It wasn't unusual for Meredith to lay with her head on Derek's chest this way; at least, it hadn't been. Come to think of it, he wasn't sure she'd done it since the shooting. He kept his eyes on the journal he'd been reading. It was nice to not have to care that she was reading over his shoulder. Adele had moved on from nursing at the point where Richard had become chief of surgery, confidentiality issues weren't what he'd been warning Derek against three years ago, but they'd be the primary reason he'd been thrilled when his interim ended—though not how.
Had he been horrible at knowing what he wanted when he came to Seattle, or had he changed? When Richard had implied that he saw Derek taking his place, it'd been a boost to his ego. Opening a practice had been Mark's idea. He'd been surprised at Derek's reluctance. "It's guaranteed stability, man. Close as a doctor can get to owning the corner store!" That'd been true enough. They'd seen it via Mark's father. They'd set out to emulate that, but not the rest of Dr. Sloan's life. But had Derek really wanted it?
He might not have really wanted the job that'd caused him to push Meredith away, and he should've recognized that. He'd done it to Addison once he'd started to resent choosing the security of the practice. He'd hated the bureaucracy associated with ownership when that'd only been overhearing his parents balance the books. Head of neurosurgery was enough admin for him.
His father had been gone a month whenever his mother had sat all five of them down in the livingn room and said she needed to update her will, and part of that was determining who would take over the store.
"I don't want it," Amelia had said, immediately, from Kathleen's lap. No one had laughed, like they would've a month earlier.
Liz had asked, "Won't it go to the man of the house?"
"I'd give it to you," Derek countered, oblivious, then, to the resentment in her question. "You're the math dork."
"I'm not gonna be an accountant."
"Duh, you'd be a shopkeeper."
"Same difference!"
"Neither of you can work a pricing… Neither of you can price right, anyway," Nancy interrupted.
"You'd be a great boss," Amelia offered, and they'd all exhaled in gratitude that she hadn't caught the word Nan had almost used. "On account of you're bossy."
"Do you want it, Nan?" Mom's tone stood out to Derek, then. It'd only been thirty-two days since she'd last said, "You don't have to like it, missy. You give up five hours of your life to ring up Cheerios for your father!"
Nan's face scrunched up, the same way it had after she'd spilled nail polish on the kitchen table after Kath told her to put newspaper down under it. "I could."
"We all could," Lizzie said. "We've been child labor our whole lives."
"Elizabeth," Nan snapped.
"We all say it!"
"Not like that," Derek pointed out. "Daddy…he never made us."
"'Daddy' isn't here."
"Think I don't know that? I was—"
"Yeah, yeah, you were there, we know! You were so brave, cowering in the back with the baby!"
Amy threw herself at Lizzie, shrieking, "I'm not a baby!" Derek vibrated with the desire to have gotten to her first.
"All of you shut up!" Kathleen had burst out. "I'll do it, Mom. I can start managing in August if you don't want to—"
"Absolutely not." The sudden return of their mother's sharpness cut through the mayhem. Amy stopped fighting Nan's hold like a wild animal, Lizzie's slump straightened, and Kath let go of the authority she'd seized more and more over the past few weeks. "You've all answered my question. We're selling the store. The proceeds will go to your college funds, and you will pursue whatever strikes your fancy, the way we've always told you to do. None of you will shape your futures around your father's dream, do you understand?"
Over the years, he'd come to see that his mother had had about as much interest in being a shopkeeper as her children. Their father's family had wanted her to take it on, with arguments about legacy and stability. If any one of the five of them had shown enthusiasm, it might've swayed her, in spite of her career being the example Dad had given whenever he told them that none of them were beholden to the store.
None of them had been able to put that together at the time. Silence had followed, until Amy had asked, "Does that mean no one's gonna get shot?"
If Derek hadn't left the practice behind, it might have. Sure, he'd lost patients over the years, but he'd also worked in a door-manned building on the Upper East Side.
There'd been a shooting within six months of his start at Seattle Grace. Addison had come straight to him, and he'd been thinking about Meredith. He'd been thinking of her constantly at that point, believing himself angry at her for dating the vet, truly angry at himself for staying in his sham of a marriage. And why? He could see, now, how much harder that question had gotten to answer once he'd been taking a bullet out of Preston's brain with Cristina in the room.
"You okay?" Meredith asked. "You're all furrowed."
"Furrowed, huh?" What could he tell her? That he'd determined that his finally throwing propriety to the wind had been the result of childhood trauma? She'd get it. God knew she'd been there the next time he'd fielded it. But he didn't want her to decide he regretted the prom, or think that if it wasn't for her he wouldn't have been here for Clark to shoot.
"Yeah." She reached up, running a finger between his eyes and off the tip of his nose. "Am I hurting you?"
He gripped her shoulder the way he'd been inclined to do in preparation for her to spook. "Are you putting too much pressure on my healing ribcage?" he clarified. "Where have I heard that before?"
"Shut up," she grumbled. "You never actually put weight on me. And I didn't take a bullet."
"You only drowned."
"Right." Her nod was tense. He trailed the pads of his fingers against her shoulder, tucking his thumb under the sleeve of her t-shirt. "I'm sorry if I underrated what that was like for you. I thought I got how bad it was, because of what I saw my mom do."
"I'm sorry I scared you. With the speeding. I don't know what I was thinking."
"You weren't. I've been there. The near-death thing. Near Death Meredith. I was all about that rush for a while. I'm sure it didn't look like I was the biggest fan of living, but actually…that rush, it makes you sure you want to be alive. I…I played a lot of chicken with the universe. That's not what I was doing that day," she added in a rush that made her syllables trip over themselves.
"I know. I think…I understand more than I did." He'd known that it'd been an annoyance to her the first time the traffic violations he'd mentioned off-handedly—like they were misjudgments or new speed-traps—had mounted up to an arrest. It'd been a little underhanded when he'd point out that what's-his-shrink had cleared him. He'd still thought that most of her stress was the result of dealing with Yang's wedding, Lexie's macabre obsessions and breakdown, Karev's regression to frat-boy. He'd told himself it wouldn't happen again every time he'd seen police lights in his rearview, but that conviction would disappear the next time he turned onto the freeway. He understood Meredith better, now. Those moments had made him worry he might understand Amelia a little bit more, too.
"I'll never get all of what you went through, growing up with her, but…. I'm a year older than my father was." Saying that much made his chest ache and had nothing to do with the bullet that had entered it. Not physically.
Meredith's head rose far enough to meet his eyes. "Derek."
"It's not what you're thinking. Or…maybe it is. You see these things." He put the journal down and brought his knuckles up to her cheek. "I want a baby with you, but that's not what made me check into reality. For a long time, I knew he'd be proud of me. No one was all that impressed by the whole M.D. thing by the fourth go. Kath was the only one who didn't get 'oh, you too?' Poor Amy got that after saying she was going to be a brain surgeon. But we'd all heard the way Dad talked about Mom's job, and how she should've been able to go to med school—she graduated from college in '52."
"Not an opt—Wait, really?" Meredith's eyes widened, and her lips puckered. Something had occurred to her that she wasn't sure she should've spoken up about.
"Yes?"
"Um. What year was Kath born?'
"Sixty-one. Five kids, twelve years."
"Mmhmm, I know that part. I just…my mom was born in '53."
He knew that. He did. He'd signed Ellis Grey's freaking death note, as Meredith would put it. That Meredith had been born the year his father died made him very aware that they were twelve years apart. Somehow, this was more jarring.
Meredith's lip twitched. She snickered. She cupped her hands over her mouth, which did nothing to muffle her laughter. "Your face. Sorry! I'm so sorry, you're being all…all open-hearted….Crap, I didn't mean—!" She dissolved again over her own pun. He'd underestimated the weight that'd been on her for the past two months, even through hearing her admit to it. "Okay. Okay."
"You good?"
"I'm good," she insisted, steadily holding his gaze for about five seconds before she cracked up again. "Turn your face off!"
"Me?"
"Yes!"
"You, Meredith Grey, Queen of the Side-Eye, Duchess of the Dirty Look, you are telling me to turn my face off?"
"I'm not like that!"
"You're a bad liar. Wanna know why? It's all here." He waved a hand over her face.
"I'm an enigma."
"That's true."
"Thank—"
"An enigma who wears her thoughts on her face."
"Oh, go away." She shoved the heel of her hand against his chin. He gripped her wrist and kissed her palm. Her exaggeratedly grumpy expression was belied by her shining eyes. "You were the fourth doctor in your family."
"I was. Second surgeon. House in the Hamptons, brownstone in Manhattan. Dad wouldn't have given a hoot about that." Derek slid his hand along her arm to her back. "Helping people. Giving back. For him, that started as serving. That…if I mention that the I remember the fall of Saigon, will you lose it again?"
"No."
He almost wished she would. "Well, that's when Mom went civilian, but only because they believed in seeing things out. By that point, they knew too many guys who'd died. I don't think Mom would've dissuaded us from enlisting—five college educations—but she was vocally on Michael Moore's side after 9/11."
"In Manhattan? Wow. Mine was swayed by Colin Powell. I figured it was that she worked for him. Kinda wonder about that now that I know her type was Richard." Meredith smirked at his cringing. "I never could figure what that whole thing was like for her. The Towers. She never flashed back to being evacuated. That I know of. That's good, right?"
"Definitely." Gauging how long to wait to let her decide if she was going to add anything, without making her decide to underscore her own experience by comparing it to his wasn't easy. Sure, he'd been on the island. He'd worried about people. He hadn't spent the whole day out of contact with his single family member.
"It's hard to believe we weren't pushed in a family with five kids who did the same thing, but we weren't. It was a values thing. Well, and all of us getting Mom's science genes. Dad got lost after the science fair volcano."
"Are you saying…?"
"Four of them. Amy was the only one to get a ribbon in her first year, because she got to come up with her own idea. She was so mad—I'd kept having to postpone helping her make a volcano until it was too late." He sighed. Not the first time he'd berated himself for not being Dad, and definitely not the last.
"He knew everyone for blocks, and he'd do whatever he could for them. Whatever you did, if you helped people alongside it, that's what mattered. What it took me a long time to see was that it wasn't all that mattered.
"He would've been disappointed with me for stringing Addison along. I did it for the right reasons," he added, seeing Meredith's eyebrows immediately draw in. "All the ones I thought he'd raised me to stand up for. Fidelity, forgiveness, family. Addison gave up a lot to follow me out here, and I…I was scared. I mean…what'd I keep saying to you? Eleven years?"
Meredith nodded.
"I was twelve when Dad died. We started dating at twenty-four—It seemed...fated.
"I knew…I think I knew…the person she followed across the country wasn't the person my dad would want me to be. I'm not sure if he was the man she'd married. I just…. You know how I told you that the night I found them, I walked in the house and nothing had changed?"
"Mmhmm."
"I had changed without noticing. What I imagine it would be like is if…. Your mother... You maybe won't...but once she'd decided Richard wasn't following, if he'd shown up, the difference would've been evident to him?"
"Oh, yeah," she said, and it made him wish he hadn't come up with the comparison. "I mean…. The crying time was totally…. Do you usually see your mom cry by the time you're five?"
"Um. We did, at funerals. And Liz came at home, before they could pawn the older girls off on relatives or neighbors. We think that's Nan's doctor-origin story. Then, a couple other times before Dad died…. I guess Amy did. I hope so. Even if was a new expereince, she didn't have to deal with it alone, for days."
"Weeks. Feels like months. After that…. Yeah. She was still Mommy in Seattle. In Boston she became Mom. She still did my hair and sometimes read to me, but yeah. I noticed. An adult would've too. I've played the roles. The way she talked to…whoever she thought I was…? It changed in big ways."
"It's like that, if it'd happened over a decade. Supporting her career was a huge thing I knew Dad would approve of, but I was jealous of her—she learned new things; she had crazily unexpected procedures... We stopped discussing cases; whereas, my mom would talk about patients while helping Dad with inventory, y'know? I was missing the point. We'd said we'd start trying for kids at thirty, but there was a fellowship for her, and my last residency year, the practice, another fellowship, a job. We didn't have the lifestyle for children, and as much as I knew Dad would want it for me, I…was not going to be a good father. I was more like Mark's father than my own. Except I didn't put that together for ages. I just got…"
"Sulky like a sixteen-year-old."
"Something like that. Coming out here, meeting you…I was already becoming a better person, the guy I' wanted to be, and I still couldn't…Richard implied that being Chief wouldn't be supporting you. But rushing to marriage and a lifetime wasn't supporting you, either.
"You came back to me. That was a miracle, and I was so amazed by how hard you were working, on us, and at work, with your chosen family. I hadn't…I hadn't done that. I fought hard against my responsibility for all you'd been through, and how badly I'd screwed up before.
"I started to think I didn't know what being a good man was. Then, I killed a woman... butchered her with my hubris, and there wasn't enough of a distance between me and a serial killer…." He stopped himself there. He didn't want to remind her of the execution, not when he could almost feel the way she'd trembled finally telling him about it; her mute weeping in the car signaling that she was afraid of what he'd think if she tried.
"What Dad would've hated was how I behaved afterward. The shit I said to you about running and quitting? Running out here was the best choice I ever made, and I should've quit my marriage earlier. That didn't fit what I thought Dad would've praised me for.
"Izzie's surgery wasn't showy. I wouldn't be going into it trying to be a god. To impress. I was going to do everything I could for her, and make things up to you by focusing on our future. Not excluding the past, but not letting it drag me backward. I wasn't perfect at it. I'm not sure where being Interim Chief fell, except they we were strong enough to bridge it.
"For a second, having that bullet rip through me…. It felt inevitable." She hummed, recognizing what she'd once told him about almost dying—"Like… in saving Mom's life, I tied myself to her, and once she didn't need me…maybe that's how I knew she was dead."—"as though I'd been heading toward it forever. I'd made it past forty-one. The extra year was the one where I'd fixed things. I knew I was getting it right with you, and I refused to stop fighting just because I might not deserve what we had. It wasn't about my worthiness. Why would the universe punish me for being too slow by ruining your life?"
"You knew it would do that. You didn't think you'd be giving me an out. Proof of progress."
"It was, huh? Especially waking up to you by my side. I don't know how you balanced it all, and I…I wanted to get back to work, and aside from all the therapists, first for Amy and me, and then just Amy, I have a shrink for an oldest sister. I know the words."
"And you're a charming guy who'd been shot and went in there smiling. I knew you sweet-talked him, I share your bed. You get nightmares. The speeding was classic trauma, but it's like my booze and boning—not totally out of character. You like fast cars, you have an iron foot. He didn't think to ask if you were playing Frogger. What kind of neurosurgeon risks a multiple vehicle pile-up? He'd have expected you to be enacting some kind of self-harm that didn't put other people at risk."
"Christ. I never…. The car is—" He swallowed, stopping the justificaitions. She'd always been skittish about reckless driving; he hadn't considered that she might have othe rreasons to rebuke him—Reasons that should've occurred to him.
"Build for speed? Like Mark's Harley?"
He winced. Good thing she didn't know about the Mustang. He hadn't totaled it, but he had taught Amy to drive.
"I am so sorry, Mer. That's essentially the opposite of what you did, isn't it? You accepted being hurt if others would be protected." He stroked her hair. "Not endangering anyone else is your M.O. Not that I was..." Was he punishing her in some way for offering herself up to Clark? When he'd done the same? "It was a reminder. I could control what I was doing. The fear and the rush was all a choice—felt like a choice. It felt right, and I'd think of how right everything else was. How great our life was. The unfairness of living through what killed Dad after I'd failed to measure up, that I was in any way responsible for what happened, that you'd had to have that whole experience…that went away.
"Today, you made me remember that it can't. I have to pay attention to the whole picture; otherwise, I'll screw it up again. I have to find the balance, and if I could miss so much…I should know you better than a random psychiatrist."
"To be fairer than he deserves, he had access to my medical records." When she looked away before continuing, he expected her to say something about it being too soon, when he wished she'd been making off-the-cuff references for weeks, if that helped her. "Derek?"
"Yes, love?"
"Dunno if this would've helped, but in Jen Harmon's O.R.? I didn't recognize the man trying to keep a body alive rather than saving a life, but it was obvious Addison didn't either."
"It does help," he assured her. "That's not the man who I want raising our baby." He'd scared her that day, too. She smiled at the same time as a glistening sheen coated her eyes. True Meredith tears, the ones she'd fight to not let fall.
"Are you mad?"
"About the miscarriage?"
"Why it…. That if I hadn't told him to point the gun at me, maybe..."
"Meredith, no." He flattened his hand between her shoulders and rolled onto his side enough to have a full view of her face. "I don't love the fact that you told him to shoot you. I also understand why you did. Your life is the people in it, and it hasn't been that long since your mother was all you had. If he'd gone on to hurt anyone else, and you hadn't tried…."
"I couldn't have been the mom I want to be. I'm not sure I can anyway, but with you—"
"I think you could've, but that doesn't mean…. Your life is yours, Mer. Your body, your choices, and you didn't choose. You had a miscarriage at five weeks, it happens. Was it correlated to the stress you were under? Likely. Do we know that? No."
Her expression was doubtful, but the shine in her eyes was hope. There'd been long periods where that had gone missing.
"I do wish you'd talked to me. That you hadn't been dealing with it on your own."
"I wasn't. I had Cristina—"
"Whose fiancé had been shot. Again."
"You want Cristina Yang to agree to a wedding, find a guy with a grudge," she observed. "Kepner knows. She was there. It…it was hard enough telling you the other part, what I'd done, but I didn't want you to hear it from some respiratory therapist. You needed me, and I could point out that you'd sort of done the same thing.
"It wasn't…. It sucked, okay? I was changing dressings, and tossing soaked maxipads out with them, and D are no joke, I'd never had cramps like that, but Derek, you'd been shot. And…And there's a difference between you thinking I was passively suicidal again, and that I'd been willing to let him kill your baby." The tears were back, and her chin was jutting out at the same time it quivered.
"I don't think that. Any of it," he assured her, stroking her cheek with his thumb. "I know, now. I'm here."
"You almost weren't." She touched his chest, finding the exact spot where she'd unpicked tape with minute movements to avoid pulling hair, taken out unraveling stitches, applied the same ointment he'd used on the incision over her liver.
He moved his hand down to the hem of her shirt and up, finding the thin line. She shivered, and drew in a sharp breath when he kept going up along her torso. He flipped his hand over to circle his knuckles on the side of her breast. She leaned in, kissing him. He felt her react to his thumb tweaking her nipple, and she let him roll her onto her back.
He trailed his other hand over the concave curve her belly. "You're so strong. You took such good care of me. You've been looking after everyone for months. You're gonna be such an incredible mom. I'm so sorry I've been dealing with this like such a blockhead."
"Alex's worse," she murmured.
He smiled at her, flicking her nipple again, feeling it harden. "Oh yeah?"
"Not entirely," she admitted, breathily. "He's being a macho dumbass."
"He definitely didn't show Lexie his good side. Up," he prodded, and she curled up off the pillow for him to take her shirt off. When she lay back, she pulled him forward by the lapel, and started working his buttons out of place. He cupped her breasts, watching her face shift as she tried to keep her fingers steady.
"Ha!" she exclaimed as the last disk came unfastened. As she reached for his shoulders, he rested his thumbs on her nipples and circled them, and her arms dropped, her fists landing on the pillow. "No fair."
"I didn't say anything about fair." He brought his mouth down to her clavicle, kissing up to her neck. Her breath quickened in his ear, and when she twined her legs around his, he let her peal his shirt off, bringing his hands down to her hips.
"She's still into Mark. Lexie," she said. "Alex wants Izzie back. Not sure they weren't roleplaying the whole time."
"It's very disturbing that I can see that," he said, tugging the tie on her waistband.
"That's the problem. She sees everything. Remembers. I think the whole murderer obsession was her trying to replace the images."
"Truly your sister."
"Yup." She popped her ass up along with the "p," letting him strip her pants and underwear off her legs.
"God, you're beautiful."
"Gonna think that once I've shoved an actual baby out of there?" she asked, the levity of the question painfully false in comparison to how easily she'd let the observation about Lexie slip, and how sharp she'd been at the precinct.
"Always. You will never be anything other than gorgeous to me." He'd been speeding away from her right when she'd felt like she'd caught up, was ready for that next step, the one he hadn't already taken once before. He hadn't been trying to run. It wasn't that in the slightest, but he had to wonder if it'd felt that way.
She smiled, and then gasped as he slipped his fingers between her legs. The hood of her clit was smooth and slick, and for a good minute the only sound she made was in the form of satisfied hums. Then he could feel the bud of her clit directly under the pads of his fingers. She moaned as he rolled it, one leg stretching out alongside him. Color was already rising in her pale skin.
"Don't tease, okay? Please just take me through."
"I can do that." He trailed the nails of his other hand against her side, making her twist and buck against his hand. "You've been working so hard, Mer. How long since you've brought your fingers down here?"
"Since," she repeat. It took him a moment to realize that was all there was for her to say. Her eyes darted away. "Prob'ly hormone shit, and then…you…you were shot, and then you…I wanted you, but I hadn't told you, so it woulda felt like a lie, and if it upset you, and you…you kept—if you crashed 'cause I—you crashed in there. To me you— oh!" She arced, his hand pressing more firmly against her clit as he shifted his weight to lean over her and cup her cheek with his other hand.
Not long after he'd been discharged, she'd smoothed down a gauze pad and keep going taken him in hand with her mouth, quipping about pain management. He'd had to go back to the office as soon as he could—he'd had a contract to see out. There were memorials to arrange, security to investigate, families to talk to, and guilt to shunt down the line. She'd been busy; she'd been pissed off at him. He hadn't reconsidered any of that in light of new information.
"I'm here. I'm right here, sweetheart."
"You died, Derek. I thought you died."
"I know. Here." He took her wrist again, bringing her hand to his chest. "Feel, Mer. Feel that?" She nodded, twisting in his grip. "Hey," he said, loosening his hold, but drawing her palm closer. "You're not hurting me. I'm whole and healed, okay?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me."
"You're here. Not dead. Not…you were…you were so hurt…."
"I'm here. The pain's over. You made it so much better than it could've been, sweetheart, and you've been hurting this whole time. That's no good."
"Not now."
"No? What are you feeling, now?"
"Warm. And…and you…oh, yeah, that feels amazing."
He kissed her, drinking in the sighs evoked by simply circling two fingers over her clit. The signs that she'd crossed a line were less subtle: her hips undulated against the bed, her breath got heavier, her head tipped back.
Derek lifted his fingers, stroking her lightly, encouraging the swelling tissue until she whined at him. "You promised."
"Not teasing, baby," he assured her, and then the word registered with him. Meredith didn't react, and he was grateful for the training that kept his hand moving while his thoughts stammered. "Just want it to be strong for you."
"Gonna be. Gonna—" The vowel stuck in her throat, and her fingers splayed and then curled on his chest. Her other hand rose above her head to grab the headboard, pulling her muscles taut as he increased the pressure he was using to rub her clit. "Faster, I need it fast, yeah, just like that, oh crap it's gotta be soon, I'm so hot, Der, on fire for you, please faster, want it so bad, don't stop, I'm gonna come for you, all for you, Derek ."
He could listen to her babbling forever; it meant she was with him, not lost in her head somewhere he couldn't follow, but it was when she went silent that was the truest tell. Her whole being became frantic, desperate to get more of the electricity flowing through her, but also to released from it. If he had anything to do with it, she'd get both. She'd get everything he could give her.
Her voice kicked in again as she thrashed, a medley of sounds that ended in a single strangled groan. Her legs didn't stop once she'd come, and he kept going, rocking his hand slightly to put his fingers just above the more sensitive nerves in her glans.
"Still feel good?"
"Mmm. You wanna go?"
"Not yet. Soon."
"M'kay."
"I hate the thought of someone hurting you down here and not even knowing about it." He placed a series of kisses on her belly. She squirmed and gasped as he moved to stroke her clit. "One day, there'll be a baby in here. You'll be all round, and so gorgeous. But that takes a while. Much faster to fill you up down here. Make you burst again and again until all that fear and stress that's been in you is replaced with pleasure. I've got weeks to make up for. Think I can do it all tonight?"
"Think…think you're...ahh…very determined."
"It's what you deserve, Mer." He rubbed a knuckle against the bump of her clit, and she moaned beautifully in response to the change. Soon, her pelvis was jerking, her next orgasm suddenly on the horizon. She was just erect enough for him to put a finger down on either of her labia and draw them together to trap her glans.
"Yes, yes, Derek, oh yeah. Harder. Yeah, that's it. Oh, fuck it's good, feels so good, please don't stop, need you to not stop, need you, need you—" She broke off, tensing and shuddering, her lips pursing. Then, she reached for him, latching onto his shoulders.
"I have you," he murmured, wrapping his arm around her.
"Don't wanna—don't lemme hurt you—"
"Hey, I spent a night in jail. You're worried about my comfort, now?"
Her laugh transformed into a series of fractured cries that culminated in a shout of release. He took her weight as she pulled her legs up, her face contorting. Continuing to work his fingers against her clit, he pressed his lips to the pulse point on her neck. It pounded, blood rushing as her muscles clenched. She finally went limp, sprawling out on the bed. He gave her a second before he started dotting kisses onto her face.
"Don't," she protested, turning her head away, and squealing when he poked his tongue against the shell of the ear she was presenting him with. "Gross!"
"Hm, yeah, I'm not sure you know what gross is. Nothing in that holding cell had ever seen Lysol."
"Not sorry."
"I know."
She was quivering against his hand, her hooded eyes looking up at him were sated. His cock wanted him to go on and take her. Then, the slam of the front door echoed up to them. Meredith flinched. "Lexie," she observed. "Think it'll be a screaming night?"
He raised his eyebrow at her.
"Derek!"
"I said nothing."
"You have loud thoughts. I meant—"
"I know what you meant. She's been doing better, and we're not talking about that tonight."
"It hasn't gone away. Dumb shrink cleared everyone, because proximity to Teddy causes men to make bad choices. Meanwhile, Lexie's having nightmares, Cristina's crying, and Alex won't take a stupid—" He put a finger on her lips, and then replaced it with his.
"Shh. There's nothing you need to do about any of it right now. Nothing you can do. No point in worrying." He tweaked her glans, watching her for another, different flinch. When he didn't see it, he kept flicking. "Can you give me another?"
"If you insist."
"Oxytocin always makes you so mouthy."
"You love it when I'm mouthy," she said, over-enunciating the word so her lips morphed around it.
"I love you." He kissed her, sliding his mouth down from hers, along her neck and to her clavicle. "Let me play with you."
"Don't—"
"No teasing. You tell me when you're ready."
"I don't have to. You know. Doesn't mean you do anything about it."
"When have I ever—?"
"Eventually," she huffed, yanking his pillow out from under the bedspread and stacking it under hers, and then bending her knees, letting her legs fall open. Have at it.
She'd come hard, she could've been done, if he'd let her be. The first sigh was reluctant, almost belligerent, and he considered that mentioning the lock-up thing might've been a misstep.
"Derek? Did I…? Never mind."
"What?"
"You're right, we don't need to…we shouldn't…I spent months not telling you this huge thing, and now you're…. Just…." She covered her face with her hands. "Uggh."
"Hey, see, not the noise I'm going for." He took her clit between two fingers and let them slide off.
"Omph."
"Closer."
She stuck her tongue out at him, but moved her hands, so as far as he was concerned he won twice. "Cristina said a thing about thinking the wedding would…well, marrying Owen would fix her, and…and I dunno where she's been, because did she miss the whole thing where wanting to be fixed didn't just—? I wasn't just fixed, and I don't know if getting all wrapped up in the wedding…if I pushed her, because…because I was wrong about Teddy, and Owen got shot, and you did, and Burke did, and we're just going back and forth seeing each other's relationships wrong. I don't actually think fifty-percent means anything about you and me, even if she and Owen make it, except…. Are we okay?"
"Yeah, Mer."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "You didn't follow that."
"Not all of it," he admitted. "I missed Cristina leaving last night, I was showering off the slammer. But," he added over her eye-roll. "We are more than okay. We're perfect. As close as we can be," he added, ready for her to call that. "Cristina's having a rough time. I think if anyone can understand it's Owen. He loves her, and she was sure she loved him before this happened. Burke admired her. And if anyone jumped into something because of him being shot…." It might've been me. "It was him."
"Yeah. That's true. Guns suck."
"That they do."
"You've known that for a long time."
"I have."
"And you're okay?" She eyed him, in that way that saw through everything, but also somehow left her open to being seen through. He wanted to focus on getting that muscle under her eye to start twitching. It was starting to seem like Lexie might actually manage to go to sleep and wake up again before that happened. Meredith would go to her, because that was what she did, and she'd stay saying that people who'd been shot needed sleep—
She'd been both by his side and hiding from him for months, without actually pushing him away. It made him think again of those weeks after she drowned; the way he'd made worrying for her about him.
"Maybe not. But I'm not…. I'll slow down, Mer. I'm not going to stop on you."
"Do you think Cristina will? Be okay?"
He thought immediately of Amelia, the tears and tantrums and meltdowns from a little girl who didn't know what she'd seen. He'd thought of her while trying to revive Meredith, too. Thought of her since he'd seen the gun, his watch heavy on his wrist. Meredith fighting Cristina's hold, the way Amelia had struggled against hers.
"I hope so. I think it can't be easy for her to go through this again, but unless we're all being very thoroughly gaslit, Owen's fine, and she has you. You didn't push her anywhere, Mer. You've only ever supported her in her decisions, and provided a sounding board. Sometimes, that's all you can do for someone. Sometimes, it's enough to know there's someone there whether you break or not. You're her person."
"Pulling out the McDreamy words with the face, huh? Oh, and the fingers." She bit her lip. "Third time. Not…well, mmm, keep doing that and yeah, but I mean Cristina. Her dad. It's not a secret. Think it's in her Match essay thing. He wasn't shot, but he—there was a car accident when she was nine. Steering wheel."
"Jesus."
"Not sure he's got anything to do with it."
"Yeah. Honestly, me neither."
Her eyebrows went up. "You didn't die."
"No."
"So, you didn't…it was different for you." She nodded as if that confirmed something important. "I guess…that's funny, she was there when you woke up, too, huh? Cristina? Sorry I wasn't. Other stuff happening."
"That's…. Wait, no, you…."
Meredith swallowed, looking like she very much wanted to hide her face in her hands again.
"Wasn't she with you? Kepner was there when you operated on Owen, but the Adamsons…she got to them before they heard the news."
"Yeah. She went to find a phone as soon as we got to Seattle Pres, and…Cristina was with me until….until I told her to go. There was too much else…too many other people…I was okay."
"Meredith—"
"Well, obviously not, because, y'know, you, bullet, Alex, bullet. Reed and Percy, dead. Baby…but I wasn't shot."
You'd only asked to be. He'd tell her the miscarriage could've happened anytime, could've been adrenaline from half an hour before Clark came into that O.R. but privately he wondered if it was guilt. That she had been spared, that somehow the ties between her and Lexie, Richard, and him had put them all where they were; her certainty that something horrible had to happen to her if he'd made it. "You're incredible."
"Really, really not," she said, but she was smiling, and…that smile was the first thing he remembered seeing. She'd gone through a miscarriage, and she was right a D wasn't a joke, and been there in time for him to remember waking up, and she'd been smiling at him.
"That is an argument you're not going to win."
Her chin jutted out at the challenge, and he lowered his finger, finding the top of her cunt and stroking firmly upward. He stopped a hair short of her glans and reversed course. It took a couple of repetitions to get a whine from her, and she turned her head, pressing her mouth against the pillow.
"That's going to get hot fast, Mer."
"Promises, promises."
I'll show you promises. It was what he'd usually say, because she was a menace, and she taunted him into saying benign, childish things like that. But promises, the wedding, going for ice; Cristina's last wedding, the way she'd looked at him in the hospital, and now, her eye peeking out, waiting for him to say the thing he always did, because they had that. They had the candle house becoming a real house, and—aThe candle nightmare."
"Wh-What?"
"The speeding. You've been scared of that for a long time, and I—"
"S'okay. You always drive too fast. Just... reckless endangerment, Derek? We'd been through the being a god thing? I thought…." She clamped her mouth shut.
"You had my breakdown pencilled in," he observed, and she looked down. "Worried telling me about the miscarriage would cause it. And I'd take it out on you. What were you afraid I'd say, baby?" He continued to tend to her as he spoke, touching her in different ways, everywhere, except her slowly shifting glans.
"'Fraid you'd say it was just like the bay. Didn't wanna kill myself but wouldn't mind…wouldn't be… was terrified and desperate. That you'd forget that I fought then. I did.. That I could've been taking your wife and baby, did I have that right? That…That... you'd say a good mom would never do that. That…That I killed our baby."
"Oh, Mer. If you'd died I don't know what I've had done, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't think I'd mourn a baby as more than a possibility, and there's so much possibility left in our future. You didn't want a baby to have already lost a father, an aunt, and whatever Richard will be…. You know, we usually call people who jump in front of bullets heroes."
"That's not what I did."
"It's what you were trying to do. To protect the people those bullets were meant for. People you've given your all to take care of already this year." He ran his finger over her heptectomy scar again. "You worry because you love so much. You're going to love our babies so well."
"Babies?" She'd surfaced from the pillow, her cheeks red, her hair a cloud around her face. She wasn't trying to hide from him anymore.
"Mm, you did say crappy babies, I specifically recall the plural," he said, drawing an S around her clit. She bucked, visibly clenching. "And, uh, so far my sisters have been—"
"Ridiculously fertile, I got that. You coulda mentioned from day…uh whatever day that was…," Her face went pinker than it was already, almost as dark as the soft skin he was compressing with his knuckles. She absolutely knew which day he'd told her about his sisters, and from her expression, she didn't associate it with what had come later. What he'd held back.
"If I'd told you only three of the four had kids, and there were triplets among all those nieces and nephews, would I have gotten you here?"
"Mmm. Kath's stepkids sorta even that out. And my mother was big on protection. I don't have, for example, a sister who came outta nowhere seven years after me."
"Not totally…. Amy was an accident, never let her believe anything else, but, uh, Nan said once that Mom was so sweet on Mark because there should've been a Shepherd about his age. I didn't know what that meant at the time, but…."
"Miscarriage?"
"I think so."
"That's it?"
"That I know of."
"Hmm." Her eyes unfocused for a second, and he could see her running through the family tree she'd actually studied. "Couple questionable gaps, but... Can we….wo? 'cause I have eighteen years maybe, if I get Alzheimer's when Mom did, so—"
"Two would be great," he interrupted, unable to keep a little bit of surprise from his voice. It wasn't difficult to imagine her deciding that any would be impossible.
"Know what else would be great?"
"What's that?"
"Derek."
"You're telling me things, now, Mer."
God the laser eyes were hot. She turned her head again, muttering, "Oh, I'll tell you, bum-ass jailbird," then looked back at him, her expression somewhere between kissing him and informing him she wasn't getting him out of lock-up. "I'm freaking throbbing, Derek, so if you'd quit playing whatever semantics game you're playing by teasing me everywhere else and put your hand on my clit—" He obeyed. She fully twisted at the waist, and didn't stop moving again until she came, rocking and thrusting against his palm.
"Yeah, thought that might happen," he commented as she stared at him, dumbfounded, sweat rolling down her face. The muscle under her eye was twitching. He caught the pillow she threw and used it to prop himself up next to her. "I'm not invincible. Not a god. But I do know you. I should've seen that something was up."
"I worked pretty hard to make sure you wouldn't. But…I knew you could." She kissed him, rolling onto her side to bring her hand to his face. "We…we made a baby, Derek."
"We did."
"You said something about filling me, earlier."
"I did." He kissed her, slipping his tongue between her lips. "That what you meant?"
She rolled her eyes again, but went with it. "No."
He took his hands down to her breasts. "Hm, those are pretty full."
"Yeah," she breathed. "Keep…keep going."
He took her wrists first, bringing her hands in to take the place of his. "Here?' He separated her labia, slipping a finger into her cunt.
"Mmhmm."
"That doesn't quite fill you, does it?"
"Might take a couple more."
"There is another way," he said, crooking another finger inside of her. "To do that."
"There is, but I dunno. That thing's been exposed in some pretty gross places." She held the sincere expression for several beats, and then the giggles were back.
"Going to assume my face is the problem?"
"Usually." She snorted, not her scoffing-snort, but an involuntary sound that made her laugh harder.
"This is what I wanted. I got myself into this."
"Not…not yet you haven't." Her tits bounced with her laughter; her hands were cupped over her mouth, but the lips he could see were plumped and inviting, her open thighs glistening.
"Okay, you work on that," he instructed, shaking her gently with his palm on her mons.
Removing his pajamas was almost as relieving as getting into the shower at Seattle Grace had been the yesterday, even with its shitty water pressure.
"No…No latex."
"Do you—?"
"No! Just you. Only you." Her breathlessness suddenly wasn't laughter. He considered all the times he'd put gloves on and fingered her; how many miserable experiences she'd gotten through without aversions. D 's. Very much no joke, and she'd been alone.
"That's right. Just me, love. Gonna slide in right here—" He tickled her labia, lifting his finger by hairs as she squirmed. "—where you're nice and shiny. Gonna fill you up." He walked his fingers up her, rubbing her mons, still smooth from the wedding. Jesus, he'd wanted to get her out of that dress, leave the necklace and let it jingle while she glided against him. "Gonna find your good spots. Make you hot and taut. Gonna squirt off inside you."
"Yeah," she gasped. On impulse, he reached up, scratching her scalp. "Ooooo." That particular keening sound was new, and he was going to get her to make it as often as he could.
He'd started to pull her toward his hips when the vibrating sound reached them.
"Yours," she said. "My ringer's on." Thank God, he thought, just as she reached over toward it, her legs coming together.
"Mer, don't both—"
"It's Amy."
"Ignore it," he instructed, thinking of all the times he'd put something aside for Amelia. She hadn't been the only complication in his life, but she'd definitely been one. "Trust me, she'll keep calling."
"What if—?"
"If something's wrong, someone else will call."
"That's kinda presumptive. I used your phone to call your mom. She got the phone tree started."
"Why do you find that so funny, still?"
"I didn't it was a real thing! I didn't have a family." His phone was still going; he'd never considered her luckier. "Seriously, the last time you ignored a call from a woman named Shepherd…."
"Amelia is with Addison. Last I heard, anyway. She ditched her very prestigious research fellowship at Harvard and was hanging around L.A., which is not where you want an addict—"
"Oh, you can find it in Cambridge," she said, setting the phone on the bedside table and moving onto her knees in one fluid movement. "But I don't know that. I'm not the criminal."
"Picking up the phone for one of my sisters right now would be a crime."
"Hey," she said, maneuvering over his lap. "We only stopped being all careful about condoms a couple months before I got pregnant. In less than a year, it might not be Lexie waking us up crying."
"True." He smoothed her tousled hair back from her temples. "That's why we need to take advantage of now."
She responded by sinking onto him. "Abh. You can win that argument." It was absolutely mockery, but that didn't matter. Not with her propelling him backward as she adjusted herself on his cock. "So much better'n a speculum."
Jesus, he'd hated the idea of some random Seattle Pres doctor sticking instruments in her, but something about her saying that, punctuated with her unabashed grunts and groans, made it too much. He thrust up as far as he could, pressing a hand against the small of her back to tip her forward. She caught herself on his chest, and immediately withdrew her hands.
"Don't," he growled at her. Her eyes went wide, but he jerked his hips, and she brought them down again to support herself. He shoved a hand between them, grinding her with his palm. She howled, and he didn't relent until she burst again. Her spine arched, pressing her pelvis harder against him. When her shoulders fell, she continued rocking, her tits brushing his chest. He hissed through his teeth, and she started to draw back again. He managed to propel himself up to catch her lips, drawing her downward. Her breast covered the entirety of his scar, her breath hot on his ear as she moaned.
"Derek, fill me Derek, you wanna, I know you wanna. Got you going so deep. Skewering me. Now you get to come in me. You get to explode in me. Get to-to, ohhh, ohhh only you. Right there. Right there You're the only one I've ever wanted to-to... Der—Derek, I'm gonna come—gonna come apart. No more Mer. Just Meredith mist. Just coming and coming for you on you. Only cock I've ever let in me like this. Raw-ah-ah-AH. You feel that? Derek you're...you're pulsing in me gonna gonna c-come now, okay? Okay okay oh-yes, oh-yes, yes, yeah—"
God, good God, she was so warm, deserved so much more than cold and sterile, Christ, she was tightening, her lips a perfect 'o' as she tilted her head back; speeding had nothing on this, on her, being here, being with her, being alive, alive with "Meredith, Meredith, Meredith!'
She slid down to lie fully on top of him, her chest heaving, and he automatically cleared her hair away from the back of her neck. "Thanks."
"Any time."
"Think…think Lexie regrets hearin' my name ever?"
"I do not."
"M'kay."
He chuckled, and she made a small noise of objection. "Problem?"
"Laughing at me."
"Excuse you?"
"Nothing on my face."
"Sure, okay."
" 'M I too heavy for you?"
It was a variant on the question she'd been asking all night—no, it was a combination of them. Of what she'd worried about, had reason to, for three years. "No. Not at all."
"Might be, when there's a baby."
"I don't think so."
"'Kay, good." She nestled in against him. If he sat up to move them to the head of the bed, she'd stay in place. For someone who'd never been clingy a day in her life, she sure could cling.
"Hey, post-coital koala Mer? You're not the only one who can get mouthy."
She raised her head, slightly, considering, and then let it fall back. "Unh. No more, please."
"I wouldn't want to forgo one of your favorite things."
"One of yours."
"It can be both."
She roused herself enough to pat his face. "Tomorrow. Refill."
"Sound logic." He pressed his lips against her crown. Another thought occurred to him, and he lifted his head at an uncomfortable angle to consider her. She was an instrument he'd been learning for a couple of years. Sometimes he hit perfect notes. Mostly, they were on-pitch. Sometimes he got it horribly wrong. "Or," he said, in a murmur. "I could get ice."
She stiffened without uncurling, and the room was quiet enough for him to hear footsteps in the attic; Lexie, pacing herself to sleep. The lack of turning pages was a good—"You did not just."
"What? You like ice."
She rolled over, landing flat on him, her head on her folded arms. Her elbows were pressed against him, but she wasn't leaning on them in retribution. "I hate you," she said matter-of-factly.
"You're not a good liar."
"I can be."
"No." He rested his hand on the small of her back. "Hiding isn't the same. You let me see you, I just wish I was better at…." He hesitated. How did he put this honestly? This time, he hadn't seen, truly. She'd been It, seeking out everyone before he considered running for base. That was her kind of messy metaphor, but he wasn't sure all of her games of hide 'n' seek hadn't been that way: hiding from a seeker who didn't know they should look.
Her eyes were searching his face, and he could almost read the words she was filling in. Things about wanting her to be simple, lighter. It wasn't her. He did it with Amy, with Addison, with Meredith.
"I wanted to be able to make everyone okay. All of us did. Knowing that you didn't feel the way you used to, but you were saying the same thing….I should've seen past the superficial, but..I spent so much time with Mark, who was very 'what you see is what you get,' and…and Amy was, too, until I went away, and suddenly she had secrets, when she'd always been…painfully transparent about being in pain. It got to where I let myself…made myself believe what people said, and ignore everything else. It always blew up in my face."
"Or drowned," she offered, touching the space between his eyes again, smoothing it lazily, and then drawing it down over his cheek.
"When I woke up from being shot…I feel like a jackass, because all around me there were people feeling the pain I associated with a shooting, but I…didn't." Meredith's eyes widened, and he smiled at her. She hadn't gotten close to Reed or Charles, and one of the confessions she'd made early on was her guilt over feeling like she should feel their loss more. "It didn't feel real," he continued. "So, you told me you were okay, and I wanted to believe you. I didn't want…."
Her frown made him hesitate again. They'd been here three years ago. She'd gone under the water, and she'd been all he'd had; she'd told him she was okay, and he'd believed her. She'd told him she was better, and he hadn't known if he should. But he'd been wrong, and she'd already compared what she'd told Clark with what happened in the water. It wasn't the same, but his denial was.
"I am still so happy I made it. That I'm here with you. It wouldn't be fair of me to say I wouldn't have done exactly what you did, because I know what it's like to have to consider living in a world without you. My mom had five of us, and we never quite made up for Dad. That's not how it should've been. Your love for a kid is different, but Amy and I needed her the most, we looked the most like him….You were scared of that, a little, weren't you? Associating a baby with me?"
"I dunno. Consciously, I didn't…but…. Yeah. That's there."
"I would've done anything to keep you alive that day. And whether or not…whatever had happened, I knew that I hadn't let myself see that I could be so happy to have you, and you could love me—I knew that you did—and have so much underneath it. I kept thinking that if I'd pushed, if I hadn't pushed you…."
"Mistakes were made."
He expected her to start laughing at his face again, because he was sure he was obviously flabbergasted.
She kissed him. "Don't think you coulda gotten through my armor, but…."
"But," he agreed. "I should've tried. I'm happy you see that. I wanted you to tell me, then. Blame me, something. I also didn't want to face…. Those months between, before Addison, they were…they were real, so real, but they felt—"
"Like a dream."
He smoothed his hand up the curve of her ass and down her spine. Having Addison appear in the lobby that day must've been a nightmare for her. "Mm. And I wanted that again. I didn't understand, or want to understand, life's not that way. Our life wasn't that way then, but I could tell myself it had been.
"I'd screwed my real life up so soundly. Around every corner was someone telling me you had yours ahead of you. I went from refusing to blame myself, because I wouldn't let myself see that I'd done lasting damage, to blaming myself too much and underestimating everything else in your life. I don't know if stepping back to let you deal with it all was the best choice."
"I did."
"You did, beyond what I could… but I didn't support you so much as say, 'get to where you want what I want.' You…You hadn't done this. We're here, now. We made it. And I lived.
"I didn't want to crowd you over the past few months. I didn't want you to think you couldn't be there for your friends and for me. I came between you too much as it was, and I had so much more than I deserved—I think it felt like a dream again, until today. I wouldn't dream you being anything other than happy."
"I am," she said, more to her arms than him. "That's why…I'm sad about things, but I'm still happy. I still wanna bring a baby into this screwed up world of guns and bombs. I'm scared of that. I'm scared in the hospital, but I can…I can cross the bridge as easily as I walked into the kitchen a few years ago. 'M not supposed to be the one like this. As a kid I took on all Mom's sadness, and I am sad for April and Jackson, and scared for Cristina, and worried 'bout Lex, and fed up with Alex, but you weren't wrong 'bout the happy."
Her eyes were still busy, but her eyelids were slipping. He started combing through her hair again, keeping the pads of his fingers on her scalp.
"Did you think the wedding would'a made it real? 'Cause there's ice places without the freeway."
"Maybe. I didn't consider it. There was a gap in traffic, and I…I knew what I was doing, but not what it was doing to you."
"I know," Meredith said, her head cradled in the crook of her arm. "Idiot. Not cruel."
"Thanks.
"I think Cristina and Owen are good together. And I know I had a hand in the stress she had over the situation with Teddy. I'm sure that didn't make anything better. I owe her my life. I also…." He thought of all the choices, big and small, that his family could trace to one gunshot. "She needed to know she could do it. Have the wedding. But it wasn't going to turn her into Cristina Yang before Burke, or whoever she thought she'd be after him. If I'd been there…."
"She mighta thought that's why it didn't change what she felt? You're a reminder?"
"Mmhmm."
She nodded. "You get her. Dead dads club? S'okay. I'm in a club with your best friend, too."
He chuckled, but she might've had something. Knowing about it, he did think he had more insight into what Cristina would've had felt at nine than the mix of confusion and responsibility that'd been put on Meredith, if only because the five-year-old he'd had struggling in his arms that day had not understood the situation at all. Amelia would not have sat calmly and waited. She would've screamed, and tried to rush those guys, or thrown herself on Dad, or done something, because she was always doing things, getting into things. She was five. She could recite 9-1-1, but she would've looked to him before using the phone.
"Think she might need that. There's a me and you, and a me and Cristina, and a her and Owen, but there's you an' Cristina, too. And Lexie, and Kepner…April. Callie, Jackson. Dumbass who thinks he's Superman. Bailey…. There's all of us."
"Yeah." There was an air of comradeship among everyone who'd been on the surgical floor that day, where there'd been a shooter, not just a confusing lockdown. He trailed his finger around the back of her ear, and she nestled against him.
He used to accuse her of going to her friends too much, dismissing them as interns. He'd accepted that they were part and parcel of her too late, and he knew that in the past she'd had trouble finding a balance. Then, he'd operated on Izzie, they'd lost O'Malley—and he'd become Chief which made the scales uneven again.
There'd been a push and pull, and it had seemed untenable to him, because he could see how his sisters had given him a way to avoid Addison whenever something was amiss, and Addison had given him an excuse not to bother with his sisters. He acted like they were a unit, one that included Mark, but it'd splintered almost a lifetime before he'd met her. That Addison couldn't really get it had been in his head as he went after Meredith at prom, he was sure. As though he'd known she would. Maybe he'd sensed it, or seen her empathy. More likely, he'd wanted an excuse to run.
Meredith was determined to keep this shooting from coming between anyone. Between the two of them, she'd definitely come the furthest. Running after her had been a good choice, no matter why he'd made it. He needed to catch up again.
"You're incredible, Mer."
She hummed, acknowledging that he'd spoken more than what he'd said, but she didn't reject the words whole cloth. That win he'd absolutely take.