I dithered for a long time about the prospect of putting an OR scene in this chapter. Normally, I don't write scenes that actually happen during a surgery because I am not a doctor, and I loathe research. For this chapter, though, I really felt like I couldn't skip over the bit in the OR, especially since this is one of two moments mentioned in Derek's proposal which aren't covered in the show (the other one being where she has to hold the retractor for seven hours, but that's coming up later) so nobody actually knows what happened during those surgeries. I also thought there was just so much potential for them to be subtly (and not so subtly) flirting in the OR. I did look up the procedure and watched some videos of them actually being performed (which were very cool, by the way), in order to try and make it as accurate as possible, but, again, I am not a doctor, so please forgive any errors I may have made. Also, remember, the medicine isn't really the focus of the chapter!

This chapter is also much longer than the first one because it's new material!

Happy reading!

Kiss me beneath the milky twilight

Lead me out on the moonlight floor

Lift your open hand

Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance

Silver moon sparkling

So kiss me

Kiss Me – Sixpence None The Richer

Derek gestures to another scan, this one pinned up right next to Katie's. I suppress a giggle. He reminds me of my gross anatomy professor at Dartmouth who always walked around the classroom gesturing at diagrams of organs with a pointer. "And this one right here is a cerebral cyst. Tough save, but we did it. I kissed you in the stairwell after the surgery."

My smile widens at this one. It wasn't long after I plucked up the courage to meet Derek at that coffee shop. We weren't really dating, and we certainly hadn't had sex since that first time, but Derek was lobbying hard for a second date. A "real date" he said. As if meeting for lunch at a French café wasn't considered a real date. I knew the kind of date he meant, the take-you-out-to-dinner-at-some-swanky-restaurant-with-flowers-and-music-and-candlelight kind of date, but I just wasn't ready for that yet. Despite my resistance, though, Derek refused to be deterred, which made for an interesting time of it at work…

Right before 1x05 – Shake Your Grove Thing.

Being an intern was gruelling. In med school, they always told you it was hard work, but they never really said how hard. They didn't tell you that your whole body would ache for days after being on your feet for forty-eight hours, or that you'd still feel as exhausted when you woke up as you did when you went to bed, not matter how much sleep you had gotten.

The thing I hated the most about a forty-eight hour shift was the down time. It was easy to ignore the exhaustion when you were busy looking after patients or standing in the back of an OR, observing one of the top surgeons in the country saving someone's life, but when you were on hour 26 of a 48-hour shift, with nothing better to do than sit on a gurney in the tunnels doing nothing, it was hard to ignore the fact that your whole body was aching and you hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep in the last month.

"I hate this," Cristina mumbled angrily, crushing an empty bag of chips in her fist. "I mean we're supposed to be busy doing stuff, you know like monitoring patients, or suturing, or scrubbing in on amazing surgeries. We're not supposed to be sitting around doing nothing."

I nodded in agreement, letting my head rest against the wall. It was true that I despised just sitting down here, waiting for something to happen, but, contrary to Cristina, I wasn't wishing for an exciting surgery or a new patient to look after. I was dreaming of home, of a long, hot bath, and the softness of my pillow. I was dreaming of a morning where I wasn't woken at five o'clock in the morning to the incessant beeping of the alarm. I hadn't had a day off since the day where I went to meet Derek at the café last week because I'd agreed to pick up Izzie's overnight shift yesterday so that she could catch up on some sleep before her boyfriend arrived, and I was paying the consequences. To think that I could have been have been at home right now, asleep in bed, instead of here in the hospital made the exhaustion even worse.

Cristina's watch alarm beeped suddenly, jolting both of us out of our misery. "Five o'clock," she said briskly, jumping to her feet. "Rounds start in an hour." And with that she hurried off. Despite the fact that we were sort of best friends, she was still determined to snag all of the best cases. Had I not been so tired, I would have chased after her and tried to get my hands on some of those cases, but I was too tired to care at this point.

I paid bitterly for the decision not to chase her, as it meant that instead of taking the first elevator, which was packed with hospital staff coming in for rounds, I was stuck on the second one, which was empty except for Derek Shepherd.

He grinned when he saw me, that full-on McDreamy smile that—even tired as I was—made my insides turn to jelly. Part of me was tempted to smile back, but he would take that as an invitation to start flirting with me, and I was in no mood for that this morning. I was too busy trying to keep myself awake; I didn't want to have to worry about flirting with McDreamy too.

He'd already pressed the button for the third floor, so I just stood back and watched the doors close, making sure to keep my distance. He was standing at the back, engrossed in his phone, so hopefully he would just leave me alone. I wasn't anticipating that to be the case; Derek was not one to pass up an opportunity to flirt, but that didn't stop me from hoping.

"I thought you had the day off today."

I sighed, reminded again of the stupidity of my decision to help out my roommate. "I traded shifts with Izzie. Her boyfriend's coming home tomorrow, and she wanted to catch up on her sleep before her gets here."

"How gallant of you." Derek paused thoughtfully. "Didn't you have a forty-eight hour shift earlier this week?"

"Yeah." I groaned. "Remind me never to do it again."

Derek chuckled. "I saw Cristina dashing to catch the other elevator. Was she on the overnight too?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"And you're going to let her steal all the good cases before everyone else gets here?" There was a challenge in Derek's tone, but even that wasn't enough to spur me into action.

"Honestly, I'm too tired to care what she does," I admitted wearily. "I just want to go home and sleep and never have to come to work again."

"You don't mean that," Derek teased. "Who am I going to flirt with if you're not here?"

I couldn't help laughing a little bit at this. "I'm sure you'll find someone. There are plenty of women here who wouldn't mind flirting with you."

"Really? I hadn't noticed." I wasn't sure if he was joking or not. I wanted to ask him about it—could he really be oblivious to the effect he had on women?—but the elevator arrived at the third floor before I could say anything else. We both stepped off the elevator, him turning towards the left, and me to the right.

"I'll see you around, Derek." I hated to leave, to have to go and face the rest of the interns. Flirting with Derek made me temporarily forget the exhaustion consuming me, and the thought of work made it all come rushing back again.

"Oh you bet you will." He winked. "Hang in there, Meredith."

Let's hope, I thought to myself.

After witnessing the state of my mental faculties after rounds, Bailey had put me on scut all morning. I'd been able to snag a nap during the afternoon—forsaking my lunch break—but the three hour of shut-eye—which had been more than sufficient to restore me to my former wakefulness—had cost me dearly: Bailey, unimpressed when I didn't return to my scut duties after lunch—apparently I was supposed to do it for the whole day and not just the morning—had me running labs and charting all afternoon. So now, at eight o'clock, I was more than ready to go home, eat something, have a hot bath, and go to sleep. Cristina might even be able to tempt me with a drink at Joe's.

Despite his promise this morning, I hadn't seen Derek all day. For once, I actually wished I had; flirting with him a little bit certainly would have made my day somewhat interesting. Who knows, he might even have felt bad for me and let me scrub in on one of his surgeries; I'd noticed that he had a craniotomy on the board for this afternoon.

I'd promised Izzie and Cristina that I would meet them in the locker room, where, as usual, Cristina would try to persuade us to go to Joe's. Tonight, Izzie would probably say no—what with her boyfriend arriving tomorrow, she was going to want an early night tonight. Normally, I would say yes, but the thought of food, bath, and bed was entirely too tempting.

"Meredith?"

My finger hadn't even touched the button the call the elevator when I heard my name. I knew before I turned around what I was going to see: Derek, hurrying towards me, face already shifting into his trademark smile.

"Derek." His name came out more like a sigh. It was nice to see him, and my heart was still fluttering away—a sure sign that I was falling for him according to Izzie—but it would have been so much nicer had he bumped into me a few hours earlier. At this point, I had spent the better part of three days in the hospital. I wanted to go home.

"Listen." There was some hesitation in his voice, which struck me as odd; Derek wasn't the type to be unsure of himself. "I know you're probably tired and your shift is technically over, but I've got a cerebral cyst in OR 4 in an hour, and I really need an intern. It'll be a great learning experience," he said, smiling hopefully.

Derek's proposition had me conflicted. On the one hand, I loathed the idea of delaying my departure home by another two hours. On the other had, after the day that I had had, the thought of observing one of the world's foremost neurosurgeon's removing a cyst was like telling a five year-old that it was Christmas. I hadn't been inside an OR in a week, and, considering I was in Bailey's bad books, God only knew when another chance would come my way.

"Why me? Why not ask one of the other interns on shift?" I had every intention of doing the surgery, but I wanted to make Derek's life a little bit more difficult. Playing games with him was so much fun.

"I don't want anyone else. I want you. Consider it a...pick-me-up after a miserable day." It seemed that he had caught on.

"You heard about my bad day?" Was it impossible to have any privacy here?

"No, but I figured, seeing as you were so tired this morning, that it couldn't have been a good one."

"Well, you were right." I sighed, pushing some stray pieces of hair out of my face.

"So are you in? I promise it'll be worth your while," he said, winking.

I shook my head at him, biting back a smile. A surgery with Derek: full of interesting techniques and subtle flirting? Who would say no to that? It would be a learning experience in so many ways. "I'm in."

So much for the early night.

It was almost nine o'clock. My 48-hour shift had officially ended nearly an hour ago, and, as I walked down to the OR floor, I began to understand why Mom had never exactly been around when I was a kid. It was nearly impossible to resist the rush that followed a surgery, especially when you were operating with someone like Derek Shepherd. In fact, when you threw in the added bonus of Derek Shepherd, it was impossible to resist.

I hadn't had time to go back o the residents lounge—I'd had to go straight to pre-op to prep Derek's patient—so I hadn't been able to tell Cristina that I wasn't going to be able to meet her at Joe's. I didn't think that she was going to be too bothered, based on how things had gone today, she probably wouldn't be expecting me to be up for a drink anyways. She only asked out of habit.

There was nobody in the OR hallway. Very few elective surgeries happened at this time of night, and I couldn't help but wonder to myself as I headed to OR 4 why it was that Derek was doing the procedure now. Why not earlier in the day? Who wanted to wait that long to have their cyst removed?

All of the possible reasons for why an elective surgery would be scheduled so late floated out of my head as I shouldered open the door to the scrub room. Derek was already at the sink, reaching over to turn on the tap, but he froze as he saw me, a lazy grin spreading over his features. I groaned inwardly. How was I supposed to get through a whole hour in the OR with this man? Well, if you don't, it wouldn't be the end of the world, the little voice in the back of my head whispered naughtily. Shut up, I snapped, trying to squash it. Losing control with Derek Shepherd in the OR during the middle of a procedure wasn't going to solve any of my problems.

"You ready?" Derek asked casually, as if he were just any other attending preparing for any other cyst removal with any other intern.

I nodded, trying to wash up as briskly as I could. I was wary of his intentions, especially since he was trying to pretend that everything was perfectly normal between us. That was a bad sign. "I've never assisted on a cyst removal before."

"Really?" There was something about Derek's grin that makes me nervous, and, at the same time, the way it made his eyes dance playfully made my stomach flutter. "Well this is going to be fun then."

"Should I be afraid?" I asked boldly, turning off the water.

Derek's eyebrows arched skyward. "Afraid? Of what?"

"You," I replied.

Now he began to chuckle, undoubtedly finding me highly amusing. "Me? Why would you be afraid of me?"

"Well, you say that the fact that this is my first time assisting or observing a cyst removal is going to make this fun. You're not going to try any funny business in the OR, are you, Dr Shepherd?"

He shook his head. The surgical mask may have obscured his face, but I could tell from the way his eyes twinkled that he found me incredibly amusing. "There won't be any funny business, Dr Grey."

"Good," I said, not sure whether or not I believed him. After all, his definition of funny business and mine might be two completely different things.

All if my worries disappeared when I heard the hiss of the OR doors opening. Whether or not Derek was going to be all flirty and inappropriate for the next hour was irrelevant to me now. I could feel the exhilarating rush that accompanied that first step into the OR, the high caused by the prospect of a surgery. Derek could say whatever he wanted, and I probably wouldn't care. Given the time of day, the gallery was empty, so I'd probably get to do a little more than just observing. I might be sacrificing some beauty sleep, but this was a great learning opportunity. I couldn't help feeling that despite her reservations, my mother would be proud of me.

"All right people." Derek was grinning from ear to ear. The thought of surgery seemed to excite him as much as it excited me. "It's a beautiful night to save lives. Let's get started."

Every surgeon has their quirks, their own little superstitions and rituals before and after surgery. My mother always used to flex her fingers to make sure that they wouldn't cramp up during the procedure. Dr Burke cracks his neck. Derek's is that saying. It's a beautiful night to save lives. He always said it with a grin and his infectious good humor, but there was a note of seriousness to it, too. We're here to save someone's life. Without us, the patient will die. We're buying them more time, maybe even a whole life.

Thinking about surgery ultimately led to me thinking about my mother, and what she would say if she knew about Derek and me. I had told her that night after my first shift, but she hadn't been lucid, so there was no way she would have remembered what I had told her. She hadn't even known I was her daughter. The real Ellis Grey wouldn't be pleased, though. She'd go on about how this was unprofessional and how I didn't have time to let relationships get in the way of my career. She'd tell me I was a disappointment, which was no surprise. I'd spent my whole life disappointing her.

"Having a nap, Dr Grey?"

I jumped, jolted back to the present. Derek was grinning at me from behind his scrub cap, eyes sparkling teasingly. While I'd been lost in thought, he'd been busy opening up the patient, and was about to begin tackling the cyst.

"If I'd known you were this tired, I would have let you go home," he continued with false seriousness.

"I'm fine, Dr Shepherd," I replied hastily, fixing my gaze on the patient. Marcus Evans was eleven, and—as I'd discovered while taking him through his pre-op checks—was a huge baseball fan and was the possessor of an infectious smile—not unlike Derek's—and the most adorable dimples I had ever seen. It was strange to see him lying so limp on the table, dimples lost to the anesthesia, getting his head cut open. It was the first surgery I'd scrubbed in on that was done on a child, and I was surprised by how helpless and tiny he looked on the table. "I was just...thinking."

"About what?" he pressed, eyes glinting wickedly.

Not about that, Dr Shepherd. "It's just that this is the first surgery I've seen on a child. I'm just trying to take it all in."

"Well you can take it in much better from over here. Come take a closer look."

I could feel the anticipation thrumming in my veins as I stepped closer to the patient. This was what I was meant to do. This was my calling. Because of us, this kid would go on to have a long, happy life.

It wasn't my first time seeing someone's brain, but I was still as much in awe of it now as I had been the first time I had scrubbed in with Derek on Katie Bryce's craniotomy. To think that what I was seeing in front of my eyes was the control centre of the whole human body was...well, breathtaking.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Derek asked, his own voice full of wonder.

I nodded, not sure how to sum up what I was feeling. "Yeah."

"And it'll be even more beautiful once we fix it. Forceps." The assertiveness with which Derek spoke was unsettling. I couldn't understand exactly where all of his confidence was coming from; the part of me that wasn't completely awestruck by the brain sitting in front of me was panicking at the thought of me actually being asked to touch it—what if I killed the patient? Sure, he had years of experience on me, but that didn't make him a god. It didn't mean that he never made mistakes.

"Am I amusing you, Dr Grey?"

I started slightly, not realizing that I had been staring at Derek the whole time. I had never been more grateful for my surgical mask; it masked the flush that spread across my cheeks. The last thing I wanted was to be caught staring at my boss, especially when I was trying to vehemently convince everyone—especially myself—that there was nothing going on between us. "You're awfully confident," I said carefully.

He chuckled, not looking up from Marcus' open skull flap. "I've been doing this for a long time, Dr Grey," he replied. "Would you like to hold the retractor for me? Bokey needs to keep her hands free."

I blinked, surprised. I hadn't even been working here two weeks, and yet here Derek was treating me like I was already a resident. Most attendings let the interns observe and called on them occasionally, but we didn't normally get to help out on procedures until we had been working here a little longer. I also knew, regardless of what he said, that Bokey was more than capable of holding the retractor. She'd been a scrub nurse for years and didn't need her hands free for anything. "Okay," I said slightly warily, not sure if he was just doing this so that I would be more inclined to accept his invitations to dinner in the future. Bokey moved to the side so that I could slip in and place my hands where hers had been. The retractor was narrow and cool beneath my fingers, and I couldn't help feeling excited, and also nervous. I'd just had much more responsibility thrust on my shoulders. I wasn't just a casual observer anymore. One slip up, and Marcus could be permanently brain dead.

Derek glanced at me briefly, before turning his attention back to Marcus. "You don't seem too thrilled. I thought you'd be excited to get to hold the retractor the whole time."

"I am. I'm thrilled to be able to assist," I replied automatically, afraid that he would get me to step back again. I wanted to help out as much as I could with this, hell, I would perform the surgery myself if I knew how.

"But..."

Damn him for being able to read me so well. "I can't help feeling there's some kind of ulterior motive to this. Like I'm going to have to pay up later or something."

Derek shrugged. "I've done this procedure many times before. You, on the other hand, are experiencing this for the first time. So I say, why not make it more enjoyable?" He paused, eyes sparkling wickedly. "Though if you want to pay up, I won't say no."

"Dr Shepherd!" I couldn't help the blush that spread across my cheeks, well aware that the scrub nurses and OR techs—though silent—were hearing every word I was. The hospital gossip mill was going to have a field day tomorrow. If this kept up, not only would I become a pariah, but I might actually get kicked out of the program. Which was not something that I could afford to happen. My pride would take too much of a beating for that too be acceptable.

"I love it when you say that, you know. It's very cute," he said calmly, as if he were simply asking me for more suction and not telling the whole OR that I was turning him on. "Like those little ineffectual fists of yours." He glanced briefly at the fists in question, one of which clenched reflexively, as if poised to strike him, and I could see the glimmer in his eyes. He was enjoying this entirely too much.

I was really having difficulty refraining from attacking him. "Yeah, well those ineffectual fists might become quite effectual if you're not careful," I snapped, wishing that he would stop this. As exciting getting to assist on a craniotomy was, I was seriously beginning to regret agreeing to this.

His eyes widened teasingly, as if I had stabbed him. "Have you nothing nice to say about me, Dr Grey?" he asked, feigning hurt.

"I might, if you actually behaved," I replied. Handsome and charming and irresistible as he was, this whole not-so-secret public flirting thing had to stop. People—namely Bailey and the other interns—were starting to get suspicious, especially Cristina, who already knew about our past history. I couldn't stay away from him no matter how hard I tried, but I didn't want this—whatever it was we had to get in the way of work. Not to mention the fact that I was dying of embarrassment at the thought that everyone else in the OR could hear what he was saying and that it would no doubt be all over the hospital by tomorrow.

"You're right."

I blinked, surprised at the sudden turn the conversation had taken. "What?" He's been flirting with me almost non-stop since my first day here. Why the sudden change of heart?

"My behaviour towards you has been less than professional, Dr Grey. I'd like to apologize," he said seriously, gaze completely focused on Marcus' brain.

"Well..." I wasn't quite sure what to say. Thank you? Apology accepted?

"In fact, let me take you out to dinner to make it up to you." He was still looking at Marcus' open skull flap, but I could see his trademark grin twinkling in those blue eyes. "Say Friday night?"

"You're incorrigible."

"Really? Most people think I'm very charming. They think my sense of humour is my best feature."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not most people."

"No," he murmured, expression becoming more serious. "That you're not."

His words caught me by surprise, so much so that I almost dropped the suction tube. You're not most people. What was that supposed to mean? Was he—oh God was he serious about me? Did he want this thing we had to become something more? Thoughts swirled around my head at a dizzying rate. This wasn't happening. We'd barely even known each other two weeks. Things weren't supposed to get serious yet. In fact, they weren't supposed to get serious ever. At least, that's the way it normally was, but I had the feeling that normal wasn't going to work with Derek. My classic sleep-with-you-once-and-never-see-you-again had completely blown up in my face, and I was possibly willing to be open to something different, but this was too much. I clenched my free hand into a fist, fighting the urge to bolt from the room as fast as I could.

"Meredith?" Derek's voice pierced through my inner panic, full of concern. "Meredith, are you all right?"

I wanted to answer him, but there weren't any words to express what I was feeling. Was I all right? I hadn't the faintest idea. All I knew was that I was trying very hard not to leave now and possibly relocate to another state under an assumed name.

"Meredith?" He turned away from Marcus for one second, blue eyes boring into mine as if he were staring right into my soul. I got the feeling that he understood that he had said something wrong, but wasn't sure what.

And just like that, everything changed.

I fled as soon as the surgery was finished. It was childish, and highly embarrassing when I actually stopped to think about it, but I couldn't spend one more minute in that OR. The cyst removal was supposed to have taken an hour, and ended up taking two because of some unexpected bleeders—which may or may not have been caused by Derek's lack of attention to the patient. Marcus was going to make a full recovery, but there had been many moments in there when we had both thought the opposite. I knew Derek would want me to go and talk to Marcus' parents with him, possibly so that he could say what a great help I had been in saving their son's life, and how he couldn't have done it without me—which is bullshit. He is a world-class neurosurgeon, after all—but I couldn't. I could barely stand, let alone smile and accept thanks from a little boy's parents when I was the reason there had been any problems in the first place. If Derek had been with anyone else, he never would have been distracted, and none of this would have ever happened. Because of me—because of us—a little boy had almost died.

At the time, of course, I wasn't thinking about that. At the time, I had been calm, which seemed to catch Derek by surprise—he must have assumed that I, like every other intern, would be panicking. I had never been the panicking type—certainly not in a crisis—but afterwards, I felt like my legs were going to give out. It all seemed to hit me as I finished closing—Derek, as a reward, had let me put in the staples—: Marcus could have died. The surgery had been exhilarating, and I wasn't going to forget it any time soon, but it was the first time I'd scrubbed in on a surgery where there had been any kind of serious complications. And it was my fault.

"Meredith!"

I froze, halfway down the stairs. After having taken a few moments on the upper landing to compose myself, I'd decided to head to the locker room, get changed, and go home, hopefully before Derek was finished in post-op. I didn't want to talk about what had happened in that OR, and I thought it was best if perhaps he and I just spent some time away from each other. Obviously, that wasn't going to be the case.

Before I could collect myself enough to bolt—which was the default response in my panicked brain—he was there, taking gentle hold of my elbow, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking of doing. I wanted to say something to him, maybe tell him to let me go, but the words got lost somewhere.

"Are you okay?"

I took a deep breath, resisting the urge to mumble, "Fine" and run. I had to say this. "We can't work together anymore."

Judging by the look on his face, this wasn't what he had been expecting. "What?"

"We can't do this, Derek. That little boy almost died in there because we—" I couldn't finish the sentence. I didn't even want to admit it out loud, partially because I was dreading it. Working with him was exhilarating, and it wasn't something I wanted to give up.

Derek face softened, full of understanding. "That wasn't your fault, Meredith. Depending on where the cyst is positioned, it can make it harder to deflate it without clipping a vessel. We also had no way of knowing that he had von Willebrand disease. His parents didn't even know that." He smiled, stroking my cheek gently. "It had nothing to do with you, Meredith. In fact, you're one of the reasons he's still alive."

I shook my head. "I'm just an intern, Derek. You can't say that."

He shrugged. "It's true. I needed that extra set of hands in there, and any other intern probably would have been panicking at all the blood. Not to mention you were the one who figured it out. He probably would have died otherwise." He paused, a grin slowly transforming his face. "We did it, Meredith."

Despite any of my earlier misgivings, I couldn't help feeling the giddy delight that accompanied a successful surgery. Derek was right, there was no way we could have known about the von Willebrand's, which had been the main reason for all the complications, not the fact that Derek nicked a vessel.

"We did, didn't we?" I couldn't help grinning like an idiot, too.

"Our first big save. You know, we should celebrate. What do you say to dinner on Friday?" he asked, winking.

I shook my head, marveling at his persistence. "I see what you're trying to do here. And the answer's still no. I'm not going out to dinner with you."

Derek frowned, eyes still twinkling. "Well, then, I suppose we'll just have to celebrate another way." And before I could do or say anything, he leaned in and kissed me.

At first, the kiss was gentle. Slow. There hadn't been any kissing since that fateful encounter in the elevator last week, though that didn't mean that we hadn't both been thinking about it. He tasted of mint and the faintest hint of coffee, and his hands cradled my face like it was made of glass. It was possibly the gentlest kiss I'd ever experienced.

Gentleness, however, isn't very satisfying, and certainly not when you've been thinking about this moment constantly for the last week. Not wanting to wait any longer, I latched onto a fistful of his scrub top and pulled him closer.

The reaction was instantaneous. One hand moved to grip my waist, trapping me against his chest, while the other tangled itself in my hair. My hands—eager to be busy themselves, slipped up underneath his scrubs, tracing the contours of his chest with my fingers. His tongue invaded my mouth with a force that took me by surprise, bringing back a rush of memories of us stumbling into the house in a mess of limbs and mouths and desire.

I wasn't even aware we were moving until my back slammed against the wall, Derek's hands pausing their brief explorations of my body long enough to lift me up, giving me no choice but to wrap my legs around his waist to keep from falling—not that I was complaining. We were now the same height, which made it easier for me to reach up and rake my hands through those dreamy, ebony curls, fingernails caressing his scalp. He groaned in my mouth, and proceeded to assault the inside of my mouth with renewed vigor while his hands slipped underneath both my scrub top and the shirt underneath, skimming across my stomach and around to slip underneath the back of my bra. I could feel his erection digging into my thigh.

He abandoned my mouth temporarily, moving to trail kisses down the side of my neck, inching dangerously close to the collar of my shirt. I knew exactly where this was going, and, while my desire-addled brain had no objection to it, the more rational part of me had no desire to be caught having sex with McDreamy in the stairwell.

"We—have to—stop," I gasped, squirming away from his touch, which was setting a wildfire across my skin. "Derek—we can't."

"Mmm," he mumbled, without halting his explorations of my collarbone.

"No, seriously," I hissed, desire rapidly disappearing at the thought of Bailey or the Chief walking in on us. "We can't do this here!"

Derek looked up now, grinning. "Where do you propose we go then, Dr Grey?"

"Nowhere," I replied, disentangling myself from his arms. "This isn't happening tonight. Period. If someone were to come in—"

He chuckled. "You know it's cute how flustered you get about this."

I smacked his shoulder, not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to vent some of my frustration. "Ass. I'm being serious here."

"You were being very serious before, too. I wouldn't mind resuming that seriousness."

"You're impossible," I muttered, hastily attempting to adjust my top so it didn't look like I'd almost had sex in the stairwell with my attending. "I'm going to go home now."

"Now there's an idea," Derek said, eyes twinkling deviously. "We could actually do it in a bed this time."

"No." There was no way I was letting Derek Shepherd come back to my house. Not when I had roommates. "Not happening. I'll see you tomorrow, Dr Shepherd."

"Back to Dr Shepherd again," he asked, following me down the stairs. "I much prefer Derek."

"I know," I said, pausing with my hand on the door to the stairwell. "But it's not professional. And if we're going to do this, we have to be professional about it."

Derek's eyebrows rose, but he was grinning. "So we're actually doing this, are we now?"

I shrugged. "Maybe." And with a last grin and a wink, I fled, leaving him standing there agape.

A/N: For those of you who may be wondering, von Willebrand's disease is a genetic disease that stops the blood from clotting, among other things.