CHAPTER 11:­­­­­­­­­­ VIVA LAS VEGAS

Her house had become their home, little reminders that Derek really lived there. His sunglasses lay on the side table in the kitchen where he last left them, his half completed crossword lay on the counter, pen left by it's side ready for him to pick up again when he had a spare few minutes in the mornings. She had learned not the throw away that part of the newspaper until the next Sunday came around remembering the first time she had done it:

For once, Meredith wasn't in a rush in the morning. That was the beauty of having a morning off a week to do all the trial stats with Derek in his office. They could 'work from home' which usually meant waking up after 8am, which suited Meredith just fine. She came downstairs in sweatpants and a worn t-shirt, met by Derek's light mumblings as he rifled through piles of papers in the kitchen.

"What have you lost?" Meredith asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She thought that maybe he lost an important piece of trial paper, he was looking for it with such purpose.

"Newspaper." He mumbled, concentrated as he looked through the daunting pile of mail no one wanted to deal with. "I had it right on the counter yesterday."

"Oh. It was garbage day today. I threw it out last night with the rest of the trash when Alex wheeled the bin out." Meredith said easily as she spooned sugar into her coffee.

Derek sighed in frustration, a sound of annoyance escaping his lips, somewhere between a 'grr' and an 'argh'. "I hadn't completed it yet."

"It's Friday, Derek. You've had four days to complete it…and you we staring at it for hours on Sunday while I took that nap on the couch. I was asleep for three hours and when I woke up, you were still frowning at it like it was the world's greatest puzzle." Meredith replied, trying to hide the laughter in his voice as he almost pouted, childlike. "I thought you cheated anyway".

Derek's frown turned into a smile as he saw the control Meredith was exerting as she tried not to giggle, especially at her last comment. He could see her willing her eyebrow not to arch like it usually did when she questioned him, and he was sure she was biting her cheek to suppress the smile, but her eyes gave her away. They shone naughtily, little specks of gold twinkling mischievously.

"Listen, you. I only cheat on the Friday if I haven't managed to solve the questions." Derek laughed, capturing her in his arms.

"What's even the point? Is it because you like to show you can complete it?" Meredith asked teasingly, leaning into him, resting her head on his shoulder as she sipped her coffee.

"Just like how someone here likes to change the printed numbers in the Sudoku puzzles because she can't count to nine." Derek replied back in the same tone.

"Hey!" Meredith responded indignantly "I only cheated that ONE time- and it was rated difficult!" Meredith couldn't keep her frown up any longer, and continued teasing. "I'm just a lowly second year resident anyway.A world class neurosurgeon who has a tumour killing technique named after him, such as yourself ought to be able to complete a new york times crossword, right?"

Derek laughed, his breath tickling her neck. "Yup. Just don't tell anyone it's actually all the work of my beautiful, talented, intelligent resident."

"I'll storm your lecture on that conference really dramatically and announce that you're a fraud." Meredith giggled, turning her face to kiss him.

The joys of co-habitation according to Derek Shepherd had started with having breakfast together, sharing that first meal of the day, and Meredith had remained sceptical about it for a while. Normally Meredith was a little grumpy in the mornings- maybe if her day started at seven instead of five she would have been more enthusiastic. But now after living with Derek in her house for the past few months, she was coming round to his way of thinking. There was something in starting off the day together- even if invariably it didn't end that way, given trauma pages and night shifts. Instead of gulping down coffee and grabbing a cereal bar or sugary treat that Izzie had baked, Meredith had gotten used to the toast and cereal that Derek had everyday.

Breakfast gave them a chance to sort out the crap that had accumulated the day before- and at the weekends, sit at the table and exchange sections of the newspaper with a silent kiss and a smile, becoming a well practiced routine. This morning however, they had been welcomed with a pile of mail that Alex had left on the counter for them, and after much procrastination, Meredith had decided to go through it.

Bill. Junk. More bills. More Junk. Meredith handed over a large envelope addressed to Derek, wondering what was in it. She craned her neck as Derek sipped his coffee, ripping the envelope open and reading the covering letter.

"Hmm." He said quietly as he read. "There's a neuro-oncology conference in Las Vegas in November. They want me to present our trial. They sent some more information by mail."

Meredith knew they would be asking Derek to present their clinical trial at conferences. The chief had been shouting about it, manly back-slapping Derek, his star neurosurgeon. It was ok, Meredith knew that was the way things worked. Seniority prevails, she had even gotten used to it being named after him- she had been making sure he'd been thanking her ever since.

She smiled genuinely as him from the other side of the table. She had come to learn that they shared both achievements and failings as a couple, she had learned to find the satisfaction in sometimes supporting him, and sometimes being supported by him. Even though it had his name, it really was their trial, it was literally a labour of their love. Meredith was grateful to the trial, knowing that if the long list of failures and then that one success hadn't occurred, they wouldn't have been as strong as a couple, and Derek wouldn't have been sharing breakfast with her like they'd be doing it everyday for the rest of their lives.

Meredith dropped her keys into the bowl by the door and kicked off her shoes. She had met Cristina at Joe's after work, had a couple of drinks, and left. Gone were the days when they'd both be sitting at the bar all night, knocking back shot after shot, ranting about each other's lives. Cristina had Owen, and was actually happy with that. He was the first relationship she had had after Burke, and he couldn't have been more different. There wasn't any forcing her to live with him, to marry him, to have the huge fairytale wedding. Cristina was actually happy. She had finally met her match, someone whom she could talk to, could understand her, and after and initial rocky period in the friendship, where neither Meredith or Cristina knew where they stood, they had learned that perhaps you could still be close but not too close to each other, that you could still confide in each other and keep certain things in your life secret- only to be shared with your boyfriend.

The alcohol made her hungry, and she made her way to the fridge, hoping that she wouldn't have to cook for herself, knowing she was in the house on her own for the night and couldn't rely on someone making dinner for her. Pizza delivery it would be- until she saw the box of her favourite pasta from her favourite restaurant and a little note Derek left on it:

Because I always buy you dinner on Thursdays. D x

Tonight was supposed to be 'date night' and he wasn't there. They had made an agreement soon after the string of strays they invited into their house and the disruptions that having Izzie and Alex in the house created that they would always have one night of the week where it was just themselves, a meal at a restaurant, with a bottle of wine. It was something that, no matter how awful their schedules were, even if they had barely seen each other in forty eight hours (which happened more often than either of them would like,) they would always have that dinner together. Even if Meredith was working the night shift on that Thursday, they would either sneak in a lunch date or eat a bad meal in a quiet corner of the hospital cafeteria. They looked forward to it, where it was just them- no interruptions. This Thursday was their date night, but instead Meredith was eating the meal alone, because Derek was just about landing in Las Vegas.

It wasn't the guarantee of eating one good meal that made date night the one night in the week to look forward to, Meredith realised that now as she rinsed off her one plate and put it in the dishwasher, it was everything else the meal was about. The way Derek proudly asked for a table for two under his name, how his hand guided her through the tables in the restaurant, as if he was showing the whole world she was with him. She loved the way he still always laughed that she'd doggie bag some of her main course, and still scoff down her dessert like she hadn't eaten for a week. It was the little touches, the laughter, the easy chatting. Meredith had wondered how she had gotten from being intimidated by the need for constant conversation, to being comforted by it.

Meredith was jolted awake as she thought she heard the phone, not getting to it on time, hearing the answer machine beep as she tried to locate the cordless handset. Certainly living in a house with three other people meant that she couldn't even rely on her own memory of where she had kept it, not that she would have remembered. She pressed the button, and listened to the message.

"Hey. It's just me. I tried calling your cell, but it just kept ringing, so I figured you're either at Joe's or you've fallen asleep. If you're at Joe's I want to let you know that there's food waiting for you in the fridge, and if you've already eaten it, hope you've enjoyed it. So… I actually called to let you know I reached here safely. I haven't made it onto the strip just yet- it's only midnight, the night's still young, right? Instead we had some kind of speaker dinner thing, which is why I couldn't call you right away…they keep asking where my inspiration for the trial came from, and every time I tell them it's you. See? May be named after me, but I'm giving you all the credit. Anyway, I'll stop talking, I really hate those long messages where you stand by the machine for ages, wondering when it's gonna end. Don't call back, just sleep. You have one more day shift and then it's nights after right? Stick to the sleep schedule. It's easier. Love you."

She could hear him flip his phone shut, and then the machine beeped shrilly, ending the message.

"No really, that message he left on the answer machine was really cute, Mer." Izzie said brightly, pulling her scrub shirt over a long sleeved yellow shirt.

Meredith rolled her eyes and shook her head as she clipped her pager onto her lab coat. She knew she should have deleted that message, but she never thought that anyone else would listen to it.

"Did you miss him so much that you cried into his pillow, inhaling his scent?" Cristina asked sarcastically, as Meredith grinned at her.

Somehow, she and Derek were never that couple. Sure, they missed each other, and loved each other, but they didn't live in each other's pockets. They had their own things to do, own interests, and they had found a balance that worked for them. Derek sometimes went out with Mark, and Meredith went out with her friends, and at the end of the night, they'd fall into bed beside each other and wake up the next day. The love and affection wasn't suffocating, it was just there without them having a crushing dependence on it- that message really was enough- she didn't need to have another two hour meaningless conversation on the phone with him when he told her everything she needed to know over the message.

"Good job I have an unlimited price plan on my cell. I called him, talking on the phone with him for hours, and we fell asleep together on the phone, listening to the sound of each other breathing, as if he were right by my side!" Meredith played along.

Meredith tried to concentrate on work as the day went on, knowing that Derek was going to present their trial today. It had been published for a few months now, they had perfected the viral cocktail, and now they were saving more people than they were killing. Significantly more. Their success was growing and word was spreading with every single patient they saved. The success was originally attributed to luck, but now people realised it was ingenuity and skill- and Derek's presenting schedule was only going to get more busy.

She shouldn't have been as nervous about it as she was, but he was presenting their baby. He was telling the world about something that was her idea, something that she had had to push him to believe was possible and she had to put a lot of faith in him to let him explain to people the success of their trial. At the crux of her insecurity that overtook her for those few hours was remembering how close they were to failing, to losing it, to never realising that maybe it could work. If they had been shut down, if it had been deemed unsuccessful, Meredith didn't think that her relationship with Derek would have survived that strain- it was already at breaking point. The only thing that stopped them from crossing that line from success into failure was one patient. And in that patient, they may have only made one small change to make it work-so many things were riding on this- her relationship, her faith in herself, in medicine and in the world…maybe even in god…and now Derek was presenting this thing in Las Vegas. She trusted him to do it justice, to tell everyone all the pitfalls they encountered and how they prevented other ones. Even if she was only a second year resident, she knew her baby inside out, upside down and back-to-front.

Relief rushed into her body when she felt her cell phone vibrate against her hip in her lab coat. It was Derek texting her.

Presentation kicked ass. You can breathe now. Miss you. D x

Meredith smiled at his text as she tapped on the keys quickly. Sending some congratulations his way, throwing in an 'I miss you too' somewhere.

Derek seemed to know her really well. Over the past few months of living together, they had learned the other persons little quirks, those idiosyncrasies that made the person who they were. He knew that Meredith's heart would be in her mouth throughout the whole day, and him just acknowledging that helped. He knew she'd either been asleep or at Joe's the night before, and letting him know her that well didn't seem like she was giving herself or her independence away, but she was finding that it gave her the ability to truly be herself.

"What are you planning to do in your next two days off?" Cristina asked her at the end of their shift, as she pulled her hair out of the collar of her leather coat.

Meredith looked up at the ceiling tiles in the resident's lounge as she considered what she would actually do, without Derek there and a weekend free. What did she used to do pre-Derek? They were used to spending any weekends she had off together, managing to occupy those two days doing nothing. Even if he was on-call, as an attending, most of the problems he was paged for could be dealt with over the phone, delegating work to the fellows, only having to go in for extreme emergencies. Most of the time he managed to stretch any surgeries to Monday if they remained stable. Weekends were their time.

"Sleep maybe. What about you?" Meredith shrugged. She would wait till Sunday night, and Derek would be back home, but until then, she still had some of Ellis's boxes that were dumped straight in the garage from the office. Maybe she'd go through the stuff and actually decide to throw away some of it this time.

"Study. It still hurts that the interns knew how to suture better than me. Interns, Meredith!" Cristina scowled as if she said a dirty word. "If I were you, I'd go give McDreamy a surprise in Las Vegas…it's only a short plane ride away, you know he'd LOVE it." Cristina told her, half joking. But Meredith couldn't entertain such a thought.

Right?

Cristina's suggestion was still playing heavily on Meredith's mind when she got home. Going to Las Vegas for the weekend was certainly possible, and in fact, just the right amount of time to visit a place like that. Stay there too long and the lights make your head go funny. Leave now, come back on the same flight as Derek, they'd be back in time for an early Monday morning start that Derek had, and she would have more than enough sleep by the time she started in the evening. But it was a stupid idea, because they weren't a clingy couple. Meredith could easily live without Derek for a weekend, because god knows she was without him for a LONG time.

Reaching the front door, she saw one of those poster tubes on the front porch, and smiled as she realised that it must have been from the architect they had hired to draw up plans. There had been drafts and redrafts of the plans, with Derek insisting that the house had to be perfect for both of them. They'd be living there for a long time, perhaps even forever. She walked quickly into the house, opening the top of the tube and rolling out the plans onto the kitchen table, quickly skimming the covering letter from the architect, seeing that their plans had been approved and now all they had to do was tell their contractor.

Meredith's whole body was buzzing. Their house plans had been approved, this was really happening. And instead of being scared about it and wanting things to stay the same, she was actually really excited that the house was going to be built. She was more than ready for it, she knew that she could live with Derek and not need anyone to buffer any situation, they had learned to love and support each other.

Without thinking, Meredith pulled her phone out of the front pocket of her jeans, her fingers hovering over the buttons, three moves away from dialling Derek. But in that moment, something had changed. Laying on the kitchen table were the plans to her future- with Derek. And she couldn't just tell him over the phone, it wasn't like asking him what they'd have for dinner, it was something more than that. As Meredith stared at the plans with rooms that could become playrooms and kids' bedrooms, and basements that could be converted into anything they wanted for kids and pets and whatever else they wanted to fill their lives with, the silent 'forever' that was assumed as they saw the house plans suddenly had a certain gravity to them.

Meredith was ready to share the rest of her life with Derek.

Just calling Derek wasn't enough. Impulsively, she opened up the lid of her laptop, running to get her purse from the hallway, pulling out her credit card as she looked for flights to Vegas. She wanted to be with Derek. She had two days to do nothing, and for once, she wasn't over thinking anything. Some of the best things Meredith had done on impulse- picking Derek up in Joe's that first night, making the house of candles… sometimes you just had to do what you wanted.

The next flight was leaving in an hour and a half, she typed in her credit card details and bashed on the temperamental printer in Derek's office, trying to make it work so that it would print out a copy of her ticket.

Meredith was going to Vegas.

"I've done something… spontaneous…" Meredith told Izzie from the threshold of the door, where Izzie was laying on her bed and reading some chick-lit feel good trash.

"Spontaneous like… 'LVAD-wire cutting' spontaneous or 'oh my god, I just ate a whole slab of cheese' spontaneous, because I have done both of those things. So no judgement from me." Izzie said, looking up from her book, shifting to the side of the bed and patting the empty space, urging Meredith to join her.

Meredith walked forward cautiously, perching on the edge of the bed as she played with the end of her sleeve. "I've just booked a ticket to Vegas…" Meredith said heavily, as if she were guilty of something.

"Oh that's great!" Izzie beamed, jumping up from the bed, walking to Meredith's room, pulling out her suitcase and dumping things in it.

Izzie was folding the things neatly into the case as Meredith pulled them out of drawers and her closet, throwing them in the general direction of the bed. Her mind was buzzing, wanting to just get there to see Derek. She didn't know what this feeling was inside of her, it was an emotion she hadn't experienced before, and couldn't decipher any of the thoughts or feelings apart from this burning desire to see Derek. She couldn't try and rationalise it. It was not a clinginess, or just because she was missing him- it was something much more than that.

"Take a black dress, Mer. You'll always need one of those." Izzie said from behind her, as Meredith surveyed her wardrobe.

She pulled out one she had never worn before, one that hung out in her closet for a special occasion, but had never come up. She pulled out the black Ralph Lauren dress and walked over to the case, placing it on top of all the other clothes and then closing the zipper.

Derek shrugged off his suit jacket, draping it onto the back of the chair in his hotel room, sitting down on the edge of the bed to untie his shoes. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and checked to see if Meredith had called him during dinner, and he didn't hear it, but there were no missed calls. He frowned as he noticed the time was eleven thirty, late considering Meredith was off that evening. He resisted the urge to call her, logically knowing that the world wouldn't end if they didn't speak to each other all evening. Maybe she was with Cristina and lost track of time, or maybe she was stuck in an emergency surgery that she was paged to at the last minute at the end of her shift.

All night he had been congratulated about the success of the trial, been told that it was something ground breaking, that it was special. The only thing that was really special was Meredith. She was the one to convince him to even contemplate doing the trial- he was never one to do risky trials- he preferred to cure people in ways people knew worked. Without her, Derek would have just been another one of those neurosurgeons who was good at what he did- but never did anything outside the box, and now everything had changed, and he had Meredith to thank for all of it.

He didn't need Meredith there, but he wanted her to be by his side. He wanted to show people the actual resident behind the trial, the one who conceived the idea, who did all the work behind it. Over the past few months, their relationship had gone from strength to strength, and it was easy for him to forget all the bad times. But they had happened, and if they hadn't, they wouldn't have been in the position to plan a house together, argue about square footage and whether the kitchen should be at the front or the back of the house, and still sleep beside each other at night.

Derek dialled Meredith's number anyway, listening to the rings as he waited for her to pick up the call.

"Hello?" Meredith answered, sounding flustered and surprised.

"Meredith? Are you ok?" Derek asked, wondering why she sounded out of breath, her tone of voice sounding shocked that he was calling.

"Me? Yeah, I'm fine. Actually, great…missing you, but good." She replied hastily, sounding preoccupied, and perhaps even a little guilty, although Derek couldn't imagine why. "So...tell me, how was the presentation? On a scale of one to ten of kicking ass, how much did it kick ass?"

He knew Meredith didn't mean it that way, but Derek's heart panged painfully as he was taken back to that time in his mind after she drowned. That time where she was so closed emotionally Derek honestly thought she'd never open up again. He was so frustrated all the time with her unwillingness to tell him anything that was going on in her mind, and he had said some things that he didn't mean- like not wanting to breathe for her.

But things were different now. Meredith was different now. She was the woman he met at Joe's that night, she was that girl full of attitude that he found attacking Alex in the locker room, she was that person he fell in love with before Addison came back. She had gotten over all the damage, and had come back better.

"Ten, of course!" Derek said with mock-arrogance. He was grinning into the phone, his voice dripping with mischief. He sat back on the bed, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his top button of his shirt, sinking back into the pillows, wishing she was there to see the expression on his face, feel his arms squeeze her with a hug.

"I wish I was there to listen to it…seeing as I co-wrote it and all." Meredith joked.

"Don't worry, all through dinner I told them how indispensible my resident was. When they asked your name, I told them, and then they realised you must be Ellis Grey's daughter. I guess they were surprised the legacy lived on."

"So would my mother." Meredith laughed ruefully. "The last time she saw me, she thought I was a waste of space."

Meredith knew that her mother's impression of her wasn't true. Derek told her and showed her every single day. Although Meredith had come on leaps and bounds from before, when thinking about her mother and what her mother thought of her caused her to spiral into a depression, now she approached it with a resolution. Her mother wasn't the best mother, and her father wasn't the best father, but she could be loved. Derek loved her, she had friends, she was trying to learn to be a big sister and counsel Lexie. Sometimes, you had to create your own family when the one you were given was crap.

"You're not a waste of space to me Meredith. I think you're pretty amazing, you know that?" Derek said softly, trying to ease any kind of pain Meredith might have been feeling by what she said, no matter how off-handedly she may have said it.

Something inside Meredith still fluttered whenever Derek said something complimentary about her. She wasn't used to being praised, being told she was special to someone, and Derek told her and showed her everyday. Meredith had never really believed she was worthy of someone's love, let alone someone that she actually loved back. For a long time, it was overwhelming and scary, but she now realised that it was something she was most proud of- she was groomed to be a surgeon by her mother, but she wasn't taught to love and be loved.

That's why she was now paying the cab driver, gesturing to keep the change as she got to the resort where the conference was held, about half an hour away from the strip, away from the bustle and bright lights but close enough for a visit. She dragged her suitcase to the front desk, noticing others milling around the foyer, obviously attending the conference. She smiled confidently at the front desk, acting as if she were truly a guest at the hotel instead of a gatecrasher. Ten minutes to midnight, in a city where a day really does last twenty for hours, where one day runs into the next. Time is ruled by money- run out of it, and your time's up.

Maybe because she was making another grand gesture of turning up, and knowing how inarticulate she normally was at telling Derek how she felt, Meredith didn't know how to answer him back, when he told her she was amazing. She didn't know how to react- was she supposed to say 'I know' or 'thankyou' or 'you too'? Everything sounded so lame when she thought about saying it. She was in Las Vegas, they had said goodbye only thirty six hours ago, and now she was getting on an elevator, to the floor where Derek's room was, just to surprise him.

Words failed her.

But then who cared about her inability to articulate the feelings that were buzzing inside of her, when she was standing right outside of his door? She could hear him thinking in silence, waiting for the answer that she never intended to give verbally. She stood outside, knowing he was on the other side, that only a few feet separated them from being reunited. She stopped for a second, a millisecond of doubt and apprehension filling her mind as it always did. Even though she continually put herself out there, showing more and more commitment was still scary, even if the doubt was more a force of habit than real fear.

She swallowed down the jittery nerves and took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she made her shaky hand into a fist and knocked on the door.

Derek heard someone knocking on the door. It was late…eleven something, what could someone want at this time? He was still waiting for Meredith to answer, he knew as soon as he said it that she wouldn't know how to respond. She was still embarrassed by some of the compliments he sent her way, and either batted them away with self-deprecation, or he'd distract her with a tight squeeze and a kiss. God, how he wished she were here now, snuggling by her side on that bed that was far too big for just one person.

"Mer, just a minute, someone's at the door." He groaned, pushing himself up and off the bed as he padded the few feet to the door.

He nearly dropped his phone in surprise and blinked a few times as he saw Meredith there, suitcase by her side and phone to her ear as she smiled at his shyly, her cheeks burning red.

"Hi." She smiled, giving him a small wave as she hung up her phone and jumped into arms he didn't even know he had open until he caught her.

Midnight came and went as they held each other in their arms, doorway still open, one body in the room, one body out. Their touch was magnetic, and neither of them really wanted to let go.

She was there. In Las Vegas. For him.

***************************************

Well you done done me and you bet I felt it
I tried to be chill but you're so hot that I melted
I fell right through the cracks
Now I'm trying to get back
Before the cool done run out
I'll be giving it my bestest
And nothing's gonna to stop me but divine intervention
I reckon it's again my turn to win some or learn some

But I won't hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I'm yours

Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you're free
Look into your heart and you'll find love love love love
Listen to the music of the moment, maybe sing with me
All - ah peaceful melody
And it's our God-forsaken right to be loved love loved love loved

So I won't hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I'm sure
There's no need to complicate
Our time is short
This is our fate, I'm yours

Jason Mraz- I'm yours.