Disclaimer: I do not own Grey's Anatomy… I do, however, own a toothpick. Want it?
Teaser: Derek, Meredith, and the Latin word meaning 'to desire'
Spoiler: Episode (2.17) "Let it Be"
/Avere/
aveo, -ere, avui, avitum, m. to long for, to desire
"I miss you," she says without looking at him, her arms wrapped dejectedly around her thin, shaking body. Her icy blue eyes stare at the elevator door, her body trembling with nerves and needs and grief.
To him, they are like magick words. They set him free. For a moment, Derek Shepard sores because Meredith Grey does care. Her voice is husky and needy and her body radiates waves of lust and passion.
For a minute, his feet take him forward. His mind calls forth the memory of what it was to hold her in the circle of his arms, to cradle her soft, thin body against his and inhale her intoxicating scent.
In the space of a second, Derek's fingers reach out to touch Meredith's hips, his mind filled to the brim with images of their time together. Of those nights spent curled on her body, making passionate love in the darkness, of the way her body flushed with heat and the way her skin tasted against his mouth.
It was something to hold her. Something to want her. In the stale, bland world that had become his life, she had been a fresh breeze, whizzing in with a flutter and fuss. She had breathed color onto the pale, malnourished painting of his life. A smile brought out the sun and her lips summoned the super novas of silk and passion and lust.
She was like some bright, burning comet. A spark of pure white light burning against the black sea of stars, shining like a beacon of hope and rebirth, before trailing over the sky and into the deep, vast void of space.
And now here she was again. His super nova. Her life all but snuffed out, a candle crushed by two palms.
Stubbornly, she tries to find a way to spark and blaze again. To find the fuel and the reason to burn. She looks at him and whispering those words—I miss you—the last of her heat set shooting out to him to do as he pleases.
He fists the powerful, passionate fire in his palms, remembering what it was like to feel it cruising against his skin and in his blood. Derek remembers what it was to explode with Meredith's light, to reach out blindingly and hold that burning beacon against his chest as everything else faded to oblivion.
Slowly, eyes half closed, he inhales deeply. He catches the whiff of her scent, baby powder and sugar, and images holding her once more. In joining her nova and making their own secret nebula.
But then an image of Addison flashes before his mind just as he is about to touch the women he desires. Addison with those wicked smiles and shifty eyes. Addison who is his wife. Addison who is trying to make their relationship work.
Addison who is but a white dwarf to Meredith's red giant.
Painfully, he pulls away from Meredith's thick, husky gravitational field before the images of her burn up all his morals. He is with Addison. Addison is his wife. Meredith is the girl who gave his life… life when it had faded to gray. But Addison is the one who holds his hand when they walk home. Together.
"I can't," he tells her, the words ripped from his chest by his invisible conscience. Meredith says nothing and he senses she knew he was going to say that all along. And she does not look at him.
Ding. The elevator's chrome doors slid open. Derek stares down at Meredith, remembering passion and heat and cosmic bodies clashing in the throes of bedspreads before turning.
There are no more words spoken between them as Derek steps off. There is too much to say, and at the same time not enough to say. He knows he desires her and she knows that she desires him, and they know they desire each other, but Derek follows his conscience and Meredith stoops to pick up the pieces of her heart.
And so, they both leave each other behind.
As Derek walks away to Addison, he feels Meredith's eyes burning hot on his back. His lips quiver with need.
It is pure, unbearable desire that quickens his steps.
Notes: er… yeah… I'm really starting to lose some faith in our Doctor McDreamy. And not just because he chose Addison over Meredith—bad move number one—but because he so obviously still wants her. And he can't have both and he's toying with more Meredith's broken heart. C'mon, Derek, one or the other. Not both.