A/N: Hello, again! I want to apologize for the long delay between updates. November was supposed to be the day when I wrapped up IWBY with the next 50000 words, and I wrote less than 4000 words for it instead. I'm really good at sticking to plans these days, uh? Anyway, there's still a lot of questions you guys have, and I hope I can solve some of them soon. Maybe not in this chapter, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway!

Chapter 18

Meredith yawns, sighing loudly as she signs off one last request for blood tests.

As soon as she became a fellow she thought that her sleepless nights were over, but she was oh, so wrong. Her night on call has been long, very long, and her fitful sleep always interrupted by either her pager or a nightmare.

She's still reeling after the day before, with her breakdown in Derek's arms, and the pitying looks her mother had greeted her with in the morning haven't helped. She knows she won't feel centered for a few more days, but usually work helps her cope.

Since work goes together with Derek Shepherd now, nowhere is safe anymore.

Her phone rings, and she immediately picks it up, groaning when she sees her sister's name on the display.

"Maggie, hey," she greets, putting down her pen.

"Morning, Mer," she replies, her tone somber. "Are you in bed?"

"I've been on call, I don't even know what a bed looks like," she says, hoping a little sass can cover her tiredness.

"I would have called yesterday if I thought you were human. You usually aren't."

"I wasn't. But I got over it."

Maggie sighed. "How bad?"

"Mags…" Meredith breathes out. She hates this. She's the big sister, she's the one who's supposed to worry about Maggie, not the other way round.

"How bad?" Maggie prods, unrelenting.

"I'm okay, now."

"Was there tequila?"

Meredith rolls her eyes. "I was at work, of course not."

"Cowboy surgery?"

Crap. Maggie knows her too well. "My patient died before I could even think a surgical plan."

"Lots of tears, then?"

"Some. A moment."

"An hour of tears?!" Maggie exclaims, and Meredith wants to dig a hole. That girl is too smart for her own good.

"I wasn't alone. I promise you I wasn't."

"God, Mer, an hour? I just…"

"It's the only day I allow myself to grieve him, Maggie. I couldn't live with it if I didn't do at least that."

"I was there, Mer. I was devastated, I can't begin to imagine what you could have felt."

"I don't think it's possible to explain, Maggie," Meredith sighs, her heart clenching a little at the mere memory, a memory of downy hair and soft skin she immediately suppresses. "You can still be grieving too, you know? You can miss him. He was family."

"It's different, Mer. He wasn't mine."

"Still. I won't hold it against you if you cried yesterday."

"I did. But I was alone and it got to me."

"We'll get together next year," Meredith suggests, part of her knowing that it would be good to have Maggie around to share the pain. "You'll be more free by then, right?"

"Hopefully. Maybe I'll be an intern in Seattle, who knows?"

"It would be fun. We could share my apartment. I have a free room."

"I remember." Maggie grins. "I want to come visiting again soon. I miss having you around."

"Oh, you just miss Mom and Dad and their spoiling." Meredith giggles, teasing her.

"Maybe. It was so much easier when we still lived with them."

"It was." Meredith sighs. Life was so much easier before college and med school. "Still having issues with Dean?"

"I broke up with the loser." Maggie snorts. "And he still has half of my stuff in his dorm room and doesn't want to give it up. Asshole. Clinging in his sleep wasn't enough, apparently."

"Want me to come and kick his ass, so we'll get back your things?"

Maggie giggles. "I'll let you know if he needs some ass kicking. I'm handling it so far."

"You could always ask Mom. She'll definitely kick his ass if only for the waste of her precious time."

Maggie laughs, and Meredith giggles with her, feeling lighter. It feels good, making her sister laugh, in spite of her tiredness and her crappy day.

Meredith frowns when a cup of coffee magically appears next to her hand.

When she lifts up her gaze, she's met with Derek Shepherd's smiling eyes and perfect hair. She frowns, but his smile only deepens.

"Mags, I gotta go. I have interns sucking up to handle."

"Sure, go Medusa!" Her sister laughs as she ends the call.

"Why are you sucking up?" Meredith asks, putting away her phone and staring Derek down, instead. The man is still smiling widely.

"I'm not."

"Right. Which surgery do you want in? Because I have nothing out of the ordinary planned for today."

"I'm not saying no to any surgeries, but that's not the reason for this coffee."

"You're volunteering to do my paperwork, then?"

He smirks, looking even more handsome. There's a confidence that wasn't there before, not even after their sexcapade. Her cheeks heat up when she recalls his face in the closet while she was falling apart, and she tries to scold herself into her tough attending mask.

"Is this to check on me after what happened yesterday?" She hisses, glaring at him.

His eyes soften. "No, but I'm still concerned. Are you okay?"

"Yes." She replies quickly, but he seems to read into her fake fine-ness. She's not as bad off as she was yesterday after the realization that for the first time in six years she had forgotten the anniversary, but she still doesn't feel one-hundred percent herself. Derek doesn't need to know that, though.

"Good, I'm glad," he says, his voice soft and sexy at the same time. She takes a sip of her coffee to avoid him and relish the perfect taste of it. He managed to get it just right. If he were bribing her for a surgery he'd definitely scrub in.

"Dr. Shepherd, really – " She starts her rant, buying herself time with another sip of coffee.

"Do you want to have dinner with me?" he blurts, suddenly not looking as smooth and confident as he did a minute before. He's awkward intern Derek all over again, and she almost chokes on her sip of coffee.

She coughs, grabbing a tissue from the box at the nurses' station, noticing Derek's blush as she tries to catch her breath and avoid spraying coffee all over her charts.

"Sorry," he murmurs, lowering his gaze to the ground.

"Dinner...you want dinner?" she repeats, her voice slightly more high-pitched than usual. He's making her nervous for sure.

"Yes. Or lunch. Or anything," he splutters. "Dating. I'm asking you out on a date."

"Uh?" Her eyes widen and she freezes, staring at him, wondering if he's still sane or he hit his head pretty hard during their sexathon. "I don't date," she blurts, though she can see his face falling miserably. She just kicked his puppy, indeed.

"Oh." He hums, sounding defeated. "Not even me?" he asks, hope dripping from every syllable, even though he tries to be charming about it.

"I'm not a good date," she says bluntly, gathering her stuff and leaving him behind, not knowing what to do.

She's pretty sure she broke Derek Shepherd's heart, but she can't understand why she feels so bad about it.

Derek is not sure he'll ever see the inside of an OR again. Either way, he knows he won't scrub in with Dr. Grey in a long, long time. Probably the end of his residency. Maybe his entire career.

He still feels the shame of rejection burning through him when he thinks about Meredith Grey and his lame attempts at asking her out. Part of him wonders if he just imagined whatever they had shared at her house and in the closet, if it was all in his head.

"Daddy!"

He lets a smile spread out on his face when he sees David running towards him. At least he has his son to brighten up his days, even when he screws up.

He'll be a doctor, no matter what Dr. Grey will put him through to get there.

"Daddy I made a rocket with a cardboard box!"

David makes some of his brooding mood disappear, as Derek tries to focus on his son's explanation on the proceedings for cardboard rockets. He looks so proud Derek gets sucked in by his enthusiasm.

They end up going home on time for once, and his mother even lets Derek cook, which he desperately needs. Cooking always clears his head from the daily clutter, just like surgery, and he needs a good clean-up before he figures out his next move. Or if it's worth jeopardizing his relationship with Meredith if they end up hating each other's guts after dating for a while. He especially doesn't want to hurt David, and he knows it will be a tough blow for him if he'll start seeing more of Meredith, only to never see her again.

He wishes they'd write books on this, because he hates going in blind.

Having David has helped with spontaneity, since there's not much they can plan at times, but Derek still struggles with control. And dating Meredith Grey requires him to surrender all control sometimes, considering their positions.

Part of him knows she's worth it, though.

That's why he brings her coffee even the next morning, only this time he doesn't say anything, he just leaves a note on it as he slides it closer to her. There's an odd look in her eyes, but he leaves before he can figure out what it means.

The ball is in her court.

It takes Meredith one day to figure out Derek Shepherd is wooing her, three days before she finds his coffees with post-its on them cute, an entire week before she has the guts to page him to her office and talk to him.

She's staring at the notes she has collected in the past week, a smile curling up her lips at the chickeny scrawl he has and the cheesy words on them, and she knows she would have figured out they were from him even if he wasn't present when she received the coffees. Only Derek would write something like "If you know me, you'll love me" on a note and still smirk as he delivers it. Also, Thursday's note with "I have the cutest, funniest son on the planet" was another dead giveaway, but she was already on board by then.

There's a knock on the door and she hides the notes before she welcomes him in. He looks as nervous as she feels. Handsome, but nervous.

"You paged me?"

She takes a deep breath, willing to be smooth and collected and nice, but she only ends up blurting: "I'm not ready to date you."

"Oh." He sighs, his body frozen midway from the door to her desk, his eyes wide. "Meredith if I made you uncomfortable with the coffees and the notes…"

"They were sweet, I loved them. And I loved the coffees."

"I bet you did." He grins, cocky again, now.

"I'm dark and twisty, Derek. I don't date, and even if I did, I'm not someone you want to date."

"We all have our darkness."

"I drive away happy people, and you have a son. He knows me, he likes me, and I like him. I can't…"

Derek sighs loudly. "I get it."

"I'm not backing away because of David, Derek."

"They all do. It's okay, I know it's not easy."

"Derek, I'd date you because of David. That's the problem."

"What?" Derek looks genuinely confused by her statement, but who wouldn't?

"I enjoy spending time with you, but I'm also drawn to you by David and the relationship you have with him, and that's not healthy. He's a big part of your life, but he's not your whole life. I barely know you, let's be honest."

Derek looks taken aback. "Wow, this is a first." He chortles nervously, shaking his head.

"I'm not dismissing this!" She rushes to correct herself. "There's something here, I just...It's all fuzzy here, and I need clear boundaries. I need to know where I stand."

"So can we try being friends? Get to know each other? Revise this in a while?"

"It will be complicated either way, Derek. I'm your attending, you're an intern…"

"I checked the rules and regulations and it's an implicit rule, to be honest."

"Still."

Her eyes are low on her desk, unable to see his lost puppy gaze, or his soft eyes, begging her, much like David does.

"Can I still bring you coffee? Will it be seen as bribery?"

"Not if you drink it with me." Meredith smiles, looking up to see the slow attempt of a smile that paints onto his face. Why is she pushing him away when he's so gorgeously perfect? Why can't she be normal and enjoy this, for once?

"What about dinner, as friends? Can I invite you over so you can try my cooking?"

"That's tempting, but I'm not sure."

"So what, we'll figure out the rules as we go?"

"Pretty much." She sighs. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I like having you around, no matter which way I have you. And David likes you, so I'm sure even if I hated you, I'd have to see you often."

"I'm not planning on breaking his heart," she says quickly. "Even if this doesn't work out, I'll still try to spend time with him. I promise."

His face softens. He looks younger, all of a sudden. "Thank you, Mere. It means a lot to me."

A shiver runs down her spine at the nickname, but she tries to shrug it off, hoping he has missed it. His lips twitch in a smile, so she's pretty sure he hasn't. Damn.

"Can I ask you a question, then?"

"Of course."

"If you were dating and you weren't...what was it, dark and twisty?"

"Yes, dark and twisty."

"If you were just Meredith, would you date me?"

There's so much hope in his eyes, so many things unsaid that she can't help but reply "Yes."

The smile that blooms on his face takes her breath away.

A/N: Well, there was a little progress, wasn't there? How long do you think before Meredith caves? How many coffees will that take? Did I answer some of your questions? Because I'm pretty sure I just confused you even more! Thank you for reading even when I keep hiding clues everywhere instead of just explaining the bare facts!