Hello fanfiction . net people!

Unfortunately, I've been having some technical difficulties recently with my account.

So, just know that if you, say, PM me, I may not see it until I check my computer (which isn't often as I basically exclusively use my phone).

Anyway, on with the one-shot!

Meredith Grey never had birthdays. She had cake, sometimes, but she would cut it alone and eat it alone most of the time. She had some presents and one birthday 'party' when she was eight or nine, but that was one friend from school that came round for a few hours. But, with a mother like Ellis, she never really had any kind of birthday celebrations.

Then she hit fifteen or so, and birthdays faded away for everyone as they decided they were all far too mature for parties and bouncy castles and big, decorated cakes and sleepovers. She never had parties or bouncy castles or big, decorated cakes or sleepovers.

Then she met Derek Shepherd.

He was atrociously good at birthdays. Disgustingly so. It was just...sickening how sweet he was on her birthdays. It was if he was trying to fix all her previous birthdays. She supposed there were sleepovers with him, and he did have cake. Both kinds. No bouncy castle, but she didn't mind that. Especially when there was the event of bouncy bed instead, which was a good alternative.

But this year didn't count. Her husband had been rammed into by a truck; birthdays were hardly his top priority. He couldn't even bring her breakfast in bed unless he moved extremely slowly and extremely carefully with a tray on his lap.

She was still hoping for something but when she turned around in bed to face him, she realized that that wasn't going to happen.

He was looking at her through his eyelids. He was grasping at the covers in an attempt to pull them close for comfort and his eyebrows were furrowed in pain.

"Hey...you okay?"

"Couldn't sleep." He replied, his voice low and rough.

"Why?" She asked, lowering her amplitude. She was pretty sure she knew the answer from the state of him.

"Migraine." He mumbled back, holding his eyes shut as he was clearly struck by a wave of pain. His migraines hurt constantly, but he was always hit with random jolts that amped the pain up even higher.

That was worse than terrible, because not only was it no longer her birthday, it was now the opposite of a birthday. On a day that he was supposed to shower her with gifts and love and affection and make her feel like the most important person on the planet, she would be caring for him. That was fine, she promised to love him in sickness, but did it have to be today?

"Symptoms?"

"Normul stuffs."

"Do you need any meds?"

"Mmm." He murmured.

She nodded. "Which one?"

"The uh- the one that-" He swallowed. "Orange."

She looked at him, seriously concerned now; most of his meds were in orange containers, was he really so out of it that he forgot that? "Yeah, okay, is this water good enough or should I go and get some more?"

"Mmm. Okay." He hummed.

She nodded, opened the door of the bathroom and flicked the light on, only to pause.

She couldn't even be mad at him. He was a liar and his so-called migraine freaked her out but she couldn't even be mad. The bathroom wasn't a bathroom anymore. It was a freaking florists. "Oh, come on, seriously?" She sighed, looking back to him. He wasn't ill and bed-ridden anymore. He was sat up, smiling at her with his stupid grin.

"Happy birthday!" He announced, grinning.

"You couldn't have done that like a normal person?"

"No! Of course not! But still, I need my drugs. I think you might find them in the cabinet above the sink."

She eyed him suspiciously before opening it. He had taken the shelves out of it, and all the bottles and drugs that used to reside there.

There was instead a card, a box that she recognised as the kind some form of jewellery would come in and a multi-photo picture frame, that almost fell out when she opened it, of many, many pictures of them together, and with their kids.

She went for the card first. It was a sweet, traditional, best-wife-ever card. Well, most of it. "Hope you get to slice into some interesting abdomens today?" She read off the card, looking up at him with raised brows.

"Well, yeah. You're lying if you say that you would rather have my presents over some cool surgeries but I decided that stabbing people in the abdomen so you could have surgery was a tad illegal. So I went with a well-meaning wish instead."

She smirked. "You're so weird. You know that, right?"

"I know. There's uh- me and Zo imitating uh- Instagram people after I got it because Kate was begging for me to follow her. Although, she has like ten thousands so I have no idea why she asked me to add just one." He explained as she placed the card down and examined the frame. Zola mastered that pouty face that they were always making and, if he was honest, he had too. "Princess Zozo and then Bails attacking the animal kingdom with his dinosaurs. Us at the zoo for Zo's birthday and a picture that you took at Bailey's birthday party of him and the cake. Then me and you together because...because there are no pictures of...me anymore. Now-me, I mean."

Meredith looked from the photo, to her husband, to the chair by the bed. She settled the picture frame on the drawer right outside the bedroom. "I love now-you as much as I did...previous-you."

He smiled. "I know."

She returned from the bathroom, and sat beside him to open this one. "So...what's this?"

"If you open it, you'll be able to see."

"Wow- that's shocking" She murmured sarcastically, sliding the lid off to reveal a necklace with five crystals in it.

"So, apparently, the colours are the like- gem things of months - our birthday months, of course. I have no idea what the...you know, colours mean or whatever but I thought it was sweet."

She stared at it for a second before looking back up to him. "It is sweet. And thanks for not buying me a ring."

"Yeah. You can actually wear this one." He agreed. Surgeons and rings weren't friends, seeing as rings were always removed for surgery.

"Thank you."

"It's your birthday. I don't need a thanks." He dismissed. "What I do need, is your lips."

She chuckled as he neared her. "Well that can be arranged."

Derek Shepherd was infuriatingly good at birthdays.