Meredith's cornsilk hair was fanned out on the pillow, and she'd sprawled as much as she ever did, on her side, diagonally, with her feet almost off the side, and her forehead touching his shoulder. Exhausting her to the point where she passed out before she'd curled up again, usually in the other direction, should've drained him, too, but apparently he still couldn't fall asleep before midnight on Christmas Eve.

Carefully, he extricated himself from the bed and covered her. The heat she'd claimed before falling asleep wouldn't last, and as much as he wanted to be next to her when she started burrowing for warmth, he wasn't sure it would happen. He found his pants, and then took a thermal shirt and flannel further down the airstream to put them on. Before flipping the switch to turn off the light over the bed, he took another long look at her. Three months ago, having her in his bed at Christmas had been an impossible dream. He'd have been kidding himself if he'd thought he and Rose would've lasted to this point; it would've only been the same as last Christmas, where missing Meredith had overpowered everything else.

He could hardly believe how different this year had become. And yet….

He shook himself, drank in the golden shimmer of her hair, and then pushed the switch.

Tomorrow, they'd be at her house, and as unusual as it'd been for him, he was glad he'd agreed to opening presents with her out here on Christmas Eve. There hadn't been the rush that there might've been tomorrow morning, or the risk of Karev standing in the living room shoveling leftover Chinese food into his mouth while they did it.

She definitely wouldn't have told him about forgetting the word Chewbacca at "the freaking Hallmark store. I'm allergic to the schmaltz level in that place. And it smells weird. So, the old lady who works there asks if I'm looking for something specific, and my brain just went…Alzheimer's blank."

"Meredith."

"It did. Finally, I come up with, 'uh…Star Wars?' Which, we're standing in front of the Star Wars display, did I mention that? We are. And she lives in this place, so she very sweetly asks, 'Anything specific?' And I got nothing. Not 'Chewbacca' not 'Wookie,' not 'co-pilot.' I'm not a total dweeb like you, but I have seen Star Wars! Before I can just grab the nearest droid, my stupid mouth goes, 'the big hairy one.' The big hairy one, Derek. And this woman, who was probably old when A New Hope came out,…or who came fully formed with the Hallmark store for all I know—her judgy look would've made my mother envious."

It'd been one of the few times he'd seen her really embarrassed. She'd buried her pink cheeks in her hands, which had muffled the grumble of, "I can't believe I told you that."

He'd threaded his fingers into her hair and kissed the top of her head. It told him a lot that she hadn't run in that moment. She'd bought the ornament, She'd given it to him, but telling him that story had shown him a layer of vulnerability that had been a gift in itself.

He hadn't known what to expect from Christmas with her. Buyinh her earrings was something he'd run by Yang, complete with a picture of the set that he'd been sure was perfect. The glint of the rubies next to her shining green eyes—not emerald; closer to peridot, or shades of tourmaline he'd seen. Considerations for the future, now—made him consider taking the necklace that had come with them out of his safe-deposit box for New Year's.

He'd come up with splitting the set early on. It had been less likely to overwhelm her, and less likely to object to additional gifts. More importantly, it would remind Meredith that he wasn't going anywhere, without putting pressure on her. He'd ruled out an initial idea of putting a ring in her stocking for a reason.

He'd moved into the house, with the exception of nights like this where she'd agreed on the benefit of privacy. He tried not to push her, but when he had, like his assumption that her roommates would move out, she'd stood up to him. Her honesty made it next to impossible for him to pretend that he hadn't caused any of the pain she was carrying around, but she'd been more receptive to letting him try to fix things, atone, and to trust him with the problems he hadn't caused.

Tonight had been everything he could've hoped for, from the time he'd helped her out of the car and lead her to the path he'd made to the trailer, lined with the tea candles that were flickering out as he returned outside. (When he'd put his hands over her eyes, she'd protested: "What is this? Some weird Christmas hazing thing?"

"Exactly, yeah. Christmas hazing is something that you've lived almost thirty years without hearing about," he'd deadpanned.

"Well, I don't know." He'd heard the way her lips were curling before he'd tilted her head to see it.)

He was happy, happier than he could remember being at Christmas in years. And yet.

It was cloudy out, and nothing like a white Christmas. He sat outside the trailer, and smiled at the memory of Meredith pausing midway along the candle path, and grinning back at him. "I like the lights."

The multicolored bulbs didn't illuminate much, but if he wasn't sure she'd call them tacky within forty-eight hours, he'd leave them up.

He took his phone out of his pocket to check the time. The text from Mark surprised him.

MARK SLOAN: Weird, not to be upstate.

It'd been sent over an hour ago, but when Derek responded, he got a reply within minutes.

DEREK SHEPHERD: You've missed Christmas before.

MARK SLOAN: Not since med school.

Derek stared at his phone. He started to type multiple times, but it took him a good few minutes to draft something that didn't sound accusatory.

DEREK SHEPHERD: You went up last year?

His phone rang a minute or two later. He seriously considered hitting ignore.

Sometimes he dreamed of whisking Meredith off somewhere they'd never be found, and create a world free of connections. It was a truly impossible dream. Meredith had a skill for quick rapport that made her bedside manner excellent. She wasn't friendly in the traditional, Stevensesque way. She was a hedgehog, ready to curl up, and jab, but you didn't have to do much for her to use those spikes to attack on your behalf. She might've believed herself to be a rolling stone for a while, but she'd been a seed all along, and the roots she'd put down had gotten entangled with her friends'. He didn't know if his got wrapped up in Addison's before she extricated herself from the city, or if they've been growing unmoored for almost a year. He did know they hadn't been twisting in with Meredith's the right way for most of this year.

While he'd mostly come to terms with the affair, and this summer would've been much darker if Mark hadn't been around, Nancy's visit had popped up in his head. No, he'd had to call her at her in-laws last year. She hadn't seen Mark at Christmas; might not have known he'd been there. They hadn't put on an act right in front of him. Why that would've been worse than the communal omission, he didn't have time to figure out, but it would've. He'd been trying to convince himself he'd be happy to never see Mark again. Meanwhile, his family had hosted him at Christmas without saying a word. It was proof that Mom had meant it every time she told Mark they were his family. That she'd believed that he and Derek would move past what had happened as he and Addison had.

That was one explanation.

The other possibility meant facing more of his flaws than he would prefer to on Christmas Eve, but it was there, flashing through his mind in the second his hand hovered over the device. Letting go of grudges wasn't his M.O. How many times in his life had he worried that Mark could replace him, and his family would've been happy about it? Maybe the assumption had been that they were keeping Mark in the divorce?—And Addison, it seemed—They'd been separated again by the point of Nancy's visit, and he didn't know what might've passed between the two of them in the time between his leaving New York and her showing up in Seattle. Maybe Nancy had turned her vitriol on Addison at some point. Probably not. Not choosing sides was an art his mother had perfected. "We're all humans. I'd say four and a half out of five times we're all wrong about this world, which means there's a slim chance that one of you is totally in the clear." She'd had to see both sides in their arguments; they were all her kids, and they all bad to have her support.

Derek hadn't iced Mark out after he and Lizzie fell apart. But in that case, Liz was the dumper. All four of them had wanted to tar and feather Kathleen's first husband, but they'd never liked him. He hadn't willingly socialized with Derek, let alone been a friend.

It wasn't often that he was aware of being at a point where the future branched so clearly. Where his choice would be so obviously meaningful. It was almost midnight. There were justifications for not answering. Continuing to text. But he didn't see three paths ahead, only the two.

Answer.

Ignore.

Mark had been a brother to him. Family. Chosen family, yes, but hadn't Meredith shown him that once you make that call, you had to consider it as sacred as any other family bond? There night be a breaking point, as he and Addison had discovered, but that didn't come after a single mistake.

"I don't know how Amy does it," he said, with the phone to his ear. "Listening to the kids rattling off their gifts on the phone doesn't make up for missing Mariah's involuntary happy flailing."

A beat passed. Mark exhaled. "She smashed Trick's glasses last year. It took ten minutes to find tape. We started opening presents and picking it off the paper."

Derek laughed. "That's what he gets for standing behind her."

"That plane you sent was Lucas's favorite gift. Dunno if anyone told you. He insisted on trying it outside before he opened his gift from the Bajan grandparents."

Dear Uncle Derek,

I a writing to say thank you for my Christmas present. I really like it. Thank you for thinking of me

Sincerely,

Lucas Adams

"That's, uh…that's good to know. Hopefully this year's will measure up. If I'd known that—but Liz said he's taking guitar lessons, so Meredith and—"

"Grey?"

"No, The other Meredith I consult regularly. What do you think?"

"That mentioning the lambs would make her eye start twitching."

"She doesn't know we call them that," Derek conceded. "She thinks 'the flock' is hilarious. But, no. She found about a third of what I ended up getting them, and the rest were the result of mutual brainstorming. Working theory is that she figures that if I was in a rush for kids, Addison and I would've gotten on that."

She wasn't wrong. Over the past few years, he'd been adjusting to the idea that be might never be a father. The hope had been renewed with Meredith, but he wasn't in a hurry. They needed the room for the kids who'd play in it.

Why had he been so hurried in the spring? Meredith being younger should've kept the time between them from feeling lost, and he didn't regret his marriage. He'd still felt like he needed to make up for lost time, as though he was correcting a mistake. He'd been so certain that they were in each other's futures that he'd ignored the fact that they were at the beginning. Meredith deserved to have him move at her pace. He should've been courting her, and at least not assuming they should be where Cristina and Burke were, when they'd been broken-up for six months. Very broken-up. Very broken. That he'd hurt her hadn't been the only pain he'd wanted to ignore.

"She was great. Knows a lot more about what's out there than I do. Especially music. She'd ask a few questions, and every time I sampled the CD she returned with, it fit. Without her, I might've let myself become the gift card uncle."

He tried not to compare her and Addison. There was no purpose to it; they'd been with him in such different comments they might as well have known different Dereks. In this case, he couldn't shake the thoughts. They were both caring; Addison, because she couldn't see why you wouldn't. Meredith, because she could, and she refused to give in.

She'd been collecting presents for her friends since November, if not earlier, ducking into boutiques and thrift stores on weekends that seemed decadently leisurely now that she'd finished her internship. He'd watched a couple be opened; nurses and techs she saw every day, but whose lives weren't tied to the house. He'd started to resent hearing, Oh, Dr. Grey, I don't have anything for you, and was a little ashamed of being surprised by the sincerity the first time he'd heard her insist that that wasn't the point.

"It's not a big deal," she'd told him. "I have to be careful, actually. It's not a juju thing. There're times someone'll get me something the next year when we haven't even talked—I'm crap at Secret Santas! And, remember that tip sheet from Roseridge? That pissed me off. There can be politics, too. Expectations. There was this girl in my study group at med school who helped me out this time Mom had the flu, and I was up and down—closest I came to insisting she move to Hanover—Anyway, we'd talked about these books we liked as kids, I found a really nice edition in Harvard Square, blah, blah, etcetera, and everyone else in our group got pissy, because I didn't put it in the White Elephant swap—That's gotta be racist somehow—and she thought it meant…more than it could. I didn't have time for real friends!" In spite of the defensiveness and the scowl, he'd seen a flicker in her eyes that made him think there was something else to it. Maybe next Christmas she'd tell him. "I went with gift cards after that. No one thinks you're weird if you give them a Starbucks card, especially if you're a vocal Valentine's hater."

That was the thing. She was a vocal Valentine's hater. And Halloween. She'd buy her friends' drinks on their birthdays. On Christmas, she went all out.

He was just starting the puzzle.

"A good gift isn't going to make me anyone's favorite uncle again," he told Mark. "But I'm not trying for that. I just don't have a better way to prove I wasn't ditching them."

"No worries, Shep, I didn't have the chance to poach your whole team."

If Mark could see his face, he'd be confused. Meredith was usually the one who had to think about the answer to what's making you smile like that? The only person who called him "Shep" out here had been Richard, usually when he was trying to dismiss him, or being buddy-buddy, which didn't suit their friendship. It'd made him think of Mark, since the nickname hadn't caught on anywhere after college. Hearing it from anyone else would've rankled him.

Once, Mark might've called him out on the other part of what he'd said. Admitted. He had been running from the kids. Not individually, but as a whole. They'd been fourteen strings mooring him to New York, where only an urgent case could keep him from helping out in a crisis, even for Nancy out in Connecticut.

"We spent a whole weekend Christmas shopping. She, uh…doesn't have great associations with catalogs and Christmas. At a certain age her mother started having her fill out the order forms herself."

"For her Christmas presents? Damn, even my mother accepted magic marker circles."

With his eyes closed, Derek could see them laying on his bedroom floor surrounded by glossy pages. He'd eventually transfer his to notebook paper to rank them by preference, and imagined a day where he could order everything he and his sisters circled, like Mark's parents almost always did.

"Poor Grey. Imagine telling your mom you know the truth about Santa, and getting, 'Oh, thank God, now you can do the paperwork.'"

"Mmm, false assumption."

"What…? No way."

"Once she and her mom moved out there was no Santa, for sure. Her memories from before that are spotty…." He hesitated, looking over eat the end of the trailer where his girlfriend was sleeping. He was used to talking about her to her friends who already knew most, possibly all, that he did. Mark wasn't much of a gossip, and he'd mention the conversation to her. He had no doubt that Cristina knew plenty about him. "My guess is that they didn't do it, since she doesn't remember any big let-down in Boston. I'd be shocked if it was the same for Lexie, but whether that's Ellis Grey putting her foot down, or Susan Grey hers, I'm not sure. Their father wouldn't have stood up for his convictions. What's interesting there is that while she doesn't remember Christmases with him, listening to her talk about the ones with Ellis…."

"Amelia all over again?"

"You'd think, but not at all. She doesn't own rose-colored glasses. Apparently Ellis and her sister were frosty with each other, which could get heated, but mostly…mostly it sounds like anyone who's honest about Christmas with their family. There are fights at The Pen whether Amy's there or not. For Mer, what matters is that her mom took those days off. Always."

"Makes a difference." Mark's father had been a surgeon, and both Sloan parents had made it obvious that they believed his primary function to be cramping their lifestyle. However, they'd praised his academics and occasionally attended hockey games. What derision there'd been hadn't been the psychologically-damaging rants Meredith had been subjected to. "Look, man, about last year—"

"It's not…."

His instinct to shut down conversations about painful things, to insist that he was past anything that happened in the past. He might not have gone into psychiatry, but he knew it came from the unspoken pact he and his sisters had made to never talk about the shooting, lest it upset their mother. He was also sure that had been a huge part of what made Amy keep her pain and confusion about it all to herself. He hadn't started trying to shake the habit until recently. It was only fair if he wanted Meredith to do the same. With Mark, he could fall back on what felt natural. that didn't mean it would be the best call.

"What about it?" He leaned forward, elbows on knees.

"I didn't just show up. Your mom called me. I hadn't spoken to her, or anyone in the family. I only answered because I knew she'd be at my door within a few hours if I didn't. She, uh, she told me she wasn't the one I owed my apologies to, and that you and Addison were trying to make it work and, uh, I owed it to...to my family to do the same. She 'suggested' that I go up to The Pen for Christmas, since that's the time to grant grace. I told her I didn't want to ruin the holiday for you and Addie. When she said you wouldn't be there…. Maybe I still shouldn't have…. She said to treat it like a first step. And grace or not, the girls really let me have it. Including Kate, which is a laugh."

"What? Why?"

"Oh, uh…the time she and I…. She was with the tick. It was maybe '90? So, not long—""

"Kate cheated on him with you, and she stayed another—?"

"Hey, on average it takes seven times to leave a relationship like that."

"She's a…. Never mind." He sighed. They'd been through all of that hundreds of times. Kate had been married to Reid for fifteen years. The thought of her ex still made Derek want to slam his fist against the bloodsucker's face. In a twisted way, she was glad she'd been with Mark at that point. Maybe it'd been a reminder of how someone should treat her. "Whose idea was it not to tell me? About you being there?"

Mark laughed. "Not about Kate? Now that you're not gonna tear my head off for it, I don't mind telling you that it was mutual. For me, because then you would've torn my head off. Her, because you would've ripped my head off, probably. And, uh…that would be your mom. Likely…. You did almost break your hand on my face six weeks later, remember? Think she thought grace might be harder to give over the phone. Didn't want taking pity on me to cause her to lose you."

"I wasn't really feeling the Christmas spirit," he admitted. "It was—" Light appeared in the gaps between the blinds on the window by the bed. "That's what Mom does. She manages us. Doles out news. Takes advantage of how busy we all are. Sometimes...sometimes I think she's punishing us for how we were after Dad…. It must've seemed like we were shutting her out. I don't love it, but I'm not going to be mad at her over it now."

"That's…. Okay. Yeah. Grey's a good influence on you."

"She is," he agreed as the door to the trailer opened. Meredith had wrapped herself in an afghan, which wouldn't be close to warm enough out here. That didn't stop her from starting to take the next step. He held up his index finger, trying to indicate bath one minute and don't you dare. She pulled back, her lower lip sticking out about as far as her foot had been. "I'll see you at her place tomorrow."

Meredith's eyebrows went up as Mark said, "Later today, you mean."

"Not if you're trying to talk Mom into letting you open your presents." In New York, it'd been the twenty-fifth for three hours in New York. Whether it was Christmas or Christmas Eve would feel liminal for a while.

"Fair point," Mark said. Derek shook his head at his doleful tone. He'd been in college the first time he'd actually stayed with Derek's family on Christmas Eve, and he'd thrown his lot in with Amy on that question. In hindsight, he'd probably just wanted her to have someone on her side. "Tell Grey Merry Christmas for me."

"Will do." He ended the call. "Get back inside."

"I am inside," Meredith said, smugly., and then started to change that by stepping down. "The stars are—Derek!" Her foot might've touched the ground; it took him a second to stand, but the contact couldn't have lasted more than a second before he lifted her in a fireman's carry. He started to head inside, but she grabbed the side of the trailer by the door.

"You want to freeze?"

"You have a heater."

"It's not rated for nudity."

"just a few minutes? Please?"

He couldn't deny that tone, and she knew it. Her face when he sat down and shifted her onto his lap was purely triumphant. "Not long," he said. "If you don't go back to sleep, Santa won't come."

She shoved his shoulder. "Shut up."

In the morning, she was going to find a bottle of the lotion she loved under the decorative tree he'd put on the table inside, and he'd recruited Karev to put the My So-Called Life DVD boxset out at the house. He'd confirmed with him only a couple of hours ago; he hadn't been sure how she'd take the gesture initially. Having watched her over the course of the evening, he couldn't wait to see what her eyes did. It wouldn't matter if she called him sappy, and he wasn't as worried that she'd feel condescended to. The next few seconds made him sure she wouldn't. She folded her lip over her teeth, and her eyes flicked over his face a couple of times before she spoke. "How's Mark?"

"He spent last Christmas with my family."

Her mouth formed a perfect "o," and she placed a hand on his cheek.

"I-It's…. I'm okay with it."

"But it's not okay?"

He lifted her hand and kissed her palm. "Smart, aren't you?'

"Champion deflector. Takes one, know one."

"It's…. I don't know, I…. Last Christmas, you remember the guy who fell off of his roof putting up lights?"

"The Chrismakuh family? Cute kids."

"Yeah. One of those cute kids called me a stupid shepherd. Said I broke his dad's brain."

"Did you?"

"Not this time. There'd been a secondary bleed. They weren't the first family to latch onto the whole shepherd thing. Usually, they're more evangelical than that crew, but it gets more common around the holiday. It shouldn't have been a big deal. What the kid said. But last year…a lot of things that should've been insignificant took on meaning."

"Don't I know it."

"For the rest of the season I kept hearing it, but not from a patient's kid. In my head, it was one of my sister's kids. Tyson, Frannie, Bri. I kept pulling up Travelocity and almost booking tickets—William Shatner would've made bank the way the prices k=jumped up-but I…I didn't want to face my family. I think I was already subconsciously aware that I'd made the wrong choice. I missed you so much, and I was beating myself up about it. After tonight…knowing we could've had…. I'm judging that guy a little less. We were invited to join Richard and Adele for lunch, which was a saving grace. I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten through the day intact.

"None of those eleven Christmases were spent alone together. Either it was the chaos of my family, or the formality of hers. Just the two of us, in a year where we hadn't been picking up gifts through the year, but desperately scrounging through December, interrogating every pick for symbolism…. It was miserable. Opening it all took us twenty minutes, max. I know my mood only got worse once I called my family. I expected every kid to say I was a stupid Shepherd.

"That feeling…it hasn't gone away. Not entirely. I've been talking to the kids, and they're…they're great. How much they understand varies, and it'd be a lot worse if Addison hadn't talked to them too. She saw them less, but she was family their whole lives."

"You could've gone. I-I don't think…I'm not ready for that, and it sounds like they're not ready for me, but—"

"Kate went from married to a shit stain to remarried with two stepdaughters between New Year's Day '91 and Christmas '92. They'll adapt. They'll love you, because I do. Because you make me happy. Even if you're never ready for the chaos of my family at Christmas. That's where I'm trying to go here," he said, stroking her calf. "That stuff…the feeling that I'm being a stupid Shepherd, it's all the same. I'm doing what I told my sister Amy off for throughout our adult lives, but I don't wish I'd gone there. Far from it. If every Christmas Eve for the rest of our lives is like tonight, I'll be happy. And I'm happy to spend tomorrow with your people, but I wouldn't object if it was just going to be us."

"Forty-eight uninterrupted hours?" she asked, a little too lightly.

"Side benefit." He kissed her cheek. "Just spending time with you is the best part."

"That's not very Christmassy."

"It is for you, right?"

It'd been the only time she had guaranteed attention. She shrugged, and the afghan fell off her shoulder. He pressed his lips to the freckled skin, and then rested his chin on it. What about affection?

In a flash, he remembered her handing BokHee the crime novel she'd bought after pointing out options for the four lambs who identified as readers. "I know you don't do Christmas. It's just a socially acceptable time to show my appreciation." It'd been in the backseat of her car for a week. That was a big piece. She didn't expect reciprocation, because, at least partially, she was just ensuring that the recipient knew she valued them. She didn't trust herself to get it across otherwise, at least not "socially acceptably." She'd had to learn when the if you don't bring enough for the class rules applied, and he wouldn't be surprised if a professor or boss had gotten the wrong idea. For the most part, Christmas presents could be random. He wasn't sure how anyone could think her motive was quid-pro-quo once they removed the wrapping.

"I think anything qualifies as Christmassy if you're with the people you love," he said. "Celebrating warmth, even in the cold."

She snickered. "Not laughing at you! That was sappy as hell, but I, um…Australian Christmas was this thing for me. I used to think it'd be perfect."

"Used to?"

e was glad she didn't see any part of his puzzlement. If you took out the light-in-the-darkness element, and the Birth of Jesus had never been a part of your scaffolding, what did that leave? Presents. Family. The two days she'd be seen. Things that had surprised him, like her casually taking on holiday hostess duties after working through Thanksgiving, took on new meaning. She was passing it on. To him, with that signed copy of Live at Shea Stadium, which had been the biggest gig he'd been to as a teenager; to her friends with a gathering point, and whatever they'd find in those perfectly-wrapped packages. And in a roundaboutway, to herself. He was sure that having Meredith assume presents would be given had shamed the others into participating.

"It's…." He felt her swallow and kissed the curve of her neck. Her fingers entwined with his. He tightened his grip. Verbally reminding her of the where and when could make her pull back, but he had to do something if it might keep the haunted expression she got if the past came too close. "That was a couple of years ago. It was just me and Mom, and part of me…. I was so scared about what my life would look like without her…'cause somehow her becoming estranged from everyone in her life led to me being isolated from everyone in mine…and she was disappearing…. I think…n-no, I-I did want to…if I could get far enough, and never…never have to know…. I sound like…I wasn't actually going to abandon her, I-I just—"

"You felt like she was abandoning you?"

She nodded, and continued to sink forward, her head landing on a bent knee. He circled his palm over her back. "Didn't even make sense. Christmas is…was always when I came back."

"Maybe you thought that if you went somewhere it felt totally different, you could ignore that. You've told me that the beaches were where you felt the most like your own person. Christmas on the beach could've given you a totally different context. If you made the two days that belonged most to the two of you yours, the rest of the year would be simple."

The mumble might've been maybe or mmhmm.

"This is your first Christmas without her," he observed. He'd spent Christmas with the Montgomerys for the first time in the early nineties—had he missed the year after Kathleen's divorce? No wonder he was so unsure of what awaited him—but for all the formality, there'd been visible love. He'd never seen an adulterer in the Captain, but he couldn't be trusted to judge that. (Maybe it was a genetic tendency.) He'd known he'd be up north the next year. They'd only repeated it every few years; Addison preferred the distance of their Thanksgiving feasts. As kids came, he'd arranged to have them come over on a weekend and open their presents. Seeing their happiness had carried him through the quieter holiday in Connecticut.

Meredith's Christmases would never be the same. Before he could apologize for not having acknowledged that at all, she murmured, "It's not."

"Oh? Did you spend a year at a friends? In Italy?" It didn't seem likely, judging by the stories O'Malley and Stevens told about her cluelessness helping Stevens decorate the tree last year. This year, the muscle memory had definitely been limited, but maybe her host had already—

"She wasn't here last year."

"Oh, sweetness," he breathed, and he anticipated a glare being shot over her shoulder. It wasn't. She raised her head a little, her chin on her hand, Her shoulder blades were pulled in toward each other; he moved his hand up her spine.

"She…Mom always took off two days. I worked Christmas Eve."

"I remember." At the end of shift on the twenty-third, he'd offered to walk her to her car, but she'd been on hour thirty-six of a forty-eight. He didn't know what would've happened if that wasn't the case. He hadn't been ready to give in, but he'd missed her desperately, and realizing that this was the best be could hope for had been a twisting knife in his heart. He'd also been concerned that Meredith's plan had been to sleep through to Boxing Day. Whether that was better or worse than the Thanksgiving that had incited them to work this year, their first true holiday tradition, he wasn't sure. ("He got me to start living again. How that manifested may not be your favorite thing, but—"

"Someone very smart told me. I don't get to judge how you got through that time.")

"She thought the party at Roseridge was a department gathering for Research and Teaching Assistants at Dartmouth. Before me. Before my father. Before she had answers to the questions I didn't know I should be asking.

"I'd…um…I'd planned to take her to the house over night. I'd derived Joe's egg nog recipe, and—"

"Derived?"

"Oh. Yeah." She lowered her eyes, but he caught the mischievous glint in them. "It seems simple, but he uses a couple liquors, and I bet him that if I could identify them, he'd write down the measurements. Pretty sure I got those mostly accurate, too, but that part's sort of blurry. I told you I tended bar."

"So does Karev. You think he can do that?"

"Nope." She smiled, and he suspected that bet had been a competition. "Mom's…she faked being a wine snob, but she liked hot drinks, and…I didn't think it'd be the last year. I thought it could be…a thing. But with where she'd been—when she'd been, at the hospital, thinking George was Thatcher…. I just assumed it'd upset her. I'd almost decided to sign her out for dinner, anyway, but…she thought she was working, and she recognized me for…for what turned out to be the last time until…that day. I told her it was Christmas. Tried to prove it. Before…In Boston, that'd worked, but you're not supposed to…. It can confuse them more, I just...It was.… She didn't…She accused me of being on something. T-Told me n-never to show up at the hospital in a 'state' again. I-I was an embarrassment. The usual. B-But, um, where it went from there…she went to places…places even she would never have gone to on…on…o-over the…over…."

He'd been anticipating the break in her voice, but the forcefulness of the sob that escaped her surprised him. She'd been fighting it for minutes, he'd felt that, but the jagged sound that made her jerk forward, her head arched like she needed to ride for air seemed older than that. As though it might've been there since the spring. She hadn't let herself mourn, claiming her mother had wanted to end it, and she'd lost her long ago. What else there'd of relief, guilt, free, loneliness, he'd been left to guess. To her, it'd all been pain. Ellis bad been an obligation last year, and filling the space she'd left had been simple for an intern run ragged. She'd had enough in the fall with the trial, Lexie, him—this might've been the first time she'd let herself miss her mom.

He shifted to bring her head to rest against his shoulder. She cried rarely enough that whenever she did, she wept like the world was ending. Hers bad. It hadn't been until Ellis died that Derek understood how much of Meredith was defined by being her daughter. He hadn't known how to empathize properly, even having lost his dad. Her mother had been horrible and miserable. But she'd been all her daughter had for certain, and he'd all but told her he was ready to give up on her, because she wasn't ready for the kind of commitment she had had no reason to believe in.

Two months ago, she'd taken him to watch the ferryboats and with her lips purpled by wine, she'd told him what she'd believed about a summer night in 1983, and what she'd come to understand. That night as she slept against him, visibly unburdened, he'd relived the past year with that truth in mind, and wondered why she'd come back to him after moments like that. What ate at him the most to now was that he hadn't seen it in her somehow. That the truth of his own childhood, and decades with Amy, hadn't given him what he'd needed to see her, regardless of what he'd known or not known. If he'd had more time, would she have confided in him? Would he have thought past Ellis's selfishness to help her to the truth?

He didn't know. He wanted to tell her about Dad, but not while it's playing Whose Trauma is Worse? Would she be mad, deep down, that he hadn't seen?

He couldn't change the past, and it wasn't the time to bring up more pain. He just let her cry, running his fingers over her scalp, until her sniffles were populated with words. "Fucking weirdo...ruining Christmas…."

"Hey, no. I's not Christmas if someone doesn't cry, in my experience."

"Kids."

"Not just them. Celebrating with the people you have makes you remember the ones who aren't there."

I fell in love with her. Would it just hurt her to know he'd felt that way? That if he'd really been honest with himself, they could've had that time?

Stupid Shepherd. He'd known Dad would've been disappointed in him. He'd been sure Dad would've been on the side of marriage vows, but seeing Meredith rally, negotiating a ceasefire between Stevens and Karev, and laughing about the antics of her dog, he'd compared it to Thanksgiving and wondered: If he'd signed, would Addison have been as hurt? He didn't wish it on her, but if how much damage he'd cause had been part of his consideration, he'd blown it. He and Addie hadn't been happy. He'ddreaded Christmas, and yet he'd continued with the farce for months.

"You had three decades of Christmas with your mom, Mer. Sounds like it was the most reliable part of your life. You could spend tomorrow crying under the bed, and it would be understandable. If you wanted me there to, I'd be right beside you, and that would not ruin anything."

"She'd hate that." She, his she, had gone so quiet, her voice breathy and soft. He didn't like it. Quiet Meredith meant scared Meredith, meant loud thoughts, meant convincing herself of something untrue.

"Tough. It's not about her.You love your mom. She's not here to judge you, and there's no reason to put it on yourself."

"Working on it." She raised her head and he remembered holding her in the supply closet while she cried after taking a patient off of life-support for the first time. Right as she was putting herself together. He wanted to kiss her so much, but he'd refrained. It would've been selfish; he'd known he couldn't promise her anything. He hadn't been ready (Had he thought of it that way?)…hadn't been brave enough… hadn't been strong enough.

She smiled at him, fully brightening her red-rimmed eyes.

He cupped her cheek. "I'm proud of you for getting through this year, and you did it spectacularly."

"You're a little biased."

"Think about this time last year; what you've learned and done. Pretend someone else did it all and tell me it's not incredible."

Her smile grew, and he kissed it. Her breaths were heavy puffs of heat on his cheek and mouth. Her cheeks were stiff with dried tears. He kissed along her cheekbone, and she giggled as that layer fell away.

"This is pretty incredible."

"Hm." He moved his hand up her thigh. "Don't think that was the deal."

"There wasn't a deal." He lifted his hand. "There can be! Deals are good!"

"So? What's incredible?"

"I…. This year…started with a guy blowing up on me. I drowned. Mom died. Susan. I passed the exam Mom always said I'd fail. I'm ending it with…with you. A successful FDA trial. A sister I didn't want, but who can't be convinced to not want me. A glowing kidney."

He laughed. "I wasn't sure I could top that tonight."

"Who says you did?" she teased. "This year really sucked at some points. That's not unusual for me,…I was on a rollercoaster in the dark, and I didn't get...didn't think I deserved safety restraints. This time, I'm not in line to do it again. Not in the same way. Actually…actually, it's incredible that I made it through the past thirty years."

He kissed her, and slowly forged a path over her thigh, moving his knuckles medially a few inches, and back laterally one. She shifted, trying to influence his pace. Watching her face twitch with anticipation made it difficult not to give her exactly what she wanted.

When he made contact he found her glans already poking out from her hood. He stretched his index finger out dorsally, feeling like he was collecting morning dew.

"Cold." She sighed, happily and the twitches calmed. Her lips parted and curled in response to his exploratory movements. Slowly she sank forward into his chest, encouraging him with humming moans that transitioned from "mmm"s to "oooo"s once he goes from circling her glans to swiping back and forth between the spots where her sounds peaked.

"Feel pretty good?"

"Really, really…oohhh." She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling up slightly. "Gonna ruin your pants. Already snotted on your sweater."

"Sounds like you want me to go in and take my clothes off."

She shook her head. "Not yet. Do you want….?" She reached for his crotch. He caught her hand, entwining their fingers again.

"Inside," he told her, and himself. "This is just for you."

"Mmmm. You're incredible."

"One more."

"Huh?" She raised her eyes to him, and he laughed at her expression, an unlikely mix of bliss and bafflement.

"You'll get there."

"Not yet." A request, demand, prayer, lament, complaint. "Just this."

He smiled, toying with her earlobe. She'd taken out the ones he'd given her so carefully that he hadn't been able to bring himself to tell her to put them back in, even though he'd been imagining it for weeks.

Her clit started to swell more quickly, and her hips rolled in sync with her quickening breath. Her head came up as her body strained in the other direction.

"Talk to me, baby. You feel it?"

"Uh-huh."

He swept her hair over her right shoulder and ran the pads of his fingers along the back of her neck. She shivered, and he felt her clench every muscle below her waist.

"Cover me more?"

He coated his fingers with the wetness along the inside of her thigh, and arranged his fingers over her labia and glans. She groaned as she pushed back, "Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah." He could hear the sand-paper scratchiness in her voice. Hadn't he left…? He found the water bottle on the table behind her, and unscrewed the bottle with his teeth.

"Here, Mer."

As she sipped he drank in her expression. Her eyes flashed between relief and wonder.

"Better?"

She kissed him, but after a minute or so, he pulled back, gently holding her chin.

"Think it'll feel better if your throat isn't burning like the Sahara when you come?" he asked, rubbing just a little harder.

"Uh-huh."

"That's what I figured. That's all. Kissing you sometimes clues me in to the fact that your tongue is sticking to the roof of your mouth, but it's only a problem because you're uncomfortable—Hey, no."

"'M hot," she complained, dodging his attempt to get the afghan back around her shoulders. "Only for a minute. Almost there."

That he could confirm. Her clit was fully engorged under his fingers, any second it'd start to shift. There was still so much to learn about this gorgeous, inscrutable woman, but he knew her body. If she didn't want the blanket now while sweat was just starting to gather along her collarbone, it'd be more than a minute before he could get her wrapped up again. With her lack of body fat, she got cold easily, but the only other heat source she'd accept once the hot blood in her clit had been released back into her system was him.

"If you want it off, we're going to go inside."

"Der-ek, no." she whined, a sign of how far gone, or rather how close she was, her arms pumping to keep grinding against his fingers."

"Mere-deth, yes. Tell you what, if you can wrap your arms and legs around me and hold on, I can manage with one arm, and this hand can stay right there. We'll get you on the bed, unwrap you like the incredible gift you are, and I'll make you come much faster and much, much better than I can out here. Deal?"

"Deal!"

He'd made all the Koala-Mer jokes to this point when she was postcoitally clinging, but it was definitely an all-the-time ability. For the short distance between the door and the bed, he might not have needed to keep his arm under her ass, except that she'd never say if not having any support bothered her.

He lay her on the bed as promised, and while she threw off the afghan, it'd gotten twisted around one leg, so he got the symbolic unwrapping. He sat by her bucking hip, placing the top of his palm where his fingers had been. Her pelvis arced up toward him, and she rocked on her tailbone. "What are you?"

"Ready, soclose...agh, for real, Derek? You said!"

"I did. I will." He cleared a sweaty lock of hair off of her face, drawing his crooked finger slowly over her hairline. "Sooner, if you tell me."

"I'm…to you, I'm—"

He lifted the finger he'd tapped against the corner of her mouth. "You're a surgeon, dearhreart. That makes it true. The trial made it true. Your friends, your patience—"

"Outta that."

"So...?" He started to rub again, earning a string of melodious, low moans.

"H-Harder."

"As soon as you tell me."

"I…I…." She swallowed, and he wished he'd brought the water bottle in. "I'm…." She closed her eyes, and Derek cursed Ellis Grey for the dozenth time that day, at the least. "Incredible."

He couldn't be sure the word had more than breath behind it, but her smile would've been proof of success if he hadn't seen her lips form the syllables. Immediately he started rolling his hand against her, pressing just slowly enough that he could catch her flinch if it got to be too much. Her control disappeared as she thrashed, and ground against him, finishing with a final moan that was less tactfully describable as a grunt.

He loved watching her be overcome by pleasure. Those sharp eyes going unfocused, her body, which always carried tension, going limp. He removed the shoes and trousers he'd put on to go outside, and lay next to her, toying with her earlobe. He'd planned to ask her to leave the drops, and only the drops, on, but the moment they'd crossed the invisible line into the bedroom, she'd twisted away from him, and gone back to the table for the box the earrings had come in. There'd been no distracting her from taking them out. Kissing her neck in the right places could get her mind off of almost anything long enough for him to catch her hands and turn her. She'd surprised hi by putting her palm flat on his chest and shoving decidedly.

"I'm not…." She'd sucked her lips in, the tension that made him sure she was a second away from stomping her foot coursing through her. It ebbed before that point, and she rephrased the deprecation. "If you're told you're careless often enough, it gets hard to remember why you bother being careful. It's a self-fulfilling…whatever. That's why…. It never mattered when no one I hung out with could recognize real stones, or if they could, they weren't calling me on the costume jewelry I got from the queens who lived next door to me."

She narrowed her eyes at him, just for a second, like she'd done the first time she'd told him about their neighbors in Boston; who were the most reliable adults in her life. In that case, it wasn't her mother's fault she hadn't gained additional stability.

"Your mother had an opinion on jewelry, I assume?" he'd asked. "A contradictory one that explains why you don't accessorize even if you're miles from an O.R? Probably means you didn't get a necklace to celebrate milestones. That maybe a friend went with you to get your ears pierced, and your mom told you that was bending to the patriarchy? So, you started collecting holes, asking her what it meant that your male teachers were the ones who suspended you for them?"

"Wow, you're good." She'd hooked the earrings into place, and closed the box. "How'd you do that?"

It'd been a difficult question to answer with her rotating in his arms and then stripping off the top layers of her outfit, but he'd tried. "Four sisters, Mom…."

"Addison," she'd put in, opening a button that overlapped the center of her bra.

"Right. Six points on a 3-D model of feminists who are still very…."

"Girly?"

Heat had somehow managed to gather in his face. "I didn't mean you weren't."

"So far they have all been girlier than me. Doesn't mean that I don't read as decidedly femme...inine. I'm okay with where I am on that spectrum. Your…Your sisters got necklaces?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes bracelets. For graduation. Sweet Sixteen. Thirteen. Usually birthstones. Sometimes favorite color. I got cufflinks, tie-pins. Mom'd say they didn't have to wear anything they didn't want to, but sometimes there were benefits to showing you could take care of something nice. You could influence the questions you were asked, and where the eye fell. Women's clothes were designed to be worn with certain types of jewelry. Someone who might not notice what you're wearing might notice what you're not.

He'd let his hand trail down from her earlobe to her neck. "I don't care about any of that. I appreciate if you only wear your watch because it's practical, but you picked it out, and it's pretty. You like rare, sparkly things, even if sometimes they're surgeries.I won't be hurt if you lock those up and never wear them. I bought them because they made me think of you. Whatever you do next—"

She'd pressed herself flush against him. "They're the most beautiful thing I've ever owned. They're meant to be worn. I'm gonna be careful with them, but I won't hide them away in a box forever."

He'd caught the undercurrent, or maybe he'd projected it; that he was trying to be careful with her, but he couldn't stop her from making choices and living her life.

Not very long after that, she'd sprawled, unmoving but for the small spasms that stopped once she'd fallen asleep.

This time her legs had fallen together, and she squirmed, her hips rolling, the rhythm of her pelvis making him sure her thighs weren't all she was clenching. He imagined slipping his fingers inside her and feeling her squeeze while he worked her clit from both sides. It would have to wait, because he couldn't. "You ready to go again?"

A ripple of relief passed over her face. "This Christmas keeps getting better."

He laughed, and swung himself over her. "I think we have another tradition."

She looped her arms over his neck and kissed him, more softly than he would've anticipated. "I love you."

As he returned the words, and a much firmer, longer kiss, he wondered if hearing that would ever stop feeling like a gift in itself. He hoped not.