Considering the freak snowstorm, a week ago, the October air was balmy, though Meredith supposed her blood hadn't thinned out completely and to anyone who hadn't spent twenty years in the northeast it might have been a little nippy. She didn't mind. She'd been colder a couple of weeks ago, standing outside surrounded by a hundred candles that gave off almost no warmth. She'd known he'd expected her to go inside; but she wanted him to respect her steps, she'd do the same. Make a point of it because he didn't always read subtly.
Hence, her sitting on a bench on her night — early morning — off, sparkle pager traded to Alex for the information that Derek's shift had been uneventful, and his post-ops rounded on, complication free. On nights he was the only neuro on-call, he wouldn't even go as far fron the hospital as her house, and she'd stayed with him a few nights ago. The sparkle shone brighter with proximity, she'd teased, but really, she hadn't wanted to lose out on a night of the sleep she got with him next to her, even under the constraints of an on-call room bed. She felt like she might be catching up from some point in January. Insomnia was one of the many issues that'd plagued her of and on for as long as she could remember. Last summer and early that fall she'd been able to sleep — or not— when she wanted. She'd attributed it to intern exhaustion, until it disappeared. Until she'd spent months bone-weary, memorizing her ceiling. In the spring, it'd been better, but not as easy; not with dreams where she tumbled deeper into Elliott Bay, her mother's voice in her head.
It had been different for her, the drowning. That didn't mean it'd been easy.
She twisted her grip on the bottle in her hands. Surgical nurses were coming through the lobby doors; she'd be spotted if she left. She didn't want to leave. That made it harder to stay.
He almost walked past her. Hunched into his jacket, taking quick, long strides, and she could see him on a sidewalk in Manhattan; where everyone's brisk, don't-talk-to-me vibe seemed anathema to the Derek Shepherd she knew. She observed for longer than she should've, and her "Derek?" was soft, but he turned, smiling before he got all the way around.
"Hey, what are you doing here? Not that I'm not thrilled to see you."
"I know a place where we can sit and watch the ferryboats," she said, and the way his eyes lit up was so expectant that she wanted to let that be it. "And there's this thing I should tell you. It's not an us thing. Not really. It's me. But it affected us, and it's not gonna…. Wyatt says that whatever I know now, I still…. Can we go? And I'll tell you where people can't see you looking all concerned and think I've lost it again?"
He glanced around, and then tilted his head like he was trying to mask the movement. She didn't care. The hospital watched her; she watched back. But she and Derek were good, and she wasn't going to let some intern busybody tell the floor that they weren't while she wasn't even there.
"Come on." He held his hand out. Such a simple thing to him. Her past made it huge. Someone willing to be attached to her romantically, in public, wasn't something she'd had. She'd gotten arms looped through hers, or momentary clasps to pull her up or over, hiding the meaning from observers. Derek threaded his fingers through hers and bumped his thumb over her knuckles. "My car or yours?"
"Yours. I rode in with Izzie."
It wasn't tequila, but she didn't know how much of the bottle it would take her to be able to tell this story. She'd said it aloud all of five times in her life. She thought it was a positive that she trusted that he'd get her home after, or at least drop her off to find an on-call room—
That thought didn't make sense. This wasn't something he'd leave her over—not even if it confirms what he thought in the spring? — She told herself not, but she didn't trust her interpretations of people, yet. Wyatt said it'd come. Meredith doubted. Oh, how, Meredith doubted.
Derek opened the door her, and the part of her raised by a second-wave feminist, who'd aced women's studies classes in college wanted to object to this display of chivalry, but she checked that. Yes, the action was equally based on how he'd been taught to treat his mom and sisters, but there was more to it. Little things like that for her was part of how he showed that he loved her. How wrong was it that she'd paid enough attention to know there hadn't been as many of them with Addison?
"Same place?" he asked, looping out of the parking lot.
"Uh-huh." She picked at the label on the bottle, wishing she'd gotten something screwtop. The multi-tool he carried was usually in his pocket. She could- He reached over the console and took her hand again wrapping it in his. Her heart beat in double time, the way it had whenever one of her nervous habits cropped up while she'd been trying to radiate "nice, normal girlfriend." To be fair, he'd never had more of a reaction than this. Soft acknowledgement and redirection. She'd just been sure he'd get tired of catching for his adult partner's tics. She wasn't unsure now, but the less she panicked about what he wanted versus who she was, and accepted that he could know and want her, the more the tiny intercessions felt like the small gestures. The ways he demonstrated love.
It wasn't far from the hospital to the overlook, within walking distance, if you were determined. A year ago, they'd come here in the weeks before summer faded, and even in the dark it'd been humid. Now, she set the example by getting out of the car, but they might have to return before she finished this story, seat warmers and heater winning out.
The bench was dry, at least. Derek sat, indicating the spot next to him where she landed naturally now, his right, but she shook her head, standing on the thin lane of grass between bench and sidewalk.
"Kinda reminds me of the esplanade," he said, watching her in his periphery as He slid over to the edge of the seat to work the weak multi-tool corkscrew into the bottle.
She didn't bother suppressing her deer-in-the-headlights expression. It threw her off whenever he alluded to having heard of Boston, let alone that he'd have attended his youngest sister's college graduation while she received her high school diploma. She felt the same way knowing Lexie had been at Harvard before she'd left for her ill-fated European tour; although she hadn't let her sister see her discomfort. Lexie would think she was off-putting; it wasn't that. Even picturing Cristina in the place of one of the library-bound roommates who'd looked askance at her in the kitchen of some Smith girl she'd hooked up with after a show in Northampton made her skin crawl.
The Meredith they'd have met in Massachusetts was a livewire, dynamite about to go off, willing to fight for the underdog. She'd had none of the self-confidence they admired. She'd been far more interested in shutting off her brain than utilizing it, and she couldn't even do that. Her idiosyncrasies kept her from fitting into any of the worlds she flitted between; she was too nerdy for the partiers, too crass for the nerds. Beloved at protests, too flaky to volunteer. Volatile in classroom debates, handing in crumpled homework done on the way to a rave. Med school had given her just enough objective reinforcement; blind grades, clinicals with MDs who didn't know their surgical history, the degree that matched her mother's. Before the name on that diploma read Meredith Grey, she hadn't been ready for any of them.
"I like it better across the river," she told Derek, who raised his eyebrows quickly, and then refocused on the bottle; his loose posture tightening slightly like he was avoiding sudden movements that would scare her of the path of the past. Buckle up, bub. "From the Cambridge side. I used to walk home from Harvard Square along Memorial Drive. It was gorgeous during the day; practical at night, after the T shut down. Creepy-quiet, sometimes."
"Isn't it kind of a…multiple college city?"
"Exactly. Life in Cambridge concentrated around the MIT and Harvard. Off Mass Ave, away from the squares; it's residential. Brighton goes late for BU. Thanks to the professors and the retired surgeons; Downtown goes a few hours after the theatres let out. But sometimes I could be in the center of the city and think no one would hear me scream. And that would make a difference; don't give me any misinterpreted Kitty Genoese bystander effect bullshit."
"Wasn't going to." His expression was more serious than she expected. Right. Four sisters. That was the truest thing he'd told her. The one that set him apart from all the guys who cited Papa Hemingway's ode to masculinity as their favorite book.
"Right. Sorry."
"She was…?"
"A lesbian, yeah. Not like it's well-known. The attack was random, and she'd been married to a guy for a hot second. The professor who taught it to me knew her, though, and it's always pissed me off that her girlfriend got identified as her roommate or whatever. I…I'm sorry. Not a lot of people who can listen to me talk about that stuff these days. Pretty much only Cristina knows, and she got enough of it at Smith and Berkeley. Burke-ly. Huh. Think they ever noticed that?"
He paused with the cork halfway out. "Sure you need this?"
"Yes! I…ah…Um. That came out wrong. It's…."
"No offense, Mer but you're used to a stronger weapon."
She tried to laugh, but it was hollow. That was true, but her affinity for tequila was why she had no judgement for her tolerance with other types of liquor. Izzie's desire to be "classy for once" on her birthday had ended in an acidic purple arc hitting the bushes with George holding Meredith's waist so she didn't fall over the railing.
That'd been at the height of messy-Meredith; Derek had seen a lot of mornings after. It might not have been so much of a joke.
"Mer?"
"I'm not always like I was last winter. I can deal with shit, and not drink and fuck it off. It was just a lot, and, you know, in surgery if something good happens, you try to recreate the circumstances, but you can't, because people are different. And it wasn't…it was less you than 'you'd made everything better.' I wouldn't have had to get wasted with the glass slippers if I'd really thought one of them could replace you."
"What happened to 'I took advantage?'"
"By the time you finally got your cock in me, yeah, 'cause I'd started drinking before you bugged me, and I didn't stop 'cause sometimes it's better if I'm not as…responsive as I can be, but I'd said yes, and it never became a no."
"Good," he said, popping the cork. He held the bottle out to her. She took it but didn't drink. "Mer, I'm not sure I know exactly where this is coming from, but I know what a problem, a serious one, looks like. I've never thought you had anything but a few bad weeks."
She nodded, but her mind kept flashing to Thatcher, and the way Lexie covered for him, and Richard, who didn't make it a secret that he was in AA, and she could make connections in stories that weren't her own. She'd given Joe her keys when none of her other friends were around. How many times did she get them back that night?
"Rough estimate," he said, drawing her attention back. "How many ways could you have gotten that cork out?"
"Depends on what's in the car. Surgical tools are too easy. If I'd had on heels, that'd do it. In college, we mostly broke the neck. Any fancier tricks are from the bar I tended senior year; it was a local dive in Hanover, and we were always misplacing the rusted old corkscrew."
"I can see you as a bartender. Not putting up with the assholes. Keeping confidences."
"It was fun. Impressed some of the Red Sox-watching regulars with my chugging skills. I didn't get fired, either. Place folded. Owner was a y2k believer with a gambling problem."
"Yikes."
"Yup. I wouldn't have lasted anyway. He hated me. I started off insisting that no hospital would let a glitch like that slide, and by the end I was taping news clippings to his door."
Derek laughed.
"Didn't want to stay up north anyway. I picked up shifts at a few places later, but wasn't on payroll. Wasn't on many payrolls. I had a tendency to take off for weekends. Weeks. Following people, bands, parties. Eventually, I got tired of always leaving, but not going anywhere, you know? I thought I was done with her," she added, taking a pull from the bottle. Irony was delicious. "Table-dancing, tequila Meredith. She's fun, but she can't keep a job. She tries, and she fails, as her mother reminds her whenever she calls to have money wired to her account. Mostly, she's bored and can't get out of her head. It takes her some very dark places."
"But it also took her to med school."
"Yeah. Mom used to say that if I hadn't figured myself out by twenty-five she was gonna donate whatever was left in my education savings. So, I couldn't bullshit around and expect a payoff. Otherwise, what had she done it all for? She didn't raise a researcher, or a drummer, or a temp. Didn't care that I took the GRE and did okay—she sure as hell didn't raise a professor. Should've asked her what my father did; would've made the last one make more sense. I'm a little afraid to ask Lex how her parents felt about her going for surgery.
"Thing is, it's not like I had an alternate plan. I was a sub-drummer one summer for a band that still tours, and they offered to give me the spot, but they hadn't been signed yet, and it would've been…risky. It's easy to say she deprived me of that, but I was a junior in college who'd been told: 'if you do nothing with your life, do it with a degree.' If she'd fought me, I might've gone along to be defiant, which is probably why she just said, 'you won't do that;' she was right." She sighed and gulped from the bottle again before handing it over. "I always thought she knew I wanted to be a doctor, and she thought I'd screw it up. That's why what she said that day she was lucid was so confusing."
"Which part?"
"Before I told her what was happening, she said… she thought she'd had a breakdown, and she remembered the fight we'd had, but what she remembers about it…. She said…it wasn't 'sorry;' it was she'd said terrible things, and I didn't have to go to med school."
Derek had his mouth against the lip of the bottle, and Meredith looked down at the grass, hiding her smile at the way confusion made his lips twist. "The one…the fight before you left to travel?"
"That's the one."
"You'd gotten in already."
"Yup," she agreed, taking the wine back. "Sent in a deposit and everything. I took a commuter plane up to New York to tell her. Had this whole thing about trying to follow in her footsteps, but never growing into them, and deciding I could stay on the path anyway. Had a…." She swallowed only the lump in her throat a couple of times, and then washed it down. "Had a picture from when I was real little. Two, maybe three. I'm standing in a pair of her heels. Right…right to the side you can see her hands ready to catch me. Maybe why I took so long to learn to walk in 'em. Hoping she'd show up if I fell."
"Do you still have the picture?"
"Did I set it on fire after she said I was better equipped for med school as toddler? I did not, and I think it was big of me."
"Jesus. Yeah, I'd say so."
She toasted the bottle toward him. "I was so…I'd done it. I'd gotten where she wanted, and…I was never enough." She purposefully did not drink, though her hand itched with the desire. The instinct.
"You're more than enough."
Anything but ordinary.
"Thank you. I'm starting to…to believe that can be true. Which is not a bad place to start this, but I'm not.… Tell me something."
"What?"
"This is…it's a big thing. One Cristina only knows because…I didn't decide to tell her so much as I had to, so… tell me something true."
"I never…."
She held the bottle out, eyebrow raised. She was not here for I never lied to you.
He smiled sheepishly.
"Something more than the spiel you made up for a first date in the eighties," she added.
"Hey, what?"
"Coffee ice cream, the Clash, the motorcycle…sure, your mom, your sisters; that was real. Important. The five women who made you who you were, before her. That's what you were going for, right?"
"No. Not exactly. Who I was in the eighties wasn't nearly that cool." Meredith rolled her eyes. "I'm serious, here. I wasn't that cool by the time I met Addison. Ask her next time she gets bored down there. Hell, ask Mark tomorrow, I don't care. But as for what I was going for…." His eyes flickered as he stared at the water. "Okay...here's something true: I chose Bowdoin because I didn't think Mark would follow me there." He drank and gave the wine back to her. "He'd been there for everything, since we were kids. It wasn't that I didn't want him around. More that I wanted to get away from Manhattan, and everything that went with it. And I don't mean for four years. I had this dream that I'd become a doctor, go off to the middle of nowhere; somewhere rural that doesn't have a hospital within two hours. I'd considered surgery; I knew if I pursued it, it'd be neuro, but for a year or so…."
"It's a big thing to get to be your own person."
"Mm. The worst of it…. Hey, you wanna hand me the blunt object for a second?"
"What?" She stepped back, suspiciously. "Why?"
"Because I'm aware I didn't learn from this, and you'd have every right to bludgeon me."
She made a show of gulping from the bottle, and then holding it up to judge the level. Halfway down the label. Not bad. She would've brought an extra if she wanted full-on blitzed. Fuzzy would be good and pausing to make sure she didn't cruise past it would be too. Then. She handed it off.
"What I regret most is leading him on." The pause as his words settled made the wine she was trying to let settle boil inside her. "It's not like we didn't talk. We were best friends, and my dad didn't—there was no 'men don't's; not in that regard. Mom always says Mark knew me, but he doesn't know himself."
"Gimme the blunt object."
He was tentative, and she thought it might be genuine. Four sisters must've taught him the small ones needed weapons if they couldn't pull hair.
"I had one of those. A Mark. Sorta. Maybe I'm the Mark. I wanted her to follow. Relationship isn't one to one unless you're not telling me something."
The joke, if it was one, did not land at first; then he replied, "If Mark liked a dick that wasn't his, do you think he'd bother keeping it a secret?"
"Fair point." Not that simple. She'd save that note.
"That was, Sadie?"
"Yeah." She smiled in spite of the mix of apprehension and uncertainty increasing with her heartbeat. "You remembered?"
"Everything you've told me about yourself."
"Er. Same."
Derek's eyes lit up for just long enough to make her aware that she'd been right to let that slip. "I'm sorry if you were on the other side with her. I should've at least been less encouraging. Less, 'Yeah, bro, you'll be a shoe-in…' It wasn't about him going Ivy, but he was far more of a city kid than me. It was the seventies. Mom let us run around the neighborhood all day, but we had no business going more than three blocks in any direction."
"Huh. I had supervision, too, y'know. A lot of it. A lot of different grownups, who had no idea what the other's rules were, or what they'd said yes to. And then I turned ten; I could be trusted to ride the bus, and if I ended up on a milk carton; well, I knew better than to go off with a strange man, didn't I?" She paused. "Hey, you realize you're essentially dating Mark with a cunt?"
Derek blinked at her. It wasn't like she'd never said it to him, "pussy" was not her word, but this wasn't a direction.
"You are! It's possible that was too much. Just…."
"You throwing spaghetti against the wall to make sure I stay."
"That's a waste of pasta." She sighed. "I do trust you. Mostly. I…I'm trying to stop doing that."
"I know. And you are similar, but the differences aren't anatomical. If it helps," he added. "I kind of led everyone in my life on from then, about who I was. What I wanted."
"Been there." Bottle check. Below the label. She held onto it and angled her body away. "There's a lot of water in our pasts, Derek. The Sound, the Charles, the Hudson. Lotsa rivers. Dozens of bridges just in the cities. All the water…water can't be forgotten. We need it. It's seventy-five percent of who we are. More than that, figuratively. What happened last year, and before that, it matters, even if we really don't want it to." She stared out at the boats. Their paths never seemed to waver, but they could, and lives could be changed with one gust of wind. "I didn't practice this, and I'm not used to saying it; I shouldn't be. No one should.
"By the end of her life, my mother was alone, except for me. That hadn't always been the case, but it wasn't the only time, either. She treated me like an adult, because for a lot of my life, she didn't have another adult. That's…you shouldn't do that to a kid, but my point is, I was it. She went from having my father, Richard, the hospital—whether or not she was liked, by the end of her residency, she was respected—to being on her own with a five-year-old. It'd be overwhelming for anyone, and for someone so used to being in control…. She lost her grip. She made a horrible, horrifying choice. It wasn't the way I thought, and I don't know how…."
She turned, facing him, her arms wrapped around herself to protect from the breeze of the water, and maybe more. "What I remember is this: one night, I was waiting up for mom to come home from an emergency. I expected to be in trouble, but whatever I had to say or ask…I don't remember what it was, but it must've seemed important enough. She didn't snap and tell me to get my bum back to bed. She went with me and tucked me in again, which never happened. Supposedly, it'd encourage bad sleep habits. Clearly that worked out, considering I'm such an insomniac that I don't know when the snoring thing started.
"She, uh, told me a lot of things might be changing soon, and I shouldn't be scared. Complications didn't always lead to bad outcomes. I asked if she meant kindergarten. This was in early June, and I'd just started to understand that it wouldn't be long. before I had to go to a school that wasn't at the hospital. She laughed, and said that would be part of it, but our lives might look very different by September. She said…asked if I'd like having Uncle Richard around more. I said yes. He was more fun than Daddy. She laughed again, and I went to sleep thinking that if I could make Mommy laugh twice, I must be the funniest kid ever. The next morning, my cereal was on the table, the milk set out in a little cup beside it. My father was gone. I was confused, but not upset. Not yet. His books were still there. His books were like…like my doll. I knew he'd come back for them.
"Not long after that, Mom took me to a carousel. Dunno where, except I think I'd remember if it was the one at the zoo. I was big on animals; I'd already asked for riding lessons. She told me we'd talk about it in second grade. I never forgot that, either. But by second grade, I'd decided it'd be too much trouble for her to have to write a check once a month and arrange for me to carpool to a barn with one of the half-dozen girls who had medals to show off every Monday."
"I can see you as a horse girl," Derek said, thoughtfully.
She wrapped her lips around the mouth of the bottle, a fragment the giggle that was trying its damnedest to escape echoing back at her. That part, she'd said before, in a very different context. Her hands had been covered in horse blood when she'd muse that if she'd managed to get on one more than a couple times at birthday parties, equestrian vet could've ended up on her imaginary list of surgeon-alternatives. One of Finn's less ambitious plans had been to take her riding. She'd said sure, made some cowgirl joke. She hadn't been able to picture going out on a trail with a vet, but she could with a neurosurgeon?
The wine was almost gone. She took a final pull and tipped it toward him, neck first. "Take it." Once he followed through, she continued, "Bet you treated a lot of them. SCIs helicoptered in from Connecticut," she said. "Must make it seem like a dangerous pastime."
"Most things are. I wouldn't advise a parent against it like I would football or hockey."
"You played hockey. Didn't you?" she added, like she hadn't admitted to memorizing details like that.
"I did. You didn't ride."
"No," she said. How was it this conversation could be so different when he knew it wasn't a case of a safety-conscious parent, or choosing Brownies?
"We'll go, some time. There are three or four horse farms within spitting distance of the trailer." He didn't say it to get her back on track, she knew that, but it had the same effect. She wanted to make plans with him. She had to do this first.
"Richard was waiting for us at the carousel. He said all the Uncle Richard things—he called me 'pipsqueak,' which I loved, since neither of my parents liked silly words—but he didn't pick me up. Mom put me on the carousel and promised to wave at me, but she didn't. Every time I went around, she looked more upset. I couldn't see his face, and the last time she was alone. All I heard him say was…was 'you have a daughter.' That might've been all Mom heard.
"I think the carousel let off on the wrong side, because I'd been watching, and…and she couldn't have left. She…she found me, or I…she found me. Told me it was fine. Not to be scared. There, um…that's the first time I think I was standing in front of her, but she was mostly talking to herself. I think that might've…it might've happened a lot. It definitely happened post-diagnosis. Maybe…maybe even when she seemed lucid."
Derek had been watching her steadily, but here his expression became searching. She pressed her lips together, indicating that he was on the right track. Ste hadn't recounted everything her mother had said the day of the false gift; and she'd have to, to explain fully. She should've brought another bottle. One per trauma.
But how did you count? Those lines were dotted, if they were visible at all.
"There used to be a dinner. An end-of-year banquet thing. They did a whole hotel-ballroom thing again two weeks later for the new class. It stopped around the same time they got their second female intern and showing off the wives wasn't a thing. That's why Richard gets credit for the 'intern mixer' thing."
"What?" she added, as his eyebrows went up. "I never mentioned how much Mom wanted to be chief one day? She had plans for where she could put that money. She hated those kinds of things. But that year, she got recognized for being the first resident shortlisted for the Harper Avery. Richard was there. Thatcher made an appearance—propriety? Maybe. Maybe returning his house key. His books had disappeared somewhere in there. I wouldn't talk to either of them. They'd made Mom sad, and she shouldn't be sad. Not when the chief had said he was proud of her. She was extraordinary, a pearl no other surgical program could claim. Patriarchal bullshit, right? I didn't understand that she'd have been pissed if she hadn't been so far gone. I didn't think of him as the dad. He was the boss, and Mom was my boss.
"I asked her what extraordinary meant on the way home. She said it meant being 'So special you can push the rules in the direction they need to go.' She laughed. I didn't think I was funny that time."
Meredith slid a finger under the band of her watch; turning it until she found the engraving. She'd gone into the jeweler on the defensive; yes, I'm buying my own graduation present, what of it? If paying in cash wouldn't have been a hassle, she'd have claimed to have been her mother's intern, like it'd matter to the pretty clerk giving her the form. As she'd written out "Dr. Meredith Grey, June 4th, 2006" in the squares, she'd realized her mom might've done the same thing. Meredith's aunt had been the only family she'd had left by her graduation.
"I think it happened the next day. Not sure. I know it was the nineteenth of June. I know…I know I had on the shoes I'd worn to the carousel. They were a casualty." That was the word the social worker had used while helping her put on a pair of too-big boots from Lost & Found.
Casualties are not casual, Meredith had said. They are people. Shoes are not people. But I did like them. Throwing them out is a diss-pointment, she'd added, to Show Respect to Adults. That was a rule. Calling 911 was also a rule. That was the first time she'd realized rules could be confusing.
"Mom was…manic…devastated…up and down all day. I sat on the stairs, watching. Then, she called me to the kitchen. I thought it was dinnertime. I don't…." She paused, realizing she'd been pacing the way her mother had that day. "I don't remember eating lunch. The hospital cafeteria was closed, but the janitor was there. He was the proto-Joe. I used to sit in there with a coloring book for hours, and blather on about daycare gossip, or stuff I'd seen in the halls. Wasn't the first time he'd opened the kitchen to make me a grilled cheese. He'd always put tomato on them, and it took me years of burning my mouth on boiling fruit to understand that he'd leave the bread open until the last second before putting them on and taking it off the heat. I hope I thanked him, that night. Sorta expected him to be around last year. Maybe better he wasn't. I'd have sold Mom out for a sandwich."
In a way she had, hadn't she?
She pivoted and had to take a quick step back to regain her balance. Derek started to reach for her, reflexively. A reflex. Saving her was a reflex for him. She thought of sitting on the roof with George the day he thought he was invincible. Saved from death by bird crap, their patient saved by the bird. Who was she if that was allegorical? Was she on the ledge, or had that been Ellis, making Meredith the bird? Or maybe she was George, seizing life on the other side of being shat on.
"Why were you at the hospital?" Derek prompted.
"Oh. Right. Mom called me over. She was sitting on the floor, like we were gonna roll a ball, or play one of the clapping games all the other girls at daycare knew. She never did that. When she read to me, we sat on the sofa or my bed. She didn't play. Being on floor was asking to be stepped on, and women had had enough of that.
"She told me to come sit. I didn't want to. Something felt wrong. She was too still. Mom was intense. You can see it in the surgical videos. Some surgeons, they get ready…um, get ready to cut, and they're placid. With Mom, there were always waves. While I crept across and sat down, waiting for the catch, she was calm. Eerily calm. I finally couldn't avoid it anymore. I sat down across from her. She…she…" She cut. She said. Spelling it to Wyatt hadn't been easy, but the story had been simple. It wasn't anymore. Nothing with Derek was simple, except loving him.
"What did she do, Meredith?" he asked. Her eyes passed over him to the cars passing behind him. Fight, flight, or freeze. She'd fought Wyatt, and now she was freezing.
"She told me not to be scared. That's when I saw the scalpel. She didn't have a suture kit, or a fruit, or anything else she practiced on.… I told her she should be careful with it. 'Blades aren't toys.'
"She said…'That's right.' And I shouldn't touch it. I didn't need to be afraid. And no matter what happened, I was not allowed to call 911. Did I understand?"
No. She hadn't.
What if she had asked isn't calling 911 a rule? What if her mother had told her new rules took precedent?
"Did you see Lexie the day she got sprayed by arterial blood?"
Right around when you kissed Rose? Watching him from the corner of her eye, she couldn't tell if he had the same thought. The headlights of the rushing cars got too distinct. She wasn't blinking enough. That was why her eyes were burning.
"I didn't, but I've seen a severed carotid."
"Okay. So. Imagine you're about to start your fellowship. You were a celebrated general surgeon before you passed your boards. You just finished residency and working E.R. shifts was a way spend nights with your lover. You'd put the kid to bed in an on-call room and tell your husband there was an emergency. Said kid is sitting across from you, big-eyed and twitchy, because you told her not to listen to something you, and every other grownup in her life, told her over and over. The daycare instructor has a goddamned rhyme for it. 'If there's dripping blood, or you see a bone; don't wait for a grownup, get to a phone.' Kinda gory but gets the point across. If your goal is to die, do you cut your wrists?"
He shook his head; his eyebrows drawn together like she was a particularly puzzling tumor.
"She screamed when she made the first cut. I can still hear it. It was pain, but there was something else underneath. Triumph. Disbelief. Like she hadn't thought she could do it. But she had. She switched hands. Told me again not to be afraid. Made the second cut, and she said…she said, 'be an extraordinary woman, Meredith.'"
In spite of the gusts of wind, and the rush of cars, she could still hear his inhale.
"I waited for her to pass out. There was blood all over the floor. I knew losing too much blood could kill someone. I told the dispatcher…I don't know how I knew… I…I said…." Meredith frowned, trying to see past the haze that'd kept her from drowning in that memory for years. She could reach the phone in Seattle; why did she remember standing on a chair? She'd said Mommy bled too much…she'd said her mommy tried to kill herself. How did she know that phrase? She didn't. She'd revisited the scene in so many nightmares, details must've crossed over.
"The paramedics came. By the time we got to the hospital, she'd woken up and was asking for Richard. He wasn't there. He wasn't going to appear at her side, and understand she'd been willing to give up everything once she lost him, or whatever irrational thing… Richard was out of her grasp. That's when she lost it. Not when she came to in an ambulance, because I'd screwed it up. She started screaming at them to get me out of the room, because seeing me in the doorway, covered in blood, made her realize it wasn't gonna pay-off, and she was alone with me. She'd fucked up.
"He didn't know it happened, until a few weeks ago, and I…." The car lights were blurry even when she blinked, and she'd crossed a line where she couldn't quite convince herself that the wind was making her eyes water. She made herself look at Derek. "For most of my life, I thought my mother could have this promising career, have me sitting in front of her, and decide life wasn't worth it. I'd called the paramedics because I needed her. I'd made her live for me."
His eyes met hers. She knew they were sharing a thought this time. I can't keep trying to breathe for you. Not what he'd meant, maybe, but they'd both made the association.
"She never tried again. We talked about it one time. A babysitter asked questions about my nightmares. Mom was clear: if I told the wrong person, they might take me away from her. I'd spent her seventy two-hour hold in a group home; I knew Thatcher wasn't gonna come for me. I didn't say anything to anyone, until Sadie. She told me it was fucked up. That maybe she'd been depressed, or whatever, but doing it in front of an innocent kid was fucked up. Innocent. I was fourteen." She shook her head. "Fourteen, and it hadn't occurred to me that…. It'd become so true to me that I wasn't worth…." Her voice cracked on the words, and when she swallowed, she felt the bite of acid at the back of her throat. "She told me it was selfish, which, from Sadie? The irony is painful. But it was selfish. It seems more selfish to me now, knowing that she was…was basically playing her five-year-old.
"In twenty-four years, she never said, 'hey, Meredith, about that time I risked dying by banking on you breaking the rules—or maybe following them? Unclear—you get that that was a ploy? Yeah, your dad had just taken off; Richard was kind of a big deal to you too, but you didn't think I wanted to leave you, too, did you? In retrospect, I was putting a big decision onto a small child. You wanna maybe talk to someone about that?' Not even, 'oh, Meredith? Just because you failed French—and yes, a B+ is failure— you're not going to come home from school to find me dead! I know none of my friends can stand me anymore, but I'm okay with being a frigid bitch. I have a great job!'
"And…I didn't take care of her because of that. I didn't think I was beholden to her, because I'd saved her life against her wishes, or…or I owed her. She was my mom. She…she was just my mom, and she was sick, and that's what…it's what you do, but it's…I wanted to do it. It was hard, but she wasn't…what I said to her…what I said…. Fuck! W-why can't I just…I can't…I didn't always…as a kid, I talked to her more than anyone, because—because who else could I talk to? If I might say the wrong thing, and lose her after all, who else did I have? But then…but no matter what I did, I couldn't meet her expectations, and I'd try to explain, and she'd interrupt, and…and talk me in circles, and then 'spit it out, Meredith, I don't have time.' In the life she didn't want, she didn't have time for me once I started messing up? Well, of course not. What'd I expect? Technically, I'd messed up there!
"Except I hadn't. I'd done what she wanted. What she expected. I never knew that. I never knew what she expected!
"This won't work for you in college, Meredith.'
"'You can't be this argumentative in med school, Meredith.'
"'You'll have to speak up more as a woman in medicine.'
"'Don't let them show you how much you want it.'
"'You have to be willing to work for it.' I c-couldn't….
"Be extraordinary. You don't have to go to med school. Cure Alzheimer's. I want to know you… and…and she did. Derek, she did. She said all these things about who I'd been before. Before her diagnosis, when I thought I was nothing like the person she wanted me to be, and it was true. I was like that. Passionate. A fighter. A goddamn force of nature. Focused…? I would've said no, but…but I never had another goal. I was…all those things…things she sounded like she admired, and I didn't think I could…I didn't think anyone could…."
Listen to you, babbling and stammering at your boyfriend.
"Mer?" Derek had gotten up from the bench and was approaching her slowly, like she was a freaking wild animal who might bolt. She felt like she might. She locked her knees, letting him get closer, staring over his shoulder at the lights interspaced along the path. The orange beams bled together in front of her, blurry and soft. "Mer," he repeated, lower, but more sharply.
"I'm okay."
"You're not. You're trembling. Come sit with me." He put his hands on her shoulders, and her instinct was to shrug him off and tell him she wasn't a child. But he wasn't treating her like a child; he was doing what he knew how to do, taking care of her in a way she'd been taught not to expect.
The solidity of the bench made her realize how exposed she'd felt standing alone on the path, even though no one else was out here at almost—possibly after— midnight on a weekday. She pulled her legs up automatically, leaning forward, and she wasn't stupid, she got that in some way she was protecting the most vulnerable parts of her anatomy, her heart specifically. Derek wasn't deterred. She didn't know how he could tell she would let him put his arm around her, and when to stay back, because she couldn't always.
"Do you know," he said, "how amazing it is that you love the way you do? Ellis had passion, and she was a damaged person. She was obviously different then, but that you spent your life thinking you weren't worth loving, worth choosing, worth living for? You're a miracle, Meredith. I'm sorry she didn't…couldn't tell you that. I'm sorry that I made you question it because it's always been true."
Then why didn't you choose me? Because that wasn't about her. It was about choosing Addison, keeping his promise. It was honorable, something she admired, and exactly what she'd hated Richard for doing.
"I don't know what to say," she admitted.
"That's allowed." He smoothed her hair away from the back of her neck, and his fingers found the knots in her spine, immediately.
"She…that day…the lucid day? I was so confused. I got to Roseridge, and she started asking if she'd had a breakdown, after our fight. Like…like losing me might've caused that? If she thought that was possible, how could I think she hadn't meant it the first time? What else would she mean? And then…and then she wanted me to let her die again? Well,why wouldn't I let her go this time, if that's what she wanted? If I didn't need her?After decades of knowing that if I'd obeyed her, I would've killed her? If she thought I'd figured it out, that would've been truer!
"And she…when she was listing off all the things I was, she said she'd raised me to be extraordinary. I thought she was telling me that…that I had to be better than she'd been when she decided her life wasn't worth it? I think she did, too. That she associated it with who she'd become. Because…well, what else? All she'd ended up with was surgery and me, and if I didn't continue on her legacy? If I was happy just being in love with you? What was the point? He got to be Chief, and she was alone in a hospital room. She'd gotten it all wrong.
"But the first time she said it? When she told me to be an extraordinary woman? A woman who's 'so special you can push the rules in the direction they need to go?' She wanted it all. Richard couldn't deal with her having a kid. Thatcher…Susan was stubborn, but she wasn't...if I say an 'iron woman' Mom will reform from her ashes and start lecturing me about how horrible Margaret Thatcher was, but 'woman of steel' is too Superman, and DC sucks—"
Derek made an aborted snorting noise. "Sorry, God, I just thought of how frustrating it would be to be a therapist trying to keep you on track."
"I get babblier with booze," she pointed out. "I didn't say anything for the first three weeks in Wyatt's office."
"Huh. That's one of the few ways you're at one extreme or the other; you talk, or you don't. I see why, now."
"Yeah. I used to think I was an accident, you know? Could've been, but they were on the East Coast, married for a couple years, no shotguns—she could've made a different decision. She wanted it all. She didn't look at her five-year-old, and want to leave her...me. She expected me to think for myself and push against the rules she'd set." Meredith leaned forward pressing her forehead against the heel of her palm. "It's not like she cut horizontally or didn't go deep enough. The wounds took time to close. I don't know…I don't remember how long. I don't know if she was balancing what looked real versus actually putting herself at risk, but— "
"But you were five. That you had to be exposed to that is big enough. You had no reason to question her intent."
"It's not like I repressed it, though. I didn't remember the carousel thing until I was back here, and hearing Richard's voice, but the rest…I got lucky. I could've been afraid of blood. Could've not been able to walk in that kitchen. We basically turned around and left. I didn't have a lot of time to change the associations, or whatever. It wasn't as visceral in Boston. Got worse again, talking about it, and cleaning Alex's pet patient's blood off the kitchen floor. That poor girl…. I feel like I…." Meredith bit her lip and watched a containership pass on the way to the port that had, in a way, brought them all to this peninsula.
"Like you what?"
She shrugged. "We don't have to talk about that day."
"The day of the ferry crash?" He moved his hand to her jacket, and then decided against it, slipping it up under her sweater. She hadn't been aware of how much colder she'd gotten until she felt his skin against hers. His next exhalation was heavy; maybe he'd needed the reassurance of her warmth. All the more reason not to talk about it. "We can't ignore the water, right?"
"Surrounded on three sides. Doesn't mean we have to deal with all of it tonight."
"No. What about Ava…what's her real name, again?"
"Rebecca. I…you're sure?"
"I am." He didn't have much room to maneuver under two layers, but he moved his thumb steadily along the lower part of her back.
"I feel like I went through the opposite thing…or maybe not. Maybe it's closer…. I didn't recognize myself when I went into the water. Or…or…I thought I'd become the person Mom thought I'd be. Not right. Not enough. Av—Rebecca…she felt more like herself as a blank slate. That wouldn't have lasted, Borderline doesn't disappear, but I…I was trying to be that. The cypher. For you, for Mom, even for Cristina in some ways. I came out wanting to be me again, because you were starting to know me, and even after all those months it was me that you…you chose, but I…I wasn't sure how to…. consolidate it all. Who I'd been before med school, and Early-Seattle me, and intern-me…
"And I couldn't believe that I could fit into…that if my mom and Cristina weren't extraordinary enough to have both, why should I…? I was going to disappoint you. I'd done it to Mom my whole life. I wasn't enough for her, for Thatcher, for anyone—and in other ways I was too much.
"But…what Mom did wasn't about me. Good or bad. I also…I choose to think that the truest moment I had with her that day where she was lucid was before she understood what was happening; that her life had…had ended. She wanted something from me…she wanted to go home, but…but she was talking to me. Not to some younger version of herself, which I think…maybe not. She could've meant it all. It doesn't matter. She didn't know the me she was looking at; the me I'd become.
"Rebecca was paranoid about people for reasons she couldn't even understand, but mostly she wasn't sure how to be herself without having Alex tell her who she was supposed to be, and then everyone at home expected her to be who she was before."
Derek didn't reply for long enough that Meredith turned her head, less concerned than she would've been ten minutes earlier with his palm still in place. He smiled at her, his eyes holding onto their thoughtful look.
"That's not unlike how it was in the trailer with Addison," he said. Meredith wished that he couldn't feel the breath she took. She didn't want to avoid the topic; the opposite, but it'd been something they danced around for months. "Not entirely, because trailer, not exactly a brownstone in Manhattan. Most of the time, I think she thought that if she could just…make it up to me enough; convince me that we were the same people we were at…uh…." He winced.
"At what, Derek?" she asked, dryly. It was a bizarre moment to know they'd get through this night, but the way his chagrined expression made her want to laugh at him with tears still wet on her face was one of those things that made it impossible to deny that she loved him. She was in it, and she'd run out of reasons to deny that.
She raised her eyebrows at him. He could squirm a little here; he'd convinced her to let Izzie bring in the sheet cake. She'd considered letting them pay for her at Joe's a compromise. Addison had come in, read the icing, and said, "Oh, Derek and I got married at twenty-eight," before sweeping out of the room with a corner piece. What amazed Meredith was that she managed to look like she'd never held a paper plate in her life.
That'd been right before her mother's lucid day; right before Meredith came out of the water ready to aim for real happiness, and not known what it looked like any more than the superficial kind.
"You are a far wiser twenty-eight than we were. A mature twenty-eight."
"Psh. Have you met me?"
"Have you met Mark? He—no, that's not fair, is it? He's changed since then, and I don't know if I can say he's changed the least of us. You know a person so well, you put them in a box, and eventually the box falls apart."
"What if I'm totally different in twelve years? When I'm old, like you?"
He ran his hand quickly over her ribcage, and it was absolutely the wine that made her squeal—she was not a squealing person. "You will be," he said, his voice far more serious than his actions. "I assume we both will. All we can do is pay attention. I didn't do that. Addison and I share the blame for a lot of how things fell apart, but that was me. Not letting her see that I wanted something else; not seeing that she wasn't happy either. I don't think I knew what I wanted, only that…."
He studied Meredith again for a moment and then touched the corner of her mouth giving her a breath of anticipation before he kissed her. It was his side of the moment, the confirmation, and she drew it out. There was a part of her mind that held onto every kiss until the next one, afraid that it could be the last. She didn't think it'd be a habit until she stopped doing that.
She ended up with her legs off the bench, and his hands both on the small of her back. He left them there, and if he was holding her in place, there were worse ways he could do it than with his thumbs hooked over the waistband of her jeans.
"I looked at Addison a year ago, and I saw the past. I don't have a clue when it started, but when I realized it—it wasn't that it'd been true for years, exactly. More that I hadn't let go of the investment because of the past. She was woven into my life, my family. More than the kids calling her Aunt Addison; she got along with all my sisters better than I do. And they don't all get along, so I truly don't understand how…."
"She's a chameleon like that. A sexy chameleon."
"You said that out loud."
"I know. You're the one who gets to hear it. You've got taste, Derek. She's not my type; far too put together for me, but I'm bi, not blind, and even then, her voice is pretty hot. I'm not the only one, either. Never tell Torres, but I'm pretty sure Hahn was not her first girl-crush."
"You watch Torres that closely?"
"I watch everyone."
"Uh-huh."
"You were saying things."
"I was." He kissed her again, like he needed to do something with the playful flintiness. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself closer to him, hooking her leg around his calf.
"I didn't question our marriage the same way I didn't question the practice. It was what success looked like; we were stable in a way my family never had been. Mom let us take on a lot after Dad died, but the finances were 'not your business, you want numbers? Go do your math homework.' I'm sure we were better off after selling his store, and getting his life insurance payout, and I think she was ashamed of that. And she invested. I heard my uncles being asses about that, but she put five kids through med school; whatever she did to do it, she gave up a lot. Addison and I…that wasn't an issue."
"You're a neurosurgeon," she pointed out.
"There weren't robber baron heirs at your Boston prep school?"
"Industry happened in Northern Mass, but I get what you mean."
"Our patients had the kind of money that's stupid. That's more than their kids, their grandkids, and their great grandkids will need. Be it inheritance or dot-com money, the 'keeping up with the Astors' energy is real. I couldn't imagine…I didn't see how I'd ever manage to leave, so, why rock the boat? I thought I wasn't unhappy, but since Addison definitely wasn't looking to get me to be the guy I'd been for the past few years….
"You mentioned the turn of the millennium, earlier? It was only supposed to go up from there. That was the year, Mark and I opened the practice, Amelia finished med school, and Liz had Hannie. No one ever believes that the last baby is the last baby—she said that after the triplets, accidents happen. But Kath had four with her stepkids, and since Nancy had one upped her, it seemed possible."
"Sounds like Nancy," Meredith offered. Triplets, four, one-upped. She got that with one sister not having babies, the other three had a few each, but she'd thought…well, there hadn't been any vague references to high-order multiples when Addison delivered the quints, but they were raised Catholic and over forty, someone could've had ten.
"You really didn't get her good side. I'm not saying it's that much better, but she's not usually so intense. We're a protective people.
"That summer we had this massive gathering up-state. One morning, I took the kids over eight out on a hike. Arbitrary line, but start going younger, and suddenly you had six more and it was a multiple-adult situation. Even then, I had four girls; two who didn't want to be anywhere near a tree if there wasn't a café within two blocks, and two who I kept having to pull out of trees.
"We got to the overlook, and we still had to go back. Ally and I were having to trade off carrying Macky piggyback, because she'd twisted an ankle…don't try to keep track, it takes diagrams, what I'm saying is, this was not a restful commune with nature. But I stood there looking at this, admittedly pitiful waterfall, and I thought, I could stay here forever.
"I love Manhattan. I think on balance I'm a city person, but I did that for almost all of my life. Seattle, the property…it's both."
He'd taken his turn staring out at the water while recounting the anecdote, and now he turned to her, the chagrinned expression combined with nervousness at the corners of his eyes. "Sorry, that was more than— "
"I want those stories. Yeah, I need flashcards to keep your nieces and nephews' straight, but I'm a quick study."
"Well, at least two of them are queer already, so…."
"Rim-shot." She grinned. "Were you Cool Uncle Derek?"
"I tried. Cool about that. And Ally showed me her tattoo first, but I think I was the only one in town who wouldn't tell Kath.
"Not Mark?"
"Mark is terrified of Kathleen. She does this look that's exactly like my mother's, and he crumbles. It's a sight to behold." He rested a hand on her knee. "What I want to say is that with Addison I saw…we both saw the past. With you, I see the future, too." They were both silent for a moment. He was waiting for her to flinch; she knew, because so was she.
She didn't.
"Me, too. With you, and…and seeing a future for myself, one that isn't just…just doing what Mom didn't get to do or working up to her level…you're not going to scare me talking about your sisters' kids. I wasn't just saying…I want kids with you. Not now, but not forever from now…. Mom was forty-eight at onset. I don't want to put a kid through having that…ever. As a teenager, or before that is…definitely not."
"Mer."
"We have to consider it. Her parents were both gone by the time she was in college. He was in an MVA, but all I can find out about my grandmother is the 'a long illness' obit stuff. Mom talked about it like it was cancer, but…she hid things from herself."
"I wasn't objecting to that. You're right, we do have to consider it. It was more…your first thought is for our hypothetical kid. Not yourself."
"Oh, I'll feel plenty sorry for myself once it starts happening. That was the worst…it was all the worst, but the year or so Mom could function, but knew…. We kicked the tenants out of the Boston apartment, and I went down there as much as I could. She was finishing up at Mayo, which scared me, but not wanting anyone to know meant seeing the project through. She faced what she was going to lose all the time. It was the one period where I knew that however pissed-off she got at me; it wasn't really me she was mad at. I was her proxy for the rest of the world.
"If…once we have a kid, I'll be mad over every day I could lose with them, I promise that. But I can also tell you that having said hypothetical kid won't be real to me until it happens. I'll be ready for the bottom to fall out, constantly."
"I understand that you'll take it to the nth degree, but that's a normal parent thing, as far as I can tell."
"Wouldn't know. My references are Ellis and sitcom moms. So…don't let me be her, okay?"
"You couldn't be her—and I mean this positively—you couldn't be her when you wanted to be, Mer. When you wanted to be focused on the medicine, you're about the patients. The people. I'll be there, but I don't think motherhood will turn you into your mother. I really don't."
She rose up slightly to kiss him, and it didn't take much encouragement for him to pull her onto his lap. She clasped her hands behind his neck, one leg slung between his. "That a multi-tool in your pocket, or…?"
He smirked, bumping the tip of his nose against hers as he shook his head, mouthing, nope.
Crap. It hadn't been long since she'd tried to stop saying as much of that stuff; to be more of a grown-up for him. She hadn't considered how hot it'd be for him to meet her occasionally adolescent humor, and to expect more from her than the party-girl whose med-school extracurriculars hadn't helped her mature socially—She'd never gotten past twenty-three in her mother's eyes, but she'd felt constantly sixteen in her presence.
"Derek?"
He hummed in response.
"This might not be my place, so…there's that, but I just wondered, what about Mark? What do you see with…for…him?"
His gaze was on her, but he was seeing something far away. He had one hand on the small of her back still and the other was following the same trajectory he'd used to hook a piece of her hair behind her ear. His fingers were gentle and rough against her temple, tickling behind her ear. It was a reassuring gesture, but his other hand, his leg, made it something more.
"I'm not sure," he admitted. "He should be as much part of my past as Addison. More. But Addie couldn't settle here. Mark…. if there's one person I couldn't have imagined thriving away from Manhattan, it'd be him. But this is the first time his life hasn't been totally entangled in mine, and…." He blinked, and his eyes focused on her. "I think that's up to him."
She smiled. She hadn't been looking for a specific answer, but that was a good one. They fell into a kiss again, neither of them initiating it more than the other. His hand on her back rose, moving between her shoulder blades, scratching up and down along her spine.
She wasn't cold anymore. Derek was warmth and safety. He knew all of it now. The frame of her. Some of it she was still filling in, and she was starting to trust he'd be part of that. That he wanted to, at least. She felt lighter, like telling him had pushed out the dregs of the story she'd thought she knew. It wasn't true; she had no doubt her issues would trace back to that, but the resolutions, those would be different.
Light and light-headed, from the wine, from relief, from the hand on the back of her head, massaging her scalp. He knew so many of her preferences, but there was so much he didn't know, and she wanted him to. She wasn't afraid to let him know her.
"I thought I'd…between the ferry crash and…and Cristina's wedding…. June nineteenth…. I've never…save for Wyatt, I've never chosen when someone finds out."
"Oh," he breathed. "Mer. You were with Cristina, right? You weren't alone?"
She shrugged. "Sure, but I've been alone before."
"Tell me this year wasn't harder just based on her being gone. And that wasn't all you were dealing with."
"It was. More…more because, if we'd lived anywhere else, further from Seattle Grace…if I'd hesitated longer.… I understood that a lot more, living there, and…and after what happened. I was so…. I don't believe in luck. The odds were not in my favor. I don't know if she…. What happened for me that day was weird, and likely the result of a lot of drugs. I'll tell you sometime if you want, but what matters is it felt like I got a choice. Like I got to fight. I'd like to think she did, too. That she came out of it sure about living.
"I'll never know that when she woke up, and Richard wasn't there…. But it was about them. She should've considered me more. She also trusted me. At five years old. Barely. That's…I never felt like enough for her. Now I think maybe…maybe I could have been…was…and she just wanted better for me. Trouble was that came out as wanting me to be better. And I say I stopped trying to please her at fourteen, but really, it was a performance. I still went to an Ivy. And I didn't just get in as a legacy, I got in at Harvard and Brown. Smith. Wellesley. I graduated top ten. She didn't…she….
"I decided to take the MCAT after 9/11. Mom was at the U.N., and…." She trailed off. He'd probably been in the city that day. Upper Manhattan, not having to evacuate over the Hudson, but watching the wound open in his city with nothing he could do about it.
"Hey, stay here with me." He moved the hand that'd been in her hair down, slipping it under her shirt too. "She was your only family. You must've been scared."
"I was. But also, I thought, 'if she was gone, would I still want it? To be a surgeon? I decided I would. There was one more MCAT date that year. In a week. I don't…I think someone must've dropped for me to sign up. I hope it had nothing to do with the Towers, but it coulda."
Derek's fingers were just below her bra strap, which was very distracting, but his eyes did something when she said that, and he kissed her, his lips moving against her, his tongue dancing inside her mouth.
She was decidedly more light-headed by the time he let her go, blood surging to warm up her skin, and down, just enough that not only she could feel the way his leg was pushing the seam of her jeans against her crotch. It felt nice. Enough to make her want to squirm, just to feel it a little more. Definitely not appropriate for this conversation. But for the way he'd kissed her, the way he was looking at her….
"I was gonna take it again in six months. See what my score was and start prep. I, um…. I ended up doing well that time, and she didn't…. I've told you what she said. The basics of it. But she didn't…." She bit her lip. Bragging about her accomplishments sat strangely in her stomach, triggering dozens of excuses to appear in her head. She imagined them as bubbles that she had to pop, while they reformed at random around her; playing Pac-Man while half the ghosts respawned; trick birthday candles that went out one at a time.
I went to an Ivy feeder school.
I test well. Test scores don't mean anything.
Turns out Mom was prepping me for the MCAT my whole life.
I only had four letters of rec.
Derek touched the corner of her mouth, and when she let go of her lip he brushed his thumb over her mouth. "You did well."
A statement, but she nodded.
"How well?"
"Better than her."
"And if you were to give that a number?"
"It's not…not that impressive, especially because she'd been quizzing me on that stuff for— "
"How well?"
"Um. Forty-three."
Derek put a finger on her mouth again, and kissed her neck, right in the curve, and up over her jaw to behind her ear. "She didn't say anything about it?"
"Not a word, even though I told her, when she accused me of riding her coattails. Like I couldn't have genuinely gotten into Geisel on merit…. Mom, she'd raise the bar without telling me I'd cleared it."
"You more than cleared that bar, Mer. You soared over it. In a week. I started studying for it a year ahead, specifically the segments you wouldn't have been able to be quizzed on. That is a fantastic score. I'm proud of you for it."
She stared at him, unable to process that initially, searching it for sarcasm or mockery. It wasn't there. How did you respond to someone saying exactly what you'd needed to hear?
She didn't have an answer. All she could do was kiss him, trying to spill out all she was thinking into him. Exploring the slippery interior of his mouth, she leaned forward, and slid further up his leg. She must've made a sound, or something, because he pulled back and smiled at her.
"You ready to go home, sweetheart?" he asked.
"Yes. Not yet."
He laughed, and threaded his right hand under her hair, caressing the back of her neck. "Which is it?"
Unfair. This was an unfair position to question her in. She could hardly breathe while his fingers found the trail right at the center, from the bottom of her scalp to her nape. When he started massaging just below that, she let her head loll onto his shoulder.
"How long have you been holding all that tension over this?"
"April? Last September? I don't know. There were a few times where I knew— " Thought. Hoped. "—I'd end up telling you ne…eventually."
"Next. But I wasn't. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. We're…we're better now. Right?"
"We are."
She raised her head again, intending to let her lips fall onto his. He got there first, his lips on her neck, sucking his way upward behind her ear where he brought his tongue into play against the sensitive skin there. Meanwhile his ever-wandering hands were under the front of her sweater, stroking the skin of her belly.
He was there. She'd told him the thing, and he was there. He was everywhere; all she could smell, all she could taste, all she could feel. All she wanted to feel.
Her skin was tingling under his touch, her hands drinking this warmth she could feel through his way-too-many layers of clothing. His thumbs kept drifting toward her waist, which was not helping the way her hips wanted to cant, to start releasing the tension mounting between her legs.
"Mer. Yes, or not yet?"
"Don't know. Don't care.
"You wanna go get in the car? It's warm in there."
"'m not cold."
"Getting hot, aren't you?"
"Little bit."
He leaned in bringing his mouth to her ear. "If I told you that I wanted to lay you down on this bench and take you, would you let me?"
"Yes." She didn't think, didn't have to. She'd let him do almost he wanted with her—because it was with her. Because of the things he didn't want: to leave her, to hurt her, to be careless with her. He snaked his hands around to her ass and lifted as he stood. "What are you doing?"
"Taking you to the car. There's something else I'd rather do tonight." He hefted her up and she kept her hands clasped where they were. He could hold her up and thrust into her when her legs could not be trusted to cling; she had no doubts when he held her. Ever. Had she ever felt that safe in anyone else's arms?
The only person she really remembered carrying her as a child was Richard.
"Grab that, please?" He angled her toward the empty bottle, and she leaned over to pick it up. Her thighs were clenched around him, but he was the one who was absolutely going to ensure she wouldn't fall.
They'd parked in a small lot mostly used by joggers, and while the whole area was well-lit, Meredith had the instincts of a small woman usually assumed to be less coherent than she was. She was loud and brash about her independence, but she'd never turned down offers to walk her home or to her car from good guys she knew, because she'd had encounters with bad guys, ones she knew, and ones she didn't. It was a possibility, a real one, that she'd never be the drunk girl alone again.
"Keys?" she asked as they approached.
"Le…no, right jacket pocket."
She circumvented those directions by sticking her hands into both pockets. She'd really been hoping for a pants pocket. "Your left, my right," she announced, fishing them out.
"Pop that," he instructed, turning her to the side in front of the keyhole for the hatch.
"Yeah, I'll pop that," she muttered. He squeezed her ass, and she turned an innocent smile at him, matching the one he was giving her. The key clicked, and he backed them away as it opened.
"Go team. Going down." He sat her on the bumper, and before she could ask what was happening, he kissed her, his tongue actively engaging hers. She was vaguely aware that his hands were doing something behind her because they weren't on her. She had hands though, and they weren't fully-trained neurosurgeon hands—not yet. It was a not yet— but she was nimble. She found the top button on his shirt, and undid it, before he gently grabbed her wrists. "Other plans," he said.
Derek had plans. The thought made her heartbeat speed up, but not to run. His tone of voice made her shiver. Holding onto her hands, he laid her back. Not onto the hard floor of the car: she landed on something soft. The emergency blanket. He deposited her hands by her sides, and slowly pulled her jacket off of her. Her sweater, he tugged up, kissing the exposed skin, fluttering his lips against the laparoscopic scare from her appendectomy. One hand dug into her hair whike the other carefully slipped open the button of her jeans. The pressure in the narrow gap between her jeans and her panties made her tilt her head back, and he kissed her throat while it was vibrating her noise of unexpected pleasure.
"Little bit?" he asked, taking advantage of the layer of fabric to start massaging her more firmly than she could've stood without the barrier.
"Lotta little bit."
His fingers played against her mons, pulling her panties closely to her clit, and sliding downward just regularly enough to keep her from becoming overly frustrated, but irregularly enough that he got at least a gasp from her each time.
"Hey, Mer. Need you to try something before we get started."
"Oh, we're started,"
The corner of his lip quirked up. "And don't I always make sure you finish?"
"Yeah," she allowed, as he slowly undid her zipper, tooth by tooth. If he got paged the fault was hers;; otherwise, the gripe was residual from men who barely knew the difference.
She arced her ass up for him to take them over her hips, but he left them on her thighs. "Stay up there," he instructed, reaching under her and unfolding the bottom half of the blanket. "Okay, if these stay right about here—" He tugged her pants up as close to her tailbone as he could. "—how quickly can you get them up?"
Her stomach swooped; she was sure it should be in misgiving, but it wasn't at all. They were edging close to the bracket on "little bit."
She arranged her hands, holding her thumbs out. He hooked her waistband on them, and she rocked back on her pelvis, pulled them up over her ass, and landed her feet on the bumper, sitting up in the same move. "Can I help you, officer?"
"Not your first rodeo?"
She bit her lip. He couldn't judge her, not being the one orchestrating the whole situation. It wasn't his first time. Not like when he'd picked her up. They needed to be able to have these conversations. She'd cut herself off so many times, starting to tell him something she'd tried, that she liked, that she didn't. Even with how blown his pupils were, she could imagine his eyes darkening. She'd thought he'd done the math with poor, super-boner Steve. Considered their meeting, drawn conclusions, and whatever, he had a wife. She'd been so wrong. She'd watched the calculations happen in real time at Finn's. What kind of woman do you meet at a bar? She hated that it'd hurt; she'd never given a shit what some one-night stand thought of her afterward—and did he look at goddamn Mark that way, before everything happened? —but it had, and she couldn't set herself up for it again.
Derek tucked the hair that'd fallen in her eyes behind her ear, trailing his crooked finger down behind it. "Talk to me, Mer."
"Sadie'd sometimes…. I…um…I make her sound controlling. We were both assholes. But, uh, she'd find a dark corner and put her hand down my pants. Claiming me without saying we were an item. It… it was hot. Never got caught with her. Couple car catches. First time was at a party. Stupid Paul Waxman thought he had to be on top. Which, fine, he had no idea what he was doing, he could flash his ass at the door. Generally, wasn't the person with their pants down. Was the one who had to distract the cop from the dude dared me to go down on him in an alley, or whatever."
"Dared you?"
"Never said no to a dare. Never lost a bet. Police distraction was a good skill to have once I started going to protests. Probably what I would've done."
"What? Activism?"
"Mm. Long story, we had neighbors in Boston's arm of Act Up! Weird for the woman who's not even out."
"Mer…."
"S'okay. Choice. I never… I was scared of being arrested. Afraid Mom wouldn't come. Afraid she would. No record. Best of the worst, worst of the best. On the edges of everything. The hospital kids: Mom didn't do social events that weren't fundraisers or awards. School: Not old money. Attitude and grades didn't match. Riot scene was the only place I felt like I could be everything I was. Lots of activism tied to that. I'd totally have liberated an animal testing lab by this point."
Derek laughed. "Not an occupational hazard you have to consider. Maybe for insurance fraud, which…not giving you ideas."
"Not having them. About that," she added.
"Ah, but you are having ideas?"
"More curious about yours."
He repeated his gesture with her hair, and kissed her, moving her backward again. "Anyone ever go down on you in one of those alleys?" His hand was already in her unbuttoned jeans—she could button them while she stood up, right? Should've practiced that—He resumed the massaging he'd started earlier, his middle finger going back and forth at the base of her pelvis.
"No. Club bathrooms. Never a guy." See, you're my first sometimes. She didn't say it. He was her first a lot of things. With the nature of the lack of connection she'd gone for, there'd been less kink, less adventure than people expected. She still got creamed at "Never Have I Ever."
Derek sat back, drawing her pants down again. She tucked her thumbs under the elastic of her panties, but he had his hand on them already.
"No," she protested. "Der, we don't have… we don't have forever."
"We're not gonna need forever." The you're going to come fast and hard implications of it, made her twitch. He ran his nails lightly along her crotch.
"Your panties thing s'frustrating."
In the relative darkness, she could still see the color come to his cheeks. "There's not a thing."
"Prom panties. Wet, stupid lacy… Proof thing, or a fetish thing?"
"All I'm hearing is you saying your panties were wet."
"You coulda put them down on the…mmm, yes." He'd moved his hand down, his thumb directly over her clit, moving in small, slow circles. "On the exam table. It wasn't f-fair to her."
"Putting them on the bulletin board wasn't fair to you."
"She thought I'd lied to her face. Worse. Told her I wasn't screwing you, and then I just wanted your hands…fuck, I need to stop talking."
"Why? I want to know what's in your head, Mer."
"Not now."
"Especially now. I see your eyes go away. Just for a second at a time. I want you to take me with you."
"No, you don't."
"You were so beautiful that night, Mer, but I might as well have been cheating on her for a long time. Maybe part of me did… I…Jesus. A man's jacket."
"See? I shoulda—mmph."
Derek corked her mouth with his tongue, his lips pulling hers into a perfect seal. "I always want to know. Okay?"
She nodded, still catching her breath.
"I'm sorry I made you part of something that petty. If I'd been honest with you, or her, or myself…It was not what you deserved. Do you see that?"
"Yeah."
"What did you want me to do that night?" he asked, his index finger tugging the elastic. "Did you want me to be so gentle, stroking your prepuce? Or had that already retracted? Were you ready to have your glans tweaked? That one finger wiggling you love so much? Or did you need it so badly that you'd have told me to rub you in circles until you came, and came, so long, and hard? You moaned so pretty, but I wish I could've made you scream. Let the whole hospital find out because you couldn't hold back."
Everything he said she swore she could feel, but not enough. A ghost of a feeling. He was being too distracting for her to go deeply enough into the fantasy to feel it properly. She needed to be touched. She was clenching her pelvic floor muscles to get a little bit of movement. "Derek, please, anything. Just you."
Finally, he started pulling the fabric down, and the back of his hand brushed against her clit. She jerked her tailbone up for him to take it down to where the waistband of her jeans sat. Before he could make a thing out of every further step, she bent her knees and opened her legs.
"Eager girl." He smiled. "So much going on with this beautiful quim."
"Derek." Meredith's chest was heaving with anticipation; he did this, he'd done worse, and she'd never felt so much like she was going to implode or explode or something, if he didn't. "You wanna do the tongue thing, right? That's the plan? You need me to be swollen enough for that? Wait much longer and I won't make it there. I'll be ready so quick if you just—Ohhhh, yesss."
Derek had finally put his index finger on top of her glans, and for a second she thought she might not've been hyperbolizing; that the frisson it sent through her was a full-on finish, it hit her so hard and made her arc off the blanket stretching up until she was released with a shudder.
She lay still for a moment, though her hips were begging her to follow Derek's circling on her clit. "You're an asshole," she informed him. "You wanna finish me licking me out, right? But it can't be long cuz you're more noticeable out of the car, and you'll—oh, yeeees—you'll have to be."
"Correct on all counts. You know me, huh?"
"I know you're incredibly… I-I-ohhhhhfuck." She strained again, momentarily stretching one leg out, as tension shot out from her clit and down, like an electric shock. "More, please. Two fingers. Toward you. Yes, just like that! Do that; please keep going, going, going." Her hips moved with every breath, and her breath was quickening already to match—he'd had too many people trying to match him. She needed to be in sync with him.
"That's it, beautiful. Keep telling me what you're feeling."
"Can you…can you do the twisty thing?"
"I can. Feel sweetheart." He ran his index finger from her glans down. "Feel how much you're giving me to work with?"
"Yeah. Can you do that again? Oh, that's so good. Need a better word. Just-just, mmmmm, oh yeah, oh yeah, ohhh faster, do that faster." He did, one finger above her glans, one below, twisting gently. "Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's-it's bubbles. It's—press, yeaaah. Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah. I-I-I…." She groaned, as a long tremor coursed through her. "Really like that, really like the twisty thing. Faster, okay? Faster, faster, oh-oh-oh-oh, yes. Need you to rub, just a little."
Her hips were bucking in response to the tension working its way through her. She wanted him to pin her, pin her and rub, rub, rub until there was no other outlet but release.
"Almost there, baby?"
"Yeah. You don't hafta…."
"I want to." He leaned down, kissing her, and then backing out of the car. "C'mere." He grabbed the corners of the blanket and tugged her closer to the bumper. "Ready?"
"Very." She held a hand out to him. He laced their fingers together, and then put his other hand on her abdomen. Pinning her. His breath was warm against her, and she was so excited for what came next that she was prepared for it to not feel as incredible as she anticipated. She shouldn't have worried. His tongue made contact with her clit, and she thought she might have jumped out of her skin. But no, she hadn't, because it was skin that gave them contact, skin that made this feel good, not unbearable.
She'd been a raw nerve the previous year. The drinking, the sex, it was all in the interest in building a barrier between herself and the world. Barriers were important, as long as they were permeable enough to let something in. In this case, feeling. Such feeling. Derek's tongue rolled perfectly around her glans, which was sensitive in the best way.
"Holy motherfuck! Yes." She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to stifle a moan that would've resonated in the darkness. He started moving her left-right-left-right, slower than she'd want him to rub, but she could feel the drag and the tiny sparks tingling through her. Then he pulled up, letting her bump off and returning to cradle her again, and again, and again.
She writhed under the weight of his hand keeping her in place, the tension she couldn't buck out leaving her in a series of moans that came so quickly she could barely catch her breath until he moved the tip of his tongue down and drew it up the relative bulge of her clit.
"Again, please. Not gonna last much longer. Oh-oh-oh, yes, suck. Sucking is so good, so good." She clutched his hand through a frisson that twisted her to the side, and at the end of it she knew she was rocketing toward a line. "Hold on," she gasped. "I gotta—can't—" She twisted and reached up under her sweater with one hand to unhook her bra. It wasn't as freeing as getting it off altogether, but it was an incredible relief. "So much better. You made me so full Derek. My nipples are hard as rocks but they're gonna be so tender. Needed room."
He was undoubtedly uncomfortable. She had watched him grow while getting her off before; the feeling of power was heady. It could be happening now, while he licked her in a parking lot.
"Oh! Gonna come. Swirl me. Swirl me til I pull back." He made her direction that much sweeter by rolling his tongue again, doubling the sensation she got as he licked her glans and around it in spirals. "That's it, that's it faster faster, yeah, I like that, really like that. Ohhh I'm close, so close. Suck, suck again, before I—yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah—Crap, gone. Lick had. Hard lick hard. Yes! Oh, I feel that, I feel it. Faster, faster, faster, push so hard, Derek—unh, not enough, not—oh, ohhhhh, I'm right there; keep licking, okay? Just keep—Ahhh, yes there-there-there!" She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth again as she screamed, pulling up on Derek's hand, one leg stretched out of the bow, her sneakers angled as her foot curled into a ballerina's arabesque. Their eyes met in the eternal moment everything in her was pulled tight, tight, tight, including him as his hand gave her a piece of the world to latch onto when it felt most like she might be flung away from it. She knew she wasn't gorgeous in that moment, buckled, her face caught in contortions far less predictable than the contractions happening inside her; sweat covering a face that flushed in blotches, grunting in the last second before she froze. His gaze, as he obediently kept the sensation going, made her think that to him she might be.
She toppled, panting, her hair falling into her face. "Okay."
He pulled back, but replaced his mouth with a cupped hand, his fingers barely lowered enough to be called on her clit; how she liked riding out the rippling sensation that stayed on after she came if she wasn't being immediately teased into refilling.
He climbed back into the car, and she let her legs come together, shuddering with the twitch that followed. "Good?"
"Incredible. Glad your job just involves the hands. I get the tongue to myself."
"You do," he agreed, a dreamy smile on his face, as he kissed her and then rearranged her hair. "You could go again right now, couldn't you?"
"Doesn't mean anything."
"It doesn't mean anything negative," he corrected. "Just means you have a fluctuating threshold that didn't reach."
"What about you?" She pushed up on her elbows, trying to see into his lap.
"I'm going to take you home and we're going to find that spot deep inside that makes you arc that gorgeous back so far that those poor confined tits are pointing toward the ceiling."
"Oh. Yes, please." She started to sit up, but he didn't let her, gently putting weight on their joined hands while bent the middle finger on the opposite side and brought his knuckle down, lightly stroking her precipice. "Der—"
"Thought you might like a quick preview of coming events." His smirk took a beat. He'd heard that after he said it. "That's what she said, right?"
She felt herself flush more. "Yup."
"I love you. You and your sense of humor." He sat against the side of the trunk and shifted her so that her head rested on his chest. His arms came around under hers, and he started stroking her hood lightly and murmuring in her ear, "That you're caring, and fierce, and prickly Your resilience. I love you for telling me what you did tonight, and for all the time you felt like you couldn't. I love you for carrying that for years, and for letting the truth of it change things for the good when it could've made you bitter."
Meredith felt the moment the flame in her caught again; as his touch went from feeling nice to nice-but-could-be-more. Her breath got deeper, and Derek started circling her, occasionally drawing a finger down to stroke her swelling labia.
"I love you for your brilliance, your creativity, your curiosity.I love you for still loving the ferry even though open water still bothers you."
"You know that?" Her voice came out hoarse and treacly, like it too just wanted to live in the soft world of his voice and his light touch that was making her feel like all was right in a world that wasn't.
Last time, the sex was good, but she had sensed something missing. She thought she'd romanticized those days in July and August, the shine of a new year for the surgeon's daughter who once thought the Fourth was a New Year's celebration. This was it. The knowing. She hadn't been letting him know her.
"I do. I'm sorry."
"You saved me."
"I'm still sorry you were that scared down there, and that you ever have to feel a percentage point of it again. I love you for being tough. I also love your softness. I love you for being brave at five, through onto twenty-eight. I love you as a grownup grungy riot girl. As a stellar doctor. A rolling stone who learned to grow roots. Meredith who slept with guys. Meredith who dated girls. Meredith who is terrified she'll get love wrong, but tries so hard, because she loves so much. Meredith who got a forty-three on the MCAT. Who is still learning to navigate the world, and makes mistakes, and learns from them. I love that you drink tequila, because you can't hide all your brashness; your disdain for euphemism.
"I love your mind. Your daydreaming, your big dreams. That you want to be a mom. I'd love you if you didn't. I love how beautiful you are, inside and out. Up and down. I love you when you're pink. I love you when you're red. When you're flat and I get to build you up, and when you're all engorged, ready to explode.
"You're getting there now, aren't you, baby? So many gorgeous parts of you coming out to play." He toyed with her glans, making her shift from sighing to soft moans as he moved down, exploring the sensitivity of her puffed up labia and the bulbs underneath them. "We'll play a little longer. What would you like next? Do you want this orgasm to have to fight its way out of you so that we get to wring out every last second of pleasure? Or do you want me to go so fast you're blasted into orbit?"
With a mouth that was still dry from her inability to keep it shut last time, Meredith croaked. "Both? But fast now. Play with me s'long as you want, but then fast so we can go home, and I can pump you dry."
"Yeah? That what your body wants? You seem pretty into the slow."
"Into you touching me," she said, breathing in his scent, and then tilting her head up to kiss his neck. "Blast me, Derek, blast me so I can make it home."
"As though you've never asked me to just keep going."
She smiled up at him. "You won't be complaining if it means I come around you twice."
He tweaked her glans, and she yelped in surprise. He paused, raising an eyebrow at her.
"Try that again," she directed. He did, grasping it between two fingers and sliding them off. "Mmm, yeah, I'm into that."
"You're into having that button messed with in general," he pointed out. "Matches your button nose." He kissed the tip of her nose. It was not sexy, and yet it was somehow incredibly hot.
"Mostly. Don't like pinches. Screwed a chick who did a couple times. From mostly dry. Whatever you're into but, ugh," she shuddered. "Or, like—" She held her fingers up, opening and and not-quite closing them. "—that. Or squeezing. It's for sure not a zit."
"Has someone tried that on you? Sounds painful."
"Doorbell's worse. Poking, that's another no. And, yes, it has happened. That one I don't think anyone likes—well, someone, somewhere, because humans, but I've never had anyone say 'poke me.'" She wasn't surprised when Derek poked her in the armpit after that, but she was a little surprised that her usual ticklishness there felt nice. That might be worth exploring. "Some people like it bein' held tight. You like having your cock squeezed. Lotsa people like nipple-clamps, and I thought they were gonna kill me the one time I tried. Mmm. Do it a few more times, then flicks, okay? I like fing—yes, yes, do that again, pull-ohhh, yes that's goin' on the list—fingers. Your mouth. Cocks, obviously. No other body parts. Please don't ask, unless I'm on morphine and don't have to remember remembering."
"I don't think I'll be asking. I am gonna ask, you actually have a list, don't you?"
"Good call. And…maybe…no, you know what? Yes. I have a list. I make lists, it's a…a…oh, that's nice….Point made, I'll tell you stuff. I'll tell you whatever you want if you…yeessss. It's not a full on will, won't, want, but if I really like something and wanna try—Oh! Tapping. We haven't tried that. I like it a lot, but—ah!" The frisson took her by surprise. Derek was working her in a way that was moving her forward, but not very fast. Giving them the longest time possible while still being able to make blasting her good.
"But it has to be on-rhythm?"
"It's a curse."
"Are you kidding? It's proof that everything you do is meaningful to you, Mer. Were you that aware of the beat before you became a drummer?"
"Uh, I really liked 'We—We Got the Beat.'"
"You know, the Go-Gos—"
"Started as a punk band. Who do you thin—? I mean…."
"Who do I think you are? I know who you are, sweetheart. You've been doing an incredible job of being open. I know you probably read every liner note on that album, maybe on a Saturday, where Ellis was in the living room, and you were hiding in your room. And you found their older stuff at Newbury Comics a couple of years later, maybe?" He kissed her temple and then moved down behind her ear, sucking at the bottom, which sent an undulation through her body. "I know more than just where you liked to be touched."
"I know. Habit. I'm a work in progress. I had a good sense of it, but no. Drums were a, 'hey, this kid is going to break the piano, let's let her beat something else up first.' No telling what'd happened junior year if I hadn't had that. See? Anything." She leaned up to be kissed, and found herself humming into his mouth as he flicked her. He was speeding up. Were they close to blasting, or was he teasing? "I'd'a been okay in the clit-is-the-glans history. Mostly treated it like it—ohhh, that feels good—like it was."
Derek swirled his finger on the bump under her glans. "Which is a shame. Can I ask you something?"
"Mmm, you can anything me something."
"Okay, so we're not at sex-drunk Meredith. Possibly slightly drunk-drunk Meredith, but you're not to 'bad at words'. What was that?"
"'M always bad at words. Clit-drunk Meredith. Sweet fuck, that feels fantastic."
"You are not. I love your words. That's all you, Mer. You get nice and full down here, and your button gets bumped up."
"Never say that when I'm coherent. Question?"
"Noted. You…the gir—the la—the women you've been with, none of them…. I mean…."
"Want me to dig you out?"
"Mm, I'll be digging for you in a minute or two."
"Promises, promises. You are an educated liberal adult male; you know that when two ladies—or people with vulvas—do the do it's gonna involve a lotta clit stimulation. You'd be correct. What you're underesti—oh-oh-oh-fuck yes, keep doing that. Keep doing it so fast—this isn't foreplay, exactly, but- but-but- it's half foreplay, half aftergl—ohhhh-w. You ask someone what they like, you're drunk, or drunk on them, you're on fire—so much fire, so much in me. Starting to want it out. Don't wanna stop yet. It…it was…I was a kid. You wanna please the interesting peeeerson, but you wanna…wanna be licked out, rubbed out. Rub me out, Derek. Blast me. Please, please."
"Soon, love."
"I'll—I'll tell you more about the women. You like that. There was scissoring, 'cause it's such a…a stereotype, you gotta try. Takes a lotta lube. Gotta slide so fast. Fast, fast, f—ah!—aassst. Not s'into bein' pegged. Like a real cock more'n silicoooon—oof. Fingers in my cunt. Not a lot—not a lotta watching. Sa-Sa-Sadie didn't—oh! Yes, yes, yes rub me, rub me, Derek. oh yesss, whole hand oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah! You do it so well; know me so well. You do me in the light, and-and watch me— ohhh yes, it's gonna happen. I'm gonna come, gonna come so soon. You…you watch me do myself. Don't think it's weird."
"Of course, it's not weird. Lets me see what's surefire."
"Suckin's surefire. Lotta cunn—cunni—cunnilingus. Not 's good as you. Sweet fuck, holy sweet fuck, so close. So close, Derek. Harder, dig, dig, find—oh, yeah rub that, rub me there. Oh, oh, oh, can-can you—ohhhhhh—gonna be good, gonna be so good. Can you hold me, please? Hold me while I come, come, come, gonna come, gonna come, oh yeah, it's right there, it's right there. Grind me, please. Fingers, two fingers, hard, fire starting ha-a-errrrrrd, there it is, yes, yes, yes!"
Trapped in Derek's arms, Meredith let go. Her body went through the usual contortions, up, out, pushing—was it an evolution thing that sex and birth involved people telling their partner to push?—dropping, but with him keeping her tethered, it felt different. Safer to let things happen, though she didn't know what, if anything, happened differently if she wasn't facing resistance. It'd take experimentation to find out. She wasn't against that.
She wasn't sure if she heard the other car pulling up, or if she only thought she had once she'd come down enough to register other stimuli. The cop parked across the parking lot, like he might be doing rounds, not there specifically to investigate their loan hatchback. A girl could dream.
"Mer, Mer, gotta move, sweetheart."
"I know. Working on it." She didn't feel totally boneless the way she did after he really dicked her down, or sometimes when she was just done, regardless of which nerves had been stimulated. Her body definitely wasn't up to its normal reaction time, though, and while if he hadn't had his arms wrapped around her, she would've shot upright, now the neurons she needed to tell her muscles and tendons to work did not seem to be online.
"Lifting you on my count—"
"Derek, what—?"
"—one, two, three, up. Get your pants up, get in your seat," he instructed as he dumped her over the backseat.
"Ack! What happened to counting?"
"Sorry!" he called, and then slammed the hatch shut.
Meredith exhaled. She didn't want to get her pants up, was the thing. A thing. One of the things. The light-headedness was back, and she was definitely a little bit drunk. It hadn't been that long. Hadn't taken her long to get off, either, but three-quarters of a bottle of wine—crap, it had been about that, hadn't it?—wasn't enough to make her nerves and vessels obviously affected.
The fact that she was still lying there considering that, while she risked flashing her whole quim to a cop. Then again, with 20/20 vision, he might've—Come on, Grey, get it together. She yanked her underwear and pants up. As she lifted her ass to pull them up an aftershock went through her legs, and she had to fight to stretch without arcing her back to window-level. With that done, she hesitated before doing up her fly. Alone in the dark car, she whimpered to herself. She hated putting underwear on while she could still feel the flutters in her cunt, and these were more uncomfortably damp than she remembered them being at the time they went down.
It wasn't until she sat up that she remembered unhooking her bra. Goddamnit.
She heard Derek's voice and squinted out the window. He was standing across from the cop, but she couldn't see his face well enough to figure out if the smile was real or not. Then, he turned his head, just enough for their eyes to meet, and he jerked his eyes to the passenger seat.
Easy for him to say.
She jerked her pants up further, grimacing. For one second, she had a hand on her fly of her jeans, and the flutters that sometimes mean't nope, don't touch were far more you know how this would feel better?
She almost wanted to ask the cop to breathalyze her just to know how much of this was the wine, and how much was—crap, he was good. How the hell did he and Addison have boring sex? How could that be boring?—Welp, Derek would find the nifty device Alex had given her for Christmas eventually. It'd been a gag gift, but not really. He got it. He was another screw-up who put thought into being messed up without failing. It'd kept her from ever showing up for a morning shift with an elevated BAL.
Derek's voice got louder. Crap. Meredith swung her leg up onto the passenger seat and clambered over the wide console. Great for sex, not so much fun to climb over. She toppled into the seat, slamming her elbow into the door. She had never, in any of the times she'd had to stifle herself during sneaky sex, had a harder time not cursing at the top of her lungs. She cradled the spot, and a chunk of hair fell in her face. Oh, shit. Sex hair. She definitely had sex hair. Brush. Glove compartment. Pretty boy—such a pretty man. Endorphins were a bitch—had to have a brush, or a comb or—bingo. Oh, ew, she'd have to put a better brush in here. She'd have to plant brushes everywhere. Would anyone notice them in the supply cabinets?—The hard plastic bristles bit into her scalp as she scraped her hair up, wrapping the hair tie she wore under her watch around it right before Derek opened her door.
She startled, managing to grab the 'oh, shit' handle before she actually fell out of the car, but Derek caught her elbow with her palm anyway. She yelped. Derek's face contorted in confusion. "Bashed it," she murmured.
Derek took her hand, rotating her arm to reveal a quarter-sized hematoma. Without hesitation, he raised it to his lips. This man. He kept her hand as she climbed out of the car. "Got your jacket," he said, his voice carrying in the empty lot, "Grab your wallet."
She leaned back in, digging through her purse, and when she stood up was surprised when instead of holding the jacket for her to put on, he grabbed her shoulders.
"Wh—?"
"Don't move." Derek kept his hand on her left shoulder, likely to make it look like he was supporting her. His other hand slipped up her shirt. Crap, the bra. Felt good though. His fingers were already cold. She really liked cold.
She glanced down before she felt him fiddling with the hook. Yeah, that'd be noticeable. She smirked to herself. Derek had been tenting his pants at the time he dropped her into the back, and very obviously not having that dealt with. How often did these situations feature a guy fingering his girlfriend? Too bad he hadn't been there twenty minutes earlier; she knew from experience, it was not the girl being gone down on. Wait, no. If he'd been here then, she wouldn't have had—yeah, no, good timing Mr. Cop.
"All set," he said.
"Did you just do that with one hand?"
"Uh, yeah? Surgeon." He held the jacket out. Instinctively, she slipped her arms into it.
"Yeah, but…" She shook her head. Not the time. Her mind knew that. Her body could still feel the slide of his fingertips across her back as he hooked the garment in one move. Forget damp panties she was glad not having a dick meant she couldn't cream her pants. "How wasted do I need to be?"
"You're good."
"Derek, I'm not—!" Okay, she was loud, but that wasn't proof of anything.
"Come on, sweetheart, show the nice cop that you're a grownup, here of your own free will and we can go home."
"Right! Home. Home is good." She let him keep his arm around her as they walked over to where the cop was standing under the nearest streetlight. He was maybe ten years older than Derek, still a patrol officer, and something about the handlebar mustache and the cut of his silver hair made her think proud 'Nam vet, though she had no way of knowing that.
Her knees were slightly wobbly, which might explain the tumble moving up front. As the man looked up at them, she reached up, grabbing onto the hand on her shoulder and pulling it down across her body. It accentuated the drunk girlfriend story she was sure Derek had given, and this was not a situation she liked being in. She wasn't a seventeen-year-old, and she was pretty sure the Washington State indecent exposure laws required lewd intent. Both places it was a misdemeanor. She was a career woman who had a tendency to end up with her pants down on public bathroom counters; she tracked these things. There were places it could get you on a sex offender registry, but that was usually assholes exposing their dicks around minors.
"Can I help you, officer?" Meredith couldn't quite keep the brisk Dr. Grey tone out of her voice. She knew Derek wanted her to play dumb, but he'd also know she couldn't do that. Fine, she'd used being a blonde, blue-eyed waif to slip away from cops unnoticed in the past, but that she was not going to add to stereotypes about women being incompetent.
"Good evening, ma'am. Officer Trent Everly"
"Dr. Grey. Meredith Grey." Bond, really? But if she didn't start with her title, he'd definitely—
"All right, Miss Meredith—" Derek grasped her other shoulder, and held her arm taut, like he was managing a choke collar. It felt apt, because that made her want to go off like a wild dog, the way her mother would have. And why the fuck shouldn't she? Ellis was gone. Meredith was Dr. Grey, now, and she was going to be Dr. Grey.
"It's doctor," she said, giving him a smile she used to practice in the mirror after seeing it on her mother's face. "Dr. Grey. Officer."
"Mer—"
"Did he call you Mr. Derek? No. I'm sure he did not. I am not a Miss, or a Ms. If…when…I…I'm never gonna be a Mrs., because I am a doctor. I spent just as long at school as you did. I took the same classes, and I earned the f—the go—the freaking title." Sorry, her brain told her to add. Sorry. Sorry. No! She did not have to apologize for existing.
"That's all right. I like a girl who can stand up for herself." The cop's smile was well meaning; she was sure to him twenty-eight was moderately young. It didn't make her want to slam her fist somewhere where tiny and ineffectual still hurt. Derek tightened his hold.
"You been drinking this evening, Dr. Grey?"
"Well, he got off at eleven, and the corkscrew was in his car, so not until late last night, but, yes sir. A little bit."
What part of that made Derek squeeze her hand wasn't clear. Could've been any or all of it. She was not going to play stupid. She could play small girl can't open wine bottle. She hadn't opened it. She had done a shot before getting in the car with Izzie, but, one wouldn't keep her warm in the parking lot. It was psychological, and that was likely messed up, but—Cop talking.
"All right, that's fair enough, can you tell me what brought you out here tonight?"
Aw, shucks, officer, it's just that my mom tried to kill herself when I was five, and I wanted to tell my boyfriend about it in front of the ferryboats.
"The ferries. Derek had a late shift, so, I caught a ride up to the hospital…doesn't matter…. We used to come out here more, and watch the boats, but we hadn't in a while. Last spring, there was a crash in Elliott Bay—"
"I remember that. Legal nightmare for the city. We handled the missing persons situations up there at Grace. That where you work?"
"Yes. I'm a surgical resident. I was doing triage that day, and I got knocked into the Bay. This is…it's the first time I've been out here since. It was more overwhelming than I expected. I, um, I ended up with most of the wine."
He did study her. "I see. May I see your ID?"
Next to maybe suturing, that have might been the gesture she could do the most instinctively. He scanned it, which was very different than studying an ID. Ironically, that started happening when the ID was real. She wished she could tell if he looked at her height or age first. Not a lightweight, bucko.
"Dr. Shepherd lives out on Bainbridge?"
"He does. I'm fine on the ferry. Especially the car deck. It's more…open water. Hearing it. Funny, right? The thing that relaxes most people?"
"No ma'am. There's nothing funny about trauma." He gave her a long look. It struck her that she might've made the right guess about him. Maybe she could start trusting her interpretation of people. Strangers, at least. But that was important. Patients were strangers. "I'm going to run these. Stay put."
He headed to his car. Derek brought his other arm down, sandwiching hers. "Lotta a little bit."
"Not really. Think maybe it hadn't all hit me in the car. And endorphins. Endorphins are a bitch."
His laugh rumbled through her. "Lotta endorphins, huh?"
"I'm still getting twitches. There is a reason that just freaking rub is how you default when you're learning how to use your bits."
"There were a lot of things you like before the rubbing."
"That's true. We should do a more controlled experiment."
"You make charts too, don't you?"
"I…I…. Yes."
"You are such a nerd, and I love you. I love the way you refuse to take bullshit from anyone."
"Really? You don't think I should've…gone along to get along?"
"Not with something like that. You did earn your degree. I'd just prefer for you not to get arrested for assaulting an officer."
"I love you."
He looked down, and she knew he wondered what he'd said to deserve that. All of it. Everything. He could be…a guy, but he also surprised her constantly.
"I love you, too."
They got their IDs back, and that was more or less it. Derek had operated on several King County officers over the year. She wondered how deep he'd have to go and not be able to talk himself out.
They were passing Seattle Grace when both of them started laughing.
"We never tell Bailey."
"No. We do not." He held his hand out over the console and she took it. "How're you feeling, sweetheart?"
She considered it as they made turns that had felt familiar to her from day one. "Visible…." He snorted. "Not—crap, it was the right word! Just… I meant…." She took a breath. "I meant, for most of my life I've been background in the life of someone else. I had all these different things I was, but they didn't connect, and I…nothing was my thing. I was Death, I was Ellis Grey's daughter. Everyone at Dartmouth thought she helped me, I went home so much. Meanwhile, I spent Thanksgiving, MLK, and Patriot's Day interviewing home health aides, because she ran another one off." Meredith shook her head to backtrack, trying to figure out where her point went. "There was always this thing that was pivotal to my story, but was hers. Would've hurt her. I tried to treat the Alzheimer's that way too. Didn't work out because…because by then it wasn't hers anymore. Wasn't her story. But I didn't know how to…narrate myself. Does that make sense?"
"I think so. Last spring…?"
"Playing the love interest in your story? Trying to. Now…well, we're all our own story, right? But…I would rather Mom not be…I would rather that she be alive and lucid. I always thought…and I mighta been wrong, but I always hoped once I was an adult…a doctor. Maybe even…even not, we'd be able to be friends, or whatever. I got, like, a second of that whenever she'd decide I was Auntie Marie, or one of her other college friends. I wish…I wish I remember more from before. Like, the story I told you, did I really expect her to tell me to get my butt back in bed? Or did I add that, once I'd been snapped at for waiting up every other night for most of grade school?"
"I remember my father as being the best fisherman, the best at setting up camp, the best scout leader…. Mom told me he'd stay up for a week before every scout trip practicing knots and practicing assembling the fishing poles. Lizzie remembers a trip where he put up the tent she and Kate were in, and it collapsed on them in the middle of the night."
"Oh, no!"
"On their first camping trip? Mom and Dad's tent flat out blew away. They were with the extended family, and...for most of my childhood, I'd tell this story saying, Mom hopped around in her sleeping bag until she could change in someone else's tent because she didn't want anyone seeing her pajamas. Then, uh, one day someone's telling it to a cousin, or something, and Amy, she was maybe four, goes, 'Mommy, we see your pajamas all the time. Are you sure you weren't a jaybird?'"
"A jaybird?"
"You've never heard the phrase 'naked as a jaybird?'"
"Nope. My household was not very idiomatic. She wanted to invent her own. Worse part is, she did. They're all in the book. Does it just mean naked?"
"Basically. Has something to do with jailbirds, I think."
"Probably racist originally."
"Likely."
"What'd your mom say? To Amy?"
"She said, 'well, we did have five kids,' and winked at Dad."
"Oh, yes! Go, Carolyn."
"I was grossed out at the time, but now I'm glad they had that." He pulled into the driveway of her house.
"I know something about that. I want to hate Richard for staying with Adele. Knowing what Mom went through—Seeing it from…." She took a breath. "Having been in a similar situation…I could hate him and not you. Their affair lasted years. I have to…I have to do it slowly, because I'd be overwhelmed at the hospital otherwise, but as I think back…I think I saw more of him than Thatcher. I went to daycare at the hospital. During…not long after I tracked him down, I walked around the U-Dub campus for a while. I don't recognize any of it. At the hospital…I know it better than I knew MGH. I colored in the galleries before I could see through the window. I slept in on-call rooms. I played in supply closets. I was afraid of the imaging rooms, because I thought they kept skeletons in there. Richard spent a whole afternoon showing me how x-rays worked. I…I just remembered that.
"He and Adele were new. They met at Grace, too. But he was doing his best to be a good man. A good person and a good man are different. They shouldn't be, but we're not there yet, and we weren't there in 1983. And either way, vows are important. Promises are. If Mom had made me promise not to call—" Her voice cracked at the exact moment Derek kissed her.
"You didn't," he said, with his thumb and a finger on her chin. He never held her in place, never cared if she couldn't make eye contact; he made suggestions. "You called, Meredith. You saved your mom's life. At five years old. You saved her, just like she knew you would."
"Was she…was she talking to me, Derek?"
Her slapdash ponytail was loosening, and he slipped a piece of it away from her eyes, sliding his fingers behind her ear. It was a sweet spot. An erogenous zone, but also, sweet. Meant to comfort her. Did comfort her.
"When, love?"
"There are times that day where I'm starting to think she was looking at me, and seeing herself at twenty-eight. Or twenty-four. Sadie and I left the month after my twenty-fourth birthday. I didn't look like me that day. Not the me she knew. So...so…was the Meredith she knew focused? Passionate? A fighter? A force of nature? Did she think that I…?Or…or….She had me at twenty-four, Derek. Did she think that I…I made her ordinary?"
He stroked her cheek, and she expected him to kiss her again, but instead he said, "Stay there. Don't move."
She gave him a wavering smile. He deserved someone—No, she wanted to give him all the smiles she could. She could be enough. She was enough. Meredith was enough.
He opened the passenger side door. Her seat put her sightly taller than him, so he was looking up at her when he said, "I don't think anyone could live with you for any amount of time and not see those things in you. You are laser-focused on the people and things you care about. Focus doesn't look the same if you're eighteen—Passionate? A fighter? I watch you walk down the hall, and I see that. A force of nature?" He shook his head, and Meredith's emotions were off-kilter; she had to tell herself that he wasn't saying no. Disbelief, Grey. It's disbelief. "Meredith, your passion, your focus, your willingness to fight people? You blew through my world like a tornado. You made this Emerald City the place where I want to spend the rest of my life. You are a fighter, and you didn't fight Addison for me, because you see that's not how it should work. You advocated for yourself. That's…that's what I should've seen. Last spring…there are a lot of things I missed, but that's…you were losing sight of yourself. That who you are—maybe your life needs some polish before it's shiny, but you are so much brighter than any ideal 'girl in a bar.'"
What did you say to that? What could she say, when he not only said exactly what she'd needed to hear, but he saw what she thought she'd concealed. When he called the cheesy rom-com speech she'd cobbled together advocating for herself, and meant it. That he understood that last year she wasn't being her, but he wasn't seeing her, either. She hadn't had a way to explain the feeling that the water didn't take away, but 'losing sight of herself' encapsulated it perfectly. She'd been desperate for a model, desperate for a script, and it wasn't because Meredith Grey couldn't handle things. It was because she'd tried to be so many things for so many people in one year, let alone the past five—ten—fifteen that she'd only had the façade of herself left.
When she met a guy at the bar, he'd been a façade. They'd had to figure out how to become people again, apart; so that they could be those people together.
She didn't know what to say.
She slid out of the car, and wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. He enveloped her, one hand on the back of her head. "This," she murmured, standing on her toes to put her lips against his ear. "I like this."
"Put it on the list."
He might've been joking, but she would. Things she liked with Derek weren't just, or even mostly, sex things. They'd gotten good at it the most quickly, maybe, but it wasn't why the slipper fit. It was in the way he kissed the top of her head after saying that, that said he knew she would. That he hadn't been joking, because he knew her.
She was a work-in-progress, and he didn't expect anything else. Twenty-eight or not, he didn't need her to be ready to get married. He only asked that she let him love her.
Love could never be enough if you didn't believe that you were enough for love.
Crap. She really was—She was not turning into her mother. She was picking up where she left off. She'd inherited the fight; as Ellis's daughter, as a doctor, as a woman, but she was not going to become her mother. Her mother's repeated wisdoms never had anything to do with love. Meredith would do things her way, and it would be enough. Chances were, it would be more than enough. And maybe Ellis wouldn't have cared, or would've been jealous, or believed she'd done wrong by raising Meredith to have only one option. Whatever the reason she'd had for not mentioning her MCAT scores, her semesters on the Dean's List, her with highest honors. It didn't matter. Meredith had been enough for her mother at five years old.
Now, she got to set the bar for herself. She got to decide what was enough.
"Let's go upstairs," she said. "I made plans I intend to follow through on."
He held her by the waist as he moved her out of the way of the car door. Chauvinist, she might've once thought. No. Not with Derek. It was love. Just his love. She could never have enough of that.
