"I hate that I did that," Meredith said, as they returned to the car after touring the rehab facility, and eating lunch with Lexie. He'd watched Thatcher watch them; Meredith waiting for Lexie to determine if she could cut something before diving in, but opening her water bottle without fanfare. Did he wonder where she'd gotten the caring instinct from? Derek did. The longer he knew Thatcher, the harder it got to imagine him picking up Ellis's slack. Meredith wouldn't remember the hospital so well if he'd done half of what a resident's wife would've been expected to do at the time—or even now. The tenderest moments he'd seen between Thatcher and Lexie, Molly, or even Laura, made him doubt any of them were Daddy or Grandpa's girl.
"Done what?" Derek asked.
"Gone all 'keep up, we're the Jones,' on Thatcher. It's good that he wants to be there for her."
Snap.
That goddamn rubber band.They were in traffic; he needed both hands on the wheel. He didn't want to say anything. Not in the car where she'd feel trapped.
"It's also good that you want to look out for her."
"I…It's…I…I…. Fuck." Snap. "Craaap, I sound like him. No wonder Mom hated it when I couldn't get my thoughts out in the right order."
"I love your thoughts in any order."
"Sweet sentiment, but bullshit."
"I definitely want the current ones."
She rolled her eyes, and he nearly closed his. She got like this when she most needed to talk. If she was talking to Yang about Lexie or the crash, he hadn't overheard. Yang's loss in Minnesota had taken precedent, and she'd probably assumed Meredith was "over it," right when she felt safe enough to let it hit.
"It's…. I keep thinking of that day he came in…the day I was awkward, and freaky, and you didn't bring meeting needs to the table.—That's bullshit, fyi, but so's Sydney Heron, in general.—He had me totally eating out of his wino hand…. He told me he…he was, um, a lifetime's worth of proud. Of me. And…and…turns out, of Lexie. He'd written her a check when he said it. Twenty-thousand dollars. A lifetime's worth of proud. And I thought…I thought, why? Why that amount? Why would he think she wouldn't know he was proud? Molly had told me he didn't shut up about her. It's so stupid, because...because that's way less than he would've paid over thirteen years, but I wondered…."
"If he was talking to you both times," Derek finished.
He hadn't been given details at the time, only a whisper in the darkness of the trailer. My father's a boozehound. Lexie's having to deal with him the way I had to deal with Ellis. I fell for every lie he told me, and yelled at her on his behalf. How fucked up am I?
"The amount he was drinking could've brought on hallucinations. It wouldn't have made his mistreatment of Lexie your fault."
They turned into the dock, where a ferry had just started boarding. Meredith shifted, staring at him, her lips parted. He wanted very much to kiss her, but her eyes were busy, flicking back and forth, seeing him, but not just him. They'd had multiple conversations about Thatcher's alcoholism over the years. What it meant about her: nothing. What made her any different: everything. Usually, if someone else factored into the conversation, that was Richard. The belief that she'd had a part in both men's downslides was weaker every time it resurfaced. This was different. He'd given her reason to think she hadn't just selfishly wanted Thatcher to have thought of her in her sister's presence.
"Do you think she really believed we wouldn't want her?"
"Did she say that exactly?"
"I-I said something about how I'd work on braiding white girl hair, so she wouldn't have to have all her girl time with you, and she said that…that Thatcher kept talking about taking her home, and she figured…she figured it was something we'd determined before she woke up."
"Then she really wasn't thinking," he said, pulling into a parking spot in the back corner of the car deck. "You make your opinions known, but you don't decide things for people. Not unless it's absolutely necessary.
" It would've been a lot for Molly and Eric to have had her move in the year their baby was born. She might've been seeing it that way. Assuming we'd want privacy."
"At our house in the middle of nowhere? How'd she get that idea?" Meredith quirked a corner of her lips. "Didn't I tell her she'd always had a room with us? I told Cristina, ages ago. I told her again after Dr. Mr. Feeney died. Told her Zo would love some 'K'istina' time. It would've been…kinda nice," she said, sounding like she begrudged her own feeling. "She never lived in the house. Not 'til now."
"And that's not about you." He scooped her hand up in his. Around them, people left their cars to head upstairs. If Meredith made to go, he'd follow, but the exodus gave him a better idea. "She needs to be close to the hospital. Living with us, she'd want to help with Zola more…or she'd want to want to."
"I got the happily ever after. The one…The one it seemed like we could both get intern year. But…I really did think Owen loved her like you love me. He still…but he cheated on her. For being her. How is that different from Burke?"
"Mer, you can't see everything.
"Cristina is going to do a lot this year, and you are two, but it'll be different. She's not your competition anymore. Honestly…Honestly, I think it might have been better for her to be in Rochester for it. She's going to think she has to prove she's worth the fellowship she left, and the one she has. She's going to want to fill all the time she'd have spent with Owen. You'll be there, but you know zoo Saturdays aren't her thing. "
"She doesn't want to just read a book until it's time to teach her protégé."
"I'm not surprised by that. Wanting to prioritize her work doesn't mean she has to become as shut off as your mother did. I think you two will be friends a long time. You're both going to make discoveries that we can't imagine, yet. Look at Callie. And, speaking of, she thinks you're going to do great things, in particular, or she would've picked Cristina to tutor."
"She was okay on her—"
"She had more free time. Callie helped you make use of yours; adjust to juggling your day-to-day work, Zola, and research, and kick board-exam ass. Passing on multiple skills doesn't mean one of them was more important."
"Callie's done some pretty cool stuff."
"She has."
"She's gonna fix your hand."
"She's trying. If she didn't have her family, maybe it'd be faster, but you know what? I wouldn't trust her the way I do. I wouldn't know how determined she is, and how much she cares. How much she's fought to get where she is."
"She said it's good for Zo to see me working. I might still try for fewer overnights, since Lexie's been discharged."
"That'd be good."
They announced the departure from the dock, and Derek the movement in the rearview died down. There was a wall in front of them. As he spoke, he took off his seatbelt and switched her hand to his left, moving the right to her leg.
"Mer, they know you love them. Lexie. Zola. Cristina. They know. You don't have to think of everything. Lexie has a whole team looking out for her. Zola has both of us. Cristina's has to get used to being back, and she's doing it somewhere familiar. I love our new house, but it's possible that it wouldn't have been be the best place for her, not just because of its location. We have a lot of open land—" He slid his hand up to her side, and leaned over the console to kiss her. "—but there are a lot of trees right by the house."
"They're different than the ones in Iowa!"
"To us. How long have we looked at them?"
"A while. Derek?" She put her hand on his cheek, her thumb pushing his chin back. "I'm sorry about your friend."
"Thanks. Me too. For a long time…he might still be the youngest person at that place. He just… He needs full-time care, and his family had a small apartment; his mom still lives there. As soon as I could contribute, I found him a better place than the state facility that took his Medicaid." He turned the knob on the side of her seat, leaning it back enough to put her below the sightline of the passenger window.
"That's what….What're you—"
"'That's what' what?" he asked, letting both his hands explore her skin. The damage to his median nerve wasn't entirely different from what Lexie was experiencing in her hands. The nerve contained fibers from C-6, C-7, and T-1 as well as C-5, in some people. He didn't appreciate exactly how much he couldn't feel unless he was doing something like this, where on the right he could identify individual hairs on with the pad of his index finger, but on the left, nothing. He could feel more running the side of his hand against her. Lexie's damage at C-7 would affect that, too— Derek closed his eyes for a second, and tried to practice the focus he was going to preach.
His right hand found the button of Meredith's pants. She'd dressed to impress, anticipating the atmosphere of the other program on the site. The width of his hand unzipped her fly; he longed to pull both pants and panties down, but that would be a bridge too far.
"Der." The modicum of argument in the protest was belied by her shifting her weight onto her tailbone, giving him easy access to her clit. She hadn't anticipated this, her mind too busy weighing his reassurances, but it took only a few strokes for her prepuce to start to retract from the bead of her glans.
This would've been easier if he hadn't given himself extreme carpal tunnel bashing rocks like a caveman—Did they end up with RSI in the Stone Age? Carvers, probably did. But they'd have done it stone-on-stone. Stone-on-bone would've been an accident.
"What're you thinking about?" Meredith asked, her hand on his face again. He caught it, and kissed the bend of her wrist. That kinked rubber band was just visible under her watch. No marks. In the past, she'd sometimes flipped her watch enough that crown made a red trail over that skin. She had more muscle, now, but her wrists stayed so, impossibly thin.
"The Flintstones," he said, deadpan.
She narrowed her eyes, but couldn't hold the expression for long. Every time he spiraled his finger around her glans and lifted it a hair, it swelled to match him.
"Too bad we're against indecent exposure charges."
"Why? We are. Not gonna charm me out of it; they'd call CPS. Why too bad?" Her other hand had risen to the back of his neck, her dallying fingers pausing every few moments. They coincided with the hums of pleasure she emitted whenever he could get her like this, with nothing, not even sleep, looming in the immediate future.
"Because, I only get to feel you fill up down here. You get a visual, no matter what. I get a hint, with certain shirts, if you don't have on a bra.
"Don't misunderstand me, gorgeous girl, I love nothing more than this smile." He traced it, and it parted in a tiny hoot of a moan as he tweaked her clit in the same direction. The sound, one she'd become self-conscious of for a little while, a microcosm of the transition from hook-up to relationship. It meant she wasn't near the point of chasing an orgasm, and she'd say she didn't care. That this was all she wanted to feel. Getting her to keep making it was a simple matter of finding the right pressure and speed to manipulate the engorged tissue around her glans. It was sweet that something so simple made her feel so good,
All he changed for a while was direction, flicking up from just above her cunt, dragging his finger left, then right, circling. His left hand might've been better for this, if Meredith wouldn't worry; not repeating one movement for too long was essential for drawing this out.
"You don't hafta see," she pointed out at the end of a streak of breathy "oo"s that ended in a lower moan. Adding pressure, he smiled. Her thoughts hadn't runaway with her in the quiet. "You visualize."
Her leg stretched out toward the glovebox, the tremor inviting him to bring another finger down against her.
"Sure, but I always underestimate how much I love watching what your body does when you're giving into it. I love seeing it change, moment by moment. Helped me learn how to read other indicators."
He kissed the tip of her ear, and ran his tongue over the shell of it, finding the tiny hole from a cartilage piercing she'd taken out before he'd met her. She bucked up toward his fingers, her hips gyrating."Ohhhh, Derek!" She tensed, her legs pulling together under his hand, and then up onto the seat, spreading as much as she could in unforgiving trousers. "Gonna come," she murmured, her tone a mix of need, wonder, and a little disappointment bordering on disdain. The simple goodnesses were the most fleeting.
He estimated that if she needed or wanted him to, he could get her there twice more after this, but the foundation would be in place. It was a trade-off where she'd know exactly where she was going, even if it took time to get there.
The pout didn't last long, and once she'd reached the precipice they were searching for, he doubted she'd cop to it. He treasured it. He loved getting her to spend time where nothing outside of the moment mattered; they weren't rushing a means to an end. It was part of how she took care of herself now, too; the single finger stroking just to feel good. She'd say she'd been selfish as a teenager and adolescent, but he'd long wondered if to her that phrase meant "did things that weren't for the benefit of Ellis Grey," not "considered my own comfort above all others."
In this moment, not needing more was a foreign concept for her.
"Think you knew that from the start," he accused.
The narrowed eyes were more convincing this time, until they flickered closed and he noticed the muscle under the right twitching. "Feel it now," she groaned. "Right there. Be soon."
"Will it?" He kept his fingers on her, sliding them over to her labia. "Doesn't have to be."
"I-I…unh, that harder. Yeah, oh-okay…I know. You know I know."
"Do I? Do I know that you understand that I could spend days happily doing whatever you wanted me to? Not just this, though I love doing this; every part from the first kiss to having you go boneless in my arms, and giving you just that much more than you thought you could take. Making you fall apart from pleasure is a privilege. Knowing you could have more doesn't make this bad, does it?"
"Uh-uh. So good, so, so good. You make it…make me…so good, Derek."
"You deserve it, my love. You are so good. You're good, and patient, and gracious…."
"Nuh-uh."
"Yeah-huh. You give people every chance, unless and until they do something to hurt someone you love, and you let that person decide what it means. You think of yourself and everyone else. You can take a break, especially here. Especially on the ferry."
"L-Liminal space." She reached up to one of the metal rods that attached the headrest to her seat. "Outside of time."
"Yeah. It is." He kissed her, moving his fingers to pointedly maneuver the puffy areas between his index and middle fingers. Her moan was also an exclamation.
"Yes, yes! Rolly thing's so…so…fuck that feels…. Oh-oh-yeah. Oh yeah. Keep doing that. Yeah, yeah. Derek, it's happening, Press h-harder. Just there, right there. It's there, I'm—I'm—" She bent her other arm back to the head restraint adjuster on that side, grabbing onto them white-knuckled. Her feet were back on the seat, adding to the resistance she was both straining to hold onto and desperate to be released from.
She got her wish a moment later, arcing upward. He moved his left hand to her hip, ready to push down if she surged up over lower sight line of the window.
He kept rubbing two fingers over her, lightening up only slightly as her voice cut off at the final moment of her release. She dropped back with a thwap, her breath ragged.
Her face shone even in the shadows of the parking deck, smiling lazily up at him with hooded eyes.
"Mmm," she murmured. "Good now."
"Yeah?" He slowly folded back the finger he'd left rubbing just to the side of her clit. "We've got time."
"We got lucky."
"You got lucky, mincina."
"You get off on me getting off."
"We'd have to find a less conspicuous place for that."
"Get a steering wheel that swings over and i could move fast. Actual road head is not a thing I'll do."
"Never expected that," he assured her. "Have you?"
She stared at her nails. He wasn't sure if she'd bitten them as a kid, but if so the habit never resurfaced. Her neuroses were more subtle, less common. Equally self-flagellating. "You don't have to—"
"Once. Hitchhiking from a rave. Past midnight. With my friend Garrett. He was good about that. Didn't just leave whenever he wanted, without caring how I'd get home. He'd say if I was alone no one would pick me up, because I looked like an urban legend. Hitchhiking Death.
"It'd been a twenty-four hour thing, and once we had a ride, my palladian passed out in the backseat. Our savior said something about how taking risks were part of what that made being a wicked human wicked cool. It...resonated. I'd spent February break in Aspen with a group from Dartmouth who mixed their white powders. So stupid, undeniably looking to thumb mortality in the nose. Sucha fucking rush.
"So…So it wasn't…'suck my dick or I'll chuck you out.' He…He said we'd switch, after, and I wanted to see if he'd really follow through. Don't think…I couldn't have kept driving. I'd have pulled over, but I believed I was more of a douche than that. We were on empty backroads that I knew. So…. But…he started swerving, and I was terrified. Not of him. Distracted driving. Mom driving. Her mind was never, ever there.
"The guy's got one hand in my hair, holding me there. The closer he gets, the faster we go…. I hadn't remembered a condom, this would be the time I finally got herpes, and Garrett was gonna wake up when we crashed, with no idea what happened. He wasn't gonna wake up. I was gonna be the death of my friend, because I was a twenty-year-old catastrophe who enabled anyone living on the line. Pretending not to care, to be a hedon. A nihilist. Caring so much that every disappointment hit me like something on the spectrum of BB to bullet.
"For a long time, I thought everyone was the same. That they wanted more, were capable of it, wished they could be satisfied by the life of parties, and booze, and sex, but couldn't be without going to class, or working, or volunteering…. I was desperate to be necessary, or what was the point? But that night I realized that no, some people don't care. This guy didn't just not care about himself; he'd put some girl and her friend in danger—made it my fault. Made me trust people less for a while, but I started watching them more. I saw that my drive, and energy, and even my time management—always making up for getting wrapped up in chaos—was actually pretty unique. And I still had some misconceptions. I see it with Sadie and Cristina in different ways. How…How I assume our commonalities must have the same roots and end points.
"Nothing bad happened."
Derek sucked his cheeks in to keep quiet. Holding her in place made that assault, and she'd be correcting anyone else.
"I heard other engines. Motorcycle gang. The trunk on his car was a behemoth; Garrett would've been safer if we'd been rear ended than I woulda been hitting someone. I slammed my hand down on the brake. The jolt woke him up enough to figure out the basics, I dove out of my door and dragged him out onto the shoulder. Blue Balls was coming after us, but the motorcycles belonged to…they may've called themselves a coven?—We rode pillory with the witches to, I shit you not, catch the T at Alewife."
"The…alewives took you to Alewife?"
"Mmm," she agreed, and he could see her starting to reconstruct the walls endorphins and oxytocin had blasted. They were thin these days, primarily encasing Boston. "Point being, that accident would've been my fault."
"Mer—"
"More than Michael's was yours! That was…. It was one in a million." She jerked her seat up, and he regretted how suddenly the bleariness became shrewd curiosity. "Katie Bryce."
"Ah. Yeah. I thought of him that day, for sure. And that you figured it out—Cristina worked with you," he amended, before she could. "You were Katie's doctor. You took her history. You didn't let the silliness of rhythmic gymnastics stop you from determining she could've hit her head. That saved her from the type of injury I became a neurosurgeon to prevent. It…didn't make me think you wouldn't be important in my future."
"That's fair," Meredith allowed, shifting to lean against him. "Take my hair down? It went all poofy."
"You're not mad that I didn't tell you sooner?"
"No," she said, shrugging. "You don't see it as something incredibly considerate. You know money is important, but the changes it made for you were never…. It doesn't feel like enough to you. You don't care what I know about cheesy med school Derek, or bad hair, band nerd Derek. It's hit puberty, discovered punk, definitely punched walls Derek you keep mum about, which is really ridiculous, because I had grown men avoid me in mosh pits."
"The elbows are deadly," he observed, combing his fingers through her undone braids.
"The shoes were worse. It's all cute in your head, because you were seeing girls like me in the E.R., promising their moms they'd never gone to a club before; someone must've put the XTC in their drink—Oh, they don't know that's what it was, no, didn't the doctor say…?"
"I saw through it."
"Sure, because of Amy, but…they were starting to supervise us. My part of the generation. Parents started thinking they knew their kids, making said kids feel like they couldn't change at all without disappointing them, so might as well go for broke. I was the rare example of one who went unseen either way." She made a quarter turn to ask, "Can you go ahead and redo the braids?"
"Yeah." He kissed the crown of her head. It'd been a long time since he'd done anything other than twist her hair while playing with it. She'd noticed him manage Lexie's with a minimal amount of using his left ring finger rather than the index.
This commute was good for them. (Cristina would've resented it. Thank God she was self-aware.)
"Do you think Lexie was seen? She was, like, homecoming queen, and valedictorian…. I wonder if she was that different, or her classmates just liked fact-spouting girls. Mine would've torn her apart."
"Mer? Are you worried your little sister won't make friends at SCI rehab?"
"Yes! Aren't you? She's twenty-seven, and she was still eating at my lunch table! And…the Lexie I know would know all the stats about ambulation, and be socially aware of when not to say them. She'd lead a rebellion by getting us to bring her a couple bottles of Cuervo. I'd be worried she'd push herself too far to avoid disappointing a therapist
"Lexie on paper would've shown up today with a draft plan. She'd have insisted on going to the Shepherd Center, or chosen Roseridge to get some huge study or trial brought there. I don't know what I'd do in her place. Whether or not I'd lost you would be what decided it. But I've spent my whole life expecting happiness to be fleeting. Letting go of surgery might make me bitter for a while: I'd have passed the boards for nothing. We'd try to fix me, but I'd want to live our lives, and I…I couldn't figure out how to be anything else, because I'd been taught that anything not surgery was inferior. But I got there. If it was taken…." She shook her head. "I don't know what I'd do. Maybe something Alzheimer's-related. I…I know there's more to me.
"What does this Lexie have? I think she wants to use her M.D., but what's too close to surgery? What's starting over? If medicine is out, where does she go? Math? She'd be great at all those bullshit codes in billing, but I think she'd hate it. She played softball. Did marching band.
"I don't think Thatcher knows her. She wanted to hate him over Dani…. I told her to grow up. She wanted to make what she felt about that the same as….I was five. If he has a kid, now, that's not replacing anyone. Do I think he'd do better? No. He's not interested in any form of responsibility.
"I'd…I'd hate him for her. For this. For not saying he'd want her to come home, let alone letting her think I didn't.… I don't think he's as happy we're sister-ish as Susan would be."
"I think," Derek said, as evenly as he could hearing her afraid to admit to a feeling she wanted to share. Why? She knew he didn't think she owed Thatcher anything. "He's jealous. You are sisters, no ish. He's as bitter as Ellis, though he hides it better. He didn't want his lives to touch, but he's comfortable here, so he doesn't have a choice.
"You can be upset that she didn't actually understand what you went through., even though she's going through stuff of her own. And you're allowed to hate him for yourself, Meredith."
"I don't. I don't want him as my dad, either. He might not always have been like I'd rather my bad side be visible, not wrapped up in manipulative niceties. I-I liked Susan, but I don't think she told me everything. Maybe if she'd known what I knew about Mom and Richard—but losing her broke him in a real way, like losing Richard did Mom. Like I'd be if you died. It could've changed him, too. Maybe he does know Lexie better, though. Separate from medicine. We just don't see it because he's not like that anymore,"
"Sadie and Ellis didn't know you all that well, and they only missed most of the yimr you were in med school. She went away for school eleven years ago.
"I respect that you won't push her either way, but I will tell her that in my opinion moving in with him would be a mistake. The last time she went to him after a trauma, he compacted it. She's accepted his way of drifting in and out of her life, because when you're living as far away as she did, she got used to not seeing him. With Molly away, it looks normal. It's not, and I can see him making this about himself. I see what you're afraid to say; the sort of codependency that could lead to would not be good for her."
Meredith had sat up for him to fix her hair, facing the window. He could easily see her staying hunched over her knees for the rest of the trip, if it took that long for her to be sure he wouldn't see tears in her eyes.
"Y-You don't think I'm just…? H-He…He's not my dad… If it was Zola…." Her hand went to her mouth.
"He should've come to you. The sewing room he said Susan 'would already have cleaned out,' for Lexie should've been your room, even if just in the summers. You should know everything Lexie ever considered doing when she grew up. So should he, but if we're right that he can't have loved 'surgeon,' I bet she didn't want to give him something else to latch onto—"
"The opposite of Mom trying to ruin anything I cared about that wasn't surgery. Think that's why I held onto flight surgeon for so long; the Challenger had already exploded. What more could she say? Shit." Her voice cracked on the word, and he wished he had another twenty minutes, just to hold her if it relieved some of the weight. "We…We…We…. Would he…? He's not…he's wasn't…but AA is so…. Her…Her…Mark died…. He wouldn't tell her…."
Meredith's tears had mostly cleared, but fury would only burn them away for so long before it caused more. She'd gotten stuck in a loop; so sure her language patterns were Thatcher's, and too angry at him to get past ? Because Ellis hated stuttering and stammering, and him, therefore anything she'd hated in Meredith was him? Not a reminder of how she'd told a forthright girl to be quiet, and instilled her temerity, rather than being the one to teach her better?
Derek cupped her face with his right hand, and took the other, holding it far from her other wrist.
"You're afraid he's going to tell her it's for the best. That he might not go so far as to tell her it was God's plan, but he might say something else that gives her a reason to blame herself for Mark?" Meredith nodded, and her shoulders lowered visibly as she exhaled. "Could be worse if he's just going along with it. She could write off true indoctrination. Amelia had some trouble with the higher power thing. She stopped believing in God and Santa at the same time, and she needed better explanations. He seems like he could say, 'if Susan hadn't died, I wouldn't have learned to do laundry.' That's the kind of thinking that would make Lexie start thinking she has to do something 'worth' Mark dying."
"Yeah. Exactly."
"Like her big sister would."
Meredith blushed. She was pale, too for this time of year; except for playing with Zola, they hadn't been outside much.
"You don't have to figure it all out today. We'll make sure Lexie knows she won't be making it easier on us if she moves in with him, and it definitely won't get rid of us. She deserves her own life; what's going to get her there is her choice. Will she hope it'd be the homecoming she wanted four years ago? Maybe. She's warier. We'll make sure she knows the offer stands."
Meredith kissed him, like she still couldn't trust her words. Maybe she couldn't. She would remember how he'd been about her roommates, before he understood she wouldn't use them to duck him. He'd moved Lexie in, the first time, but the new house; their house, was a step. Rare as they'd become, they threw her back a little—because he'd taught her to expect the wrong thing.
He looked back at Zola's car seat. He was determined not to need second chances from her. She could be momma's girl; he loved Meredith more than anything, why would he ever not want his daughter to adore her? The thing was, Meredith would say the same thing about him. Zola wasn't even two. She wasn't more like either of them, yet, and that wouldn't matter. She was their daughter.
Lexie was Meredith's sister, but more and more that was by choice. He'd understood that for awhile, but he was starting to appreciate what it meant. He didn't think he could really claim any of his sister's husbands, but as he kissed Meredith back, hoping to distract her a little longer, he realized it'd been a long time since he'd added "in-law" whenever he thought of Lexie as his sister.