Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
You never really liked physics but lately, you've been thinking a lot about time, and parallel universes.
About how there's an infinite universes out there, with you in them. You but just slightly, insignificantly different. You but not quite.
You.
Her.
You and her.
An infinite times over.
You're leaning against the balustrade, looking out into the remorseless night, the cigarette between your fingers delicately burning and the idea of those infinite universes sounds like complete bullshit right about now.
The sound of the doors sliding signals her presence but you know she's been standing there for a while now. Watching. Watching you.
You would recognise her anywhere,in any way.
You feel her make her way toward you and you take one last long drag, filling your lungs with smoke, your eyes watering, your hand trembling.
She's beside you now, clad in nothing but your new, white shirt and you avoid her aggrieved green eyes.
You know she hates it when you smoke so you press your lips to hers, because you love her and you hate it too.
You know you taste like cigarettes but she lets you kiss her, thoroughly, completely, anyway.
You've been doing this for a couple of years now.
She's been married for a lot longer.
It's as if in these strange, unfamiliar cities with the large, modern hotel rooms-you can pretend to be strangers too.
That somehow, when she wraps herself around you, you can pretend that she had never left, that when the light filtering through the blinding white curtains colour her golden, you can pretend that she would stay.
You don't know how you do it, again and again. Watch her with another man, watch her with her arms around his body, his lips on her, the smiles she saves for him and you remember that you did that to her too, once upon a time and so you try, try and stay but you can't, can't breathe with her arms around his so you leave.
You start a private practice, and the hours are less and your mind is full so you travel, work and work, away from the city you fell in love with her and away from the city she fell in love with him.
You watch your kids grow up, your daughter at the precipice of teenagedom, your son already in double digits and you wonder where you went wrong.
You pretend that you're happy when your daughter whispers and shouts and screams about how she wants to be just like you, and hope and hope silently that she strays away from all things you.
You pretend to not see the way your son looks at his step-father, and hope and hope that the quiet resentment he harbours for you, fades away someday.
You love them, love them more than life itself but you know that you're never quite there either, you haven't been for a while now.
Your daughter's outgrown her love for fishing and your son never quite took to it, a fierce love for the marine life keeping him away, so you don't go around the lake to fish anymore instead you take up golf.
You hate it and you like that you hate it.
There's the stinging memory of shooting golf balls off the hospital roof years ago. There's the stinging absence of your best friend beside you.
You hate it and you like that you hate it.
You take them to see your old house in New York still, and you see them wanting to share it with their mother and old, festering wounds open up again.
You, yourself, avoid the city, with the smell of your childhood and your mother's disappointment in you.
But even New York with its bitter taste and endless snowfall is better than Seattle so you spent months there until one day you stumble upon your ex-wife, the one you were running away from, the one you were still hopelessly, endlessly in love with and you find that she's there for a conference, away from her husband and your children and you find that she still giggles the same after she's had a few glasses of wine and somehow, somehow she's in your room and her hands are in your hair and for the first time in a very long time, yours aren't itching for a cigarette.
You don't sleep that night, too scared to be jolted back to reality, too scared that it was all a dream but, she's in your arms and her soft snores fill the deafening silence.
She leaves the next morning, in a haste, in a worry, curses on the tip of her tongue and you watch her go, go and go because how could you ever ask her to stay?
She swears that it was a mistake, that it would never happen again and back in your city, she avoids your gaze and, you ,so you settle for being a mistake even if the pain burns your chest.
But it does happen again, this time on a sunny afternoon in Paris.
There's no alcohol this time, and no giggles either.
It's just her mouth on yours, your bodies pressed together, your hands tracing her back and hers gently taking you apart and you realise that you'd take that too-destruction, to come completely undone-if it was by her hands.
New York. Paris. Chicago. Delhi. Boston and now, Vegas.
A hideous, jealous laugh bubbles out of you, at the realisation that how you'd never really taken trips to these cities as a couple but it's these cities that aid you as dirty lovers.
She startles, gives you a strange look and walks away.
You know what she's about to say, you've known since the moment your eyes met at the airport, from the moment she hadn't even bothered to get her assigned room keys and had instead tumbled into your bed.
You know.
She's expecting you to turn around, to look at her, to accept what she has to say but you don't want to. You want to live in this illusion, live in this fantasy that you have created for the two of you.
But then how could you ever deny her anything?
She's settled on the bamboo chair, legs folded, arms wrapped tightly around her torso, eyes faraway.
You're staring at her now, and she's biting her lip. You wonder if her husband notices how swollen her lips are after she returns from these trips. You wonder if he asks. You wonder if he knows it's you.
You're always careful about marks, careful about never claiming her as yours but somehow every single time after she leaves, your back burns under the hot spray of the shower.
Because you know and she knows that you've only ever truly been hers.
"This..I..", she begins and you catch her fumbling eyes and force them to stay put.
You deserve this at least.
You deserve to look at her one last time.
"It's done. This is done.", you know she understands and you know that this was coming yet the words startle you, shake your foundation.
Six times, you've only done this six times and it feels like it's been going on for a lifetime.
She's playing with the cuffs of your shirt and you want to slowly,meticulously take it off her.
Never again. Never. She's made that clear.
But she's still here, unmoving. Still here. Within your reach.
You walk to the small round glass table in front of her and retrieve another cigarette.
You feel her eyes on you. She's waiting for an affirmation perhaps.
Or maybe something else entirely. Because she's still here.
You twirl the cigarette between your fingers, eyes fixed on your hazy reflection on the table, and that of her naked legs.
You take a minute, hear her rueful sigh and then your body is moving on its own accord.
You're kneeling in front of her, hands on her bare knees, blue eyes fixed to surprised green ones, the unlit cigarette pressing into her skin.
You want to stay like this, want to beg her, beg her to stay, beg her to choose you, to love you.
Stay, stay, stay with me, you want to yell.
No, no, no this isn't over, you almost say.
But a single, simple nod is all you can manage.
You're ready to go, to leave her to her own devices because every time you look at her a familiar sense of panic overwhelms you. You need to leave before she recognises it, before you let it engulf you.
But something in her eyes makes you stay. On your knees. Worshipping her.
She takes the cigarette from your hand and chucks it across from you. You watch the wind push it into a corner and say nothing.
She hates it when you smoke, and this is the last time she'll ever really have a chance to make that known to you.
She's still here and she's not choosing you.
She's still here and she isn't yours.
She's still here and she hates it when you smoke.
She's still here and you just want to leave.
But she's still here.
She's still looking at you.
You press a kiss to her right knee and from the small, tiny moan that leaves her, you understand.
That she's not yours but for tonight, she'll pretend too.
Just for tonight, she'll choose you.
Over him. Over everybody.
Just for tonight, you can call her yours again.
The first week after she ends it is a blur for you. Spent in dark alleyways and obscure bars, drunk off your mind, smoking two packs a day.
You don't remember a whole lot but you remember the bartender with the tattoos, the tequila shots you took, the day you left her several voicemails, crying, begging for her to take you back.
The second week after she ends it, you go back home. It's your week with the children and you're a ghost of yourself and they notice. Your daughter wants to talk about it and your son wants to talk about leaving baseball to start hockey.
You don't want to talk at all so you make them dinner and help them with their homework and sneak out periodically to smoke in the balcony. It's risky, you know but you can't help yourself anymore.
The third week after she ends it, you're back to hopping bars and drinking your way into oblivion. You see a woman across from you and her hair reminds you of her and you just want to go back, just want to fix things but you can't can't do that so you order more drinks and wonder when she stopped smelling like lavender.
By last call, you're so inebriated that the bartender asks for someone to call and her name is on the tip of your tongue, so familiar, so potent but you can't can't do that anymore so you give him your sister's. She drives you home silently, and puts you to bed and never says a word. You're grateful but there's something in the pit of your stomach that's urging you to curl up and die.
But you're so drunk that it doesn't matter.
The fourth week after she ends it, the partners of your private practice, threaten to fire you because you've been gone so long. After all, you're always sneaking away and frankly, you don't pay much heed to them. You could get a job anywhere in the world anytime you wanted.
Your sister and her partner invite themselves to your place for dinner and it's mostly normal except for the strange look she won't stop giving you and so you fetch another bottle of wine and pretend to not see the way her gaze on you intensifies.
It's when you're flipping the pages of the calendar, you realise that you've survived, survived without her.
An entire month.
It helps that most of those days are a blur, spent whispering her name to yourself.
But it's a month, nonetheless.
You smoke an extra cigarette that night to celebrate. Or really, to mourn. You decide then to let go, to let her go. Finally. Completely. You realise that there may be an infinite universe with you and her, an infinite universe where she was yours but there would always be an infinite and one universe where she wouldn't be.
You let the quiet resignation seep in and you let the resentment you'd always harboured, go.
You'd done it before, you could do it again. Watch her with him. Watch your children with him. You'd just need a few more cigarettes, a little more alcohol and a lot more distance to make it through.
Hi, I know I've been gone for a very very long time and I apologize for that. Just life got too busy, I hadn't watched grey's in a while and had no inspiration to write. But this was something I wrote a long long time ago and frankly, it's something I'm pretty proud of. So I'm writing the rest of it.
So here you go! It will probably be a 3/4 chapter fic only and will deal with Meredith and Derek post their divorce. It will also be very angsty.
I hope you liked and I hope you like the rest of it, too.
Anyway, thank you to whoever reads this and thank you thank you to any one who has stuck around since the last time I uploaded.
Okay, bye now. Will update soon.