A/N: Alright so I tried my best to explain the rules of cricket in this chapter, but I don't really think I cleared anything up. So if you want to find out more I would suggest watching a video on YouTube or something because I really don't think my explanation will help lol.

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Grey's Anatomy.

Enjoy!

The next morning, Meredith woke early, despite not needing to go in, thanks to her damn body clock and had the joy of watching Lexie walk tiredly into the kitchen.

"Good morning, when I came back you weren't here. For a worrying second I thought you'd gone home with Mark," Meredith giggled.

"I nearly did; I mean come on, have you seen the guy? But Lexie Grey does not put out to a random stranger who is related to a friend of my half-sister."

"That's very specific."

"But accurate. Because I've seen enough media to know he's a manwhore, but he's a really nice manwhore," Lexie whined.

"Do you like Mark?" she chuckled.

"Yes. He's hot and funny and if he didn't sleep with a random girl every other night I would consider dating him. But I don't even know if he liked me that much anyway so whatever. But we are going out for drinks on Friday," she finished quickly.

"What?"

"I'm seeing him again."

"But I thought he was a dirty dirty manwhore?"

"He is. But you have to get to know him to realise he's a whole lot more than that."

"You barely know him," she said, raising her eyebrows.

"Maybe, but the man is talkative. I know more than you."

"That's because you left within five minutes," Meredith laughed, "Derek wasn't offended by the way."

"It wouldn't have made a difference whether I was there or not, he would have been staring at you the whole time anyway," she smirked.

"Whatever," Meredith said, rolling her eyes, "are you going to teach me the rules of cricket or not?"

"I'm glad you asked, by the end of the day you will know everything there is to know."

"It's not going to take that long is it?" Meredith asked, looking at her with concern.

"Well no. But you would be surprised with the amount of rules there are."

xxxxx

Derek got up that morning feeling a little more optimistic and positive due to spending time with Meredith last night. They'd talked endlessly like always, enjoying each other's company, but as they left, he'd noticed that Mark was still talking to Lexie, deep in conversation, which was a bit of a rarity in Mark Sloan's case. Derek had smiled to himself and left without him, hoping he might start to comprehend the possibility that he could be in a relationship, which was definitely something he would be grilling him about. They'd been given a day off training today, told to rest their working limbs, but on a day like today with the sun shining and a light breeze flowing through the air, Derek had opted to go for a light jog. Nothing strenuous, just enough for him to feel like he was doing something.

He'd invited Mark along and they'd met up at the local park gates, intending to run through it, along a few streets and back to Derek's place. Mark arrived within a few minutes of him standing there so he managed not to look like a total idiot, and they soon set off, weaving through the passers-by at a slow pace, enough for them to hold a conversation at least.

"So, how did you get on with Lexie last night?" he asked.

"Good."

"That's all I get?" he chuckled.

"Hey, you're the sappy, romantic brother in this partnership, not me," Mark huffed.

"That doesn't mean you can't like a girl," he replied, rolling his eyes.

"Alright fine, I like her, you happy now?"

Derek dipped his head slightly before picking it back up, indicating he expected more.

"She's nice. We talked about cricket for a bit and she told me what she did. She wants to be a neurosurgeon, she's got a crazy memory, she'd smash it. You know she knows the whole periodic table off by heart? She's naturally funny as well you know? And you can tell she's a good person, kind, compassionate, she chose the right profession that's for damn sure. Brains and a good personality."

"That's more like it," Derek smiled, "I don't think I've ever heard you talk about a girl in that much detail and not once mention what she looks like."

Mark seemed to mull over this for a second as he went quiet.

"Hey, it's good Mark. You going to see her again?"

"Yeah, we're going out for drinks on Friday," he said, dodging a kid on a bike, "I don't know if she actually likes me or if it's the celebrity thing. Because she knew who we both were."

"The famous thing has come back to bite you in the ass," Derek grinned.

"Yeah," he scoffed.

"I'll talk to Meredith, see if I can get anything on Lexie for you," Derek supplied.

"Thanks man, this is new to me, I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

"That I do know."

"What about you? How's Meredith?"

"She's good, she's got a big surgery this week that she's stressed about but I told her she'd be fine. She's incredible, she hasn't got to worry about a thing. Apparently Dr Bailey is pretty intimidating and she thinks she'll go into general surgery, so she doesn't want to screw it up. I'm thinking about asking her to come to the bar next Tuesday, just something to celebrate, for her to look forward to."

Mark shook his head, a small smile on his face, prompting Derek to ask what was wrong.

"It's just that if I didn't know who her boyfriend was, I would sure as hell assume it was you."

xxxxx

It appeared that Lexie had bought a whiteboard along with various pens to teach her sister the rules of cricket; Meredith had to admit that she was dedicated.

"First things first, fielding positions."

"You've already lost me."

"Oh boy. Okay so you know how you have defence in baseball?"

"Uh huh."

"That's it. There's just a lot of different positions."

"Alright."

"So the pitch is in an oval shape with a strip down the middle called the wicket," Lexie explained, drawing as she went, "there's a lot of different positions you can have but there's only eleven men on the field at any one time, so you have to do something called 'setting your field'. Your fielders will go in specific places and sometimes the bowler will move them around to adapt to their style of bowling. I won't bother telling you what the positions are called, you don't really need to know that. The only ones you really need to know is the bowler, which is what Derek does, and the wicketkeeper, they're kind of like catchers. They stand behind the stumps and catch the ball if the batsman doesn't hit it. Any questions so far?"

"I think I've got it," she nodded.

"Okay cool. Now for how it's played. If you're fielding, or defence, you want to keep the opposition's score as low as possible, obviously. The bowler will bowl from one end of the wicket to the batter at the other end, aiming at the stumps. The stumps are essentially three sticks with bales on the top, which are just extra pieces of wood. When the bowler bowls, the ball cannot bounce more than twice, but it can't be wide, meaning it's out of the designated lines you're meant to bowl between. If the bowler hits the stumps, then the batsman is out. If the ball hits the batsman's leg, blocking it from hitting the stumps, then they're also out."

"Okay."

"Batsmen can also be out by being caught, like in baseball, or you can be run out, where someone hits the stumps whether it be a throw or by someone holding the ball and hitting it. Any time the batsman is out of their crease, they can be stumped out, which is the same action to run someone out. If the batsman edges the ball, or clipped it or whatever you want to call it and the wicketkeeper catches it it's also out."

"So like a foul tip?"

"Exactly. This will continue until the fielding side bowls out ten people or until you run out of overs, it depends what cricket game you're playing."

"You're telling me there's different sort of matches within the same sport?"

"Yep, there's a reason some people think cricket is confusing," Lexie laughed.

"Alright continue."

"So now let's say you're batting. You go out with another batsman and you stand at each end of the wicket. When you bat, there's a lot of different shots you can do, which I also won't bore you with. But your aim is to get a high a score as possible, or if you're batting second, the aim is to beat to opposition's score. If you hit it and think you can run to the other end, past the crease, which is just a white line, before the ball gets back, then you and your partner run and switch ends, hence why one point is called a run. If you hit the ball and it reaches the boundary, which is the perimeter of the pitch, you get four runs. If you hit the ball and it goes over the boundary without bouncing, then you get six runs. Once six balls have been bowled, this is called an over, you then switch ends and go again. You continue until you either run out of overs or everyone is out, and then you are either finished or you start the second innings, depending what form you're playing. And that's all you really need to know."

"Wow. That was, a lot of information. You realise I'm not going to remember all of this right?"

"You'll pick it up, something tells me you're going to be watching cricket for a long time coming," Lexie smirked.

xxxxx

The next day Meredith was sat on Charlie's couch, starting to count down the minutes until she had to be at the hospital. After talking with Lexie and coming to the realisation that most of her friends thought Charlie was boring, she had decided to test it out for herself; to pay specific attention to what he was saying. And she kind of wished she didn't. There wasn't a lot she knew about software engineering, and he was talking about things that she thought were made up, although she assumed she did that a lot with medicine so she let it slide. But as she listened, she couldn't hear the excitement in his voice, or at least emphasis on parts of the conversation, she realised he spoke in a monotone fashion and it was starting to get on her nerves. She entirely blamed Lexie for this; if she hadn't told her he was boring she wouldn't have even noticed it, and looking around his apartment, she couldn't see a thing that they had in common.

To be fair, she didn't get a lot of time outside of work to do things, but her apartment had more personality than this place. The more she looked the more she thought she was in a black and white film, of course he had a few pictures, but not enough to brighten the place up. It was actually horrifying how long she'd spent not noticing all of this. She assumed it was because she saw his bedroom more often than the rest of his place, they normally went out for dates rather than stay in, and when they were at one of their places, it tended to be for only one reason.

The thing was, he was still the guy she had met a few months ago; he was kind, hardworking and he cared about her. That alone was enough to convince herself that none of this mattered, it was the guy who mattered, not how he spoke or what his apartment looked like. Though in the back of her mind she was secretly wondering what Derek's place looked like.

"So I finished downloading the software only for it to shut down, so I'll be up late trying to figure it out," Charlie said.

Meredith zoned back in to find that she had missed an entire conversation and it didn't make any difference, she simply nodded and was empathetic towards him before she spared a glance back at the clock.

"Look Charlie, I've gotta go. But I hope you figure out that… thing," she said, standing up.

"I'll see you later," he said, standing up to kiss her cheek before she walked out the door.

She hopped into her car and closed her eyes, sitting completely still at the wheel. Images of Derek's smiling face swam through her mind, particular attention being drawn to his dazzling blue eyes. Somehow, they morphed into Charlie's green ones along with the rest of his features, and rather than feel something good inside herself like when she thought about Derek, she felt like a lead weight was weighing her down, and it largely resembled guilt. Thinking of another man shouldn't make her feel guilty, especially when said person was a friend, hell, he'd even explicitly said that he didn't want to date her, so what was there to be concerned about?

She was jolted out of her thought process when her phone started to ring. She rummaged around in her bag and pulled it out, accepting the call and putting it to her ear.

"Grey."

"Meredith!" Derek's voice greeted her, she could practically feel the smile in his voice.

"Hey Derek."

"Hey, so I'm doing another song this Tuesday. I was wondering if you wanted to come? I figure it would be a good celebration of your surgery I'm sure you'll crush. And you know, see the whole thing rather than rudely interrupt me mid-song?" he teased.

"I didn't interrupt you," she said, rolling her eyes, "But yeah, I'll come. But you can't complain if I make fun of you," she smiled.

"I wouldn't dream of it. I'll see you then."

"Bye Derek."

"Bye Mer."

With that, she hung up the phone and bit her lip, staring at the device as the guilt crept back in. What the hell was she doing?