"Yeah, Mom," Derek said. "I'll call when it gets here, I promise. Have you talked to Liz since, uh…," he hesitated, needing to think to figure out when he'd last spoken to his sister, and to mouth Mom at Meredith, who'd appeared in the bathroom doorway, wearing only her untied robe. "Saturday?"
"I have," his mother said.
Rather than heading for the dresser, Meredith came for him. It wasn't until she perched on his knee that he noticed he'd been bouncing his leg, apparently a temptation she couldn't resist. Her saucy smile stayed as her lips parted, releasing a small sigh. She'd been out of the shower long enough that her hair wasn't dripping, but when she leaned forward, he felt the warm wetness pooling between her legs.
"She's doing well. She told you she's back at work full-time?"
"Uh, uh-huh, she did. I am, too. Except for Christmas. Obviously." He put his free hand on Meredith's back to support her as she shifted, more concerned with friction than balance.
"That's excellent. I know it's not easy for you to accept help from your sisters. I'm glad Meredith stood up to you. Have you apologized for regressing to fourteen?"
"I…yeah. She knowsl" He was paying some of his dues in this moment. The bathrobe gave him a side view of Meredith's pert nipples, He wanted to reach past the fabric to find out exactly how firm they were, and what her face would do in response. How could it be that two hands weren't enough?
"I suppose I owe her my apologies, too. It sounds like your sisters put her through the wringer."
"That's not your fault, Ma," he said, lest she ask for him to find her and give over the phon—God, she was slick, and soft, and it would serve her right. He knew better. He knew he'd somehow be the one to suffer.
"I raised them. I should've put more effort into calling off the hounds. I've told them time and time again that Meredith is the one for you; that you were going to be happy, but not one of them is good at moving on from a first impression—in this case from Nancy's first impression."
Mom had realized that his sisters had been hounding Mer, which was a more than he had. All of the calls he'd avoided this summer— had they then gone to Meredith? All while her sister was comatose?
"Liz was impressed by Lexie. I'm not sure that would be the case in different circumstances, but if anyone knew Mark, it was Liz."
Derek grimaced at his mom's wording, and Meredith frowned. He shook his head. "Thirty years ago, maybe," he said, and then tilted the phone as far as possible without taking it off his ear. He meant the kiss to be quick and reassuring, but one of them deepened it. He honestly wasn't sure who. Kissing Meredith was always better than anything else he could be doing. It was especially good when he was catching her hums of pleasure. Her legs tightened around his, her spine stretching and pushing her lips more firmly to his. The vibrations of her sound ran through him.
He almost forgot to hear what his mother was saying. "…that was the golden age, I'll grant, when the three of you were a unit. Four, really. Once Amy could run, she'd follow. That's likely why Liz started going her own way. There's another time when I should've interceded. Liz wore that chip on her shoulder like armor, and it made her mean.
"Mark had every reason to have dismissed her by the time you were up north. I'm glad he didn't. She needed a friend; everything with Amy was 'When Derek was twelve….'"
"Wait," he said. Meredith had looped her arm around his neck. He ran the hand that had been balancing her through his hair. "When Amy was twelve, what happened?"
Realizing the instruction to wait hadn't been for her, Meredith rocked on his leg. The muscle twitching below her eye signaled that this wasn't a matter of keeping her comfortable until his mother stopped delivering revelations. He lowered his hand and found her clit with two fingers. Her expression almost read as misery, but the bliss in her eyes didn't match that. All the tightness radiated from the pale line of her lips, holding them together.
"Well, I don't know, exactly. Lizzie hasn't given me a full rundown on her personal life since she was nine—that had nothing to do with your father. You would've all become teenagers with him here, too.
"She'd been seeing that one boy, the one who came out to her. She'd gone for a jock after the musical theater major, but the basketball player gambit backfired. Two closet cases in a row, the older two weren't around, and she ran into Mark on a night out with her roommate. They got brunch the next morning, and for most of the year, even after he stopped seeing the roommate. They brunched wherever they were both in the city, but you must've known that."
"I…" He'd known Mark never picked up on a Sunday morning, and sure as hell didn't go to church. It was Manhattan, so applying the verb brunch to his actions wasn't even that weird. But brunching with Liz?
"They spoke on the phone once he moved over there. I suppose she wants Meredith as an informant now."
"An informant on what? Me?"
"Who else? They worry about you. We all do."
"You don't need to. I'm great. My first surgery back is next week, it's extremely risky, and I'm going to rock it."
His mother laughed. Meredith raised her head from his shoulder, intoning, "yeah you are," into his ear.
She'd strangle him if he told his mom to worry about her instead.
Things were better on the baby front. She wasn't saying she didn't deserve it anymore. Wyatt had gotten her to flip that. To admit she hadn't thought she deserved Zola, but Zola deserved parents, so would this baby, and they were, by any standards, better than most. He particularly liked her going over their ACE scores, and then asking, "and how many of these do you see your baby experiencing?" Their baby's Averse Childhood Experiences—a specific list that were known to cause health issues, particularly when combined— wouldn't all be under their control. Loss of a parent certainly wasn't something his mom had expected for him. But even Meredith only scored a four of ten—which was at the low end. "Any one of these can be terrible to go through," Wyatt had told her. "But they're not the end-all, be-all of any child's future."
"She updated you on Addison's situatuation?"
"Uh, kind of?"
Meredith grabbed his wrist—had she even noticed it was his left hand?— to show him exactly what she needed. Repeating the motion made her frantic, her mouth working as much as any other part of her; her lips saying yes, yes, yes without giving the word voice.
"I do know Vivian Carlsmith has popped up. She's had gastric cancer for a while, now, and theu're saying it's terminal.."
"Lizzie said. That's a shame. I remember Addie saying—"
The rest of her response about Addison's fetal medicine mentor was lost to him as Meredith went suddenly rigid, her eyes squeezed shut. There, he thought—but, no. She shuddered, her face shifting between pleasure and frustration. He pressed harder, using a third finger to keep steady on the center of her clit, and rubbing the sides with his index and ring fingers. Sweat rolled down from her shoulders onto her tits, making her twitch. Her lips parted to let her quickened breathing through. The ahs that escaped the gap were tiny, but the volume was mounting, and she wouldn't be able to reverse.
The fabric of her robe had already fallen from her shoulders, and this sent it down that arm. He followed the trajectory, searching for new red or pink marks that had been hidden by multiple layers. Nothing. He put his lips down lightly on the bare skin of her shoulder.
Again, she approached the edge, her mouth forming a single anticipatory "Ooh." Her eyes shot open, finding his. There was panic in them. His first thought was flashback, but slowing down to check in with her only made her buck harder. She bore down on his hand, her spine arched, her shoulders pulling back, and her throat bare, ideal for kissing and feeling her release coursing through her. The muscles in her neck looked to be convulsing each time she repressed a sound, which was only compounding the tension.
He almost swore as comprehension hit him. It was taking everything in her to exert this control, and losing a thread of it would mean losing all of it; releasing everything she'd been holding in.
She was going to scream.
"Derek?"
"Here," he said, speaking to both women. "I'm here." He pressed the phone between his cheek and his shoulder. Meredith didn't like having his hand over her mouth, but she didn't hate it enough to make it a dealbreaker. They couldn't have had sex at the hospital if that were the case. If only he could risk muting his side of the call, but his mother would notice if he wasn't responding. She didn't simply monologue and expect them to be able to repeat her main points like they were students.
"…mentioned that Henry's birthmother wants to be involved. I thought an open adoption meant photos and letters, but perhaps that's old-fashioned. You remember Bridget O'Brian?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Flossie tried to convince us she'd had her while visiting her people in Boston, but Bridget had a widow's peak. Jacob O'Brian was on the school board. Your class had a different example of a dominant trait doing Punet Squares. Poor child didn't know the truth until she was going through their papers after the accident, so of course she couldnt' confront them."
"She ever confront you about being complicit? I think I have Brigid's number. Sounds like she needs to get her DNA tested and make sure she wasn't a kidnapping victim.")
Meredith moaned against his hand, and it didn't interfere with her ability to say, you can talk to your mom like that? with her eyebrows.
In his parents' household, challenging each other to be better hadn't meant holding the kids to impossible standards, ignoring if they met them and laughing if they fell. It did mean asking questions that could guide them toward seeing what you saw. And his mother's attempt at defense—"It wasn't really my business, and at the time…." —followed by a shift to regret would keep her talking.
Shameless as she might be, Meredith obviously didn't want his mother to make out the grunts that led to a muffled but intelligible "yeah!"
The last syllable repeated in warm bursts of breath against his palm, each building on the last, full of the pleasure her body coildn't contain..She stretched herself up onto the balls of her feet. Just before the predicted scream of ecstasy cut off, she let go of his shoulder, her hand landing on his dick at the moment her whole body convulsed.
He hissed through his teeth, going through more thoughts than should've been possible in the nanoseconds it took her to let go—going to get you for this, don't move...move your hand...don't move...don't...move your hand. Never say it would be better if it'd been you, my hands aren't worth more than yours. C'mon, Meredith. Mer, move…I could.…Christ, I absolutely could not, I am forty-five and this is my life; I am forty-five and this is my wife. My Mer, Mer, please—and summon just enough energy to tumble off his lap onto the bed. She lay sprawled on her back, her chest heaving. Her smile was one of the most self-satisfied he'd ever seen on her. It was adorable. That didn't mean he wasn't already planning to replace it while paying her back for that stunt.
"—one of the agencies. They worked with the homes where girls who 'got in trouble' were sent to have their babies under the guise of visiting a non-existant aunt. That, I can say, I interfered with."
"With…With whom?" he asked, caressing Meredith's lower leg. No excoriated scars there this week. It'd been just over a month since the night she'd confirmed his long-held beliefs about the tiny scars on the inside of her upper-arm, and worse, what he'd guessed as soon as he'd felt that band-aid.
In the session he'd attended with Dr. Wyatt, where she told him he'd been right not to clear out every sharp in the house, starting with the scalpel in Meredith's purse, she'd asked what he'd felt in that moment. He'd discovered one of the models for Meredith's x-ray gaze. He'd once heard a police interrogator say he went into an interview knowing ninety-five percent of the answers he'd get; he could believe Dr. Wyatt did the same.
She hadn't seemed shocked or disgusted by him saying, "relieved. I was frustrated with her, and I can't pretend that didn't have to do with her getting there. …I misestimated how much she was trying to…. But…I hadn't been missing the signs. in the past, she might've lied to me."
He'd turned away from the doctor to stare at the tropical fish Meredith claimed to hate, but had also shown to Zola in the minute before her last appointment, going over colors and the bugs fish ate.
"She might've been right to," he'd added.
Dr. Wyatt had let him sit with that for a full minute.
"Whoever needed it," his mother responded. "All the girls friends knew where my sentiments lay." So, that wasn't where the secret of whatever had happened with Kathleen her senior year led—or his mother wasn't going to share if ir did. "You know I escort at a clinic a few times a month."
"I didn't know you still did. But that's different than taking one of the girls's friends—or…arranging…before Roe?" He wondered if he should've known that. It must've come up with Addison.
"Quite some time, yes."
"That's…it's badass, Mom."
"I appreciate that. It was rarely sixteen-year-old girls, though. I think your father and I were the only ones in the neighborhood who used birth control."
"And yet."
"Shush. We had exactly as many children as we could handle."
Derek moved his hand to Meredith's midsection. If she stood up, there was a hint of a curve, but that was all, so far. "Is that true? You wouldn't have wanted six?"
Meredith pushed up on her elbows and shook her head. He stroked her hair reassuringly. He wasn't entering into that contest with his sisters.
"Mark felt very much like our sixth child."
"I kn—"
"But he wasn't. He had parents, and keeping that in mind was difficult. How could I discipline him, when I couldn't send him to his room? How could we make him feel like he had a home with us, without causing an estrangement? Not sure if we managed that; they both passed away so young…. Heart problems are genetic, aren't they?"
"They can be. His was…was a serious injury, but it's possible some congenital weakness affected the severity, or caused the healing."
Quickly, Derek tried to run through the ACE quiz with Mark in mind—parental substance abuse? Yes. Incarcerated relative? No. Mother treated violently…? Then, they'd have said "no," but the few times Derek had spent a night at their house, he'd seen Dr. Sloan get belligerent and grab her. Yes. Parental mental illness…who knows? Neglect, yes, yes, yes. Abuse? Nothing that had gotten Derek's parents to intercede, which would've taken less than the norm, but what about what he'd report now? And before they were friends? Meredith's ACEs had all happened before the age of six.
"Daddy and I tried to find a balance. And to make sure you knew you were our son; the two of you weren't a unit."
"You did," he assured her. Telling his mother what she needed to hear was a habit he doubted he'd ever break.
Meredith fiddled with the damn red rubber band she'd called "seasonal." It was better than a blade, he got that, but the color made him picture a slash in its place. It wouldn't matter that horizontal wrist-cutting would be a plea, not an attempt; he got the hint of panic every time he noticed the damn thing.
"Hey! This is it!" Her raised voice accompanied by the tap of her nail on glass made Derek jump. She'd been using him to kill time in a cab. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He stood up, gesturing for Meredith to stay put. Her gaze locked on him, but in the time it took him to rummage around for a bag of rubber bands, she didn't curl up into herself.
"All right, dear, I'm at Peonie Dawkins place in Queens. Such garish decorations. You'll send me Christmas pajama pictures?"
"We'll FaceTime you. Both days. Expose my girls to the girls' families gradually."
"I've been exposed," Meredith muttered.
"To the sisters, you have. The kids are another ballgame. Almost literally. Not a full roster. Well…with the dads, and…God, Ally's wife…you and Zola…. Yeah, there's a team."
Meredith's jaw clenched, and he couldn't figure out what he'd done wrong; implied that she'd ever play softball again? If Zola liked t-ball, she'd be out there playing catch at all—
"Oh, goodness, Derek, you said Meredith was showering. I've kept you on the line far too long."
"She…hasn't been in here long. Just came…in, actually. Still wet—" Buffeting away the pillow Meredith was hitting him with didn't make it easier to lie to his mother. He missed the days when he could claim to get shitty service on the land and "lose" his sisters—though even then he hadn't been brave enough to pull that on Carolyn Shepherd.
"I'll speak to you tomorrow. Love you much!"
"Bye, Mom. Love y—" The phone beeped at him, and he dropped it onto the bed.
Meredith went nuts with the pillow. "Still wet, Derek? Your mother. You were on the phone with your mother!"
He let her get in a few more hits before he swung up into a sitting position and with one hand on her left shoulder, and the other pulling away the pillow, laid her down.
"Which," he said, "you knew." He ran his tongue along the inside of her breast. "From…" He loved her breasts, full-stop. "… the…" They perfectly suited her fear of looking small and delicate; they made her unquestionably a woman even when he'd been most likely to think of her as a girl. "…start."
He was very fond of her tendency to bypass bras, particularly with low-necked dresses. She knew what she had; that they didn't have to be pushed up or accentuated. The swelling just made them more, and currently they were the only real visual sign of the baby she'd be feeding with them. It was incredible; she was incredible, and it only made sense that he take advantage of this new tenderness that didn't overwhelm her the way having her tits stimulated for too long had to this point.
As long as it didn't.
"Mer?" he asked, with her left breast in both hands, flicking her nipple with his thumbs as he alternated stroking and kneading with his fingers. She was squirming; every time she lifted her shoulders, he'd think it'd been too much, and then she'd settle, insisting that he keep going. "Does this hurt?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. Was that going to be the flinch for this? The sign that she expected to be judged? "Nuh-uh…it's not…. Kinda, at first? Mostly they're just…more…more sensitive, and—ohhh that really doesn't hurt," she gasped, and he kept the backs of his nails running over the side where she seemed to get the most from it.
Wyatt would probably not advise having the boundaries discussion in this moment. But while Meredith had amassed a collection of literature about how much caffeine she could have, alcohol was totally out. (One shot would not be likely to cause fetal alcohol syndrome, but Meredith would use it as an excuse to blame herself if the baby developed hay fever.) That meant there wasn't another way to get her to relax and answer what should be simple questions..
"You've wanted…sometimes needed me to pull your hair since we got back."
"You like my hair."
He chuckled at her petulance, and brushed a lock of it over her extended lower lip, and then held the end as far over her body as he could, squeezing droplets down onto her skin. "I love your hair."
"I've always liked having it pulled. I'm not asking you to pluck pubes. That'd hurt. It…It feels like always, but…am I thinking I deserve you hurting me? I dunno."
He almost froze. Deserve you hurting me repeated in his mind, far enough back that the sound made the world feel slightly off. "Meredith. I never want to do anything only to hurt you. Even if…God, I can see how it could help…but I can't do that."
"I know. It doesn't only hurt. That's nipple clamps. That's how you'll know I'm really messed up." She sucked in her cheek. "Messed up for me."
"You're not…. You don't deserve to be hurt by me."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"Are you sure?"
She screwed her face up, thinking. Even that was progress. He had to keep that in mind. There'd been far more resistance in earlier conversations like this, about things that were far less monumental.
"I know you'd never hit me, or…anything like that. I wouldn't want you to. But when I was really fixated on how unfair the whole thing was, I thought everyone must be. They'd resent me. When you resent someone—general you—you wanna hurt them like you hurt, and...and maybe it seemed like a good way…a safe way…. I'm not sure I knew I was thinking it. Mostly, it kept me here, when that wasn't easy. And I like it."
"I know." He didn't have a clue what to do with the knowledge, but those two words took some of the anxiety from her face.
He had a hand on each of her breasts, and he shifted his weight carefully to kiss her. She took a heartbeat to kiss back, like she was totally shocked by the action. That was bizarre to him. He wanted to kiss her all the time, after everything she said or did. She deserved it. In however much time they had, he had thirty years to make up for.
It might take six kids.
Kissing her was a distraction, meant to be for her, but he often lost time in her mouth. That was her biggest fear, the day she'd start losing time, but what she was really afraid of was the amnesia. He always knew what he'd been doing and feeling in these lost minutes.
Underneath him, her squirming took on a rhythm, and her legs contorted to wrap around his.
Speaking of making up for things.
He moved his hands slowly, occasionally backtracking, drawing shapes against her skin. Eventually, his fingers were laced with hers. Her kissing became hesitant, and she growled in frustration when he moved his legs to either side of her. He pulled her upright, bringing their hands to rest between them.
"What're you doing?" she asked. Her suspicious expression only expanded his smile. Not just his smile, but his dick could wait while he made her wait, and maybe reinforced that good things were always on the horizon.
"Taking a break. A pause, if you will."
"No one texted you." Her first thought. She didn't trip in her hurry to expel the second one, but it appeared on her face. God, she made it hard to deprive her. Teasing her was one thing; there were ways to keep her mind where he wanted it. In this situation, he had to counter her conceptions of what she got wrong.
"Next time Warren's in town, I'm going to ask if he wants to go fishing sometime."
"Yeah? That'd be good. You'd have known people, in Boston."
"Maybe. Acquaintances. The thing is… Addison and I…socialized. We had couple friends like Weiss and Savvy. But, in terms of close friends, Mark and Sam were it. I have more unrelated people I'd confide in here than I would've if we'd gone to Manhattan, much less Boston. I don't regret our choice to stay, so I'd never resent you for it. Do you?"
"Definitely not. Just thinking, now that you can operate, it's more of a missed opportunity."
"I thought it through at the time. Getting my hand working was as easy to imagine as not." They'd been equally difficult to imagine, actually. "In my experience, resentment is what happens when negative emotions like envy and shame are put in a dark box, and stoked with petty, irrational slights. It takes time, and starts quietly. Liz started resenting me before she could name the feeling. It became part of her personality."
"Are…Are you okay with the stuff your mom told you? About Mark and Liz?"
"There will always be things I don't know. It used to seem impossible, and that's…it fed the resentment. It sucks that my best friend and sister thought to keep that from me, but I can't be sure they were wrong to. I'd hate to have ruined something they needed."
"I think you would've gotten your head around it. You wanted him to be happy; it's a big reason you ignored that you weren't. May've made the betrayal worse."
"Insightful and gorgeous. Did…Did you resent me last year?"
Her eyes clouded with tears. Shit. Maybe he didn't know ninety-five percent of the answers. Comforting her without getting her to clam up was something he'd improved at, but any time he thought he had it finessed, she surprised him.
"It's okay if you did, Mer. I just want to know what I missed."
"S'hormones," she muttered. "I-I'd done something to your career. It was fair for you to do something to mine. You…You just wanted a solution, and so did I. And I knew…. Derek, I love you, and it's not often that I want how you see things to change, but when I do…. It takes time. Took a freaking plane crash. You…You said yourself, months later you were still testing me. If I'd taken that butterfly glioma to you, you'd have said I was setting you up for failure to."
He bit his tongue to avoid arguing what he knew was probably true. "Why do you put up with me?"
"Because I'm worse. Because you didn't second guess me at home with Zola, which matters more. Because I'm still a surgeon, and you're still here.
"I did resent Lexie," she admitted, and this time a tear fell. "She would've done the same thing, for the right person, and I told myself she wouldn't have gotten caught. Probably not true."
"Nope." He kissed her cheek, collecting her tears with the tip of his tongue.
"But she…she got…the butterfly glioma, and she'd been there for Isaac's surgery. She was on Allison Clark and Jen…and she kept questioning the risks you took. You thought you needed that…but you convinced her. You weren't going to get lost in the odds, and I…I get the best of you, Derek. Me and Zola and…the fetus, or whatever. But Lexie could've had both…I mean, not exactly, but… she took it all for granted. She spent all her time in the attic, like she still saw herself as a roommate."
"You envied both of us," he realized. "I took you off my service, and kept her on, it meant you weren't working together much, either. She was trying to give us time as a family, but it must've felt like you were being shut out."
"Malefi—"
She much preferred having him shut her up with his mouth, and in spite of the weight of the conversation, her body surged toward his.
"Callie and Sofia are healthy. I can do all kinds of things with this hand." He slid it under her hip and squeezed her ass before he caught her hand again. "Envying your sister is natural, and I'd guess you didn't want to take anything from her; you just wanted to be at her side. Seem true?"
"Y-Yeah, actually."
"We'll make sure she knows she's here as your sister."
"Whatever that means."
"Know what the best part of that will be?"
"Uh-uh."
"At least for a while, she's a sister who won't come barging in—"
Meredith's lips crooked in a smile that was just as gorgeous when he caught her hands again and her eyebrows shifted into a deep v.
"—to find you getting off on me while I was on the phone with my mother."
"It's the hormones! From the point the water started to hanging up the towel, it felt like every nerve in my skin was reporting directly to my clit. I still didn't plan…. It sounded like you were about to hang up. I didn't think it'd be that fast."
Her cheeks were bright pink, and he had a feeling that what she really wanted to say was more along the lines of amazing or intense.
"Because it wasn't your first," he said. "You'd already gotten off when you molested me while my mom—"
"If you're standing at attention, fully naked, and I'm on the phone with Cristina in the next room, for who knows how long, you're not gonna go for it?"
She had him there, in multiple ways. It wasn't as simple for her, which wasn't fair, and the image of her in there, holding her labia spread; the relieved smile she always got when the water hit—was incredibly hot.
"How's it feel now?"
"Resentful."
He laughed and lay her back down. Their linked hands he lifted up to the headboard. "Grab it," he instructed. "Let go if your shoulders start to hurt."
She didn't argue with the direction. He'd been calling her on ignoring her own discomfort for years, and she'd always listened with lip.
"You had a band-aid on your right thigh. What else should I know?" Her hands twisted. "You can let go to snap, too. I shouldn't—"
"You don't like—"
"I don't like you hurting in any way. Right now, that's less important. I shouldn't have taken your hands for that long."
"I can handle it."
"I know."
Had she been handling it in that conversation, or had it just not been that difficult? He didn't want to avoid the hard stuff they needed to discuss; he just wanted to support her at the same time. Meredith Grey never made that easy.
"What are you thinking, just now? Before I said that."
"I was…ashamed of this, and of what I felt about Lexie."
"Did you treat her differently because of it?"
"I don't think so."
"Do you still resent her over it?"
"How could I, when—?"
"When she got to be in on all those cool surgeries, and chances are she won't get to use those skills—?"
She folded her lip over her teeth, sucking on it withoit biting down. "I've thought it, maybe. Only, it would've been easier…and you not having a resident, but…but I don't resent her for it. It's just…. Not fair."
"No. It's not. You're a surgeon. Envy, jealousy, they're part of the game. What matters is that you can seperate it, and now…now you can let it go. There's no poiint in berating yourself for it—no reason to.
"As for the other part. You have nothing to be ashamed of. If you don't want me to check you now—if you want it to be seperate—"
"Hey, I'm stripping anyway…." She let the suggestive tone trail out of her words. "It, uh, it helps that you don't separate that part of me from the me you want. Um…. There's a place on my side that's been covered for a couple days, and a…a…spot on the bottom of my left foot."
A what? He wanted to check immediately, but that wasn't how they did this. He reached for the box of band-aids on the bedside table. The bottle of antiseptic was the same they'd used on the cuts she'd picked at in the fall. She should've seen Wyatt then, but there'd been so many other things to think about—She would never have prioritized herself. He should have. "Do they hurt?"
"Just my foot. Standing too long."
For how long? Through assisting on a Whipple yesterday? He wanted to know, but he didn't like the change in her voice.
He gestured for her right arm. So far, all to see there was a small faded scar that belonged to a moderately jagged cut. She had almost ambidextrous precision in the O.R. If he hadn't understood this was separate, this indication of how her hands could shake would be.
One of Wyatt's suggestions as a replacement skill was going over the area she wanted to cut with a make-up brush. A few nights ago, he'd discovered It soothed her coming out of a nightmare, when nothing else did. If she didn't want to keep this seperate, he had to be sure that if going over her body, occasionally finding marks she didn't realize she'd made, unsettled her, he could draw her back.
He swirled the make-up brush over smooth, unbroken skin, even as he examined the slit she'd created over the side of her eighth rib.
"You couldn't breathe?" he posited.
She met his eyes and dipped her chin. "Makes it seem like I've converted to blood-letting. It's not that."
"It's not that," he agreed.
She must've done it the night he spent on call, half-hoping for an MVA and a simple craniotomy to be his first procedure. It gave him his own guilt, but she wouldn't be the only adult in the house from now on. Lexie couldn't take over if Zola was upstairs, but she could call someone. She could listen. There was a question for another time: What would she tell Lexie?
He went up and back down her left side before he picked up her right leg. Then, he put it down a few inches from where it had been. Meredith sighed at the touch of the brush to the inside of her thigh where there was a collection of old scars. When he spun it over her mons, her leg tensed, and an anticipatory sound came through her pursed lips.
"Mom's not gonna hear you now," he said. Truly, he was impressed by how quiet she'd been. Once she'd accepted that he loved every sound she made, she'd let go, and even at the hospital they'd been overheard. She'd never cared.
He and Addison had never had sex in a hospital. He knew people did, in New York. They just hadn't. With Meredith, once they'd breached the exam room on call rooms were tame. When your partner knew where all the out-of-the-way supply closets were, they became where you went for privacy. It'd never felt like a risk.
He darted the make-up brush over her clit and down to the bottom of her labia. Her legs went in opposite directions, one pulling up, and the other straining next to him.
"Seems like you might like that."
"Not sure, maybe you should try it again a few dozen…hundred dozen…times."
"Hm. Counting would be an interesting experiment. A noble follow-up to the 'How Many Licks?' study, huh?" He moved the brush, drawing it slowly down her arm, and back. She shivered with a small, sharp moan, almost exactly like the sounds she'd been reduced to while he'd gathered that data. "But we'll have to wait. You're full of variables."
"A-After you do this…more just a few more, and then, you can add a variable. Just, don't stop yet. Not yet."
He grinned. It was exactly what he'd expected the moment her legs moved. He raised the brush a tiny bit each time and her clit swelled to meet it, exactly like it did when he used the tip of his finger, first on her hood and continuing up as it retracted.
"Der? You know it'd never be there, ri-right?" she asked, her pelvis shooting up at the end of the question. "Already have a slit."
"I do know."
Face, eyes, breasts, genitals. Those were the places where self-harm became something else. Where she cut seemed to be random, discreet places. Her calf has seemed borderline anomalous, until he'd realized it she'd reopened the cut from the crash.
Her beauty, her body, her sexuality; somehow she'd learned to appreciate those parts of herself. But there were changes on the horizon. She sometimes touched her hairline where her forehead had been lacerated. If she had any trouble breastfeeding, with postpartum hormones affecting her thoughts, the blue of a stretchmark could become a guideline.
That was months away. As many as there'd been since the crash. Ages, and not long at all. Her thoughts must've been on a similar trajectory, because she added, "If we get that far, you're job is to make sure they don't cut me for no reason."
Episiotomies were a topic Addison could hold forth on, but he'd never thought about it like this, looking at the skin between her cunt and urethra. He hated the idea that she'd be dealing with any pain, especially there. An incision would be worse, and she could easily decide she didn't have a right to complain.
"They'll have to convince me the baby won't come out if they don't," he promised, and sealed it by kissing her there.
She whimpered, and her eyes pleaded. She would not beg. He did his best not to put her in a position where she'd want to.
"Yes! Fuck, yes, thank you. That's fantastic…oh, oh, ohhhh, yes!"
Thank God she'd let herself have this.
The second trimester wasn't a panacea; she'd been sick a couple of times in the past week. When he sat with her, she'd eventually rest against his chest and might pull his arm around her if he didn't realize she was ready to be held. But if he somehow slept through her getting up, she wouldn't wake him, and there might be times he didn't know about.
She would tell him what to do with his tongue, her words dropping ts and drawing out vowels. It made sense in its way; there had been times she'd had to demand attention to have her basic needs seen to. There had been intervals where she wouldn't direct him; where she'd believed he thought her experience was too much. The days where they were both sure the other would spook seemed to belong to the ancient past, but they didn't. Not at all.
"Ooohoboy. There, there, there like that suck like that…."
Maybe it was that period that had him wondering if her stunt tonight qualified as risk-taking behavior. She'd done similar things; arguably to a greater extreme. Taking his cock into her hand when he'd had Larry Jennings on the phone, or her mouth when an interviewing nurse had appeared at his office door early. (That one, he might've deserved; he'd panicked at being walked in on, and shoved her under the desk. It was the smirky, "I was just making room down there" that made it easy to forget that.)
Her heels pounded his back, and then dug in, tugging herself up and pushing him down. Willing to take control. Not yet, my love.
"What if my mom had heard you?"
"Hunh?" She stared at him like he was incomprehensible. "You wanna…no…what? For real, Derek?"
He caught her foot before it touched his erection. Left foot. Wrong foot. He wasn't going to look there until he'd proved her right about how much he wanted her, no matter what. What she was going through was part of their lives, just like his hand had been. "Let go for a minute. Roll your shoulders."
Was the etymology of "groan" was a combination of grunt and moan? The sound she made was the most exact hybrid he'd ever heard.
"Not even tied up. I could take care of myself."
"Could you? Everything you want right now?"
"You don't wanna know everything I want right now. Lexie's got those new adaptive scissors. She could practice on your sweaters."
"That's non-violent."
"You finish what you start," she intoned, and worried at her top lip.
"Still true," he confirmed. "Try answering my question."
"Told you, I wasn't thinking. Horny horomones. Are you mad? Is that what's happening?"
Was he? His family had five doctors ,and five women who did not experience the mythical period syncing thing, and were always yelling about stolen sanitary belts—She'd never have had to use one, would she? Those were the things that made their age difference notable, not anything he would've anticipated—Mom had included him in matter-of-fact Talks, but also been constantly interrupted by Lizzie ("Mom, stop." "Why is this happening to me?" "I just won't Do It, okay?")
Otherwise, being the boy got doors slammed between in his face, and he'd emerged slightly more repressed than his sisters. He'd used that to separate himself from Mark. Addison…he thought she'd been happy with what they did in their bedroom, and sometimes on the couch. With Meredith, it'd started on her living room floor. She'd been blunt about what she was going to do for him, incredibly responsive to his matching her. That she wasn't demanding had confused and intrigued him, and the next thing he'd known, they'd been discussing condoms on the bridge. The openness between them was part of what made their relationship refreshing. But there hadn't been…crossover. Sure, he hadn't objected simply because Lizzie was in the house, but his mom.—While he considerred all of this, Meredith came to her own conclusions.
"Whatever. It'd just turn me back into the whorey bitch who stole you."
He thought she'd said "horny" again, for a second, but that didn't match her tine. Nancy's epithet had been "slutty intern," he knew because she'd claimed it. According to her, they were both slutty, and woe betide anyone who called her a skank. She wasn't a whore, she'd say, but, if doctor didn't work out she probably could go professional. Except, she hadn't said that in a long time. Not since before "whore" meant something else was going on in her head.
He stretched on his side and propped his head on his arm to see her face. "I'm not mad. It was impressive, having you march in here and take what you needed, regardless of the situation. Not that you didn't recognize the situation," he added. While he was chief, she'd worried her unrefined edges would hit a snag.
She'd chosen to adapt, learning when to sheath her claws, in particular. It made the times she decided to be sharp powerful. Liz had experienced that last month. Meredith been as determined and protective as any other Shepherd. His sisters would go easier on her, and include her more. He couldn't tell her what that would look like.
"You're not gonna revert to intern or the… girl in the bar. They see you as an adult. One of them. Amelia's obviously struggled since she was a teen, but they all have issues, too. Soon you'll know more about those than you'd ever want to."
He put his hand on her belly again. (Under there, a separate entity was growing. Their vocal cords had formed. He hoped they had her laugh.)
"My sisters won't blame you if something goes wrong, Mer." Her eyes flicked. He'd hit on something. "Liz was beside herself over the triples being early, and who do you think convinced her she was being irrational? Her sister the OB-GYN."
"Who doesn't like me."
"I don't think Nan likes me, these days. She doesn't know you. She met you at a rough time, and hopefully she'll get over it one day. Kate likes you. Liz respects you, which is more than a lot of people can claim. Amy thinks you're too cool for me."
"Wish she'd picked up. I get why she didn't, but…they wouldn't have listened to her, either, huh?"
He traced her eyebrows, and then the line above them. "You're very empathetic and logical. You don't have to justify everyone's actions to say how you feel about them."
"Mom used to say that if you killed a patient the reason you made the mistake wouldn't matter." The rubber band snapped against her wrist. He wanted to go back to distracting her; not reacting took far more effort. "That's not true, is it? We do M so mistakes don't happen the same way twice. The why matters."
"Right. Your mom was wrong. It doesn't change your experience in the moment. You get along with Amelia, and having her advice about how to approach the others might've helped. And she…she did end up being part of it.
"If the procedure hadn't worked, she was going to take my acoustic neuroma. She told him 'no' in October to get me to say 'yes' to the transplant, but she was going to have an epiphany. She and Liz had it all arranged. She told me when I texted her to tell her it'd worked."
"She loves you."
"Mm. You get my sisters, Mer. You can block the group chat, and deal with them separately. You can be you. They're bad with boundaries, but I think you could teach them a thing or two. "
Meredith raised her hand to his hair. "You really do," she said, raking it back off his forehead. "You're something else."
"Just anything couldn't keep up with you."
Her smile was beautiful, and he drank it in before moving his hand down. It exploded across her face. He'd planned to take her to the edge one more time, but with her first moan he knew he wouldn't be able to last listening to her again, watching her squirm and buck. She'd fight for it this time, if she thought she had to. That could be fun. Not tonight, my love.
She shot up when he moved to take his shorts off, and her hands got busy unfastening the buttons on his shirt. He didn't think to stop her, when a few weeks ago, he'd have pulled away; determined to do it himself, as slow as working one-handed, or using the button hook might be. On the day of Adele's funeral, she'd snapped, "You can doesn't mean you have to," echoing something he told her all the time.
Had the cut on her thigh already been there? The deeper cut on her bicep? Both? Had she made one immediately after the waterfall of red fabric pooled at her feet? While she sat curled alone on the bathroom floor? They could've both been done in a frenzied few moments after she'd paced and snapped the rubber band so many times it'd left one of the tiny bruise she'd hidden with her watch. Had the band broken, leaving her desperate, or had she known it wouldn't be enough?
She evaded any time he tried to put those days together, and with all she was having to share, he'd decided to let her keep them if she needed to.
Thank the lord he'd gotten as far into undressing as he had. Meredith's hand went to work before he'd gotten his boxers fully off of his legs.
"Proud of yourself?" he asked, straddling her. Her nipples were firm, and this time he let himself roll one between his fingers. She gave him another glimpse of the saucy smile she'd worn entering the room.
He pressed the thumb of that hand to her clit as he entered her gorgeous, perfect slit. She cried out, stretching back to grab the head board and he lowered himself over her. One of her legs wrapped around him, the other pressed flat on the bed. It wasn't unusual, and it wasn't until both her legs were back on the bed, her right foot twitching randomly that he realized she'd been keeping her weight off of her heel.
She stayed with him. Making her desperate kept her present; he'd known that for a long time. She hadn't been disappearing as often, though, and her sleep was easier, lately. The trauma of the crash itself had become secondary to everything after.
That was for later. First, there was just her: her heat, her scent, and her eyes settled on his. Her climax came fast and hard, taking him along. It was fitting, to his mind. He would follow wherever she went.
She was limp when he sat up and took her ankle in his hands. On the bottom of her foot was a burn, about the size a cigarette would make, but not as circular.
"Already talked to Wyatt about it," she muttered, not meeting his eyes. "Judgement: mine, bad. Flames aren't lapping at us anymore. Wanna forget it, afraid of forgetting it, not fair that I could. Threw away Arizona's lighter. Stole Arizona's lighter. Keeps hurting. Not as much control."
"Arizona's…?"
"She stress-smokes. Sorta did her a favor, except what's two dollars, now?"
He could barely absorb her chopped phrases staring at the blister. What he caught was that not as much control was a con, and it had weighed more against keeps hurting, still in her most unfiltered thoughts, a pro.
What did he say? Thank you for telling me? I appreciate that? You followed up in all the right ways? No, no, no. He went with what was true: "I love you." He kissed her foot, and she yelped. Her ticklishness there was a weapon he wielded carefully.
Nerve damage, even in one spot, would interfere with sensation.
It was possible that the sensitivity that made her so receptive was part of why she did this. Hypersensitivity everywhere. Attracted to fire, because so much burned inside of her, and somehow people thought she was cold.
"Kit," he said as he stood. Meredith shook the box of band-aids at him. He took it and put it up, trading it for a quarter of a roll of gauze. "Wish we had heel tape."
"Lack of foresight."
If he took a box from plastics supplies, would it be more likely to be used? Lighters were two bucks. They had matches and a longneck he'd be using to light the tea candles along the path to the house. Hell, he was pretty sure she had an engraved zippo somewhere, and she wasn't its original owner..
He hadn't felt this uneasy about the scapel. Oh, he'd wanted to toss it in the pond on the far end of the property, but it would've been symbolic and left her with options that weren't as clean or precise.
The blister was relatively small, even on her narrow foot. His whole life had been one reminder after another that he could be thrown off-kilter by small things. Amelia, a bullet, a small hemorrhage, a pill, an aneurysm, a baby, this woman, this woman, this woman.
She tracked every movement it took him to get to lying down with her in his arms. "I don't think you can cauterize the vessels in the wound you're treating here, my love."
"It was…even doing it I felt stupid, but it got to…to where I just had to see. Wyatt says bad impulse control is often a symptom of childhood trauma, which means I told you not to quit therapy three years ago." It wasn't the first time she'd offered that translation.
"Or it means bad impulse control is often a symptom of childhood trauma." He kissed her scrunched up nose. "Hey, Mer? Everything I did tonight was left-handed."
He'd done it to make her smile exactly that way, and for the firm press of her palm against the nape of his neck when she kissed him. "Definitely better than just playing with your balls all day," she said.
Callie had set him up. Lexie'd be moving back in, and they'd never let that go—and Mark wouldn't have, either. "Great way to condition this week. Lotsa repetitive motions."
In the next second, she looked nervous, and plucked at her rubber band, which she'd stretched between two fingers, far off her skin. "The acoustic neuroma removal…that's something you and Mark would've done…. Can I hear your plan?"
"Absolutely," he said. "First, tell me what you know."
Of all the smiles he'd seen on her that night, the one that appeared while she spoke about vestibular schwannomas on the vestibulocochlear nerve was his favorite.
A/N: Happy Friday, y'all! Hope you enjoyed this round of Mer/Der Bang Out their Problems. The next two chapters are Christmas, and we head towards the Pegasus Plot. With a living Grey, what is to become of Grey+Sloan? Stick around to find out!