And the Man in the Moon

by Chicleeblair

Turns out, having one of the boys become your husband doesn't mean you're done with the daddy issues. While Derek's working late, adjusting to being interim Chief of Surgery, a painfully awkward parking lot encounter sends Meredith directly to Joe's—after all, she can still drink tequila! (Post 6x13 "State of Love and Trust")

Gonna be like you, Dad. You know, I'm gonna be like you."

-Cat Stevens "Cat's in the Cradle"

---

"Hey, Chief? Uh…Chief? Chief Shepherd!"

Interim Chief of Surgery Derek Shepherd pivoted to face Callie Torres, the—his orthopedics attending. "Sorry. Yes?"

"Still weird. Is it weird for you?"

"It's…an adjustment."

"Well, you didn't look around for Webber. Progress!"

"Assuming you weren't trying to test my response times, can you be fast with whatever it is? I'm heading out." Only four hours later than he'd hoped, and two later than he'd expected.

"If you're hurrying to get home to your wife, you're gonna be SOL."

"Oh?" She'd gotten off a while ago, hadn't she? Had she gotten paged, or…? "What are you telling me, Torres?"

"Whoa, no need to do the chiefly looming thing! She's…uninjured. I offered to drive her home, but she said if she did that, there wouldn't be any mugs tomorrow. She's lucky, I finally got to free a guy who'd broken—you don't care. She's downstairs breaking down casts."

"Why'd you…? Oh." He checked his watch. "I saw her getting ready to leave at…seven-thirty? Eight? Not that long ago. She…She went directly across the street, didn't she?"

"Without passing 'Go' or collectiong two hundred dollars," Callie confirmed.

An old feeling swept through Derek; the internal cringe he'd experiened whenever someone would stop him on the street, and after a few pleasantries, take his arm. Their voices would lower, their words becoming releuctant. "I wasn't sure if I should say anything, but I saw your sister last night, and…." Sometimes, it would be welcome; a sighting when she was AWOL. Others, it'd bring the blood-chilling fear that she'd slipped. Rarely, they were talking about a different sister. It didn't matter; he felt the same resentment. At the interloper. At the subject of their disclosure. At the disasters that had gotten them to the point where entire blocks worth of New Yorkers believed they had a right to be involved in the Shepherds' goings-on.

"I got it. Thanks, Torres." It wasn't fair to be annoyed at Callie. She was simply acting as Meredith's friend, and likely protecting them from the hospital—as prone to nosy gossip as any neighborhood.

"Not a problem, Chief." Callie stuck her hands in her pockets and got a couple of feet away before she turned to add, "Yang's still here. She didn't want me to page her."

"Yeah," he said. "Okay." She hadn't meant to scold him for what he'd been thinking, but it worked. She'd been around for some of the low points, and knew Mer's tendencies as well as anyone. Going to Joe's on her own wasn't one of them, but if she'd met up with Karev or even Lexie, she'd have had a tail coming back.

Callie held his gaze while he thought that through, and then continued on at her usual pace.

He could hear the fiberglass being wailed on from the start of the corridor of empty physical therapy rooms and prosthetic labs. The rectangular cast room window was grated, but between the diamonds-her birthstone, "Perfect, right? Crazy diamond!"—he could see chips of neon green flying around Meredith's clenched shoulders. Her mallet pounded in thumps that were impressively even, considering how wildly her arms were moving.

She didn't react to the door opening. She didn't react to the door opening. She was only easy to startle if she was comfortable ib ger surroundings, but she did it with the same intensity she did everything else. He cleared his throat, ready to catch the mallet if it flew out of her hand.

He shouldn't have worried. She could be an absent-minded dervish of limbs, crashing into whatever she hadn't knocked over, but some of her awareness was always anticipating a threat.

She could also be incredibly self-contained. Careful, her movements small, her arms wrapped around herself. In bed, she was comfortable in her body: lithe-limbed, even graceful. Her confidence followed her out of it these days, but the juxtaposition used to boggle him.

Her fingers were another contrast. She could have a workspace to herself, or be crammed in the middle of a crowed table; her fine motor movements would be perfectly controlled. She made her instruments dance, wove sutures with a quick, constant rhythm, wrapped bandages with the perfect amount of pressure.

Those fingers were curled into fists, one white-knuckled around the handle of the mallet. It thunked the side of the table when she turned and rocked onto her heels, catching herself on the padded leather. A chunk of cast-batting slipped off of her shoulder. There were more caught in her hair. His desire to start running his hands through it wasn't a bad instinct. It would soothe her, but not before she was willing to be soothed.

"Wha're you…?" she started—possibly "The fuck're you?" she'd started off mumbling and trailed off when the answer occured to her. "Tattletale Torres."

"Callie let me know you were down here."

"Don' worry, Chief, I'm not breaking rules. Just casts."

"Any particular reason for that?"

"Trynta figure out what of our crockery 's Izzie's would've taken too long." He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at that. "Pluuus, Joe took my keys," she added, raising her hand to shake off a piece of cotton. She turned back to her pile, and seeing she'd done all the damage she could, sighed. "I'll clean't up." She took a double handful of the detritus, which didn't make a dimple in the mess overall, much less a dent.

"Here." He closed the distance between them, wrapping the casting up in the butcher paper covering the table. While he was stuffing the whole mess into the trashcan, she went for the door.

This time she definitely said, "What the fuck?" and scrabbled at the lock, crossing her arms as soon as he looked up. "You don't give me that look."

"Which look?"

"You think you've got me figured out."

"I doubt that'll ever happen. I signed up for a life-long challenge."

"Set yourself up for dissapointment there, bub. I'm suuuper easy, in so many ways. Tell me I'm like my mother and I'll be your…one've the… those… the monkeys." She circled her hand in the air. "The dancy ones. Lock a door—" He caught her as her attempt to throwing herself at him turned into stumbling into him. "—you get t'take advantage. Chiefs do that."

She tasted as sharp as her words sounded, but under that her mouth was soft. He hoisted her up onto the table.

"Does this make you nuhs…nostul…remind you of prom night?" Her hands went for his belt. He took one of wrists. "C'mon, d'you really think tha's a challenge?" she asked. Between her husky tone and the alcohol, her words came out steeped in Boston. "I'm the slut you met at a bar. Got all the same tricks, an'I can pull'em off way less sober 'n this. Wan'a demonstration?"

"I…uh…."

"Or do ya wanna tell me how immature I'm being?"

"I've done the same thing. Remember the beer cans?" He ran his fingers along her arms.

"Vividly." The sharp delivery of her v's made it hard not to wince. "You weren't the mechanic, but you fixed Izzie, and somehow being tumor-free means breakin' Alex's heart. So you got fixed by a lemon. And now you're Chief of Surgery—" Her overenunciation hit a highpoint there, surg-er-ee. "—so you've got better things t'do than trying t'mechanic me when I breakd—Ow!" She jerked away, and he held his thumb over the needle he'd inserted in the bend of her elbow.

"Small pinch," he said, kissing her pout. "Hold that."

She followed the direction, eyes wide as he started to tear off pieces of tape, paused, and then dug a transparent dressing out of his pocket. Once the catheter was secure, he took the full IV bag out of the other side of his labcoat, holding it above her heart while he surveyed the room.

"That a banana bag in your pocket, Chief Shepherd?" She tried to deliver the line deadpan, but she couldn't keep the giggle from her voice. He wasn't sure what was making her try.

An IV pole stood in the back corner of the room. He dragged it over, propelling the rolling stool along with it. He set the bag up, and then rode the stool over to the sink to retrieve a paper cup from the shelf above it.

"Is this the part where you tell me to take some Aspirin with the banana bag? It helps with the hangover."

"It does," he said, confirming that there was a stack of pink basins up there, too.

This was not a controlled-drunk Meredith. Most of the time, she timed her shots to get "the most bang" from them, because, high as her tolerance was, she had no body-fat. This was one of the times where she didn't care. The night would go where it went, and she'd follow.

It was when he turned to see her hunched in over her crossed arms that the words fully registered with him. She'd quoted the most obtuse thing he'd ever said, pitch perfect. Guilt hit him over how far down he'dpushed the memory so far down, but he'd had to. There were too many other encounters in the scrub room, too many banana bags—hell, he'd hooked her up to them—just not here, where, in his experience, memories could get a stronger grip.

"Hey. I…." He hesitated, and then decided to figure out the present before addressing the past. "I took care of that part, too. Hold out your hand." He popped the pills that'd also been in his pocket into her palm. She took them, and downed the water like it was another shot, then tossed the Dixie cup into the trash. "Ten points."

She scowled. "You don't have to do that. This."

"What? Take care of my wife?"

"This isn't…. 'm not growing liver anymore. More likely fucking up the…the new part…. I was gonna say 'to match' but that's how to become Thatcher."

"The banana bag should—"

"Shut up about the banana bag!"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to r—"

"No, you meant to let the pathetic drunk girl down easy."

"I do not think you're pathetic!"

"You thought it, then. It was in your eyes. You were facing screwball drunk Meredith for the first time. She's even more of a mess than the girl who'd begged you in clichés, 'cause until you it was all screwing up, and screwing around. Chief's wife should be more'n booze, shoes, and daddy issues, dontcha think?"

"Probably. Good thing you are."

Christ, what had she…? He'd administrated plenty of banana bags; neuro meant falls, fights, MVAs, meant alcohol. But he wouldn't have thought of those while talking to her. He'd been—what? Clueless as to how to say the words that would hurt her. Trying to distance himself. Had he been trying to see Meredith as young and…what? More damaged than he wanted to deal with, after finally escaping his sisters? That had occurred to him—had almost destroyed them—but at that point? He didn't know.

"You'd laid your heart out for me, and I was breaking it. I wanted to…to show you it wasn't that I didn't care. It came out…pretty condescending, huh?"

She shrugged. "S'okay. You were taking a better bet. I was a disaster way before you. Maybe always will be. Look at Thatcher. An' Mom's wine bottles made some heavy recycling bins, lemme tell you. In retrospect. Didn't think about it then. She yelled at me less past the nightly journaling glass.

"So, see? I'm bred this way, and I'm tootally oblivious. If it's conti—counta—some kinda Typhoid Mary–Death thing, you should hope McSteamy's paying attenion. You could get some real boozing past me, and if not, we're back to: tell me I'm like Mom—"

"Mer—"

"I fell for it! Lexie showed me how stupid I was that day Thatcher gave me all that 'lifetime's wortha proud,' and a year later, I did it all over again with Richard. I knew, but I just.… I got pissed at you, 'cause I didn'…I didn' wanna…." She swallowed, all of the bright fury disappearing from her face, and beads of perspiration appeared on her forehead.

In spite of all her assertions about selff-reliance, she cast a desperate look at him. Rather than bothering with basins, he got his arm around her waist, guiding her off of the table and over to the sink. She whimpered between heaves, and he winced in sympathy. Just watching her made his throat burn in sympathy.

"Did you even eat tonight?" he asked, taking the opportunity to free a piece of batting from her hair. He didn't expect the question to incite another lunge for the door, but as soon as he moved the arm bracing her, she bolted. He jerked the faucet off and dropped the paper towel he'd been wetting into the sink. Since his hands were wet, and she was generally slippery, he wrapped her in a bear hug, locking her elbows at her sides.

"Let me go!" She bucked against him; stronger than her size suggested.

"Stop, you're going pull your IV out."

"Puked up the aspirin, too. M'allergic to being taken care of. S'fine. I'll…I'll find an on call room, and only Callie'll know 'bout my stupid issue…." She went abruptly still again, and he wasn't sure if there'd been an 's' on that word or not.

"Mer, I'm not going to let you run right now. I know you're mad about what happened with Richard—"

"'M not—"

"Yeah, you are. You're mad at me, and you're mad at yourself, and you're mad at him. You have every right to be. But you're stuck with me. You have choices: There are obviously things we need to talk about, but it can wait. We can go home now, or we can stay here until you stop spinnings."

"How d'you…? Ugh." She let her head drop onto his shoulder. "My skull's all squeezy."

"You want to try lying down?"

"Mmhmm. Didn't even…I've had way taller pyramids."

"You had a tolerance," he reminded her.

"Side effect of major surgery: become a cheap date."

"Not if you get the good stuff."

"Only for the chief's wife."

On the table, she curled on her side; not taking up an inch more space than necessary. He almost regretted seeing through her attempts at provoking him. He wished she rail at Richard. Last year, she'd trusted the man enough to let him take her anger at both himself and Thatcher. He'd taken advantage of that. Probably anticipating that when the time came to lay blame, she'd put it where she always did, on herself.

This time, he pre-armed them with an emesis basin, putting it on the table above her head. "Lights?"

"No opinion."

She talked more in the dark. The thought almost made him leave it on, just so he wouldn't be yet another manipulator pulling her strings. Then, he watched her head in toward her elbow, shifting back a moment later. The grimace told him all he needed to know about the dizzying dark. He flipped them off, and a dimmer came on over the sink.

"There." He lowered the seat of the stool up to put himself almost at her level. "Oh, one more thing for you." He took the Altoids out of his lab-coat pocket. Meredith smirked. "Once a Scout always brainwashed," he acnkowledged. "Consider it the last item on my treatment plan."

"Not a pill," she grumbled, pushing up a little to accept the mint.

"Helps, doesn't it?" He pocketed the tin and started tracing her hairline with the pad of his finger.

"Talk now."

"I love you."

"Not that."

"I'm telling you things I think you need to hear, and that's one of them. You're more important to me than this job, and if you hadn't been around to call me out on being a self-interested ass, I wouldn't have shaped up enough to deserve it, or you.

"In the past there were some…suggestions that I couldn't continue our relationship and do this job. That never had anything to do with you." She frowned, looking down so that her eyelashes almost covered her eyes.

"I pulled a stunt with Richard. It wasn't a—" He started to say professional, but made a quick detour. "—mature way to handle things. I did think of my career, but not…not advancing it. Maybe to some degree, but not at all primarily. More that what he was doing would end everyone's. It'd tank his legacy, ruin the hospital's reputation, and could cost lives. And I was frustrated that he'd used you." The way they all did. He didn't think even Susan could be said to be innocent of it.

"Told me he wasn't 'n alcoholic," she murmured. "That when Mom left he had 'situational depression.'" That phrase came out with disdain, but not at Richard's gall. "It's….I know Mom having 'a child' wasn't about me Meredith when he said it, but…. I'd've understood if he couldn't stand the sight of me. Adele, too. And I came here. I brought Mom back."

Jesus. He didn't think anyone could carry guilt as heavy as hers without needing to put it down sometimes. "He did it first."

"Huh?"

"He had options in Manhattan. Brown was wooing him. There were rumors that Hopkins was sniffing around. He picked Seattle."

"They've got family. Mom wasn't here. Mighta…mighta just started at the UN when he left New York."

"If he'd wanted to avoid her, this doesn't seem like a good place to ensure it. And he started visiting her at Roseridge, didn't he?"

"And stopped. That…it upset her so much. I hadn't seen her like that since…since the first time. S'weird how soon after that she…she had the heart attack. Not as close as when he left her, and…but like he broke her heart all over again. And if I'd thought…. That day…the breakdown…that was more like mania…I sat on the stairs and watched her pace and pace…but it wasn't the end. She was depressed for a long time, after. Crying. Broken down. I didn't remember.

"Coming back to the place where she had all that trauma….I was five," she added, with an exasperated sigh like she was repeating audible words, not his thoughts. "I didn't know."

"That's right. You did everything you could do for everyone involved. You owed nothing to anyone. Not then, and not in November."

"But I shoulda…. I didn't wanna cause more trouble for them. Meredith the marriage wrecking ball. If…if Mom was why…. Whether it was…. Whatever made him start the first time; Adele hadta deal with the fallout. Left her life, moved 'cross the country. Came back. Mom and I popped up. Carousel goes around again."

"She made an informed choice to stay. Every time. Her separation from him didn't end with your mom's death. None of that is your fault."

"'I shoulda told."

"You did. You told me. My experience with this stuff…you know it's Amy?"

"Uh-huh."

"If I made you a list of times I let her manipulate me, you'd think I was the most gullible guy in the world. But she didn't lie. She'd say I didn't know what it was like being alone with Mom. It wasn't as though I didn't start drinking in high school. Not like I'd never snuck out for a party. All true. I might've started younger than her, assuming she told me the truth about that. Mark found the key to his parents' liquor cabinet in junior high.

"Whenever she'd promise that she wouldn't do it again, she'd believe herself. I felt responsible for her, but as her brother, wasn't I supposed to be sort of an enabler who taught her how to find her limits? It was Addison who pointed out she wasn't learning." Meredith's arms extended to hold herself up, and he moved his hand to her shoulder. "Mer?"

"I…Derek…at fourteen I was all 'lightweight Meredith, one drink, she's near tdeath,' and…and I've never…I mean, I haven't always, but there was…. There were…."

"Other things. I know. You've told me." He took his hand back to her forehead, circling his fingers over her temple. She resisted for a moment, but then lay back down, her arms crossed under her head. "You've gone through periods of drinking a lot. You've done it to cope. But you stop. You didn't use George's death as an excuse to go through every bottle in the house like they were full of water, and—Mer, Susan died a couple months after your mother, and you were Thatcher's donor. Seems like he started drinking within an hour or so of…of slapping you, and didn't stop for a year."

"You're still mad 'bout that? It sucked, but…but sometimes parents…. Not Mom. Before the Alzheimer's, she'd never, but Sadie's—"

"Her father is a violent, manipulative dick, I realize—"

"We knew it wasn't okay! He's the worst, but going back to her mom wasn't…. What I'm saying is, Thatcher's not— H-He was upset. He loved her, and I…I look like…. Stop shaking your head at me, I'm just saying!"

"Your resemblance to your mother doesn't make it okay." He ran his finger over the curve of her eyebrow, the furrow forming below it, and off the tip of her nose. "Nothing makes it okay. You can let him try to get to know you and remember that."

"Don't wanna be bitter. Wanna be better."

"You are…." He started combing his fingers through her hair, trying to figure out how to word his thoughts so that she wouldn't misinterpret understanding as criticism. "Amelia got clean before she was twenty, and in that time she pulled enough shit…. That's not…. Think I've told you, we resemble our dad the most. Amy's spirit is his, too. Mom…she withdrew from all of us, but her the most. She had more support than you did, but…. I have credentials here."

Meredith's eyes were clearer than they'd been before her body rejected the shots it couldn't handle, but the storm in her mind was causing the shutters to move too quickly for him to catch every flash of emotion, or whether they were triggered by her one-blink glances into the past. "I did stuff."

"After the party cleared out?"

"Usually not, but there were a lotta parties."

"Mer…I'm guessing 'situational depression' might be close to what Wyatt said last year? If she didn't…in retrospect, I might. Possibly closer to PDD."

Her lower lip disappeared over her teeth, and she worried at it for enough time to make him consider a different approach. Then, he caught the whisper, "You're not wrong."

He tipped her chin up slightly to kiss her. That might not have come out if she could blow below the limit, and he wanted to provide positive reinforcement. "You were living at an eight in those days. Before that?"

"Depended."

"The years between college and med school?"

"Nine, sometimes." Was it a ten, in the water? He didn't ask. She'd take it the wrong way, and maybe that was his answer. Too much pain to concentrate. Too much pain to take action.

"And had you found something that consistanrly numbed that, and made it possible to move foraward without second-guessing yourself on a loop? That silenced the part of you that wanted to do something? Then, who knows. But you thrived in med school, and…do you remember telling me you didn't know why anyone did drugs after your first surgery?"

"Better rush than coke, and even the first shift didn't dump me on my ass as bad." Did that too, whatcha going to say about it? "And it's not just about me."

"Exactly. You can get that rush from life, and for whatever reason the artificial kind wasn't enough. Alcohol doesn't give you that. It got you to a place where you could feel it, regardless of everything else in your head. You've never been trying to check out of life completely. You…you sorta called it with the knitting."

She shoved up, faster this time, almost hitting him in the face with her hard head. "What do you…? It's….We don't have to…."

Make Meredith believe she shouldn't talk about something, and it went into an iron box. It'd taken Ellis dying for her to let those secrets out. Richard had counted on his taking over the lease. He'd left her mother, but when having her play daughter could benefit him…. Derek tried to shove that thought away, glad she wasn't looking directly at him. She'd be sure the fury was aimed at her.

"Not…I meant…. You remember how you explained it?" He moved the chunk of hair that'd fallen to curtain her face behind her ear, trying to ease her back down, but she wasn't susceptible. Eye contact. Not always her preference, but if she thought she had to defend herself, she made sure you knew she could handle it.

"That it made things go porny, and sex tended to ruin my life?" Her eyes lost focus for a second, and then she said, "My college friends usedta say I'd rude, cruede, lewd, and nude."

He was glad that she kept smiling while he laughed, because he wasn't sure he could've stopped. "That's pretty accurate. Although, I'd replace 'rude' with 'cute.'"

"Blegh."

"But, the booze doesn't make you those things. It shuts off the voice in the back of your head that tells you to behave in a certain way. It doesn't create the complications, just opportunites for them. We were both sober at the prom. With O'Malley—"

"I'd spent like five minutes at Joe's. It wasn't…wasn't much of a factor."

"You had a lot of reasons to say yes to him. With the others—"

"I wanted to feel what I did with you. Never did. I get it." She lay down again; her eyes going distant as she did.

"Hold on. You don't have all of it. Alcohol as a depressant. It can dump you on your ass pretty hard, too. When things are bad, that's negligable. You don't feel the difference. These days, your pain's at a much lower baseline. And you don't keep it all in your head. You have other ways of coping. You're still working on that when it comes to Ellis-related situations." He took her wrist, half-expecting her to take off again. "Family in general."

She did raise her head, but her gaze locked on his. "Y-You think it's that?"

"You don't?" he asked, immediately knowing he should've said, is it not? He didn't claim to know her mind better than she did, only to have the benefit of being outside of it, and experience tracing the source of chronic pain.

"Sh-She's been…louder."

Derek had no doubt that people had commented on her tendency to quote Ellis verbatim; worse if they realized she'd run a Stadler and Waldorf-style commentary in her head for so long. He didn't know how she was supposed to have avoided it. Being able to recreate everything from Ellis's opinions to her tone, her cadence, syntax and diction had been a survival mechanism. Ellis's word had been her law, her gospel, her etiquette guide. Any choices she'd made had been based on garnering approval or disapproval. Instructions might only be given once, while remonstrations were repeated dozens of times. What could Meredith do, other than memorize everything she said, and to anticipate what she didn't?

"It's all been her freaking out over him, and then…then saying stuff about how pathetic it was to…to need a man's approval, and…and how could I…how could she…have thought any of it was true? I thought…. Kept thinking that if she was that messed up afterward, he must've been…. He made the choice, but…with us…with us, I was the one who couldn't—"

"You needing time wasn't the same. He never found her again. Not until Roseridge, when the situation let him have them both again. As soon as that changed…." He shook his head. That visitiing a woman with Alzheimer's had been the breaking point made him sure it wasn't going to fic anything. "It shouldn't have taken needing you to protect his reputation for him to tell you things that are true—"

"Don't—"

"They are, love. You're extraordinary. You missed months of work, and you're caught up. You should've been getting extra tutoring weeks earlier—"

"It doesn't matter." She slammed her hand against the table, which only thwacked in response, and the look she sent it should've set the leather aflame. "He did it to keep me quiet! He…he made my mother—He made Ellis Grey quiet! He's why…he's why everything, and I thought he'd be…. He had to be better than Thatcher! And…he's not. Not just like…everyone's a person. Like my mom must'a had a type after all.

"I want to hate him for all of it. For me, for her. It'd be easier. Was easier. But I don't, I can't, because he was more than the cereal guy, and he's apologized for real, and…and…I just don't."

"I've felt that about the baby sister I adore. I'm proud of her, now, but that doesn't change the past. They should've been protecting you. All three of them should've done more, even Adele. If she knew, she'd have known that if she told Richard his concerns about how neglected you were, he might be able to get through to your mother. It's okay to be mad that they didn't, and to separate your relationships to them as an adult from that."

Mom had told him to let go of his anger over Dad, but he'd been carrying it for three decades. Meredith needed to experience feeling worthy of anger for herself, even at the people who'd done more than the bare minnimum.

"As an adult, he violated your trust. It took a lot for you to give him that. You can be mad about that, too. You can be whatever you feel about any of it."

"But I don't…. I don't…. He said the depression thing, and I thought yeah, I've been there, and I'm good now. 'Cause, you know, it made sense to me that it could be like that. I said this stupid thing about still being able to drink tequila…. He wanted that. For me to…to connect with that."

To identify with him. To see herself as taking after him, not her father. Jesus. The talents that made Richard a great teacher should never be used for selfish ends.

"Then, on New Year's Eve…at Joe's…. He wasn't better than.… Of course, Thatcher was right; he saw himself. And I'm…I-I-I felt so…. I took so long to tell you, 'cause I didn't …."

She went quiet again, and he watched her face carefully. The panicky look didn't appear. In contrast to her earlier clamminess, there were chill bumps on her arms. He ran his knuckles over them, reminding her that he was here, wherever she'd gone.

"He told Joe to pour me a shot of tequila, made it sound like I was part of his…whatever, just like he had working with me in the lab. And, y'know, I've been that wasted, but he was…. It was Richard, and it….

"I was humiliated," she finally admitted, sounding abashed over it. "I felt…duped. Everything he'd said was 'a lifetime's worth of proud' all over again. And I still…L-Lexie hid it for Thatcher, and I-I thought m-maybe that's what…what I was supposed to…what family,…but you're my family, I don't like not telling you things, and he's not my dad. He never…never wanted to be. Just wanted me to think….

"You know, you, Addison, and Richard are probably the only people who didn't drive my wasted ass home that winter, and he knew…knew I….that I wouldn't want…. That I'd wanna to prove I'm not…."

"Y-You're not, and you weren't. I was…I was around." She'd never caught on to how much he'd watched her during the months he was with Addison. It'd been wrong, creepy, stalkery, all the adjectives she'd throw at him if he copped to it. What had sent him home had been thinking that if he didn't try, there'd be no point to having given up his place on the stool next to her.

"You weren't lying to yourself and everyone around you. That's what makes them seem ridiculous. The denial. They're as bad as each other…. At my uncle Adam's funeral…."

He hesitated. That wasn't Amelia lying about drinks she hadn't been old enoiugh to consume, as their sisters had assumed. He'd thought Kath might've noticed her pupils, but she'd been overseeing the kids. They'd all had an idea of what a junkie looked like, and it wasn't Amelia. It still caused them to underestiamte her addiction.

"If I'm being fair, I know it's a symptom. It's conditioned, too. It's everything making you so apprehensive even talking about it. Everything that kept my family from intervening with Amy. That, and it meant facing our own mistakes." He spent another moment gliding the pads of his fingers over her goosebumps. If only they were Braille, or Morse Code. "Is this proving you can get drunk tonight and not tomorrow?"

She sat up, slowly, so he knew she wasn't making another attempt to escape. Crossing her legs so that they didn't hang off the edge of the table was another sign, and another way of not taking up space. He took her hands, checking the crook of her right arm to be sure the IV was still flowing.

"Kinda. Also…I just didn't want to go home alone. I was already heading there, but…I ran into Lexie and Thatcher in the parking lot. Her birthday's this weekend, and since she already has issues making reservations so close to Valentine's Day…. He was taking her out for her birthday, for the first time in years, and she was so good to me after the surgery, and I don't care if he remembers my birthday, but…."

"Richard does."

The day she turned twenty-nine, he'd walked her into work, tuned for the sound of her phone. Thatcher had been in the NICU with Laura a week before. Derek hadn't been subtle about mentioning her birthday. He'd spelled out that one call would do a lot to make up for the lack of unopened cards. That it never came only made the man's cowardice more obvious. It also implied that Susan didn't know—had never asked.

They'd stepped onto the bridge, and Richard had been on the other side. Meredith changed her pace a half a dozen times. Ducked behind his arm, strode ahead to pull him along, and muttered a lot of things that seemed unintelligble, though he'd bet he could translate them now. His focus had been on figuring out how to subtely work the date into the conversation.

"Dr. Grey, good morning!"

Meredith had sunk. He'd seen it before, and for a second he'd been preoccupied with other moments he pretended to have missed. The tinkling of her composed laugh had brought him back to that one.

"—always so envious of their balloons, she'd—"

"Oh, no, don't tell him this." Meredith had covered her face, but her smile shone through in her voice, her movements, the facial muscles he could see.

"She'd watch for a child to be wheeled out, and before janitorial could think about going in, she'd have liberated any leftover balloons. Once, a dad came in to retrieve a few kast things while the mom got the child in the car. Everything was right there—except the balloon. It'd already been taken to the little miss's lair."

"Her lair?"

Meredith dropped her hands. "A supply closet near the elevator. Not on the wards. I wasn't supposed to go onto those without an adult. But, you know, there were a lot of adults around. If they didn't happen to notice me…."

"They all knew you. Everyone on the floor bought her a balloon for her fifth birthday."

"You put a rock in my pocket," It was first time he'd seen her joyous at a childhood memory. "So I wouldn't fly away like Gonzo."

"It was a valid concern." Richard chuckled. "You weren't much bigger than a Muppet."

"I'd pretend to be one," she said. "And you'd be the puppeteer." (Had the brightness faded, or was that him?)

"You were a funny little thing. I'm glad I'm getting to see you all grown up. Have a happy birthday." He'd patted her arm, and continued along the bridge without a backward glance. Derek pulled her against him. She'd had her it's fine face on when she'd tugged away.

Last year, Richard had had another anecdote from an earlier year, involving colored frosting, and Meredith's pale baby hair. "Remember the balloon story?" she'd asked Derek that night, in an on call bed near Izzie's room. "A lot of them were from the gift shop. That's practical. But, thing is, they only have so many. Not everyone pitching in knew I could read, or they figured it didn't matter, since I hadn't been a discretionary thief. So, a bunch of them said 'Get Well Soon.' The thing is, I remember thinking it was a smart wish for a birthday. It meant 'get better,' and I was getting better at things. Five was going to be the best year. Everything would get well."

"I was getting better at things" had not been what she'd meant to resonate with him, but it had. Had she lost that certainty all at once, slowly over the weeks and months of upheaval, or even more gradually as her mother got more demanding? Did it peep through over the next twenty-four years and get smashed like a whack-a-mole?

He glanced over at the mallet she'd been using earlier. What had she been trying to push down?

"Lexie asked if I was headed to Joe's," she continued, oblivious to his mental detour. "I said yeah, and I…and then, I said…. It was like I was possessed, and it just….I said it…. The dumb, chipper, 'I can still drink tequila!' thing." She hunched into herself again.

Meredith didn't get embarrassed as much as she anticipated others being embarrassed for her. She shrugged off ridicule from anyone who didn't matter, and gave mockery as good as she took it. Humiliation was something different.

"Lexie's just as much of a social elephant as me, sometimes—Dunno how that girl was prom queen—and, so, she goes, 'she sure can!' Like it's an achievement! When he'd probably just left a freaking AA meeting! And I'm thinking all this stupid stuff about how if I'd known what could be in my genes, I might've been as freaked out as I am about Alzheimer's, but no, that wasn't fair, because supposedly he never had a problem until Susan. I don't think that was self-medicating grief. It was a trigger for something bigger, same as Richard. I bought into that at the time because—well, maybe because it helped thinking he loved her that much."

He wasn't entirely sure which he and she applied there, but it didn't matter. Sure, it made it easier to know deep love had kept Thatcher here with Susan, and made Richard regret what he'd lost so much. It was also as close as she'd come to admitting to being a romantic spite of everything she'd been raised to not believe.

"But mostly…. Wyatt says that's what I was doing, fyi. Self-medicating. Basically, what you said. So, Information You Had. IYH. I kept thinking, well, but you and I met at Joe's. I was already screwed up, and love had nothing to do with….The mixer though…. Seeing Richard…that was an Ellis thing…." Her eyes flitted to the side momentarily, like she was filing that thought away.

"So, anyway, I'm standing there waiting for Thatcher to say something. He went out of his way to talk to me about Richard at Christmas. But nah, no comments, or concerns, or awkward, tension-breaking jokes.

"Lexie finally tries to say something that starts with 'Meredith would you…?' and he interrupts. Tells her they should get going. He….Maybe he didn't even hear her. And, she might've been gonna say, 'Meredith would you leave the porch light on?' But…. He did. She wasn't. It was gonna be, 'would you like to come with us?'

"I would not have liked!" she insisted, with a vehmence that didn't quite cancel out the preceeding wistfulness. "It would've been wicked awkward. But I didn't get to politely decline, or…or face up to it for the sake of sisterhood, because he interrupted her! 'Let's get going, Lex. Have a good night, Meredith.' If I'd just been her friend he'd have…. I think he'd have let…. He'd have been nicer."

"And let her make the offer?" he backtracked. She nodded.

"And I don't care, I don't. He has more than proven that knowing me is not on his bucket list—which he wouldn't have without me, but whatever, guess we're pretending it was an anonymous donation. And, okay, I meant what I said, about who he is to me, but…he's my sister's dad, and even if he just knew I did it for Lexie, you'd think…. Whatever., it was not a fun encounter.

"Then, I was sitting alone at Joe's, thinking about New Year's, and I…I sorta went off on him? About his arrangement with Richard…. He can refuse to serve drunk people, shouldn't he refuse to serve a drunk?"

"What'd he say?" Derek was fond of Joe; he'd always looked out for Meredith, but he was also a man with two kids trying to run a business.

"Um…. He'd been working in the back a lot before the holiday rush, and one of the college kids tending didn't know Richard from any of the Mercy West schleps. By the time Joe tried to talk to him…sounds like his speech was a not-dry run for me. Minus the Ellis. He's good at talking people in circles. According to Joe, wagon jumpers are like that, and it'd was better that he was there, not here. Someone else was more likely to get through to him than the bartender. 'Til then, he was tryin' to help him save face. Like I did.,

"Mer…." Trying to help her see the flaws in that comparison could wait. "I'm sorry about the run-in with Thatcher. ABout everything with him. Meeting him, he seemed nice enough. Obviously spineless. I underestimated him. He's lazy, a coward, and selfish. It rounds out to cruelty.

"You might have inherited some of his traits, but it doesn't make you anything like him. I don't care if he uses guilt, or your moderate resemblance to the woman he divorced twenty-five years ago to justify his behavior to himself. He is a fool to use any excuse to avoid you. Not because he should be grateful, or because you're important to Lexie. Because you are incredible. Maybe he's bitter that he can't take more credit for you—and by proxy might not be able to take much for Lexie. Maybe he's intimidated by you. He should be, but that isn't an excuse for giving up the privilege of knowing you."

Her lips formed the word "privilege," and he wanted to keep repeating it, to make it loop in her head, to write it all over her body. For the moment, he squeezed her hands. Were they trembling?

"There's no reason for him to be concerned about you, but he doesn't know that. So, maybe he should've followed up, but my guess…my hope is that he assumed you wouldn't want his opinion on your business—"

"I don't! I…I don't. I just.…"

"You want him to have one."

"M-Maybe," she hedged. "Mom had enough for both of them."

"Very few of which still apply.

"You know, I'd bet Richard saw putting himself in a category with you as distancing himself from cases like Thatcher's, too."

"How d'you mean?"

"He was around that year, like you said, and he did worry about how much you were going through—meaning he saw you succeed. I imagine he noted the things you had in common: Ellis's death, our breakups. He told himself he could do what you do. Deal with the damage, maybe hit a low, but come out of it able to drink casually. Not because you don't have problems or pain, but because for whatever reason, you're not like him—That's his to see—It doesn't matter what's going on in his life. He can't be like you."

There was more he could point out: her second-, third-, and fourth-thoughts, her ready confessions, the times she'd lost interest in her second drink in favor of darts, or dancing, or dragging him home were all evidence for his side. Before he could pick one thread, he was distracted by her shift from scoff to snicker. "What?" he asked.

"N-Nothing! Only…The Jungle Book. 'I wanna be like yoo-oo-ou.'" She didn't quite commit to singing it, making the delivery cuter, in his opinion.

"'Doo-be-doo,'" he quoted, and she giggled.

"There's probably something crazy racist in that; definitely Kipyard's colonialist, but he likes do-wop, and thinks he's king of all of us. Weird things stick in your brain from when you're a kid—my brain."

"No, it's everyone," he assured her. "Sometimes, I'll notice that it's one, and think of that vulture in Robin Hood. 'One o'clock and all's weeeell!'" Her laugh made trying to mimick the cartoon was worth it. "Want to know a secret?"

"Duh."

"Possibly because we had a children's Tales of Reynard, and Dad read us Fantastic Mr. Fox, I thought Robin Hood had always been a story about a fox. A parable."

"Please tell me you didn't figure it out 'til Men in Tights."

"Mm, maybe before that," he said. "Speaking of secrets…. I've been catching up on the state of the hospital over the past few days. There are going to be things I can't tell you, which I hate, but this I can say: Things are worse than I suspected. You missed most o of the merger chaos, but that was…it was desperation on Richard's part. Impatient desperation. I'm going to be surprised if the situation with Kepner was the only instance of negligence.

"Last year, I got overwhelmed. I didn't come here for snip and clip aneurysms, and yet, I'd screwed one up, and destroyed a patient because of my hubris."

"Der—"

"I had to face that. I had to be sure I understood that lives mattered more than numbers—more than anything. That I'm a person who will make mistakes, even if I'm doing everythiing I can—that's no reason to not make the effort. That I'm more than my job, and that my job…it's not there to be an escape from my problems.

"And Richard watched me go into the woods, bat beer cans around for a couple days, and then turn things around to save Stevens. You and I got married, we're happy, we're gonna have crappy babies." That Meredith smiled instead of saying something about their children's potential alcoholism made him hope that he'd gotten somewhere. "For almost a decade, this job was more than what he did, it's been who he is. The rankings going down that fast…he took it personally."

He'd blamed her, almost within her hearing, he remembered. Had he found things to blame on her in the twenty-five years before her internship? Adele and I didn't have kids; after seeing how things were with Ellis's girl…. The idea felt disturbing, but not impossible.

"He'd made a point of not antagonizing the board; he saw them all on the same size. It was going to take time for us to recover without cutting the kinds of surgeries that had gotten us high rankings in the first place. The impossible, scary, ground-breaking ones. The board is all for those—when things are financially sound. Not his philosophy at all. When he tried to appease them, we got frustrated at him; he came to believe weren't with him either. He ended up isolated, with no one happy, and the hospital not any better.

"I'm not sure when he and Adele originally started having issues, but I think it's telling that when they seperated, he tried to give the job up as penance. He knows that balancing the two is difficult for him. I don't know what he told her, recently, but I doubt it was the whole truth."

"She thought he was schlepping Bailey!"

"Yeah. That's…. I guess she hoped it was something she knew how to deal with."

"I don't know, somehow 'fellow resident' and 'protégé' are different. Plus, she has a kid. Tuck's too young to be useful." She turned her hands inward, pulling him closer. "I know a thing or two about self-destruction—for real, he's nailing that part of being like me—ee-ee," she added. "He's taking all these crazy chances, and not weighing the risks.

"He and Mom make more sense to me as I get to know him. I've always thought he'd have been good for her—for us—but it could've gone the other way."

"Oh, yeah?" he prompted, not totally sure how they'd gotten there

"Mm. I mean, any adult woulda been good for me, but for them…. Mom was brilliant; she was innovative. Risk taking? Eh. Really not in her life-life. Can you argue that she didn't leave Boston until I graduated college 'cause she thought I was gonna need somewhere to land—possibly literally? Sure. Would I choose that side? Nah, she never sold the apartment; no reason she coiuldn't have let it out earlier. And she left just early enough that she could justify not just lettin' me have it. Said she doubted I'd be able t'keep a job good enough to pay the taxes 'n utilities. Only thing she'd support me doing was continuing my education."

She'd shifted from adament point-making to mumbling, and her eyes darkened over a decades—no, decade. Twenty-one wouldn't be a decade for her until April. And, when you considered that their relationship could only progress on one side within three years of that…. It wasn't that old of a slight.

"Then it'd be all, 'you won't be able to float through a graduate program like you did undergrad—' See, the tactic was implying that I'd be forced to become some sort of researcher, because I couldn't hack real doctor. Part of me hopes she was reverse-psyching me, but it…it felt more like she'd lost hope."

"Mer—"

"Not what we're talking about," she snapped, weakly trying to pull her hands back. His grip on them was loose, and she didn't put actual effort into it. "My point was she lived in Boston that whole time. I'll allow that even she must've been reluctant to totally upheaval me after the initial disaster, but if she actually cared there were times it'd have been okay. I'd have packed our whole place for her in junior high. She hadoffers. Good ones. She never dated. There were men. Mediocre ones."

There was a daughter. A wonderful one.

She was right. Considering her risk-avoidant made Ellis's behavior more understandable, but no more laudable.

"If Richard…. Adele was safe. And she…she loved him in a really…a steady way. A strong tie. Whatever Mom and Thatcher had, by that point it was easy for her to break. 'Cause she's a mother, I was a tie that could've been used to hold her back, so she took me. Adele was holding on. I dunno, maybe Richard thought better of Thatcher…thought he'd come back. But…he can't have thought she'd get back with him and keep playing happy families. Saying she had me…a family…. It wasn't gonna happen. 'S how I know…usually know…he wasn't actually focused on me. He was dooming me to not have a dad.

"It's never made sense to me that she didn't just…make her grand gesture handling me over to Thatcher, unless she thought it wouldn't be enough—that she could end up totally alone. Being alone with me scared her enough to risk everytjing—She never did that again. If you think about it, when she finally branched out from MGH, she had eggs everywhere. The book. Mayo, the UN.

"Adele coulda left—he deserved it; that woman shouldn't've been treated like a consolation prize—He might not have shut her out as much as Mom did me, or as fast, but he did. Mom at least kept publishin and invenrting techniques—Richard's a fantastic surgeon, but he's been a teacher for his whole career…. It was like when the risk of the affair fell through, neither of them could fully commit to risk. And, it's like, a ballerina can leap higher and farther with a partner, but what they can do on their own is still really damn impressive. Maybe Mom could handle more in the O.R. Because she'd succeeded in leaving Thatcher, and taking me, and not dying—or maybe he used all of his up hiding flasks and conning residents into doing complicated surgeries. That's his sort of risk. The kind that doesn't fall on him."

"You're pretty insightful, you know that?" Derek let go of her hands to loop his arms around her waist. She shivered, reflexively, and then did it again. He shrugged out of his labcoat and draped it over her shoulders.

"My jacket's right there," she said, indicating the visitor chair holding her bag.

"Mm, not letting you go just yet." He leaned in, saying, "You're a flight risk," before kissing her cheek.

She smiled down at her hands. "Dunno where I thought I was headed."

"It would've definitely made you the only one of us who's gotten drunk and done something silly."

"The bat was silly?"

"The bat was idiotic. The physical embodiement of callibg you out for my flaws. I was not thinking of the bat. You were silly to think I wasn't going to follow you."

"Oh, that'd have been a great look. Chief Shepherd chasing his stupid, drunk—"

"Tequila really isn't your friend tonight. C'mon, are you stupid?"

"Why can you say you're an idiot—"

"I said the bat was idiotic. What are you?"

Wyatt had worked on the negative self-talk, but that didn't mean it'd stopped.

"Do we have to?" she whined. He imagined that somewhere in her mind Ellis was saying that would never get her anything—No, she'd probably learned that organically, once Thatcher left.

"Tell me the truth."

"In vino veritas is bullshit."

"I know, believe me." He'd had to learn that to tune out Amelia. She'd curse him out in the back of cabs using words he didn't think he'd known at sixteen, and then curl up next to him on his couch the next morning. Tying knots in the crust of her toast like she'd done since her fingers were long enough. He'd idiotically lobbed vitriolic hypocracy at Meredith, and they'd had a harder impact than she'd initially acknowledged. "What do you know?"

She sighed. "I'm not stupid."

"And you are…?"

"A surgeon. That's positive."

"Also a noun. Try again."

"Not unintelligent. Have potential." She wrinkled her nose involutarily at often had someone told her she wasn't living up to that?

"You can do better. You are…?"

"Married to a McDopey-Dope."

"And? Give me an attribute," he added, and her frown deepened. He could see her crossing "loved," "not alone," and "wanted" off the list.

"What about pretty?" she asked, with a smile he couldn't resist. He wasn't clear on if Ellis never mentioned her daughter's looks, or if she'd been the you're pretty, and you can use that type. She'd likely never said, well, at least your pretty, like his grandmother would throw at his sisters whenever one of them admitted she couldn't bake, or sew, or whatever she thought it took to attract a man. Mom would list off all of the better things the persecuted sister had to worry about, and he'd put something like, he wouldn't care if his wife could knit. Someone—usually Liz—would snap, well, who'd wanna marry you, anyway? He'd assume Ellis was in his mom's camp, but could also see her insisting that not utilizing every possible advantage would be failure.

"And insightful," she added.

"Mmhmm, pretty stubborn," he countered, touching the tip of her nose with his. "Gorgeously hard-headed. Beautifully…?"

"Blech." She pressed her head against his shoulder as she considered the trap she'd walked into. Her response came with her gaze aimed at the cabinets over the sink. "…creative?" She stretched the word out into four syllables, and ended it with a question mark. Her tongue flashed between her teeth, and he kissed her before she could qualify it with a sorta or I guess.

Acknowledging everything he noticed about the adjective might flip her dismissive switch, so he tried to convey as much of it as he could. He was sure that was something she'd been told about herself and rejected. It was much better than just negating one of the insults her mother had thrown around, or citing a skill she'd had to develop—on bad days, "independent" was the best he could coax from her.

"Yes. No matter how overwhelming a situation is, you can come up with solutions. It makes you an innovative surgeon, and a thoughtful person, because have creative ways of showing people you're paying attention. Bringing it all the way around, you're not as much self-destructive as others-protective.

"Oh, you've done some interesting things," he added to check the doubt bending her eyebrows downward. "I don't know two-thirds of it, I'm sure. But since I've known you destruction hasn't been what you've wanted. You've wanted to fix things, to bring people together and keep them in place."

"When you came in here, I was pounding casts into smithereens."

"Why?"

"I was mad. I…I'd already made a slight scene being snippy at Joe. I mean, I get attention in there just by, like, existing as myself, and throwing back shots, even though its been years since I was the floor show…and….I didn't wanna go home and take it out on Lexie, like a—It wasn't about her at all, but I was so keyed up, if she'd tried t'defend him…. I'd never…but I get in people's faces, and she, uh…she says he never hit her, but…."

Derek brushed his hand over her hair again, around the back of her ear. This was another way her creativity came into play. She could imagine every possible alternative playing out. Granted the negative ones came more easily for her, but that only made sense. How else could you be prepared? (He'd never asked her opinions on chess, but assuming she didn't totally disdain it, he'd be wary playing against her.)

"You've talked to her about that?"

"A little. Mom's condition's come up, and it happening. I wasn't scared of her. Not really. Just, it surprised me. She was…adamant about not spanking. She'd go off on me, but mostly…mostly she'd leave, or close her door. I-I could…could scream and cry…but I wouldn't see her until…until I was 'capable of rational conversation.'"

That tracked, it tracked so perfectly, and he did his best to keep his expression still.

"Anyway, Lexie said Susan was the choleric one. Her word. Weirdo. Said Thatcher never got loud. Wasn't all that physical at all. Wasn't effusive…which…which means no wonder I'm the way I am….

"She said it was like living with a totally different person. I dunno, seems like they weren't super-close to start. There just wasn't anyone else who could—I dunno, look after him, like he's not a grown man. I really, really wonder about when he met Susan. Like, he left the night Mom told him, but if Adele suspected, he might…. Except she worked here, with them….

"Whatever, Thatcher needed someone, and Molly had the baby, which was not…. Apparently…. Crap, it's not funny," she said, putting a hand over her smile. "It's awful. Before…Before Lexie had any idea she'd be calling the NRMP. Like…well, not the night before the funeral, she was flirting with you, then." She smirked at him. He was glad she could tease him about that—he could only cringe. "So, before that, the…the baby got hiccups, and…Thatcher just…exploded. At—well, maybe not at the two-month-old—but get her out of here! He called it insensitive! That's when she figured he might need help…keeping his grip. Baby hiccups don't even sound like…it's absurd."

"It is, it is, and none of it reminds me of you."

"I-I yell."

"You…You are so used to looking for your mother in yourself. Now, here's your father, and he's not showing you his good side, so the negatives are all you have to look for. But you aren't him anymore than you are her. Okay? You have flaws, but you're not a congolmeration of theirs."

He gave her time to process while trying to chafe heat into her body with his hands on her back. He glanced over her shoulder at the clock. They needed to head out soon. Tomorrow was Saturday, she could sleep in, but there was only so much potential for that in their house. How miserable would it have been for her to hide out in an on-call room until she could drive home?

"Derek?" He didn't expect the softness; definitely didn't anticipate the anxiety in her expression.

"Yes, love?"

She started to speak a couple of times before the match finally caught. "I don't wanna…. I'm all supportive wife here, okay, but are you…? The board is the same group of fish dicks they were two weeks ago. You like being liked, and you have a buncha Richard's good qualities, but it's not like you've never stopped talking to your wife about things…. I hear you about confidentiality, I do, so, if you…if you need to go to the woods, it's okay. Only…Only, tell me."

"Karev has the trailer," he pointed out. She glared at him, and okay, fine, she wasn't the only one who avoided certain types of conversation. "I don't think that'll happen. I'm excited to start fixing morale here first. No dorky team building, just less animosity. Richard tries to talk to those fish…board members on their level. I plan to give the report, and give the department heads—maybe even attendings—a rundown of whatever they're planning. Doctors, nurses, techs—they're my team.

"If I do start to get distant, it won't be your fault. I don't want to get lost in this job.—I'm lucky, I get to work with my brilliant, supportive wife—but work isn't everything. Our life at home matters to me. A lot. I don't only know we can do this, I think we'll be great at it. We're entering a new chapter together."

Meredith slid forward, and, still a little off balance, ended up further on the edge of the table than she was going for. He brought his legs together and guided her onto his lap. She kissed him. Her legs locked around him. Her intentions were clear before she started shifting her hips.

"Mer—"

"Back pocket. The…." She lowered her left hand for a moment, and said, "…right." Decisively as she brought it back to his shoulders.

He sighed tugged the square out with two fingers.

Unfolded, the note on the bar read: Take advantage. She'd signed and time-stamped it. The numbers were smidged, but confirmed the general timeline he'd put together.

"Figured I might get to all porny. Not like you've never sober-screwed drunk Meredith. I was making out with the bottle before you showed up at Izzie's party—"

"You weren't…." He hesitated. It would not be impossible to set her off at this point, a bomb fueled by frustration that wasn't as sexual as she'd have him believe.

"A rose is a spade," she said, her voice both snappish and sultry. "I set out to get trashed, and I'm very determined when I want to be. But that was like an hour ago. I'm gonna remember your name in the morning." She unknotted his tie one-handed, leaning backward to pull it off.

"Smack your head on the floor, and that becomes less certain," he said, supporting her spine with both bands. She rolled her eyes, and arced further. Her thighs might be thin but she made every muscle work for her.

"If you were gonna let me fall tonight it would've happened already." She sat up and draped the tie over her neck.

"Mer, I hope I'm never in a place where I 'let you' fall."

She raised her eyes and folded her lip back, reminding him again of that night in his car. It'd been two and a half years ago. It'd been a lifetime ago. Meredith had changed, in some ways, but his wife was the same girl she'd been that night.

"I'm not doing the thing," she said. "I was upset. I'm not any more. I told you the stuff I'd be trying to sex away. Now, I want to distract you from the rest of it. The Chief of it. The being chief of it."

He could hear the difference in her enunciation, when she meant Richard and when she meant the job.—That was the crux of what weighed on him: Chief was Richard.

He hadn't said anything when she twisted away, and he didn't have a clue what his face had told her. He spun to watch her go for her purse; the IV line going taut.

"Wasn't a Scout," she said, and he exhaled at the tease in her voice. "But a slut learns to be prepared, too." She dangled a bottle in front of his face. It looked like hand lotion, but it wasn't the one he saw her use all the time.

"You are making it very difficult to come up with objections."

"That's not all I can…wait…." She scrunched her face up, and then gave a resigned sigh. "I'm drunk, okay? I appreciate that you wanna be all noble husband saving me from my shitty coping skills. But we are past that part of the evening.

"So, let me be clear: I am saying yes." She straddled him again. "I am saying please." She kissed him, and, proving those fingers were the least impaired part of her, started undoing the buttons of his shirt. Her mouth stayed on his while she worked, and he found himself chasing the hint of saltiness on her lips.

Halfway through, she pressed her hands against his chest, smoothing them up to his shoulders, and then turning her head to speak into his ear. "I am saying fuck me, Derek.

She stopped at his belt to shrug off his coat, and hang it on the IV pole, over the banana bag. He brushed the back of his hand over her arm, finding the goosebumps that hadn't gone away.

"I don't want to be the next guy who's using you."

"You can't be, because I want you to. I want you to get exactly what you want from me and to be there tomorrow when I feel like an asshole. I need…I need to know you don't think I'm a…. That you don't see the needy, gullible, screwball screwup."

"You are not—"

"You can tell me, and tell me, but I can't…. I have to see…. Your eyes don't lie."

They must. They must have, because if they didn't, she'd be right about what she saw in that scrubroom. He didn't doubt that she'd already been able to read them, even if she hadn't understood the backstory. His sister, her father, Richard—it would be easier if their love for each other was completely untainted by outside influences, but that wasn't possible. They'd tried that. (He had. She'd involved him in the situation with Thatcher; he'd met her mother. He'd wanted more without seeing what he had.)

"You are not a needy, gullible, screwball screwup," he said, kissing down her neck with each word. When he reached the collar of her shirt, she nudged him up and started to strip it off, and then huffed, holding her arm out to him. He detached the tubing of the IV while she whipped the shirt onto the floor, like it had been the problem.

"So freaking sexy," she grumbled.

"You are. You are selfless, brilliant, and powerful," he listed amiably, before looking up at her. "That is always sexy. You didn't come back here to break down casts," he observed, placing his hands on her sides and running them along her ribs, slightly higher each time.

"I…gave myself options. Not the first time I've taken my bra off in Joe's bathroom for you."

"True." She shivered, and he wasn't sure if it was cold or his index fingers crooking along the undersides of her breasts. "Let's see if we can get you warmed up a little."

"Might not," she said as he stood up with her. "Just wanna feel you inside me.'

"What if I want more than that for you?"

She smiled. "You always do."

He sat her on the end of the table this time. "Correct."

"But we should go home some time, Chief."

"You were the one who was going to stay here," he said, undoing the button of her fly.

"I had a lot of dumb ideas tonight." She lifted her ass off the table for him, and he took her underwear down at the same time to save her the effort of having to do it again. With her so close on his lap, and not turning her head away every few seconds to hide from him, he'd seen where the fatigue in her voice was tugging on her eyes. "Keeping your coat in view was a better one," she commented, knocking her flats off against the table so he could free her legs from the constriction of her narrow trousers.

"How's that?"

"I'll see it if you pocket my panties."

He dropped her folded clothes on the stretch of table above her head, and then tapped the tip of her nose. "I'll pocket you."

Her giggle was lovely; the sound, the upward tilt of her neck, the meaning. She could laugh while facing down any amount of darkness, and he adored that about her, but there was weight to that. Tequila loosened some of the tension it had to fight to escape her chest, but the giggle was something else. it wasn't just lighter, it was her light.

For so long, he'd been oblivious to the fact that she couldn't always feel what he could see constantly. That her perception of her value; her capacities for success, empathy, happiness, her self-worth had flickered. These days, it dimmed rather than going out completely. The return to full brightness was still staggering. And, it was affected most by one of the three people meant to encourage her unconditionally—Richard had lost any right to deny his place in that trinity—to love her best, without asking for favor or reward.

Why wasn't I enough? She'd asked him that plenty of times, never directed in the correct direction: at him. He wasn't brave enough to bridge it himself, so he tried to answer in other ways. You are more than enough. You deserved better. You desevere better.

She kept giggling while he marveled at her, far too long for it to be totally about panties. "Remember who found us?" she asked, the bubbling laughter wrapped around her words.

"Torres," he said, slowly. She nodded, and he poked her belly button, just to get her to collapse into giggles again. "She could be on her way up here to cle—To check on you. Up for that risk?"

"You are." Meredith stretched her leg out and up between his, aligning her calf with the increasingly strained seam of his pants. He caught her ankle. "Crap! Derek, don't, don't, do-" She broke off in a squeal, jerking her foot to get it away from his finger, and that no one was immediately pulling at the locked door proved that the hall had stayed deserted. He let her break his grip, and her attempt to put her feet out of his reach ended in a pouty huff. "That's taking advantage. Enthusiastic no. On the won't list."

He tucked his hand under her head to smooth out the bundle of her hair, and his fingers caught a piece of cotton—he'd have to find a chance to keep combing thorugh it to get it all.

He held it up to her. In the low light, there wouldn't have been a significant difference between the flush that she'd worn earlier, originally from the alcohol but sustained by activity, and the blush that was inflaming her cheeks. The chill bumps on her arm kept him from dismissing the pinkening apples. He spiraled his finger over them, imaging an old computer punch-card; maybe one accidentally encoded with multiple commands, possibly for entirely different programs. Otherwise, her reaction was minimal. Her smile didn't waver, but the jut of her chin and the angle of her eyelashes did. The bigger tell came a second later, and he coasted his hand down to her clenching fist.

She hated showing the limited embarrassment she did feel; it was a sign of "going soft." If her general attitude of fuck it, what you see is who I am had originated in self-acceptance, maybe it would've been. If she wasn't so used to judgement that she anticipated it from everyone, at all times. By nature, she wasn't a people pleaser; that might've been what kept— saved—her from becoming a chameleon. What mattered to her wasn't what was thought about her; it was who was thinking it. The more she cared about someone, the more she'd try to anticipate their expectations. Her own opinion had barely ranked. Since then, she'd taken on far more pride in who she was, and in making her own decisions about who she wanted to be.

That night at the trailer, she'd told him she could take whatever he threw at her, because Ellis had said worse. But by then she'd known—thank God she'd known—he didn't think she was a lemon. What hurt now, even if it was just the nick of self-consciousness, was when she wasn't sure. Did smashing casts to work through her fury fit into the mold of "acceptably weird?" It wasn't his assurance one way or the other she needed, so much as she needed to know.

"Have I mentioned tonight that I love how intense you are?"

When they had a baby, he'd be willing to roll the genetic dice in almost all things. They didn't know all of the connections that existed in genetics, and if the Alzheimer's gene was connected to any of Meredith's other traits, he was against ruling it out. But if they could select for that specific sunburst of a smile, he'd do it.

He set the batting on his palm. "Make a wish."

She laughed, and he blew it away. Mission accomplished.

He'd make sure to let Callie know that he'd been the one to clean. She'd blame him for the mess, anyway.

"'Intense' is an attribute."

"It is," he agreed, kissing her for good measure, and continuing downward to her clavicle. "But it's mine. You can't copy it next time."

"No fair. I'm not…not all the good things." She didn't, he noticed deny that there'd be a next time.

"I'd like you to rephrase that, Dr. Grey."

"Huh?"

"Try it as a question."

"What is I am not all the good things, Al—? Oh, ew." Derek was the one to splutter with laughter. "Hey, no! Did you just try to motorboat me? My tits are great, but not that. No one's tried that since.I started going to more bars than frat parties. That's, like, actually twenty-one. No bar in Hanover was worth risking my Idaho ID."

"Your…?"

"My best fake. Clubbing fake. Out-of-state, and actually had my picture. Supposed to be accurate, but I never worried someone wouid know what a Wyoming ID looked like."

"Wyoming? You said Ida…." Several expressions flitted over Meredith's face as he made the realization—one was amusement, but also regret, apprehension, and…shame. Oh, that was not happening. He kissed her, lifting her head up closer with one hand. The other cupped her breast, massaging it gently as he closed his mouth on her nipple. It was firm. That could come from the cold of the room, but he'd ensure that wasn't true for long.

"I wasn't being…. It's what the asshole I bought it from called it," she said. "I told him that if I was a ho, I wouldn't need a fake; I wouldn't be paying for my own drinks, or even my own cover. The ID was so I didn't have to flatter guys in the line. The ones with plenty of cash, and no social skills. Him, in five years."

"If I have any trouble with the fish dicks, I'm bringing you in."

Confusingly, she didn't smile at that. "You can handle them," she said, raising her hand, then curling her fingers in right before touching his hair. He opened them with his thumb, guiding her hair the rest of the way. "Not at the hospital. That's the rule."

"I'm the chief. I'm allowing an exception."

"It's your rule."

"Then I can definitely let you break it." Her touch was hesitant, completely opposite to how she'd dig into his hair at home.

"You have product on you? Opeople could see you going out."

"I have a hat."

Her eyebrows jumped up so adorably that he kissed them, then returned to the nipple he'd been focused on.

"You said that was your best fake," he prompted. "There were more?" He loved hearing stories that featured her away from her mother, where she really made the progress that'd brought her here.

"Had a hand-me-down in high school; someone's older sister, or cousin. Kept me from getting blocked from 21 shows, only 'cause my friends knew the bouncers. They…a lot of them get bonuses for every fake they catch. Also had a…uh…doctored Harvard ID. I… uhhhhh, yes."

Her next exhalation brought miniscule changes; her hips fturning out a little bit, relaxing onto the table, her shoulders sinking. He wanted to slip his hand down, pretty sure there'd be wetness starting to gather. Drawing her attention to it would keep her from getting in her head about it. But, it wasn't worth having her tell him to use her again, just because her body needed more time.

"Harvard?" he asked, around her nipple.

"Student ID. Got it…junior year of high school? Let me into parties. Made cops less likely to harrass me in Harvard Square. Kept it while Die was there. I, uh…in the gap…mighta used it to get into a couple guest lectures."

He hummed against her and she let out a small sigh. "You like that, huh?"

"What is yes, good vibrations?"

He laughed and she tugged at his hair. "You've got the great excitations going on," she said. "Can I help?"

He wanted to say yes, let her fingers nimbly open, undo, pull, be free to feel her. "Just a minute, beautiful." He opened his fly, which gave him freedom of focus. Meredith was more sensitive already with his mouth on her breast; her encouraging mmms started to trail off in the tiniest of whines.

"The question I wanted to hear was: something "along the lines of what are the positive attriubutes you think I'm not seeing in myself? Because, you're right, no one is all the good things—but there's a gap between that and thinking you'd need to steal intense next time we play this game."

She screwed her face up in distaste—He could see her swallow a snarky remark about games being fun— but he waited and after a prolonged eye-roll she said, "Tell me the good ones you see."

"Still a statement," he teased. "Determined. Steadfast. Smart. Brave. Daring. Shrewd." With each word he kissed along her chest and down, an invisible mortician's cut to show her a hidden interior. "Inventive." He rolled his tongue and balanced her nipple at the end of it for that one, pushing it up to slightly graze his teeth before sliding it off. "Brilliant. Loyal. Clever. Curious…sometimes to the point of nosy."

Meredith had his hair threaded through her fingers, and she tugged at that one. "Not good."

"You use it for good. Context matters." He kept his lips moving along his invisible trail, massaging the breast he'd left behind. "You're a problem-solver. You're able to adapt. Impatient and patient. Quiet and loud. Amenable. Hard-headed. Never hard-hearted," he added, with her heartbeat thrumming against his lips, and through his body.

He could minister to her this way forever, but tonight taking care of her meant getting her home reasonably soon. "Blunt and circumspect. Trustworthy. Reserved, but not stand-offish. Magnetic. Enchanting. You are all those good things, and so many more. That's your mind. Your body is also many things. Adorable. Gorgeous. Lovely. Responsive. Sexy. Do you know what it all amounts to?"

She shook her head, and he wondered if the spark in her eye was a projection on his part. It didn't matter. She needed to hear this all the time.

"You…are…" He pursed his lips over her left nipple, savoring the "ahh" he got in resoinse. Definitely not the cold. Her legs were active, he noted as she straightened one bent knee and then drew it up again, before twisting so they both fell to the left when he popped his lips off of her. "Precious."

Doubt hit its cue to appear in her eyes, but it'd taken the lead role from disbelief a year or so back, and every so often faith came in as an understudy. He'd keep saying it after trust and certainty were all he got; after her "I know," was sincere, with or without the eyeroll. He'd say it even if she never figured out how to respond.

He kissed her lopsided smile, and the apples that had gone pink again. It made him think of the work she'd done, barely acknowledged, while going through three years of residency. Her instincts made her want to flee from proclamations like that. She gave them no credence, but did assume that whoever made the claim would inevitably be disappointed by her.

He kissed the furrow between her brows. She knew he believed it. That she was precious to him. She'd readily admit that her skills were valuable—"I was a risky investment, but it looks like it'll pay off."—Generalizing to acknowledge that everything about her was invaluable to the world was a hard turn from listening to Ellis 's evaluations, which balanced Meredith's worth against her own career trajectory.

He flicked open the bottle. Dammit. He didn't expect warming lube; she didn't like the sensation, but he'd hoped for room temperature. "This might be cold, baby."

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

"Says the woman whose teeth are chattering."

She snapped her jaw at him, and moved her knees apart. It was impossible not to think of prom in this position. The telltale panties were soaked by the time he took them off, and she'd grabbed and ground. They'd both been desperate to satisfy arousal and deny desire. Tonight, she needed him to believe her words over her body, but he didn't think it'd be the right call to simply use her and be there tomorrow. He wasn't going to reinforce the idea that approval and praise were all she should expect in return for giving someone what they wanted from her.

He'd definitely underestimated her preference for cold; he'd always assumed it was the contrast to the heat she'd collected, but it took only setting his finger over the smooth hood of her clit to put paid to that theory. She bucked with a happy groan, the kind of reaction that usually took working her up for long enough that he was been sworn at.

"Sorry." She had one hand behind her head; he grabbed the other. He'd be watching her face, regardless, as he tested her readiness for friction and pressure.

"You're kidding, right?"

The paper under her rustled with her shrug. "Dunno. Been all loud and reactive enough t'night, haven't I?"

"I adore you loud and reactive. You know that."

"Yeah. I mean, when you're fucking me it's one thing, but, like—"

"No," he said, as lost as he'd been the times she'd gone shy on him in the trailer. It'd been one thing for her to be more reserved once she'd had roommates around, but in the middle of the woods? He'd laughed when she'd asked if he was sure he wanted that, misreading her sincerity. That'd been in the spring, after-Addison, and it'd taken until the fall, post-Rose, for him to unravel the mix of assumptions and judgements that had gone into the contradiction.

"No but-likes." He slipped his hand under her and squeezing. The divot from her sucking in her cheek was gone as quickly as the upturned corner it'd blocked. "Okay, yeah, see, it's more obvious that something is up when you don't react to the butt joke."

"Gotta start somewhere."

"Start what?"

"Nothing. I don't know what I'm saying. Not…. I'm not that…. What about ass-likes? There. Can you just lube…? Ugh, I can't even say things like I'm not…. I was so big on not…. All the stuff Mom complained about, the making nicey-nice banquet shit? She was so fake, talking through her ass at those things, and then making fun of them on the cab-ride home. She'd say that by my generation we'd be able to just be surgeons—At Harvard-related shit, she'd say she did it for me, and the least I could do was not be a total heathan.

"Do you get it? She was saying that it'd take name-dropping and old-dude schmoozing to get me anywhere. So I just….refused to care about the…the place settings, or…or making an impression. I could stay back from the line where she'd stop taking me, but I've gotten worse at not crossing lines."

He let his finger glide over her glans. "Mer, you're great with patients, and families. The interns look up to you."

She snorted. "Not belittling insecure ducklings is not the same as having to make small talk and be demure. I said the thing about Adele not being a consolation prize? S'true. She's her own person, but she's a Chief's Wife person—" Derek blinked. Again he could hear the capitals, but she didn't mean Richard. More like…the ultimate chief. The ur-Chief. He wondered, did growing up around hospital hierarchy affect what she thought this job menat? "L-Like, Addison would've been good at it, if she got over not getting the job herself, and—ogghh, sweet motherfucking…." She pressed her lips together, almost like she might be sick again, but words were what she wanted to keep from coming out of her mouth. He repeated the quick tweak, hoping for it to hold her full attention as long as possible.

Goddamn it, Shepherd. How much of "you weren't thinking about Richard," was you weren't thinking about me? None of it. Not that night. Preoccupied by Richard, worried about him—her own feelings hadn't ranked. Maybe he'd been wrong to think he could do this—

He couldn't think that. Meredith's eyelids were fluttering, but it wouldn't take any time at all for her to zero in on a hint of uncertainty. She'd had to be fast at reading moods to duck in and out of her mother's presence, he was sure. Otherwise, she was the lightening rod for all her frustration.

Addison was great at hobknobbing with the uptowners that'd supposedly been their circle in Manhattan. Long before they'd started growing apart, catching sight of her across a ballroom had made him feel bumbling, out-of-place. He'd been almost exactly Meredith's age at the beginning, but he'd been quick to adapt—No. To conform. Meredith resisted conformity, whether she wanted to or not. That was why she hadn't become her mother's clone: she couldn't.

She made a series of sweet keening noises, and he returned to gliding with increased pressure. "Love, are you hearing me?"

"Y-Yeah."

"You're listening?"

"Same thing."

It wasn't, and she knew it, but he wasn't going to take the deyour bait.

"I sprang this on you, I know that. And, it's not a First Lady, required to make appearances thing. If you're not comfortable—" He knew he'd gotten it wrong when her face contorted with something that wasn't pleasure before his words were out. She was human Jenga, sometimes: no matter how carefully you moved, you couldn't know what would upset the balance, and things fell apart too fast for you to figure out the physics between one time and the next.

She pushed up on her elbows, and he swore he heard the clatter of the blocks that'd been shifting since she'd left Joe's. "I'm the chief's wife. D'you know how it'll appear if I'm not with you?"

"Like you're a busy, busy surgeon?"

"Bzzzt, try again! 'Dr. Shepherd, where's your wife?' 'He found a babysitter.' 'Ha, Dick, be nice.' "

She really did have talent, he thought. He could practically see the archetypal characters she was mimicking.

"'Oh, he knows I'm just jealous. Seems like only yesterday I was at a fundraiser for Dana Faber and interrupted a…let's say, a lively discussion she and Ellis were having about her curfew. She was a pert little thing, if you catch my meaning. Colorful languiage, too!'

Nope. You can't make that face," she added in her own voice, her finger drawing a bumpy circle in the air in front of him. "You want—You need keep this job, if just to give it back. The ho has heard it all before. Heard it from you. I can take it from the ladies who brunch."

He hadn't…? No, he definitely hadn't asked her about the brunch, yet. Did she actually think that was the phrase, or…? Christ, what was this, contact drunk? That was not important, it was just that there was a lot happening, here. He wasn't sure, exactly, where the sinkhole had come from, and she wasn't mad enough—or was just mad enough—that she hadn't moved the leg that keeps brushing against his cock.

"Okay, so, you'll come with me?"

She pushed up hard enough to fling herself forward and grabbed onto his shoulders, and he might as well have been the one who'd come into this with dulled reflexes; he floundered long enough for her to take hold of his cock.

"D'you know what that'll look like?" she asked, her voice somewhere between a threat and a growl. "You'll want me to be all put together and pretty. I'll manage it for long enough that you'll think I was in vino exaggerating that night in the ortho work room. Then, at some moment where absolutely everyone will notice, I will catch my heal on a crumb, knock over breakable, and swear like a fucking co-ed on a bender."

"You put together very pretty." He'd grabbed her wrist, and she wasn't trying to stop him from tugging it upward. Not physically. She wasn't making it easier, either.

"What're you basing that on? Prom, where we ended up just like this? Me slumping down the aisle at Cristina's wedding? The mixer?"

Each of those brought an image that made disengaging her hand less appealing. Once he'd managed it, he put her hand on his other shoulder, and covered her fingers with his; that was best for both of them.

Strange, how loving someone this much could mean resisting her.

Able to zoom out, he considered how she carried herself. He was sure it'd been called "boyish," which was wholly inaccurate. He preferred "coltish," but she might take that wrong—"a juvenile horse?" or "Bambi's the other sister"—She hadn't mentioned this year's mixer, or Stevens' wedding; that lavender dress that'd been gorgeous on her. As gorgeous as the wedding dress would've been—Did something in you know, is that why you didn't invite your flock?—No, if he was right about what was at the heart of this, that would be fuel for the fire.

As he was thinking, he made another rookie mistake; he took long enough that she broke the silence.

"I don't sit up straight. I snort, I spill stuff. I dropped a kidney."

"You caught—"

"I step on hems. I own great shoes, but with very few exceptions look like a misfiring robot in heels higher than an inch or two. You met me because I fled before I could say something wrong to Richard, and end up making a scene in front of everyone who'd matter in my life for years to come. I said the tequila thing sober. I say the stupid things sober. The Head of Chaplaincy at MGH once asked me if I'd be going to Harvard, and without taking a second to consider my audience, I said, 'Hell, no. They fucking wish.' That was junior year.

"What d'you think the chances are of me saying, 'fish dick' to a major donor?"

Forget resisting her, not cracking up at that was the most difficult thing he'd done, and that was knowing that the slightest uptick of his lip would be a mallet that turned turn the Jenga blocks into smithereens. He didn't dare move his lips, not even to point out that Harvard had, in fact, wished for her.

"D'you know why I became the girl who dances on tables? Having the rhythm to play drums didn't make me any less of a klutzy dancer, but even One-Shot Meredith could get past that. It gave me something to do between drinks—took a long time to be sure I wouldn't dump whole cups of punch on myself. Probably saved me from alcohol poisoning early on—But consciously? When I got stared at, it was on my terms.

"Rremember the way Bailey's dad looked at her at Christmas? It was that from playground to banquet room, whatever I did. Reading, nerd. Listening, creep. With the boys? Trouble. With the girls? Wannabe. Shoulda been the other way around. Talking? 'Gross, no one wants to hear that.' Not talking? 'Say something, freak.' 'Sp-sp-spit it out, M-M-Meredith.' 'Shut up, Grey, no one asked you.' 'Keep a civil tongue in your head.' 'You're highly intelligent, Miss Grey, if only your language reflected it.' 'You think anyone's gonna trust a surgeon who speaks like a trollop?'"

"Mer—"

"At my parties, it didn't matter that I didn't have a dad to ask me onto the floor. I didn't have to know the steps or risk having my shoe hit a candelabra. It'd been years since I was the quiet girl, but I had to go away to college before I could just talk. Everyone was more into hearing their own voice; all of us monologuing about Gender and Sexuality 101, and no one knew who Ellis Grey was. Then, I was supposedly an adult, and in almost every situation—temp jobs, clubbing, didn't matter—I was back to not knowing what to say, except that it probably shouldn't be about the article I read from the journal I nicked from Mom. People didn't want to hear about the other stuff I cared about either—the environment, or civil liberties, or music—It was like…like the whole world had forgotten what passion was. I steered Sadie away from Italy just so I could fall back on the language barrier while we traveled.

"But at med school…everyone wanted to hear the gross stuff." She looked at him, and he almost forgot why his hands were where they were; he wanted so badly to touch her while her eyes were shining like this.

What must it have been like to find somewhere she fit in after a lifetime being told she'd fail there? To be drawn to people, but be as afraid of letting out her new secret as she'd been starting school in the first place, twenty years earlier?

"I did interviews, and I had a good bedside manner. I'm great with patients, and families. I thought I'd gotten better! And then…and then Mom came back, and there I was: stuttery, stammering Meredith! So, Chief—" She forcefully reclaimed her hands and pressed them against his face. "—what I thought was I oughta start doing a minute ago was speaking like a goddamn adult, but it'd be a lie. The kind that goes sour.

"Happy girlfriend was the façade that fell apart. The truth is easy lay in the bar." She moved her shoulders in what looked the most like an exaggerated chill, hard enough to make her tits bounce separately. "They won't have forgotten who I am. Which intern I was. Whose daughter I am. And I wouldn't be able to let them. But I am a grown woman." She made her point by forcefully reclaiming her hands, and curling her feet against the edge of the table and pushing up until her spine formed a curve, her quim thrust at his face. "I'm your wife, Chief Shepherd. Can't I support you the way I'm good at? The kind of making a stir that stays between us?" She circled her hips.

His dick—fish dicks, goddamnit, Meredith—was all for the idea, which she'd know from having those fingers exploring. They'd each worked independently, and her thumb had been stroking his balls…. Not happening. Not until they'd clarified a few things.

He wrapped his hands around her ankles before he kissed her cunt, then her clit where he sucked for just a moment. He kissed her mons and tufted the hair there while he kept going up to her navel, her waist, her breasts. her clavicle, her jawline.

He stopped at her mouth, moving back as she raised it toward him, until she lifted her head, her eyebrow making the irate, "What gives?" unnecessary.

"If it was possible, I would choose to hear every thought you have. Raw, unfiltered, rough draft. I will not care if you offend someone, or if you curse out a board member's husband for looking at a waitress the wrong way."

She turned toward the shelves on the back of the room. Telfa. Couldn't he just use their safe word to end this whole scene and take her home? Get her another dose of Aspirin and a ginger ale, and figure out what to say while she snored beside him?

No. She'd see rejection all over that, and a banana bag wasn't going to make tomorrow that much better. He wanted her to let him take care of her; not pretend she felt fine to avoid talking about something she'd buried this deep.

"You don't dance in public," she said, and the evenness of her tone worried him. Steadiness was one thing; it was the lack of accusation or anger that threw him. The words implied he'd found the right track. Where had it forked? Dancing in public….The prom? He hadn't danced with Addison so much as swayed with her. It'd been a Catch-22, unable to take his eyes of Meredith, while trying to keep his wife far enough away that she didn't notice Meredith's eyes on him.

He kept circling to that for obvious reasons, but nothing had come through while she'd joked about it—If Torres passed by that window, they'd have to pay her off this time, but asking Mer to just give him words was one tactic he could rule out fully—Dancing in public. I said the tequila thing sober. The girl who dances on tables. The kind of stir that stays between us. I was humiliated. Chief Shepherd, chasing his stupid, drunk wife.

She'd been pissed when Richard had called her in to hear Thatcher deliver an apology that was too little too late. If Richard decided that that misstep was an excuse to let himself off the hook for giving her his own, he had another thing coming. Derek would take her ire; he'd hear about all the other times Richard had already made things right, and how she wasn't family. Every spiel he'd ever heard accompanying Amy to NA and AA; going with Mom to AlAnon; he'd delve into all of them to get both Richard and Meredith to see exactly what she deserved. He'd also rethink how he'd advise her to respond. Right now, he was on the side of making the fist curled over her hip as effective as possible.

"Meredith, baby—"

"Don't 'baby' me!" she snarled, shoving her palm against his chest.

"Baby, you are not some problem I have to manage. I will love you if nothing about you ever changes. It's not a matter of tolerating some things and loving others. I love you. The system as a whole.

"Last time I…applied for this job, you being an intern came up a lot. it's only been two years, and you are not a different person. I'm not either. That doesn't means we haven't changed, or our relationship hasn't. It doesn't mean the board or donors will see that. We were sort of a scandal. That will not affect how I do my job.

"Sometimes, it will mean functions. They will be awkward as hell. Those things always are. I ran from the mixer, too, remember? I didn't want to have Richard ask me about my wife, but I really didn't want anyone else asking why I left New York; would I be staying in Seattle; did I have family here, did I like the weather…." He couldn't do what she did, but he tried to get across how frustrating, and just—meaningless it had felt. "I didn't want anyone getting close enough to know anything about me. Ten minutes later, I wanted to tell you everything."

"You wanted to fuck me," she said, and he was back to intercepting her wrists when it was both the smartest and stupidest thing he could be doing. "You wanted to take the straps of that dress down and see what color my nipples were. To find out if I tasted like tequila. You would've said the same thing to—"

"No."

"You gave me a line, Derek. You were wearing your 'pulling' shirt."

"That was bullshit. I didn't take you to the trailer for two months. You think I planned on taking someone home from the bar across the street from the hospital where I was going to work?"

She propped herself up on her elbows again, and he remembered the globes of her breasts that night, the straight cut of the dress as tempting as the deep v of her prom dress. She'd hunched, then; in the lobby carrying Izzie's clutch, and at the start of the aisle at Cristina's wedding. Her gait could be a lope sometimes, but it didn't drag anymore. That was why she hadn't thought of that hastily hemmed lavender dress; she hadn't tripped on it.

"You are still growing up," he said. "More than most, although, I do believe it's true for everyone. Thinking you're done may just be refusing to learn, and that's not something I see you ever doing." He smoothed the clear window of the tagaderm holding the IV in the crook of her arm.

"If mingling with the Emerald City elite isn't something you care about studying, I will want you by my side. I need you to keep me from taking myself too seriously."

"It's a serious job."

"Not more than brain surgery.

"Actually, you know what I think of? I think of you getting your cohort to rally behind Izzie, and then standing up to Richard. I think of you taking over Sadie's appendectomy, and then taking on the blame. Taking in the disaster, taking care of the patient, and then dealing with the PR. That's leadership."

"I'm not a role model."

"I said 'leader.' We'll shelve that, because what's more important is this: I am not embarrassed by you. I am not ashamed of how we got here. Nothing you do or say will be humiliating to me." She flinched as though he'd stuck her again. "Is that what she'd say? You humiliated her?"

"She thought she was raising a daughter not a buffoon, but if I couldn't figure out how to do better…."

"We're gonna put aside the part where you were a child, and she was being a horrible parent and a worse teacher—I won't think that, because I'll know you're there because you love me. If I had wanted to play the game of keeping up appearances, I'd have stayed in New York. I wanted this job, because I want to fix the hospital. I'm not gonna deny that it could be a good career move, but if they expect my wife to be anyone other than the talented, honest, clever—"

"Okay, okay." She moved the hand she'd shoved him with into his face. He knocked her arm lightly aside and closed more of the distance between them.

"—impressive, wonderful, wily, growing, grown woman she is," he added. "I will—"

"Do nothing! I don't want it to be about me!"

"What about with you? How about if next time I keep you in the loop, and everything doesn't change on you in a single day?"

"That'd be good."

"You haven't lost him, you know. If he's mad at either of us, it should be me. You did the ri—"

"You're only saying that because I freaked out. I was gonna let that surgery happen. I wasn't ready for it. Any of it," she added in a mumble.

"You told me. That was the right thing. I have the experience, and I can stand up to Richard. You wanted the surgery, yeah. You also wanted him to step up. To not have been lying to you. To be the person you thought you could count on, after George, and Izzie, and the transplant, and the merger. It's been a lot."

"That's the thing, it was, but it was…. I had you. And, yeah, you got the job kinda underhandedly, but you have it and I…want to be supportive, or whatever. To make it easier."

"You do. If not for you, I wouldn't have been any more ready for this than I was two years ago. It's possible that staying on wasn't the right choice for Richard, and by proxy the hospital, but it was the right thing for us. We're the team that matters the most."

"Yeah?"

"Don't you think?"

"Well, I wouldn't trade you for cardio, that's for sure." She latched one arm over his back, and he pulled her up. She nuzzled into his neck, tilting her mouth up to add, "And I'm glad none of your fishing holes have dick fish." As she said that, her hand grabbed his cock again, spreading the dot of lube in her palm. "When'd you get that?"

"I'm very sneaky. Stealthy. Slithery."

"Slick?" he offered.

"Will be. Please?" She worked her thumb against the base of his neck, matching the speed of her other hand.

"C'mere." He slid her to the very edge of the table, tipping her forward to align her cunt with the tip of his cock. She sighed as he entered her. "Found your heat, love."

She hummed, her face buried in the curve of his shoulder, clinging so closely that he kept one hand on her spine to rock her backward, the other getting access to her clit mostly thanks to the lube that was already there. He hadn't spent this long listening to her breathe for nothing.

"Just right, Goldilocks. You're just right for me. I'd still be off in the woods if not for you."

"Nuh-uh."

"Yup. Be a woods hermit. Definitely wouldn't have managed Isaac's surgery. Know why?" She shook her head. Her breath was hitting his neck in small huffs. If his hand hadn't been pressed so firmly against her back, he wouldn't have felt the small beads of sweat on her skin. Nothing close to a sheen, but better. Fairer, when her walls were only getting hotter with friction. "'Cause you were there. That whole long night. You were still healing, but you stayed up, and you had all the right questions. But most of all, you believed I'd figure it out. I went through every approach without an answer, and you…. God, Mer, I don't know how…how anyone could not workto deserve what you just… Fuck. Look at me, bright eyes. What are you, huh? Tell me."

Her eyes were wide, but he didn't see the desire to run from this—praise, intamacy, being seen—it'd been gone for longer than he'd known it. She'd gotten past more than most people, and she was still fighting.

"S'just us, Mer. Tell me. I need you to tell me." She pulled her legs up, bringing him flush against her when she took him in. "So beautiful, sweetheart." He rolled his knuckle over her clit. "You are—" He'd been going to finish with something else, but he lost it in the moan that choked him. Her hands were busy on his chest, following paths mapped out in her head, and tugging at his chest hair.

She went momentarily still, save for her tongue wetting her dry lips. They formed the shape of the answer he'd wanted. He grinned, but she brought the tips of her fingers to his mouth.

"Precious," she said, quiet, but clear in the dark room. Her gaze held his for long enough for him to see her settle into claiming the word, and then she lowered her head; a gentle vampire trying to suck the blood and tension up from his cock.

"That's it. You're so precious. Precious girl. Precious, Meredith. Oh, God, Mer…Mer…Meredith!"

Muscles from her back down rippled as she pumped and squeezed him, and when he released, she went almost fully limp against him. Almost.

He rotated his hand, using his fingertip to examine the bump of her clit. Not on the cusp, but proof of concept. More promising was her whimpering response to having her glans wiggled. He moved his thumb over it as he tried to lay her down again, but her arms were gripping as tightly as her legs this time.

"Hey, Koala Mer, what gives? Does that not feel good?"

"'Course it does," she scoffed. "Just right. Always. You know that." She sat up, searching his face. "You know? That you read me best?"

"I had an idea."

"Good." She returned her head to his shoulder. "I got want I needed. We can be done."

He kissed her hair. "I know you're tired, babe. You won't have to do anything."

"You too, Chief Shepherd. Tired. Long week."

"Never too much to finish what I started."

"You started warming me up. Mission accomplished." He laughed, but she pushed up again, moving her weight from his arms to the table. "Is…Is it okay if I wanna be finished? Not finished?"

"Of course," he said, slowing and lightening the stimulation on her clit. "Sure?"

"I wanted you to take me here. Now, you can take me home."

"Okay, sweetheart. If you want to pick back up when we get home, we'll make that happen."

This wasn't a first, but it was a rarity. The whole situation was compared to how she used to get, assuming that her satisfaction was secondary. She'd drive herself into a frenzy trying to finish before he did, so used to being cast off with a tied off condom.—"Some ask, but if you say 'no,' ithey're more likely to get butt-hurt than…do anything about it.— Did it take knowing how responsive she was to be sure she hadn't gotten there? He didn't think so. She was naturally tight, and could refract quickly, but that didn't explain the allusions she'd if you had to ask, you were doing something wrong. There'd been a few misunderstandings between her opening up about that, and him explaining he was disgusted at other men, not at her—That anxiety hadn't been there in a while. Oh, he could get her frothing, but not because she needed more than she thought he'd give.

"We don't quid pro quo," she reminded him, as he draped the terrycloth he'd put under the faucet for her between her legs. "Mmm."

Yeah, he could definitely get her in the tub tomorrow.

"I don't leave you hanging. It's a gray area."

"Make that joke again, and see if I let you sleep at all this weekend."

"That a promise?" he asked. She shrugged, but it was accompanied with a soft smile. It stayed there while he unhooked the IV for her to get her shirt on. "Here, hold this for me." He draped his tie over her head, knotting it loosely when she giggled. "Perfect."

"I'm sure no one will notice."

"Depends. You gonna put on your pants?"

"Ha, ha, ha. Yeah. They're tight."

"Did notice that. Sure you wouldn't be more comfortable if I…? Okay, never mind."

"Flexible," she reminded him, like that truly explained the maneuver she'd pulled to get her pants and underwear on in one move. She pulled her legs up onto the table, crossing her arms on her knees and resting her head on them.

"I'm going make sure you sleep this weekend—maybe through it." He shrugged his shirt on and went over to her purse, returning the bottle and looking for a brush.

"Have a hat, too," she complained, when he went around the table with it.

He didn't stiop his minstrations, which were solely to fish out any remaining pieces of batting. "You never remember a hat."

"Did today. Hey, use your own brush!"

"Where do you think I'm hiding that?"

"In your office, Chief Shepherd. Gotta get your stuff, right? I can wait here." She looked like a hard breath would've tipped her onto her side again. His hours had been unpredictable over the week, and she'd been awake whenever he came in. How long had she been awake apart from that?

Almost as though she knew he was doing taking-care-of-Meredith math, she cut into his thoughts. "Hey, Derek?"

"Yeah?"

"How d'you think Richard avoided becomng 'Dick?'"

"He is—" he started, then heard what she'd actually said. 'Oh, um…."

She smirked. "Lately, he's definitely been one, but a…a couple times Mom went off about the other guys in their cohort. Sounds like they were pricks—You guys really should consider how many words for penis have become derogatory.—so if he didn't get it by then, just seems like….I had a friend whose little brother who was a Richard, but he was Ricky. Didn't stop us from manipulating him into telling strangers he was 'a little Dick.'

"So, either it's good that they didn't dub him that, because it'd have ben demeaning, or it's bad because they didn't see him as one of them—'cause he's not a Rich or Rick, either."

"You don't think they did, and it simply didn't follow him?"

"No," she said. "Too many old white dudes still here. Do you think the fish dicks call him Dick?"

"I think dick doesn't sound like a word anymore. Um. Part of it was that he's not a Jr. No reason to shorten his name growing up, past maybe 'Richie' when he was tiny. Then, here…. Were I him, I'd be suspicious of one of those guys deciding they're buddy-buddy enough to call give me by a nickname—"

"A dick name." Meredith cackled, and he regretted that he hadn't been facing her directly when she'd had that epiphany.

"He's a savvy man, I'm sure he's seen through some fake respect in his day. I'm equally sure that he must be really goddamn tired of it."

"Mom ignored a lot of sexism, but I always thought that was enabling them. I dunno. Maybe chugging pitchers to prove myself to the boys was the same thing."

"Except, you weren't, I assume, acting totally out-of-character to earm their approval."

She was quiet for a moment, and once he'd finished securing his cufflinks, he turned, half expecting her to have drifted off. She had her head on her arms, and her gaze was lowered. "I didn't have an in-character."

"I doubt that's true." He pocketed his phone and returneed to the stool, taking her hands. "Everyone tries on new personas when they're young. You could talk baseball with the guys, and social justice with your music friends, and be the wry commentator who could keep up with Sadie's rich hangers on. That there were times where you didn't pick a fight when you tried to blend in doesn't mean you were a different person. I'd bet that a lot of what makes you Meredith was consistent. The dirty jokes. The instinct to help people. The competitiveness.

"You boxed yourself in for med school. You had to, to meet the requirements and care-coordinate for Ellis. There were a lot of parts of yourself and your dreams that you held in until she was gone. It's okay to be figuring out how they fit into the happy married Meredith puzzle."

He grabbed the tie and tugged her down to kiss. She snickered against his mouth. "What?"

"Just…my mom… it's so weird and gross, but my mom… Richard. Dick's—" He'd never been so grateful for the pound of a knock. Meredith startled with a yelp, and he wrapped his arms around her for a moment, kissing the crown of her head.

"One sec," he assured her, going to open the door.

"Here you go, Chief," Callie said, holding out his briefcase and jacket.

"Thanks, Torres. I owe you…put it on our tab."

He'd realized when they were disccussing prom and the bulletin board panties she'd claaimed. This time, he'd known she'd come through, and maybe wanted her to see that he'd cleaned up the mess by himself.

Meredith frowned at him. "You're sneaky."

"I am a discrete texter, Besides, you broke apart all those casts; she owed you a favor."

"Don't patronize me. She handled me until you could come get your wasted wife."

"Please." Callie snorted. "You should've seen me on Arizona's birthday. That was before I knew it was basically a ten-year-old's wake."

Derek cringed. The Anderson's situation had not been handled well; for them, the hospital, or Robbins. Did he know what he'd have done differently? If he hadn't been preoccupied with rubbing his success in Richard's face and subverting his authority, could he have been someone Richard would have confided in? Did he still see him as his student, too green for that? Or was he a shark sniffing for blood? He'd tried to warn him about the coup—but once Richard had started making decisions to avoid it, had Derek done anything other than complain?

Meredith was looking appraisingly at Callie. "You're under-appreciated, Torres,."

"That's what I say when I put on my stethoscope."

"Not looking in the mirror?" He took in the expression that crossed over both women's faces, and gave the room a once-over to make sure neither of them was within reach of the mallet. "Because usually…affirmations…the mirror. Granted, not an affirmation as such, but sayingyou know you're worth more than…. Here." He jammed the knit hat he'd pulled out of Meredith's coat pocket onto her head.

"You said the dumb thing sober!" she marvelled.

"Yeah, I did. Sorry, Torres."

"It's fine, Chief. I know Arizona appreciates me." Callie pursed her lips. "Gah, definitely weird."

Meredith nodded emphahtically. "Right?"

Derek rolled his eyes at the banana bag he was working through the sleeve of her coat.

"You lock up here, I'll take this upstairs?" Callie took his lab coat off of the IV pole.

"Deal," he said. "Here, Mer," he held the coat up for her to put her arms in before they moved to getting off the table.

"He's tryin' to keep me distracted so I won't say anything about panty pocketing," she declared, hopping to the ground while his hands were occupied, and covering for a stumble by falling into the jacket. Before he could grab her, instead of it, she dropped onto the stool. He might have to recalibrate his assumptions about her coordination. "C'mon, seriously, Derek?"

"What?"

She pulled the sides of her coat closed with one hand, and pointed at the double rows of buttons with the other. "No one is gonna think, 'hmm, is that a banana bag in there, or…?'"

He very determinedly didn't smirk. Her breasts didn't fill to that degree, but it would be a good line the next time unhooking her bra gave her obvious relief. "I don't think anyone will…. It needs to be elevated!"

"It looks like I let McSteamy have his way with me. Not how people thought. Because they all thought I screwed him, which is funny, because they never put together that he was only here the night I br—" She trailed off, while kicking at the floor and sending herself gliding toward the opposite wall. Derek made eye contact with Callie, who caught her gently by the shoulders. Meredith tilted her head to look back at her. "It's kinda mean to you to say I broke George."

"It's not very nice to you, either," Callie pointed out, taking a wide step around to face her rather than spinning the stool. "This is cute," she added, plucking the tie around Meredith's neck before adjusting the banana bag—which he would have done if he'd had a chance—and buttoning Meredith's jacket in the process.

"Used to have a couple skinny ties. Mom called 'em an affectation." Of all the reasons to burn with resentment at Ellis Grey, it should not be that she'd deprived him of that image for three years of knowing her.

"It does sound like your style. Not that you don't rock a dress."

"S'easier. The one event I wore a suit to.… I was twenty-one. I didn't care what anyone said, except…uh, Mom not saying something was worse than her saying something."

"I feel that." Callie pulled Meredith's hat down over the tips of her ears. "Your guy has an office, now, you know."

"He also has a master-key."

Meredith! He bit his tongue to keep it in his mouth, and she smirked at him over Callie's shoulder.

"Okay, time to clear out. Head's up, Chief." Callie sent Meredith his way and put her hands in her pockets. "Get some sleep, Grey, and I'll let you scrub in on my knee replacement Monday."

"Seriously? Score!"

"Thanks for your help, Torres," Derek said, narrowly avoiding got clipped by Meredith's fist as it punched the air.

"Sure thing. Uh, and Chief? Thanks for showing me that letter."

"Not a problem. You're going to go places, Callie, but that shouldn't mean leaving your family."

"Yeah. Well…I'm mostly glad I didn't break my lease. Good night McDreamys."

Meredith was beaming at him when the door clicked shut. "I could've told her I'd've been a better McDreamy than George—if I hadn't been hung up on you—and you think she's hot, too, and we hope she and Arizona are very happy together, but—" She kept monologuing into his mouth for an impressive amount of time, but he kissed her for longer.

Whenever something like this came up, something that she would've known—or thought she would've known—if she wasn't new to relationships, as opposed to it being new to their relationship, she had to test the bounds. It was throwing spaghetti at the wall to sure he would stick. It'd been one of his reasons for texting Callie and not Cristina. Primarily, that'd been because Meredith hadn't sought Cristina out, but also, he wasn't sure she ever considered filtering what she said to her.

"You were a really good chief just then," she added, as he collected their bags. He pulled her to him, taking her left hand with his right, and wrapping his other arm around her. She was steadier on her feet than she'd been when he came in, but not enough that she wouldn't start to drift, or misjudge the placement of one shoe enough to trup the other.

"Am I allowed to know which letter?"

"Um… it was out where you could've come across it any time you were in my office, so…. It was just a copy of a letter Richard sent the board, advocating for her. I was upset on Callie's behalf at the time. Personally. She's your friend, she was Addison's only friend for a while, and now she's Mark's friend—No," he added as her mouth opened. "It's not as weird as you'd think. The three of us got along for a long itme—Plus, she'd just lost a guy she'd been married to, and her parents will still be on the other side of the country when they get their heads out of their asses."

"Look who has his optimism back! I hope they do, too, though."

"So, I thought Callie should stay here, because we like Callie. They fired Dr. Torres—also the wrong call but I see how they made it."

"What do you…? How?" Meredith frowned up at him, and then aimed the same look downward as he kept her from tripping on the metal of an open threshold. He kissed the side of her head. Her lips settled on chagrinned twist.

"What I said in there, pretty much. She's a first-year attending, but it's obvious she's going to innovate. She's an investment. To invest, you have to spend."

"Oh. So, but Mercy West….they didn't offer her anything better. Couldn't have, if they were at a point where we could…. I dunno, Mom didn't do admin."

"You know more than…. Shelfing that. You're correct." He steered her onto the elevator, and jogged his hand against her arm as she leaned against him. "They did let her start as an attending, and they had…well, they used to have a good department. One that honestly…. Do you know how she got here? She and the charge nurses have basically been running the service since I started."

"Uh, yeah. We've never had a heart-to-heart about it, but she did her internship somewhere out west—down west—She didn't say, but I got Utah or Colorado vibes. Maybe Wyoming!—She got through that, but there were… personality issues. Think she figured it'd change once the weeding was done—they did a PGY-1 general internship before specializing, but…it didn't. I got the sense that it was a mix of sexism and a personality…possibly a personality, and an incident."

Even knowing she was not at her best, Derek wouldn't like to be on the other side of the fury that flashed on Meredituh's face. Whatever had happened, however far it went would be far enough, in her opinion. Never mind that anyone who could overpwoer Callie—He winced to himself, glad Meredith wasn't looking at him. He'd made the stupid, male, assumption that a fair fight had been likely.

"It's hard enough to get a PGY-2 slot in ortho where it's not unusual to be accepted for an internship and then not to be given one of the program's residency slots. There were no sports medicine openings. She'd been drawn to ortho-trauma in med school. We were a trauma center; we'd been her second choice, and we were willing—May've had some rats jumping the ship, considering where the department is. Having a few good attendings is fine, but training under ortho gods for a few years gave her an edge. Living in the hospital couldn't have hurt."

"Jeez. That makes sense. Explains a lot. At that point Mercy had a great program, but their ortho gods all left over the past couple of years when they kept breaking promises about new equipment. They still had the patients, so they had a lot of basic procedures to offer a first-year attending. The same ones she'd have been doing here, except here she had the foundation to start building upward."

"She's gonna change the face of orthopedic surgery if someone funds her. Richard didn't want to be the one to tell her no, so he cut her career off at the start, instead of giving her a year of experience as a fellow?"

"Essentially."

Meredith's forehead bumped against his shoulder. "That was in June."

"Yes. I don't think he'd started—"

"It's…That's not…. It might not even.…."

"Your mother. He ended things in June, right before they had to sign fellowship agreements."

"It's totally different, but—"

"No, no…. The timing isn't him, it's the industry, but…. He had more to do with Miranda not switching to peds than she let on. She has her own reasons, but he fought against her leaving….I don't know, Mer. It just seems like he's been using all this fresh talent for his own benefit, while pretending to be encouraging…. I've known he was being unreasonable, but I'm an arrogant jackass."

Meredith snorted. "You're a careful arrogant jackass. His encouragement isn't bad, but…he sent me to the woods too soon for you. Before you were ready. And… that embolism! Remember when Owen was mad about Cristina doing the thoracotomy? Richard let her do one ages ago. During the tumor trial ages. He always lets us do stuff. I dunno if it's bad, but…. If you trust us, trust us. Believe Arizona when she says, 'no.' She's got the tiny humans under a knife. They can't say, 'no.' Their parents won't. The doctor has to make the call. And…. I used to call the Chief the boss doctor."

"Did you now?"

"I'm not calling you boss doctor."

"Of course not," he agreed, as they went through the automatic doors. "Interim Boss Doctor."

The February wind whipped the ends of her hair in his face, and he blew at it ineffectively, moving close until he was able see blowing raspberries against her cheek. Her laughter rang out over the mostly empty parking lot.

"All good?" he asked once she was securely in the passenger seat. She nodded, but her fingers lingered on his face when he kissed her, a perplexed look in her eyes. "What?'

"Nothing. Only…I never even asked if you were ready to go. You could've had patients, or forms, or whatever. Sorry."

"Mer, I'm always ready to go home with you."

She wrinkled her nose, but where he expected her to call him on the realities of the job, she asked, "Even tonight?"

Especially tonight, but she might misinterpret the reason for that.

"Every night." When he got into his side of the car, she was curled up against her door. "Hey, had these in my bag," he said, handing her the peanut butter crackers he'd asked Callie to pillage from his desk. "And this." He opened the water bottle from the box he kept in the trunk. She took it and stuck the crackers in the cup holder.

There were three turns in the process of going from the hospital to the parking lot alongside Joe's, and she didn't stir until the last one. "What are you doing?"

"Retrieving your keys."

"Derek, no. I'll just come by Monday, or…or—"

"It won't take a minute, and then we'll be home, okay?"

"Cristina already texted to ask if I'm okay!" she blurted, and the next words tumble over each other. "She was in surgery, meaning, Grace Gossip is active and on the alert. I'll come by Monday. He'll probably have Alex's by then, too!"

"Back before you know it. Drink your water!"

"Derek!"

He squared his shoulders on the familiar walk across the gravel. She didn't want him following her footsteps tonight, because of his job. That was why he had to do it. When she was so afraid that whatever scene she'd made was no different from the ones two years ago, which he hadn't been in a position to mitigate.

God. Two years, almost exactly, since a Valentine's Day where he'd seen the hope in Addison's eyes, and known they were wishing for different things on the first star over the trailer. Since he'd asked Meredith to walk the dog with him, and she'd confessed to "breaking" George…which meant that Thatcher had only been back in her life two years.

Last year, he'd failed her on Valentine's Day, and it'd taken almost breaking them for him to get himself together and be there for her. Richard was doing it in real-time, aftter—He stopped at the top of the bar stairs, hearing her words from maybe half an hour ago. "I need to know you don't think I'm a…." Guillible, screwball, screwup wasn't what she'd started to say, at all, Not when her fear was that who she was, the parts she couldn't change, would sabatoge him—sabatoge them.

She knew he didn't mean it. That didn't mean she believed he never would. The ones who keep failing you are the lemons. You're the mechanic who never gives in.

Joe was behind the bar, and as, well, jovial as ever. "Hey, it's the chief! What can we do for you, sir?"

Club soda, he thought, wryly, saying, "Meredith left her keys."

He liked Joe, he did. He wasn't the guys who'd accepted a fake from a fourteen-year-old—and not an expensive, made-to-order fake.

"Ah, yeah. Got them here." He deposited her key and fob on the bar. Derek swiped theem into his pocket.

"Cheers. Was there a tab?"

"Nah. She always pays up." She did. No unfinished business.

"Big crowd at Trivia Tuesday this week?"

"Dude, huge! Callie, Arizona, and Lexipedia killed it. Avery says he knows some Seattle Pres lameos, so it could go city-wide. We'll see."

"Yeah? I like the comradery that kind of thing encourages. Meredith thinks we should organize a darts bracket. I think she could get a pretty good turnout."

"Absolutely, especially now that she's hospital royalty. Official-like."

"I'm sure it looked good for you when Richard started coming in." Derek kept his tone the same, but Joe's smile started pulling in. "As long as he kept it together, you could pretend he was trying to make a good impression on the influx from Mercy West. And, hey, better a surgeon drinking here than across the street, right? I'm with you on that.

"But he broke his end of the deal. He made a scene on a busy night, risking mutual destruction. If you'd called me, or Hunt, or Karev, the story would've been that the Chief had been escorted out of your bar. Meredith Grey shows up? Well, that makes it a party."

"Hey, now. New Year's is all tourists and muggles—I wasn't sure I'd be able to find anyone who wasn't over there. From what he'd been saying, seemed like she was aware of the situation. I wanted to let the guy save face!"

"She was as aware as he wanted her to be. He was manipulating her, and by enabling him, so were you. She's not his daughter. She is my wife, and I am, currently, chief of surgery. If I hear about anything like that going on here: Anyone with a chip being served—and I mean anyone, not just personnel—a resident being called to deal with an attending's behavior. Any kind of cover-up that could affect this hospital as a whole? The gossip won't be about Meredith coming in to interrogate you. It'll be about the sudden popularity of the Harborview Alehouse, followed by the great property available across from the hospital. Am I clear?"

"Crystal, Chief."

"Keep my number where you can find it. Lose hers—unless it's Karev." Derek took a bill out of his pocket. "For your time.

"Part of Richard's problem is that he tries to be everyone's friend, Joe. To run a business, you have to pick sides. I'm biased, but my bets would always be on Meredith's." He dropped the cash and strolled to the door. Imagining Meredith storming out, he marveled that he'd only noticed the one bruise on her hip.

He hadn't noticed the moon, going in. It was full. Bad luck for anyone with real Valentine's Day plans, not a double-date with a genuine cynic, and Meredith, who could, it was true, play it up around Cristina.

She tasted of salt again, and a cracker and a half were gone from the packet—Did they have the groceries for a real breakfast? He'd make the pancakes Lexie-proof, but egg substitute wouldn't as work in hangover food—"Need anything from your car?"

"Uh-uh," she murmured. "At the hospital. Wrong direction." Her fingers twisted the lid of her water bottle, clockwise, widdershins, and back, while he merged onto the street. She was lit by the convenience store next to them, but it wasn't hard to picture it as moonlight. "Why are you smiling like that?" she asked. "Is there a body? That'd make up for me causing a scene."

"You're going to hate it," he warned.

"Try me."

"I had very romantic parents. Wherever my mom would say Dad wouldn't love her when she was old and gray, he'd go into this whole song, and the moon's out—"

"'Dancing in the Moonlight?' No, wrong generation."

"Very much. Uh. 'I love you in the morning and in the afternoon—'"

Meredith's head hit the window with a thunk that was a little worrisome. "Bad choices. Bad, Meredith."

"'I love you in the evening, and underneath the moon.'"

"I do see how you got there."

"'Skinamarinkadinkadink-'"

"'What'd Joe give you? Should I drive? Might be reduction.'"

"'Skinamarinkadinkadoo.'"

"I haaate you." Meredith harmonized on the last line, and then fell into a laugh that mixed her giggle and a deviant cackle. "i was a kid. My parents didn't sing, but…I dunno. Osmosis. TV. Babysitters. Babysitters with TV. Drag queen babysitters with—"

"TV?"

"Psh, they were the show, they'd have you know. With boas. There was one that could around my body seven times."

"I'd love to see that."

Her head dipped. "I've got a photos of 'em from after I got my camera at thirteen. None of that. Or everyone."

"I'm sorry, love."

"You cause AIDS? No. Not your fault. I killed the mood. Go back to being a skina-ma-rinka-doof."

"I love you when the ferry's boarding/and in an operating room/ I love you yelling at the bar man/ and I love you in the nude. Skinamarinkadinkadink. Skinamarinkadinkadoo. I love you."

Meredith didn't sing with him this time, but her smile made him want to lower the windows and push the pedal down to coast on the vibrancy of it.

"Is it morning?" she asked, when he'd run out of made-up lines and went back to the first verse.

"Not quite." He tapped the dashboard clock, and then repeated the rhythm on her thigh. She batted him away, which gave him the chance to take her hand. The time still only put a little over an hour and a half since he'd run into Callie in the hallway.

"I was gonna propose on Valentine's Day, did I ever tell you? All as cliché as you can imagine. Perfect, because you deserve perfect, but it wouldn't have been right for you. That's so obvious, now. Tonight, I can't imagine saying the things I said at the trailer. Then, I couldn't have pictured tonight."

"Dunno why. It's classic Death." She sighed. "No…I tell you I'm not simple, and I won't try to be. Not like Addison, or your mom, or sisters are. I just…. We're a fairy-tale. I'm happy. Even mad at you, I was happy, because I knew we'd be okay. But I'm not who anyone'd expect to be your wife. I'm just not."

"Then, they're wrong about me," he said, and for several minutes the whites of her eyes were in his periphery through the orange cast of every streetlight.

At her house—their house—lights were on from the attic to the porch, and he found himself contemplating how welcoming they were compared to the floods he'd had to put up at the trailer.

"I married you. Who you are, and who you will become, and I will support you on the way."

"Same." He thought of their spat about love and surgery, but she shook her head and swallowed. "We're the same. Same us."

"Same us," he repeated, and hopped out of the car to get to her door before she could attempt to beat him inside, based on principle that was more deeply ingrained than anything he could say.

"I got it," she argued when he caught her on the driveway made slippery by the mist that never disappeared this time of year. She had been clinging to the door, which kept the assertion from being a total lie.

"So what if you do?" The perplexed scrunch of her face made it hard not to throw off her thoughts by kissing her, but it was worth it to have her hold her hands out to him. "Silly supportive spouse survives seeking support."

"Smartass. You're humming."

He closed the last door with stuff they needed and grabbed her hands raising them over her head. "I love you in the morning/ln the afternoon." He let their arms sink toward her waist. "I love you in the evening and underneath the moon." He swung her gently back and forth, but stopped at the look on her face. "You okay?"

"I'm gonna need to learn a lot of that stuff," she said, in the soft, uncertain voice that meant "babies."

"Silly stuff."

"Not to little kids. Adults being on their level is the ideal. Developmentally necessary. You can't be the only fun parent."

"You're very fun."

"My fun isn't kid-friendly."

"It is how we'll get the kids."

She elbowed him on the porch steps, then added, "It wasn't fun. Alone. I never preferred drinking on my own, but…."

"But now it's not getting drunk then hanging out, it's the hanging out?" he guessed.

"Like…I'm a social drinker. not drinking to be social? That's weirder than you being Chief Shepherd."

That seemed like a powerful realization to open the door on.

Doing so, revealed Lexie was sitting on the stairs like a kid waiting for her parents. Her head jerked away from the wall seconds before she bounced to her feet in front of them. "You're home! I'm so sorry, Mer. I totally fucked up. I should've asked you along over him, but you would've said yes, because you're a great sister, and it would've been so uncomfortable—Not because of you! Because of him. It was because of him. I should've spoken up for you! But I hadn't told him about Mark, or Slo—"

"So, what, you thought I'd blab?"

"No…. No! I hadn't told him, because I hadn't seen him in a while, Work's been so…waah." Lexie waved her hand. "It's a lot better, now, Chief—He said congrats on that. He was kinda gloaty about Webber, actually, like you'd have kept ignoring it if he hadn't spoken up, even though a man who'd been in the program for so long—"

Derek wouldn't have imagined Meredith could tense more, but he felt it, and he was sure Lexie saw it.

"I did tell him Mom would've been disappointed that he didn't let me ask you, to reciprocate your invitation at Christmas, and then he told me not to talk about her as though I knew better—I left for school at seventeen, and it's a whole thing. He refused to go to…to visit me in Boston." Lexie grimaced. "I-I had to tell him about all of that stuff, and…it's…she's eighteen, and the baby…Mark wanting to….wantig us to…. I didn't know how he'd react, but it would've been something you shouldn't have to hear from him."

"I'd be happy to hear the truth from him."

"It wouldn't be! When Mom died, he'd say stuff like, I should just be a doctor. I'd be a sweet, gentle doctor. Why'd I want to be a killer? So… I wasn't sure that I hadn't done something to….to make it worse—with you, and him, and maybe even for her. I placated him, with the drinking, until…until I couldn't—and he almost died out of nowhere…and be just got stabilized on the meds.….And the truth is…he and I were never stable, which is…is really why I hadn't seen him much, and also…also why I didn't call him out for you. The time you gave us…the chance…. It's a gift. And I'm wasting it."

"Oh. Oh, Lex." The strain in Meredith's voice moved rapidly into the rest of her body."That's not…it's his…." Derek couldn't see her face, but he caught the small sound that was equal parts misery and annoyance. He flashed through every grimace in the car; the cracker picked up idly and dropped with equal blasé at the bottom of the last decline; the adjustment of the vent she usually hated blowing on her skin. He gestured at Lexie to move, and then grabbed her arm to keep her from following behind her sister. This was Meredith's ur-staircase, the one she'd learned how to climb stairs on, and he'd seen muscle memory basically sleepwalk her up them.

Once she'd made it and disappeared, aimed for their bedroom, he let go of Lexie, who lowered her eyebrows, confused.

"She can still drink tequila," he offered, wryly, taking the stairs three at a time.

Meredith was on her knees in the bathroom, and she drooped against his legs as soon as he was close enough. He pulled her hat off to stroke her hair. "There is a Trustees Brunch for Valentine's Day, and I'm being recognized. It's on a work day, but if you can arrange it, they'd like you there."

"What about you?" she asked, starting to grope for the counter, and then reaching up to him instead.

"I want you everywhere. You decide what that means."

"Bad at decisions," she groaned, flopping onto the bed. "Why'd I turn out headstrong? Authoritative parent. Should be great at obedien' trophy wife."

"You'd be someone else's wife, in that case."

"Coulda made it work with Sadie. Bossy bitch."

"Uh, does the sister-in-law get a vote?" Lexie appeared in the doorway, holding a can of ginger ale with a pink bendy straw sticking out of it. One of Meredith's eyes was visible over her elbow. She flicked it toward the door. She'd unbuttoned her coat downstairs, making it easy to wrangle off of her.

"Here." He handed Lexie the banana bag. "Keep it—you know that. Back in a few."

Downstairs, he hung up the coat and found the duct-tape within a minute, but kept poking around, half hoping for a 3M clip; mostly giving Meredith time to frame the basics of why she was the last person who'd judge Lexie over not using "the gift of time." Thatcher had far more of it than Ellis had, and he was particularly bad with forced relationships, in Derek's opinion. One reason he'd hung back while she made the donation decision was that he'd pushed her toward him originally, and gotten a lesson on how having no father could be better than having certain fathers.

Back upstairs, Meredith was curled up in pajamas. Her post-op recovery had eliminated any touch aversion that'd lingered between the sisters, but he was still surprised to see Lexie's hand on her back.

Lexie's quiet boldness wasn't something he'd encountered with his sisters—who'd inherited Mom's brashness—or Addison's snappy determination. Meredith came closest with her tendency to do first, discuss later, but the doing tended to be loud, literally or metaphorically.

Lexie helped him hang the fluids, and then retreated toward the door. "I've got to get out of this dress. Maybe burn it. I look like a kid at the Science Fail, but, somehow, two waiters and a maitre d' assumed I was Dad's date." She made a face that he had seen on her sister, and then tilted her head at him. "Is it weird for you—?"

"I'm sure in a couple of days, I won't look for Richard every time."

"—that Mark's going to be a grandpa?" she finished.

Hearing that put into words still managed to emuse him enough that he shook the feeling it'd be nice if the floor could open and take him as sacrifice enough to snicker. A limp hand smacked his thigh.

"It is funny, in that it's absurd!" Lexie said. "A year ago, your mom was telling him we worked 'cause he was juvenile. Dad calls…called him 'young man,' because he's overcompensating, and a dork, but…. He was spawning when I was nine. I know you guys…but Meredith's been a grown-up, and I never bothered finding off-campus housing!"

"Huh." He was still adjusting to being close to people whose lives hadn't overlapped his for a decade or three. They were puzzles, and sometimes a piece-sized detail, or the whole section of meeting Miranda's father would snap into place and connect patches he'd collected on the side. Of the strays who'd moved in and out of the house, Lexie had been most transient; she hadn't complained about the attic; she'd been thrilled over that crappy apartment she'd shared with O'Malley. All attributable to having spent eight years moving in and out of dorm rooms.

"It's weird," he conceded. "But it's not…er… shocking? That it was someone he'd dated is. He never wanted to be a deadbeat dad…. He'd leave business cards—But the onus of birth control is on women, not everyone gets to see the beauty from the bar at work the next day." The smack had more force behind it this time.

"He was worse than my mom about reminding me that Addison and I couldn't wait forever. Eventually. I asked him if he wanted another kid to have the absent parents he did, or if he'd stop bed-hopping to help us raise them. He gave me a line about it taking a village. That…wasn't long before I caught him with Addison." Meredith's fingers curled around his.

"He spent more time with my nieces and nephews than I did. Settling down, building a family, isn't something he knows he can do, but Sloan and the baby…they're ready-made. For him that's…well…. He came home from the park with me one day, and just…became number 4.5, since he'd be in-between me and Amy—my folks wouldn't let him disregard his parents—Though, there was less of that when Mts. Sloan told Mom she only needed to call to ensure someone was around when she sent Mark home, So, yeah, it's super weird to think of him as Grandpa, but skipping steps for what seems like a sure bet? That's very Mark."

Lexie nodded, slowly. "Okay. Cool. That…yeah, Thanks, Chief." She gave him a mock salute, and shut the door behind her. He sat down on the bed.

"She thinks Alex is junior Mark," Meredith observed.

"She said that?"

"No, she said fratty assholes are her type, and she knows Alex is clean, so really it's convenient, but come on."She sighed. "Watch out for her in the O.R. If you get her this week. Her judgement is seriously impaired."

"Is it, now?"

"One, double-rebound with Alex Karev. Two, she said I've beenagrown-up."

"To her, you have. And you are."

"More th'n Alex, anyway." She allowed, which wasn't at all what he'd meant. "She'd be a good Chief's wife."

"Well, I'm not handing it over to Karev or Mark, so that's not happening any time soon."

"Ha, Chief Karev? As if. Hypothetical Chief's wife…. Hey, how much of the weird is that Mark got there before you?"

"To Grandpa? None. The other part…. Technically, he got there sixteen years ago, and I sure as hell wasn't up for that."

He'd had a kid. That would've been close enough to Amelia's OD that any time his phone rang he'd expect it to be her, or worse, about her.

"But you and Addison?"

"We…We said 'one day.' First we were both residents. She went into OB-GYN, and for a good year was semi-serious about waiting until artificial wombs were viable. Then, in fetal medicine fellowship…she saw a lot of sad cases. We had a lifestyle that wasn't…like I said, I didn't want to be Mark's parents; they spent more time off at 'engagements' than with him. Bizzy and the Captain weren't much—"

"Bizzy?"

"Addison's mother. Beatrice. And, yes, Addie and Archer had many jokes about her being too Bizzy for them."

"That's so good. So much better than anything I came up with for Ellis. Some people get all the luck."

"Some might say you came out on top."

"Eh." She grinned up at him. "Consolation prizes are sometimes a lot more worth having," she teased. He kissed her, softly, the the toothpaste stuck on her lip was particularly refreshing. Like everything had been put back into place, with admustments that would keep the whole system running better.

"So…what? Addison was in a competitive field. You owned a practice. You were the boss. You're the boss again."

"I'm Interim Boss. I was Head of Neurosurgery. You're a resident. You were an intern. Oh, are we not listing off jobs?" he added as her eyes narrowed. "Whenever you want to have that conversation, we'll have it. Period."

"Those are part of it," she lamented. "Too bad artificial wombs are still a no-go. Why're we different?"

"We're…I thought she and I would get there. Seemed like the next step, But every time it'd come up, we'd decide not this year. There were a few intervals of if it happens…, but it didn't. And, truthfully…I was scared. I could get by in the life we were living. Kids shake things up."

"You're a good guy, Derek."

"For not having kids?"

"Yeah. Why d'you think I was always so careful? Always. Didn't wanna get knocked up, and have stupid hormones make me decide I should see it out, and then become my mom, or…or…. Whatever Lexie…or you…think…I was not an adult. Not in a place to take care of myself, let alone a baby.

"I get what you said about McSteamy wanting to do it better. I…I didn't think I'd settle, either, but I knew that if I did, I'd want…do want…think I want…to have that conversation, soon?"

"We can do that." He handed her two of the acetomenaphan he'd gotten from the bathroom, and put two more on the bedside table. She pulled a face, but while she took them he noticed that the gingerale was halfway empty.

"If I hadn't done the major abdominal surgery thing…. I dunno. It's the next step."

Derek left the bathroom light on, a beacon around the closed door, and climbed into bed alongside her. "We don't worry about the order of steps."

"For us. I think it's the step for us. I'm gonna be thirty-one."

"Ancient."

"It is for a uterus. And mine could be pickled."

"Your uterus isn't pickled."

"You don't know," she said, a burst of petulance that ended in a sigh. "I still don't understand me."

"At least you know that. I spent at least twelve years not knowing that I didn't understand myself. "

"I'm self-aware for a recovering trash fire."

"Meredith."

"I said, 'recovering.'"

"Tomorrow, we're going to go over the things you're not, and it's going to start with 'a trash fire of any kind,'" he informed her, lacing their hands together over her chest. She was warm now, not freezing, feverish or flushed, just Meredith.

"M'kay," she murmured, and he smiled into her hair. "Thank you for taking care of me."

"Always, Meredith."

"Yeah. All ways'a Meredith." She snuggled in against him. The phrasing could've been a stumble; her tongue slipping from the last drops of tequila, but he didn't think so.

The yarn that made up the weft of her life unraveled easily, due to a lifetime of being split. She'd try to match the varied thicknesses in the warp, and letting the rest trail along had made knots heavy enough to cause gaps.

For her sake, he hoped they'd gotten everything smoothed out ronight. Snarls wasn't anything to worry about, but if she needed to weave those into place, they'd do it. He'd rather help her become Penelope working her way through one patch of her tapestry over and over again than have her try to spin together an approximation of "Chief Shepherd's wife" and weave it too tightly around the threads that made up happy, married Meredith.

If she could only give herself half of the slack she gave everyone. Not that he worried as much as he used to—the literal pound(-ish) of liver had nothing on putting her hand on a bomb, and she no longer believed the world would be just as good without her.

Without her, Chief of Surgery Derek Shepherd wouldn't exist. He was going to make that matter. He wasn't going into the job with a five-year plan, true, but he had a lifetime plan. He'd make her as proud to say Chief Shepherd was her husband as he was to say third-year resident Meredith Grey was his wife.

---

A/N: This is one of my favorites of the one-shots I have in the queue to be posted. I don't think any of this was dealt with well enough on-screen, and the more I write in this fandom, the more Richard frustrates me. Season after season he blames things on Meredith, which harkens back to him using her as a scapegoat in the break-up-and then, turns out, he was lying about that. It was always his envy. As I write this, I wonder if all of it doesn't result from his jealousy that Meredith DID get to stay with Ellis.

I wanted to get this up, even though it's out of my (roughly) chronological one-shot posting schedule, because it compliments a subplot that'll pop up inUncomfortably Numbover the next arc.