Chapter Fifteen
Licence to Argue

A/N This took me 7 hours to write and i didn't even edit it. *insert crying emoji*

Seattle, Washington - July 2023

Derek parked the RV. Then he unbuckled his seatbelt, and pulled himself out of the front seat. Meredith walked behind him. They were edging towards the sidewalk to avoid the loud arguments, Callie, Mark, and Arizona were having in the middle of the street. As he sidled up to Owen, Meredith sidled up to Cristina.

"Er, what's going on?" Meredith whispered out of the side of her mouth. Cristina looked back at her, then at Mark, then back at Meredith again.

"Something about 'wanting different things' and apparently Sloan over there feels 'ignored.'" She used the bunnies and everything. Meredith stifled a chuckle because her tone was just so over the top that she couldn't not laugh.

As the rowing picked back up again, louder and louder, Owen shook his head. "I've had enough of this."

Cristina leaned over to Meredith again, "oh yeah, and he's mad because I don't want him to move in."

"SHUT IT!" Major Owen Hunt yelled across the street. Callie and Arizona looked up, Mark looked down at his feet. "GO OVER TO DEREK AND MEREDITH'S HOUSE AND WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THIS MESS!" Derek and Meredith turned to look at him. The other three stalked over to the sidewalk, and waited.

The mess was not going to resolve itself. So Callie, and Mark, and Arizona, sat on the couch like school children and waited for their turn to talk. "Okay," Meredith said, clearing her throat. "What's up with you two?"

Callie looked at her girlfriend, she tried not to look at Mark, so she looked to Arizona instead, waiting for her to start speaking first. The blonde looked down at her hands and then put on a faux smile. "We started talking, about what we want, about re-populating. Apparently, Calliope wants to start right away, she wants to use Mark's- look, I can't even say it." She looked back at Callie, "why can't we wait, just a bit?"

Callie licked her lips, "I want a baby. And we have all the time in the world to parents," she pointed at everyone else, "we have plenty of baby sitters." Cristina raised a judgemental eyebrow. "It's not like we have jobs, or lives. I'm bored, Arizona. I want to be with you, I do. But sometimes, I want a baby more."

Arizona looked down again. Before the virus she was an elementary school teacher, she spent her life with little kids, day in, day out. Now, she had time. She had all the free time in the world. And Callie wanted a kid. So, if they had a kid, she'd be changing diapers and teaching them to read and walking around monitoring them every second because there wasn't a nursery to send them to. Half of her wanted to explode, but the other half didn't want ruin something good. She'd found someone at the end of the world. "I like our life Callie, I like what we have, why do you want to change that?"

"I'm not- I just," Callie sniffled, and rubbed her eye. "We can put it off, to talk about it. Somewhere- someplace else." She looked around the room at everyone and felt like she was exposed. It'd been a long time since there had been this many people in a room with her. She'd forgotten what it was like to have other people in on you're conversation. She felt naked.

She got up, and shook her head and walked out of the room. Arizona followed her, because they weren't done with this. But she couldn't do it with all the people. All the eyes on her. She used to stand so tall in front of the people in her life, she with virus, her stage fright had come back.

Mark slumped into the couch after Callie left, huffing and pushing his hand into his chin. Meredith's head whipped round to look at him, "and what's wrong with you?"

Derek rolled his eyes. "Look at him, he's like a lovesick puppy. This is like eighth grade all over again. You're sleeping with her, aren't you?" He stared pointedly, on the edge of a laugh.

Mark sat forward a little in his chair, not meeting Derek's eyes. He was shifty, uncomfortable with the eyes on him. "Fine! Yeah I'm sleeping with her. And she's been ignoring me for weeks. Every time I walk into the room, she leaves. I can't do anything, it's not like there's anywhere else for me to- anyone else for me."

Cristina rolled her eyes and made to get up, "seriously, hang in there, big guy." She said, walking towards the kitchen.

Meredith hopped up and walked after her, patting Derek on the leg, a you deal with this gesture. Then she followed Cristina into the kitchen. The smaller woman was leaning against the counter, examining some dirt under her nails. "So, I'm not going to just ignore the fact that you told me that you and Owen are sort of fighting. You don't get to escape the talking too, you know." She put her best 'best friend face' and looked at her with her head slanted.

Cristina sighed, she'd missed having someone to talk to. Really, the relief of being able to argue this out with someone other than Owen, was a godsend. "I don't want him to move in because I'm not ready. It was hard getting used to him being around all the time."

"But you were around me a lot of the time?"

"Yeah, but that's different. You don't have annoying habits that I have to keep avoiding."

"Derek says I snore," Meredith confessed.

"Yeah, but I always fall asleep before you, so it doesn't matter. Anyway, we're missing the point." Cristina threw her hands up in the air, exasperated.

"What is the point? That you keep making excuses? I thought you loved him, don't you want to settle?" Meredith leaned next to her in front of the counter, not looking at each other helped them keep talking. Standing side by side felt like more of a solidarity thing.

Cristina put her head in her hands and made a noise not dissimilar from a scream. "I do love him. I do. But it's been a long time, for both of us. He practically lives with me anyway, I can't sleep in that dreadful trailer. But 'living together'," (bunnies again), "'living together' is serious, it's real. I don't know if I can do that-"

"Okay, stop." Meredith started waving her hands around, "Cristina, you are a big girl. You and Mark are just as bad as each other, you are all so scared." She gripped Cristina by the shoulders and squeezed, "we lived through a worldwide virus outbreak, we survived whilst everyone around us died. And you're worried about whether or not you can put up with Owen's annoying habits. Snap out of it! You crazy woman. I give up." Then she walked off and told Owen to go into the kitchen and talked to her like a grown up.

That night, Meredith slipped under the comforter of their bed and sighed deeply. It was a relaxed sigh, a sigh of deep comfort. She was home, and she felt home. Derek was her home too, and he was beside her, lying on her right and looking at her. The street looked the same, but everyone here had been through such a big shift since they were last here. "Are you happy to be home?" She asked her husband calmly, surely.

He hesitated, taking his time to think about it. "Yes," he settled on. "It was nice to see the guys, talk about beer and golf for a while. Be manly men, and all that." Meredith shot him a look. "No, I mean it," he continued, "it's nice to be back in our little community. No matter how complicated."

"People are underrated." She said, tilting her head down to kiss him.

"People are underrated," he replied softly, almost a whisper.

She settled down to sleep, her head falling onto the pillow. She was so tired. Being around people again was nice, it was something you couldn't make up. Something you couldn't replicate. They had all lost so much, but being together brought some of it back. Some of the good times, the good stuff they all missed. There was laughter, and joy, amongst the dark and twisty.