as the last. What others saw as resilience was a matter of returning to the path toward rejection every time, because she'd never been taught to go in any other direction. Sure, there'd been a few times when she thought she'd seen a light hanging in the darkness, but it was almost always a will-o-the-wisp that disappeared just before she realized she was retracing her steps, yet again. Eventually, she'd finally managed to forge a different road, or whatever, one that only occasionally intersected with the rocky terrain of her past. But at some point, she'd let it get too straight—ha!—too wary of where a turn-off would lead to consider following it.
"Thanks for listening. I know our personal lives aren't your favorite topic."
"Not on the clock, no. But we're not on the clock, are we? I'm sorry if anything I've said over the years has stopped you from coming to me with this before. I tried to protect you at the start of things with Shepherd, but I may have gone about it all the wrong way. I didn't want him taking advantage of my intern, but I didn't want to deny your agency. I may've mixed some messages."
Meredith didn't say anything. She hadn't been one of the direct ones, and she'd run interference when Derek was more or less stalking her. They'd all changed, and now even after having been on Derek's side of things with Andrew…especially after…she wasn't sure how she'd deal with an intern-December romance herself.
"And, for the record, your mother was a fool to think you could ever be ordinary."
This time, Meredith allowed herself to laugh. "I assure you, who I was attracted to wouldn't have made me more interesting to her."
"Girl, not that." Miranda opened the door leading to the Grey Sloan Memorial Child Wellness Center. "From what I've gathered, you are exactly what she claimed to want, and she never got it. Men being men, I understand why she thought she couldn't let on that she cared for her patients as much as it seems she did. But I don't see her ever arranging to take in strays. Especially not as an eighteen-year-old who wasn't altogether sure she wouldn't have the same rug pulled out from under her. Seems to me like you were showing signs of being better than her long before you'd committed to this career path. I'm guessing here, but considering how much she sacrificed for surgery, and how hard she tried to fit you into the same mold, I doubt she knew what to do with the possibility that she might've gotten it wrong. That you might be a credit to the world in ways that had nothing to do with her desire for a clone."
The Meredith I knew was a force of nature, passionate, focused, a fighter… Hearing that in her head hurt, a dozen years later. She'd been right, was the thing. Meredith had had those qualities, and she still did. That she'd let them go in favor of Derek had been a fear that sent her to therapy. Her mother had never praised her for them. Not until she believed they no longer applied. Was that day, the day she curled up in the chair in her mother's room, and really tried to let herself be known, the day she stopped trying? The day that laid the foundation for the wall Lexie leapt over, almost enclosing her in the same walls her mother had built? After having most of the hospital, Derek, and her mother disparage who Meredith Grey was, maybe there was no wonder Dr. Grey tried close herself off. That was one of many reasons she and Sadie hadn't been able to reconnect during the months she was there—she'd been behind the wall, and she was threatening to reveal what she'd seen. It'd taken over a decade for Meredith to be ready leave the tower of her own making.—but her mother had stayed in hers for the rest of her life.
"But I…. I did become a surgeon, in the end."
"And you're a damn fine one, but we've just established that it's not all there is to you—I've seen you gain almost every practical skill you have, and I don't know everything, do I? You did pursue the career she set you up for, but you did it your way. Your dominant qualities aren't the ones she valued in a surgeon. They might even be qualities she didn't think a surgeon should have, but here we are. The idea that she might've been wrong must've scared the crap out of her. We know how close denial follows fear around these halls."
You don't have what it takes to be a surgeon!
Be an extraordinary woman, Meredith.
They weren't mutually exclusive. Not even her mother had thought that, wasn't that the conclusion she and Dr. Wyatt had settled on? But that didn't mean that her mother's idea of what made a woman extraordinary was correct, any more than her concept of what a surgeon should be applied in all cases.
"Mom!" Those three voices lifted her spirits, no matter how rough the day had been. She caught Bailey in her arms first, and he squeezed her tightly around the waist. Ellie came skidding over in the purple cowboy boots she'd insisted on wearing, even though they didn't entirely fit yet, and holding up a drawing. Zola had her backpack slung over one arm, and her hoodie trailing off the other. In the back of her mind, Meredith could pick out the criticism her mother would have for each one of them, and the way they would reflect back on Meredith. The difference was, it didn't matter. They were who they were, it was her job to help them determine what that meant—How they could balance contributing to the world with being as happy as possible.
As far as she was concerned, that would make them extraordinary.
She'd promised Dr. Wyatt years ago that she'd learn from her mother's mistakes. That didn't mean that it was always easy to identify exactly what they'd been—Falling in love? Not fighting for him? Almost dying? Asking for help? Running away?—Acknowledging that she even made mistakes was something that she'd always done more readily than her mother. Don't be sorry. Be better!
"Mom, did you have a bad outcome today?"
Meredith blinked. The younger two—B&E, it'd never stop being funny— had gotten ready to leave while she'd been thinking, now Zola was peering up at her, concerned. "No, love. I spent most of it in the lab, actually. Why?"
"You're holding Ellis really tight."
She was. "Sorry, Ellie-Belle."
"I don't mind, Mommy. I like hugs."
"I know you do. But—" She paused to shift her daughter's weight. It wouldn't be long before she was too big to be carried from the child care center to the car. Neither of them were ready for that, judging by the way she turned angled her feet and pulled her legs up as soon as they rose from the floor.
"But if you're offering, you have to ask," Bailey finished for her. He'd been Ellie's favorite target at the height of her bowling-people-down phase. "They have to be able to say no."
"Unless it's Mommy," Ellie countered, her chin raised, ready for a challenge.
It was so easy for Meredith to see her child-self in Ellie. Sometimes when it happened, she just wished Derek was there, because she wanted to show him that the solemn expression caught in the few photographs from her childhood wasn't the only one she'd had. Others…
She remembered exactly how it felt to hear Ellis's chastisement about apologies at Ellie's age, down to every muscle that moved in her face. She'd remembered the way her expression would only irritate her mother further—for heaven's sake, it's not the end of the world!—and it wasn't hard to imagine the same emotions playing out on her youngest's face. What she couldn't imagine was causing them, over and over, and never questioning the cycle that got them there.
"Stand down, Olaf," she said, winning her a grin from the mulish girl in her arms. "You're both right. Elsa, you can run and push the button." Bailey wrinkled his nose—and for all his face was mostly Derek that was her—but ran ahead, the art portfolio he took to school twice a week banging against his legs. Zola took his place by her side, and grabbed her hand. "You okay with Anna, or should I save it for Scout?"
Zola rolled her eyes. "I'll take it."
"Scout is Sven," Ellie said, decisively. Meredith couldn't wait to see what would happen when their cousin decided to have an opinion on such matters. Whether he minded being a reindeer or not, Ellie's refusal to lose the designation of family baby would make it interesting.
"Did you talk to someone today,?" Zola pressed. "About what you told us last night?" They entered the elevator, and she held Ellie so she could lean down and push the first floor button.
"I told Miranda that I am bisexual, yes." She wanted them to get used to hearing the word, and if she'd waited to say it until the elevator doors were shut, well, there were people she didn't want finding out through the Grey Sloan grapevine. Once it got to Debbie that would be it. Maybe this would be the year she'd remember to sign the nursing director up for one of those true-crime boxes, but Christmas was a long way way off. She'd done fifteenth-ish years of hushed disclosures on a need-to-know basis, and she was tired of it. Let them talk about her. They were going to do it anyway.
It wasn't like she was going to throw herself a coming-out party, or whatever. Even if she were the type, well… she wouldn't be, not because of her personality, but because it would feel incredibly wrong in the face of what she'd seen her friends go through twenty-five years ago. She'd been free to not care who knew what, and later she'd eased into the closet and left the door cracked. It wasn't fair that she'd felt like she needed to do that, but it wasn't fair that she had the privilege, either.
She'd gotten lucky that her life played out in a way that allowed her choices to be choices. She'd tried to explain that part lying in bed with Derek one night. She'd still been reeling from being diagnosed with a "hostile uterus," but to the point of discussing their options.
"It's not like I always assumed my kids would be mine, biologically."
"You really didn't think you'd ever have this?"
"I've told you, if you want the magazine cutouts and trying on wedding dresses in the attic, you Post-ited the wrong sister."
"Your argument is suspiciously specific."
"I fantasized about being a girl who fantasized, satisfied?"
"Sufficiently."
"Insufferably," she'd countered, and he'd rolled over and kissed her. "That wasn't what I said, though," she pointed out once she'd reluctantly pushed him off. She could see him playback the conversation in his head, his eyes flickering like he was reading a script.
Derek liked wordplay, and she believed he loved the way she spoke, but that didn't mean he always listened to her exact words. Sometimes she needed him to understand what she'd meant, but that didn't excuse the times he replaced what she'd said with what he thought he heard—What he wanted or expected to hear. Words that almost always came more from his idea of her than the truth of her. It was a reminder of where their relationship had been cut off the first time, between the thrill of enigma and the need to know everything.
She'd always been more keen on knowing, even when he wasn't twisting his story around to hide the Addison-shaped hole. Not that she'd been great at sharing, but she had. Circumstance led to her starting with the big things, the Ellis Grey-sized things. The details got overwhelmed in the fiasco that followed. She never got the sense that he didn't want them, only that it frustrated him when they didn't match a mental model he'd clung to during the time they were imagining the missing pieces of their half-filled puzzles. She had moments like that, but less often, she thought, maybe because of how few expectations she'd had. She'd never expected him.
Deep down he'd believed there'd be someone after Addison. He'd believed that Ellis Grey couldn't have been that demanding and detached, even though he'd met her. If she had been, then wasn't it obvious how wrong she was? He'd never had to see that his ability to default to light and hopefulness wasn't something anyone could choose. Once he'd came to terms with her darker baseline, he'd genuinely overlooked the fact that he had moments of darkness, so it stood to reason she'd experienced light, even without him there exuding it.
"You pictured being with a woman… like we are?"
"I did hope DOMA would've been expunged by this point, but it could've had to be on a Post-it, yeah."
"I didn't mean… you told me it's different, the way you're attracted to men versus women."
"So you what? Cast me in your mental Dirty Debauched Doctors movie, and let it go?"
"In…what? No! Who do you think I am, Mark?"
"You were teenage boys together. Maybe you cleaned up your act since you went from saxxy band nerd to sexy surgeon"—He laughed, and she pushed up further, making sure he could see how serious she was, whatever words her mouth produced.—"But he is the litmus test, and he is every asshole who ever suggested I join him and his date in bed!" Her voice had built up into a whispered shout, and she'd sat up to give her body more space to express the fury overwhelming her more rational thoughts.
Derek had his hands spread in front of his shoulders, like he was about to talk down a wild animal, and his eyes were wide, with a spark of fear. Good. She bet he recognized himself in what she'd said. His lips, though were twitching.
"Something funny?"
"Just trying to imagine what happened next in those situations."
The memories were easy to call up, in spite of how far into those nights they'd come. It was always frat boys, and not the well-meaning jocks who could be educated and never got a second strike. They were other scientists, and the occasionally socially-competent engineer who got lucky in puberty, and even luckier around girls who'd never seen them in their band uniform before the acne cleared up. Exactly like McDreamy and McSteamy. The McBros.
"Derek? You know how you make jokes about my tiny, ineffectual fists?"
"I do. I love your tiny, ineff-"
"I broke a Physics major's nose for asking if he could watch me and my girlfriend."
"You, uh…. You did?"
"He put his hands on me, and I just… whatever. That day in the locker room with Alex? I wasn't trying. He wasn't being a threat, just an alpha-male, jock jackass, who would've gotten worse if I hadn't done something, but I could really only claim he brushed me, because deep down he's a good guy so he didn't—"
Derek tipped her chin up and kissed her again. Sometimes he didn't listen, and sometimes he knew exactly when listening wasn't what he needed to do. "I don't know who you would've been to me in college, but you probably would've scared the hell out of me. Yes, Mark and I could be… idiots. But we never…"
He hesitated. He'd definitely formed the gallant defense he believed she wanted; that two East Coast frat boys never joked about turning lesbians straight. Never made another guy retreat further into the closet. That he had all those sisters he believed he needed to protect, and he'd never used "like a girl" as an insult. That he'd never done anything, or been anyone, who wouldn't be the perfect husband to a grown-up riot grrrl whose reaction to double entendre about her flexibility depended on the day.
"We never set out to hurt anyone," he continued, far more thoughtfully, without the preemptive defense she'd anticipated. "But we definitely said insensitive shit. We were ignorant, and… Yeah, I loved punk rock, and I saw a show or two at CBGB's, but…Is it enough to say that you would've seen the New York I grew up in very differently than I did?"
"You voted for Guilliani, huh?"
He clutched at his heart, pretending to writhe. "Right in the heart, Meredith Grey."
She smacked him with the back of her hand, with a tiny bit more force than she would usually have used.
"Okay," he said, gritting his teeth. "Not funny. Shooting jokes, still not funny."
"Never gonna be."
"You don't think when we're old and—"
"Never. Going. To. Be. Accept it and move on."
"All right. You're usually the one with the gallows humor."
"Yeah, it's okay when I'm the one almost dying. I know how to cope with that." She punched her sinking pillow a couple of times and sighed. "But I maybe have a better understanding of why it always bothered you. I'm sorry."
"And I'm sorry I didn't try to understand then. That you could joke about it, and still be suffering." How had he imagined she'd ever developed a sense of humor?
By underestimating her darkness. By not seeing her past as dappled with light, never awash.
"Accepted."
"Good." He smiled his self-assured default smile, like he knew, just knew, that problem would never reoccur. That was okay. If she doubted enough for both of them, they wouldn't be totally at a loss when it did. "Now, help me understand the other part."
"There's not much to…. I know I accused you of not thinking about it enough less than five minutes ago, but really, there's not that much to get. If it'd been your sister who sat down next to me at Joe's that night—"
"Bite your tongue."
She'd expected him to object to the suggestion, but the sheer levels of disbelief, denial, and derision in his voice triggered a burst of laughter that she rolled over to muffle with her pillow.
"Jesus, Mer, talk about things that aren't funny."
"I was serious," she gasped.
"No. Which of my—? No. They're nothing like me!"
"Oh, and you were so my type."
"Well—but—"
"Look, I didn't actually mean one of your sisters specifically, but consider: Dark-haired, blue-eyed, neurosurgeon with a massive ego, and—"
"Amelia?! Meredith, you cannot think that you and Amelia…?"
"She's straight, I get it, but you can't tell me she's never kissed a girl, and liked it."
"I've never thought—she's my sister!"
"Not now that I know her—Not that I don't like her—"
"Oh, that's fine. You're free to not like her. Hate her, if it'll clue you into how impossible this little hypothetical—"
"But would I have been attracted to her in your place?"
"Attracted—my baby sister—!"
"That doesn't mean she doesn't have a sexuality. Plus, she's five years older than me, and my baby sister has sex in the attic. Besides, you have no grounds for being such a prude. A puritan prude." The last turn-of-phrase mad him run both hands through his hair. Meredith bit her cheek. Playing up the my mom raised me as a heathen, thing was always fun.
"A—Did you just call me…? For not wanting to think about—about you and Amelia? This has nothing to do with whatever…whatever upbringing you think I had—we're Catholic by the way. The Puritans are your ancestors, Catholics are all about the sex, if you think about it—"
This was better than the time she'd told him her beliefs were "catholic," let him stew for a minute, and then clarified that she meant in the secular sense, including a "variety of things, all-embracing."
"—But really, Amelia, Meredith. I've told you what she put us through. She's a—"
Okay, fun over. Before he could start rattling off everything he believed was wrong with his youngest sister, Meredith rolled onto her side and pressed a finger against his lips. "Stop."
"What?"
"I've told you…I humor the way you talk about her, but if we're bringing kids into the world, I don't want them hearing it. I also don't think you understand, really understand: Whatever criticism you're about to levy against Amelia, you'd have to be willing to see me that way, too."
"You're not an addict."
"And I am incredibly lucky."
"You're—you're strong."
"Don't you dare, Derek Shepherd." The way his eyes widened meant she'd injected more threat into her admonishment than he'd ever heard from her. Good. "Whatever flipped that switch for your sister, I've been there, and I guarantee you she's aware of every possible consequence. Every public service announcement, every assembly, every sit-down talk your mother ever gave her—They've played in her head on a loop, and they've brought more shame than you've ever felt in your life. But when that shame isn't worse than the pain, and the need to get rid of it?"
Her whisper cracked—maybe crackled. She pulled back, taking her weight off of Derek's chest. This wasn't anger at him. Not directly. She wasn't entirely sure what it was. Her own fear, maybe, knowing that one roll of the universe's dice would've put her on a path directly parallel to the sister-in-law whom her husband disdained almost as much as he loved.
"And Amelia fights it."
"You—"
"It's not the same. All right? I've got my demons, fair enough. And maybe, once or twice, I punched a little harder than she did. But you really can't judge her the way you do. Because you're not interchangeable. How you dealt with your experiences means nothing about her."
He was looking at her. She'd lay down to stare at the fan again, but she could feel him looking at her in the way that meant he thought she was saying something about herself, when she—maybe she was, but that wasn't the point.
"I hear you." He pressed his lips to her temple. "I do. My perspective isn't always accurate. I've taken far too long to see that, and it's possible that I still jump to conclusions." She scoffed. "But I have you to set me straight."
Did he just…? She turned to look at him. She couldn't help it. She had to know if he'd still be giving her puppy-dog eyes, or if—"Oh, you asshole."
"What?" He could never manage to keep the smugness out of his voice when he tried to feign ignorance, and she hated that she loved him for it.
"Nope."
"What'd I say?"
"Shut up."
"Meredith, what are you—?" His very poor control slipped, and she crossed his arms as he chuckled at his own cleverness.
She didn't exactly hate that he was comfortable enough to tease her about it in the same corny way he did everything. He didn't need to know that.
"This wasn't supposed to be a conversation about Amy," he said, the smile still in his voice.
"No. It was not. And it was possibly unfair of me to bring her into it."
"I'm just saying. You wouldn't be laughing if Lex—"
"Nope."
"Right. Not funny."
"And it never will be," she added, remembering how jarring it'd been to discover that Derek had such a rapport with the shinier, alternate universe version of herself. Wait. If that was how she thought of Lexie, then Amelia….The darker, alternate universe version of Derek. Yeah, okay. She'd done a bad job with the hypothetical creation.
"What I was getting at was that it's not all that different. If I'd fallen for a woman the way I fell for you, the only difference would've been the gossip that went around Seattle Grace. And if she'd had a secret spouse, and I… I…."
"Meredith."
"If I dealt with things the way I did…. I'd love to say it wouldn't have been worse. I was already the hospital slut, right? What's being a bisexual slut on top of that? But it would've been. Worse. I knew that. That's when I decided… Everyone said I slept with inappropriate men, right? That's the only rumor you heard?"
"When I…Mer, in the stairwell, that wasn't—"
"We're not discussing that." They'd probably have to, one day. She'd expected him to try bringing it up when she'd first said the word bisexual to him, sometime in the blurry second half of her intern year, when she'd been dumping her closet out on him in an attempt to scare him off. And maybe if she'd intentionally come out to him—but she'd slipped. She said enough things like "I'm the girl who gets drunk and picks up strangers at the bar" and "I don't do relationships, Derek! Ask any so-called significant other I've ever had!" that he'd finally gotten there.
"Do you… I don't know exactly how to ask this…when you talk about sleeping with 'inappropriate people…?'"
"What? What don't you know how to—oh. Oh. Oh, I know. You think you get it now? You've figured me out, right? I'm a whore, so obviously, I have no discretion. I'll sleep with anyone, right?"
"I wasn't—I didn't—"
"Well, here's the irony for you. Here's the universe's big joke. I am. I'm bisexual. And it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with whatever stupid suicidal spiral you think I'm in!"
"I never thought it did, " he'd said. "But I've never said you were suicidal, either."
That fight had gone in an entirely different direction from there. The times it'd come up since then had been less intense. College stories, adolescent mishaps. Not times to bring up the screaming match in a stairwell. There might never be a time for that.
"Yeah," he conceded. "That was all I heard."
"It wasn't. It wasn't only men. No one at the hospital knew that. Not a soul."
"Cristina—"
"She guessed. We'd had the 'I like women, I'm not gonna hit on you' talk. But she never knew there were women then. I didn't bring them here, and they weren't Joe's patrons—although actually, he was probably the first person in Seattle who'd figured it out in ten years." Derek's eyebrows rose at that, but she was approaching her limit for dramatic revelations. "Anyway, if there was a woman, or…not a man… spouse, or no spouse, first I would've been Ellis Grey's lesbian daughter. If I said the word 'bisexual' enough times, boom! I'd be the Seattle Grace slut again, regardless of any infidelity, intended or unintended."
"I'm so—"
"But," she cut in, not wanting his apology for what he hadn't had an opportunity to do—or, for the moment, what he had done. "If I'd fallen for her someone else the way I fell for you? It would've been worth it."
"Did you…?" He hesitated again. It was possible she'd made him consider his words more carefully in one discussion than he had up to that point in their Post-it marriage. "Did you think you would?"
"I…. Maybe. I guess I was as open to it as anything—more open than I thought, since I didn't know I was ready for you. I didn't plan on being in the closet when I got here; it wasn't like I thought okay, time to be professional, better straighten up. Clearly I didn't connect my sex life to my job. I thought it'd be like college, just part of the Meredith package.
"Then you happened, and there was already so much being said…." She could feel the apology coming in the way he shifted, but it would've been rote; it wouldn't be what she needed to hear, if they ever really went there. "When it comes to the whole settling down thing? If anything, I probably thought I'd be less likely to end up with a guy, because of the daddy issues. I mean, the abandonment issues would've still been front and center; plus, it's not like there's really a binary, and I've been with butch women. Not so many femme guys, but if you really think about it that's probably the daddy issues, too, which—"
"Women's Studies minor, huh?"
"Oh, would you shut up?"
"You know, I might just listen to you one day, and you'll miss my voice so much."
"You tell yourself that."
He laughed again, delighted in her as much as with himself, and she scooted a little bit more closely to his side.
"So…you imagined yourself having kids with a woman? Adopting?"
"If my partner didn't want to carry, or if I was on my own, yeah. Weird, right? They probably wouldn't let me, but… Maybe I internalized some of Mom's 'legacy' rhetoric, or maybe I just figured, hey, condoms aren't 100% effective. If something happened, and I was in the right place in my career…. I knew what not to do, didn't I? And what she got right. There were some things….Whatever my situation, I'd wanna push maternity-leave as close to actually having the kid as possible, anyway so…not getting pregnant always seemed like a bonus. I mean, I wasn't ever certain, before you, and don't get me wrong, I for sure wasn't ready when we met, but…"
"But you wanted kids."
"I did," she admitted, softly. "I do."
He nodded. "Okay. So, we'll keep working on it. However we can."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He rolled over to be above her again, and she looped her arms around his neck.
"Well, if we doend up adopting, there's one consolation."
"What's that?"
"Your not-Amelia sisters all have biological kids, right? We wouldn't be responsible for taking your hair out of the gene-pool."
He'd let his head drop onto her shoulder and groaned. "Meredith, I am begging you. Never bring up my sisters in bed again."
It'd been difficult for her to stop giggling enough to make the promise, but once she did, she found more important things for him to beg her for.
In retrospect, she wondered if coming out earlier would've been worth it, regardless of who she was with. Not for some imaginary not-Amelia woman—she'd come to love her sister-in-law, just not that way—for herself. It might've been hard during the period when her life was being autopsied by everyone on staff, but that improved once she found her confidence again, and proved herself worthy of her internship. From that point, the gossip hadn't had the same hold on her, regardless of whose respect she won or lost.
She could've done it then. Supported Callie. It'd felt like she'd be taking her spotlight, especially with the way the hospital rooted for her and Arizona, but in retrospect she knew she'd been lonely. Maybe once she'd become an attending, with enough authority that the interns who were as uncertain as she'd been could've come to her—though some wouldn't have believed it because she happened to be married to a man—Right after Derek died would've made sense, she'd consider it as something might be something she wanted to do while in San Diego, but she wasn't ready for anyone to be discussing her relationships. Eventually, she'd heard herself referred to as the hospital's darling, a title she'd definitely lost with that article. This probably wasn't the best opportunity she'd had, but it was the one she'd felt ready to choose.
Now that she was enacting it, her plan only had one real step after her conversation with Miranda, but it had to be timed carefully.
"You, uh, wanted to see me, Dr. Grey?"
"I did. Come in, and…you can leave the door open, if you want, or…." Meredith took in a long breath, and as she did she watched the other woman's gaze flit down to the edge of her desk, attracted by the unusually bright colors, maybe. Or maybe Meredith was giving off a signal, vibes that she'd tried to hold in for fifteen-odd years. Not that she believed in vibes. They were like juju, great for people who could buy into it, but bullshit for everyone else. What she'd come to understand since the time of Addison's juju was that everyone bought into something. Her take on the Grey Sloan Memorial after-life wasn't exactly something her mother would've entertained, but hadn't it turned out that Ellis's dogma didn't always apply?
If there had been vibes, she didn't think Taryn Helm would be looking at her like Meredith had been driving the car that hit her.
"Hellmou—Helm! Taryn, with me!" She snapped her fingers, and winced as her index finger bumped the bi-pride flag she'd stuck in her coffee mug once she'd finished entering Helm's number into her pager.
The resident blinked. "Yuh-Yeah. Yes, Mer—Dr. Grey, I'm…I'm with you," the last two words were mumbled, and her eyes moved down again, fixating on the flag. Meredith sighed. Maybe she'd gone about this the wrong way, but it was too late now.
"Sit," she instructed.
Still not looking away from the flag, the resident grabbed at one of the two chairs in front of Meredith's desk and lowered herself. The only thing that kept Meredith from rolling her eyes was the knowledge that Helm had spent the entirety of her residency running a gauntlet, and she'd been equally, if not more, dramatic at that point in hers.
"Do I need to put this away?" She hooked her fingers in the handle of the mug, the slightly off-balance result of a pottery party thrown by one of Bailey's classmates. She'd only just gotten to the point where she could look at it without flinching at the memory of digging clay out of his ears.
"No!" Helm yelped. "I mean, no, Dr. Grey, I'm—you don't—I'm listening." With what seemed to be monumental effort, she wrenched her gaze away from the cup and met Meredith's eyes. "I'm sorry. I just…."
"No, you're…. You have a right to feel what you feel…I…." Meredith laced her fingers together and pressed them against her lips. "All right, we're just gonna rip the Band-aid off here. Deal?"
Helm nodded, and managed to stop the gesture just before it went from vigorous to bobble-head. "Deal."
"I'm bisexual. This isn't some late-in-life revelation; I haven't spent forty-four years in denial. It's just not something I've let be…widely known around here."
"Understood! No, that, it makes sense."
"Does it? I'm not sure, actually." Meredith shook her head—not the time. "I didn't want you to hear a rumor, and think…."
"That your sexuality has anything to do with me?"
"Um."
"Look, Dr. Grey, you're being really considerate by telling me this way, so I'll be honest, a year—six months ago—finding out that you hadn't been an unattainable straight woman all that time? Yeah, it might've fed the fires of false hope a little bit. A lotta bit, probably. But the thing is, you were unattainable right? For me?"
"It's not you, Hel—"
"Oh, don't give me that."
"Excuse me?" Meredith sat back in her chair, more than a little thrown by the resident's show of spunk.
"No offense. It's just—you're my boss, yeah, but that doesn't seem to mean a lot around this place. I know you didn't intend to end up with Dr. DeLuca—he pursued you, right? But I did too, in my way. That wasn't a way that connected with you. That doesn't have anything to do with who's gay, or straight, or bi, or pan—or, or whatever. It's just people.
"So, I'm glad you're living your truth, Dr. Grey, and I really do appreciate what you're trying to do, but you don't have to worry that I'll decide you were leading me on, or, or that I have some kind of chance now. We're good."
"Okay. That's…that's good to hear."
"Good. Uh, I am a little amazed that you got it past CeCe. She said…Oh." The residents cheeks went pink. Meredith couldn't say exactly what conversations she'd had with their matchmaking patient, but she could imagine.
"I'm not a person who believes in gaydar, or whatever—"
"No, of course you—"
She held up a hand. "It's also a fact that I wasn't as open with her as I could've been. Getting up the courage to hire her was hard enough, and she was a patient. A talkative one. I don't think she would've outed me intentionally, but I…I wasn't ready. If she suspected, and I'll allow that she was incredibly intuitive, she also would've seen that. Whatever she said to you…."
"It…wasn't as cut-and-dry as I thought," Helm said. "She said she spent thirty-five years chasing after straight girls, and…and I shouldn't pursue someone who couldn't love me the way I deserved."
"I wish she'd been there to tell me that, thirty years ago," Meredith said, carefully. She didn't want her empathy to give Helm false hope. CeCe had known exactly what she needed to hear to be able to move on, whether or not it'd been a crafty turn of phrase—but she could also see too much of her past in the wistful look that crossed Helm's face.
"Um. This might not be my place, but…if you're scar—worried about what it's like being out here, you don't have to be. It's fine. Better than fine, I mean. It's a really accepting place." The reassuring smile Helm had clearly affected for her faltered. "I guess it hasn't always been."
"It hasn't. And I regret not doing more to change that—to make the hospital more welcoming as a whole, not just for…."
"For big ol' queers like me?—Like us?" Helm added, and then scooted further back in her chair, hands folded in her lap. If she'd never mentioned having an overbearing mother that would've been her tell.
"Like us," Meredith agreed. "For a long time, it was accepted that surgeons couldn't show they cared about anything but the medicine while they were in these walls. They were also expected to be here almost constantly. Residents were given the title because they lived in the hospital. Caring is an emotion, and emotions come from the brain. A muscle. Parts of it can atrophy. You block your emotions in one area, and it becomes harder to express them in another. Stop showing you care about your patients, you stop showing you care about your loved ones—everything else in your life is on that spectrum somewhere. Oh, if you're a great surgeon, fine. Be who you are. Assuming you remember who that was by the time you're great."
That was what had almost happened to Derek, before he fled to Seattle. And the year she spent in San Diego, what elements of the decision had been conscious were based on the knowledge that at some point she'd be expected to ignore the part of her that cared that her husband was dead, and if she did that before she was ready, her children would suffer. She refused to let them ever think she wasn't what mattered the most to her. Never not ever.
Helm seemed to be studying her with even more intensity than usual. Meredith started to ask exactly that the resident knew about Ellis Grey—and what she had and hadn't forgotten, when she blurted, "I'm going to find a dance studio."
"Oh? I could help with that," Meredith said, a little over-eagerly. "Ellis's studio has a few adult tracks. Want me to get you a brochure? They're about a half mile passed the hospital toward Queen Anne's Hill."
"Yes, thanks! She's adorable. Not that that says much about the studio, but…truth. I'm still supposed to be doing PT if I can. There's never enough time."
"Make it. Especially when you can connect it to life outside of the hospital. Make time to be who you are, and don't shut that out. Otherwise, where are you going to be when the robots replace us?" She grinned at the resident's it's-funny-but-it's-absolutely-not expression. "Hel—Hellmou—Taryn. I'm gonna be your boss for a few more years, but your career will be much longer. I'd like us to be better than good. I'd like us to be friends."
"Friends! Yes, friends would be good!"
"When you're ready," Meredith added.
"I'm fine—good—great! I said that. Didn't I say that?"
"You did." She knew how poorly crushes and friendships mixed, and she wasn't going to take Helm's claim to have moved on at face value. She was the authority this time, and she didn't want to make the mistakes that'd been made with her.
"Well, okay. Good. I'm good."
"All right. Well, I know you have patients to worry about, so…."
"I do! Definitely, I do!" Helm leapt to her feet. "You are so right about that, Dr. Grey. You are so right about…."
"Maybe not everything?"
Helm leaned on the chair for a second, and then gave her an abashed smile. "Maybe not."
"You know, Hellmouth, you remind me of someone."
"You? I mean…" She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head like she was trying to erase the words. "Do you? Who do you—?"
"My sister."
"Dr. Pierce?" Helm's lips puckered for a second, but she recalled her professional expression more quickly than expected. She was improving. "She's incredible. A great cardio surgeon. I just never…cardio…?"
"Didn't we just discuss a person being more than surgery? I know you went through a long stretch where medicine was all you had, Taryn. None of us had ever lived it quite that way before, and if you were totally isolated…."
"It's better now. I'm better, with Levi and J—Dr. Wilson. Luna—I mean that's a change but…yeah."
"Jo's fine, in here. She's my friend, too. And I'm glad things are better. I've learned the hard way that being alone isn't easy. You made a good choice. But I wasn't referring to Maggie." She picked up one of the framed photos clustered beside her computer monitor and drank it in for a second before flipping it around. "This is Lexie. She showed up out of nowhere—or that's how it seemed—at the start of my second year. She was more open than I was, and no matter how often I dismissed her, she kept trying, and I'm glad she did, because she was much more than I expected."
"Was she the Key?" Helm blurted, and then made a face that Meredith recognized from countless times she'd finally said something she'd thought she could hold back forever.
"She does look like Dawn, huh? No false memories. We had to do that the old-fashioned way." Helm looked only slightly less shocked than she had at the start of this conversation. "What, you think I pulled Hellmouth out of my ass?"
"No—Well—I was in high school when it aired, so you were in college right? I just thought maybe you'd had better things to do."
"Than watch a hot blonde girl beat up demons and make bad romantic decisions? It's important to see yourself represented in media, Helm." That, and no one got out of a Woman's Studies class in 1997 without having seen at least the pilot. Reruns had been her one indulgence while she juggled Dartmouth and her mother's care.
"I was a Tara. Actually tried to get people to call me that, but Mom said she'd given me a specific name, and it didn't need shortening."
"Mmm, I've heard variations on that myself." How long until someone hears "Mere?" Are you "merely" anything, Meredith?
Helm gave her the tight smile she'd gotten used to seeing from anyone who didn't know how to make sense of the clash between their mother-daughter surgical icons.
Meredith considered sharing her other nickname to bail them out of this conversational grave, but she'd deemed the chattering girl—woman—Hellmouth for a reason, and she'd lucked out the last time there was someone who knew about "Death" running around the hospital. She couldn't guarantee she wouldn't become Dr. Death this time, and she really did have a reputation to uphold. Her own, not her mother's.
Instead, she left it to Helm, who finally took a couple more backward paces and offered her one more perky challenge. "Angel or Spike?"
Meredith laughed. "My husband was on the Angel end of the spectrum," she admitted, and put those parallels in a box in her brain to be examined at another time. "But I admit to rooting for Spike."
Helm smiled again. This time Meredith could tell it was genuine, and although she was obviously pleased with herself for making her boss laugh, the unbridled, unasked-for hope didn't fill her eyes. Progress, even if she'd only gotten better at tamping it down. Meredith wondered what it said about her ego that she thought she'd miss the expression, just a little.
"Of course," she said as Helm reached for the handle of her cracked-open door. "I kinda always hoped it'd be Faith."
Helm let out a tiny squaw, and continued out the door.
She'd known that even the show that aired TV's first lesbian kiss wasn't going to go there, particularly with where the relationship that contained that kiss ended up. There was no way the chemistry between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Eliza Dushku would be played for anything real. And if it had, it wouldn't have affected her. Would it? If the culture as a whole had been less puritanical…would she have done things differently? Would being the slut of Seattle Grace had been worse if Carrie Bradshaw hadn't existed? There was no way to know.
The sound of the door closing behind Helm might as well have been the click of shears cutting through a marionette's strings. She slumped in her ergonomic rolling chair, Lexie's photograph still in her hands.
"That went better than expected," she observed. Her sister's open-mouthed laugh had been captured nearly a decade ago, but if she'd been sitting in one of the chairs opposite the desk, her expression probably would've been the same. At least, Meredith hoped they'd gotten to the point where Lexie would've openly mocked the way she'd stumbled through the interaction. Sometimes, she worried that she exaggerated how close they'd really been—wishful thinking combining with the guilt she carried over the first months of Lexie's internship. Overall, she'd spent less time pushing her away than not, but she'd pushed so hard. It could be hard to believe that the remaining time was enough of a salve for the bruises she must've caused.
Did Lexie ever imply that you weren't doing enough? the therapist's voice in her subconscious asked. Or is that what you think you'd have felt?
With the amount of times Meredith had been rejected whenever she should've expected unconditional love, on some level it made sense that it was how she'd learned to deal with being approached by someone so obviously wanting it. But now that she'd gotten past the instinct to lash out, she couldn't fathom the ease with as which she'd dealt out that kind of damage.
She had, though. She'd punched down in a way she'd prided herself on never doing. Lexie had taken the blows and bobbed up like a kid's toy. And she'd claimed that Meredith was worth it.
She wasn't the first to say it, but she was the first who made Meredith believe she meant it, wholeheartedly. Who saw the best and the worst, and stayed for the in-between. Until her, everyone always seemed to have a preference. Bright and shiny Mer, or dark and twisty Death.
Lexie had accepted the full spectrum.
A/N: Fun fact: I couldn't work it into this, but someone class of 2004 in the Dartmouth LGBTQ oral histories mentions finding a bottle of tequila in their meeting room, and that is TOO GOOD, it totally belonged to Meredith Grey, BS Class of '00, MD '06. (I will get it in a fic one day.)
If you haven't read it yet, the one-shot a-href="Punching Down" story/story_edit_ ?storyid=13993704/a is based off a reference in the previous chapter, but can be read on its own, or at any other point.
Next update was one of the earliest ideas I had for this fic.