All Along The Watchtower - Part 26.3 - Wild Horses

[ariaadagio]

Title: All Along The Watchtower
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.

Enjoy :)


All Along The Watchtower - Part 26.3
Wild Horses

As soon as they arrived at Babies “R” Us, which was chock full of aisle after aisle full of baby-oriented things, Meredith's determined charge into a night of potential registry content exploration seemed to falter.  They'd talked in the car about where to go, but Meredith hadn't known much about baby stores.  He hadn't either.  They'd opted for ubiquitous, assuming they could switch to specialized when they had a more specific shopping list in mind.  But Babies “R” Us was a big store, and the sight of so many aisles seemed to overwhelm her.  She stopped only a few feet beyond the threshold and the line of theft detectors, her blonde-kissed hair damp with drizzle from the late afternoon sun shower that had visited them in the parking lot.

“Can I help you with anything?” a perky store clerk called from a nearby register.

Meredith shook her head, silent and barely noticeable.  “Not yet,” Derek called, because he doubted the clerk could see Meredith's head move a millimeter.  “We're just looking for now.”

The clerk smiled.  “Okay,” she said.  “Let me know if you have any questions.”

Derek looked at Meredith in profile as she stood beside him.  His eyes darted to her waistline.  He couldn't help the reflexive gesture, now that he knew he could see evidence of her pregnancy with his naked eye if he tried.

She'd doggedly stayed in the same pair of jeans despite how they didn't quite fit, but her blouse was too loose and hung down too low for him to see the overflow at her waistline without lifting up the blouse, which he wouldn't dare do in a public place without invitation.  He settled for wrapping his arms around her.  Letting his palms settle over her belly button, where he could feel the subtle shift in her stomach from flat to slightly rounded.  The feeling gave him a zing from the tips of his toes to his lips, which curved into a grin before he could stop them.

She was pregnant with their baby, and he could see it.  Feel it.

He kissed her ear and her throat and her shoulder.  When he saw blush, blush he read as something other than arousal when he considered her stiff body language, he stepped away.  He loved her.  He wanted her to know it.  He wanted her to know he thought she was attractive, because he suspected she might feel a bit self-conscious about the now visible weight gain.  But he didn't want to make her uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice low and throaty.  “It's just...”

“Neat?” she said hesitantly.

He nodded.  Laughed.  God, what an amazing feeling.  That laugh.  She was pregnant, and she showed, and when he thought about it, he laughed.  “Yeah,” he said.  “A bit.”  He swallowed.  “Or a lot.  A lot.”

She bit her lip, and he saw the cute flash of her incisors.  She rested her palms over the space where his hands had been.  “I think it's pretty neat, too,” she said, though her tone was more restrained.  She didn't laugh.  Not like him.  But her gaze lit like a firecracker, and he wanted to drown himself in it.  In that expression of glee.  He loved seeing her so happy, even if she didn't exactly know what to do with that happiness.  Even if it made her blush and bristle nervously, like she wasn't sure she deserved to be that happy.

“So, what's first?” he prodded, directing her attention to the store and away from her doubts.

Or, maybe, not.  She looked back at him.  “Derek, I have no idea.  I mean I knew I wanted to do something baby-ish tonight.  I just don't... know.  I didn't... think this far in advance.”

“So, this is a knee-jerk shopping spree,” he said, nodding understandingly.

She shrugged.  She glanced at all the daunting aisles littered with cribs and swings and toys and diapers and god knew what, and she didn't budge.  Didn't dart off in any particular direction of whimsy.  Didn't seem so excited anymore as those doubts he'd seen earlier piled on higher and higher.

He understood the doubting.

He'd been in stores like this before to buy gifts for his newborn nieces and nephews, but he'd never once been there in this capacity.  As a pending father.  The prospect was a little daunting to him, particularly with the shooting in mind.  His PTSD threw a wrench into things.  He only had six months to get himself straightened out at this point.  Six months seemed like such a short time...

“You'll never make it,” Mr. Clark said.

Derek clenched his jaws, unwilling to entertain that shit right now.  No more Mr. Clark.  No more mountain climbing.  Not today, god, damn it.

His head remained silent in the moments that followed.

He took a short, tight breath and let it loose.  He was a mess, and fatherhood was daunting.  He couldn't imagine how daunting motherhood was to Meredith, who'd taken years just to come around to the idea of being ready to have a baby in the first place.  He'd resigned himself to the idea that he wouldn't ever have children with her.  She was working from bad examples.  Thatcher and Ellis.  Meredith had convinced herself she wouldn't ever be a good enough mother to make having a baby worthwhile.

I want to try again, Derek, she'd said after she'd told him about the miscarriage, and his world had realigned.

Except, now, Meredith had frozen on her feet, looking wide-eyed at the giant store, and he wanted to help.  Wanted to make it better.

Stuffed animals littered the shelves of the rack closest to the door, and inspiration hit.  He moved to the rack.  Pushed aside a plush horse and a turtle and a bear.  A fluffy lamb fell to the floor by his feet.  He grabbed a fuzzy lion the size of a house cat.  The thing had a turquoise-colored mane and purple fur and big, plush, saber teeth like small, pointy carrots.  It smiled, as all ferocious lions were wont to do.

“We're explorers,” he said playfully.  “Ready to brave our first safari into the cruel, unforgiving wilds of Babies 'R' Us.”

She stared at him, one eyebrow raised.  She chuckled.  Sort of.  A single, snorting syllable that could have been an incredulous laugh.  “Derek, what are you doing?” she said.

“I didn't bring anything to fend off the wildlife!  Will we make it out alive?” he said.  He held up the lion in front of his face, facing Meredith.  “Roar!” he gurgled in his best, most awful imitation of his favorite zoo animal while he jiggled it in the air.

“Derek, stop, seriously,” she said, giggling, and the sound relaxed him, let him know he'd done something right, no matter how silly.  He peeked at her from behind the lion and gave her his biggest grin.

She'd tilted her head to the side to regard him.  Her hands had wandered to her stomach.  Pressed her shirt against her waistline.  He could see the bump, now, with her hands like that.  She smiled at him, gaze twinkling, like, though she thought him the corniest man imaginable, she couldn't help but wonder what he'd be like roaring playfully at their baby.  Clowning around.  Being a dad.

God, you'd make such a perfect dad, she'd said when he'd been shot.

He kissed her before he put the lion back on the shelf.  He kissed her again before he bent down to pick up the fallen lamb.  When he stood straight, he found her staring at the bear he'd shoved aside to get to the lion.  The bear was a soft, squishy thing with brown fur and limbs that had been exaggerated in length to make them dangle-y and cute, and it reminded him vaguely of the bear he'd had when he'd been little, before he'd declared himself too old and responsible for stuffed animals at the tender age of seven.

She picked the bear off the shelf.  Rubbed her thumbs along the soft feel of its fur.  And she stared.  For the longest time.  With the strangest look on her face.  A sort of wistful something twisted with sadness.

“What is it?” he said as he put the lamb back on the shelf.

“I wanted one of these when I was a kid,” she said, staring at the bear.

His mouth tumbled open before he could stop it.  Just a little.  “You didn't have one?”

She shrugged.  “My mother wouldn't let me.  She said stuffed animals made you soft.  She got me Anatomy Jane instead.  Told me to learn something useful with it.”

“I thought you loved Anatomy Jane,” he said.  “With the jelly pouch and the... the twash.  And the chubble.”

She looked at him.  “You remember all those?”

He shrugged.  “Hey, I listen.”

She smiled.  “I know.  It's one of the many things I love about you.  And I loved Anatomy Jane.  But I still wanted a bear.”

He stared at her.  “So, you didn't have any stuffed animals?”

She stared at the bear.  “I think I did when I was really little.  Thatcher.  He got me...”  Her gaze shifted to the lamb he'd left on the shelf before sliding back to the bear.  “He got me a rabbit.  That was my only one.  It was packed in the box next to Anatomy Jane, wasn't it?  I remember taking it out...”

“That rabbit was your only stuffed animal?” he said, still incredulous, particularly that she could sound so blasé about how her mother had treated her.

Meredith shrugged.  “It's just... how it was.”

For a moment, he had no idea what to say.  Couldn't imagine what her childhood had been like.  Every time she gave him a glimpse of it, he hated Ellis more.  And Thatcher.  Hated them both for giving Meredith such a lousy start in life when she'd been innocent and couldn't speak up for herself.  None of that was right.

Her hand on his shoulder made him flinch.  “Hey,” she said, her tone concerned.

He realized he'd clenched the shelf with a white-knuckled grip and lost himself in brooding again.  He shook his head.  Pasted a reassuring smile on his face.  “That's the great thing about having your own baby, you know,” Derek said, recovering from his trip to badness.  He pulled her hand from his shoulder and kissed the back of her palm.

She looked up at him.  “What is?”

“You can do all the things you wanted your own mother and father to do that they didn't.  And you can skip all the things you didn't want them to do.”  He pointed at the bear.  “Our baby should definitely have a bear, I think.”

She blinked.  “Derek...”

“It's true!” he said before she could finish.  “For instance, I have some opinions on how to deal with loose teeth.  We will not be using doors to do our dirty work.”

“Doors?” she said.

He shrugged.  “It was a thing.  With string.  And a door.  And I don't like remembering it.”

She shook her head.  “Traumatized youth.”

He nodded.  “Exactly.”

“Even if I made a list of all the things I don't want to do because my mother did them, I don't think I'd know what I'm doing,” she said.  She squeezed the bear.  “I'm a feeling little lost.”  She swallowed.  Sniffed.  “I don't think I'll be a good mother.  I might even be a rotten one.”

He stared at her without responding for a long moment.  Long enough for her to give him an odd, curious look.

“What?” she said.

I wonder what Meredith-y would be, she'd said.

Strong, he'd answered.  Compassionate.  Beautiful.

She'd looked away.  I want to be those things.

You are, Mere, he'd said.  I wish you could see it.

Some realizations didn't hit like crashing trucks.  They slid into their parking spaces, unannounced, and dared one to notice them.  Derek's fingers clenched, and he blinked at the parked, sleek, metaphorical Porsche he'd just noticed.  How long had that been there?

“You're like me,” he blurted.

She frowned.  “What do you mean?”

You've had a lot of heartache in your life that you haven't quite bounced back from.

Derek's head swam as he pulled Meredith into his arms.  “Never mind,” he said.  She let him envelop her with no resistance, almost like she'd been expected him to do it sooner.  His throat felt like it was closing as a lump formed behind his Adam's apple.

Dr. Wyatt's observations...

They were true for the both of them.  Meredith wore sunglasses about herself sometimes, too.  Not uncategorically about everything like he did, but about certain things like self-worth and beauty and her ability to be a good parent.

She'd grown up without a dad, because her dad had left and started a new family with another woman.  Derek had omitted the truth about Addison and then left Meredith to pick up the pieces by herself.  She'd drowned.  Ellis had died.  Susan had died.  Thatcher had slapped her for Susan.

Meredith had had a lot of heartache, too.  Some because of him and his wrong choices.  But not all of it.  The bear squished between them as he pulled her tightly against him.

“You'll be a great mom,” he said, whispering against her.  “Being lost doesn't equate to being bad.  And you're already starting with something that Ellis never had.”

“What's that?” she said doubtfully.

“Me,” he said, and in that moment he felt worthwhile.  “I'm here.  And I'm not going anywhere.”

Meredith sighed in his embrace.  Breathed softly against his shirt.  His open windbreaker rustled as he shifted to accommodate her.  He knew she liked to listen to his heartbeat, and so he held her close and let her do what she needed.  He rubbed her back.

He stared at nothing in particular, blinking, a bit dumbstruck.  He was good at this.  Comforting.  Particularly comforting her.  Really good at it.  She hadn't said so, but she'd told him when she'd fallen into his embrace like she'd been waiting for it.  And she wore sunglasses, too.  He told her so many things that were true, and she never believed him, but they were.  They were true.  She was strong.  He'd told her that, and she didn't believe it.

She told him he was strong.  He hadn't believed it...

But... he wasn't going anywhere.  He was fighting a lot of things.  Stress and addiction and pain.  But he was still here, still breathing, still holding her in his arms, and he wasn't going to budge no matter what the fuck Gary Clark said, no matter what else happened.

I pick you.  I choose you.  I love you, he'd said.  And I'm not moving.

He was really good at comforting her, and... maybe... maybe, he was strong, too.

Maybe.

Gary Clark said nothing at all.  Derek's breaths tightened.  Maybe.  Hesitant, unsure belief took hold, which was way, way better than not believing at all.  Maybe strong.

Derek Shepherd.  Likes to brood unnecessarily.  Has bad fashion-sense.  Comforts Meredith really well.  Listens.  Is maybe strong.

Not a complete picture.  Actually, it was sort of blurry.  But... it was a way better self-portrait than the one he'd carried into the store.  Derek Shepherd.  Likes to brood unnecessarily.  Has bad fashion-sense.  Sucks at everything.  He threw that photo into his mental garbage.

“I don't even know where to start in here,” she said, pulling him away from his musing.

“What?” he said.

Her lips curled into a grin, and her gaze was mischievous in a way that said, Hah, I caught you!  “You were a thousand miles away just now.”

He shook his head.  “I'm sorry, I just...”  Had that epiphany he'd wanted.  But this was her shopping trip.  Her moment.  About her.  He took a breath and blew it out, and then he gave her an honest smile, because looking at her made him happy, and then he kissed her.  “How about we just walk the aisles first and see what they have,” he suggested.

“Am I going to have to suggest no kissing to get through this?” she said.

He blinked.  “What?”

She grinned.  “Samantha, remember?  That's what you said when we went to get Samantha.  About walking the aisles.”

He winked.  “It's a multipurpose strategy effective in many situations,” he said.

“Does it work in surgery?” she said.

“As a matter of fact, it does,” he replied.  “If we're talking metaphorically, that is.  Brains don't have aisles.”

“Good to know,” she said.

“I absolutely veto no kissing, though,” he said.  He squeezed her.  “I can't not kiss you like this.”  He kissed her.  “I just can't.”

“Okay,” she said softly.

“Okay, I can kiss you?”

“Okay, let's just... explore,” she said, rolling her eyes, and she took her first real step into the store, away from him, away from the stuffed animal rack.  He echoed the movement with his own feet.  Stayed beside her.

She officially left the entrance with one step, two steps, three.  Four.  Five.  More.  He mirrored her movements, surreptitiously letting her go at her own pace.  She didn't seem to remember she still had the teddy bear in her hands.  He didn't see any point to mentioning it.  He fell into quiet support mode, which he liked, because it gave him a chance to catch up with things, himself.  To take everything in.  To look, wide-eyed, at their future.

The store was relatively void of people, which he supposed make sense, given that it was a work day for most people, and it was close to dinner time.  The only reason he was available was because he'd come home early with Richard's blessing.  He'd been unable to function after he'd left Dr. Wyatt's office.  Barely able to ask for the time off.  Richard had taken one look at Derek and sent him on his way.  The only reason Meredith was available was because her shift had started at the crack of dawn, and the hospital was still slow with business after the shooting.

Meredith looked at cribs and bedding and diapers and teething rings and toys, and so he looked at them, too.  She looked at little onesies meant for very small babies.  Just like their baby would be when he or she was brand new.  She stopped absently to stroke all the soft fabric and plush things in a store full of soft fabric and plush things.  She wandered.  Didn't stop for long in any particular place.

He watched her, unable to stop himself, and his attention on baby things waned somewhat.  Meredith had been feeling a lot better since Dr. Charlton had prescribed Meredith some anti-nausea medication.  She'd relaxed even more when Derek's mother had left a few days ago, Manhattan-bound.

Though Meredith and his mother got along, and Meredith was starting to realize she had a family on her side that didn't suck, not like Ellis and Thatcher had, he knew a true relationship would take a while for them to cultivate.  Even then, he loved having seen her come this far.  Loved watching her blossom.

Loved watching her in general.  The way she walked.  The way she bit her lip whenever she felt pensive or unsure.  The way her eyes twinkled when she was happy.  The way she lit up the space around her simply by being there.

Something stirred inside.  Something deep within.

He loved her.

Every once in a while, that fact overwhelmed him in a good way, and nothing in his life seemed broken or wrong.

He slid behind her, body-to-body with her, and they fitted.  He put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed her arms while she looked at a stroller.  He pressed his nose into her loose tresses of brown-blonde hair by her right ear.  He inhaled.  The familiar scent of lavender filled his head.  His muscles relaxed.

“You're hovering,” she said.

“No,” he murmured with a smile.  “I'm breathing you in.”

Her nose scrunched adorably.  She didn't look up from the price tag on the stroller.  “You're hovering.”

He chuckled and pulled away, following her at a  respectable, less hover-y distance as she moved to the next stroller in the aisle.  More than thirty minutes of walking and looking in a daze had passed before she stopped in the bedding section to stare at a sun-colored bedding set painted with lambs and bears and giraffes.  A menagerie of anthropomorphized cuteness.  She ran her fingers over the soft blankets.

“Do you like it?” Derek said.  His voice arrived rough.  He cleared his throat.

She made a face.  “God, no.  It's too... cute.”

“Too cute,” he echoed.  “But aren't babies, by definition, cute?”

She turned to look at him.  “Cute, but...  This is like cute on steroids.  You're not sold on this kind of cute, are you?  I don't think I can handle cute to this degree, even with nine months of conditioning.”

He grinned.  “Meredith, I am many things, but decorator is not one of them.  We can do whatever you want as long as the nursery is functional.”

She leaned into him with a sigh.  “We'll have a nursery in the new house.”

He nodded.  “We will.”  He kissed her.  “We planned it that way.”

“I know,” she said.  “It's just... mind boggling to think about, sometimes.  That I have a sort of house with a sort of nursery, an awesome husband, and a twelve-week bowling ball.”  She tilted her head back and stared up at him, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes.  “What if I want to paint it all black?”

“The nursery?”

She nodded.

“You want a goth baby?” Derek said, raising his eyebrows.

She snorted.  “Maybe, not a goth baby.”

“I wonder if Hot Topic does baby clothes,” he said.  “I've never looked.”

“How on earth do you know what's in Hot Topic?” Meredith said.

“Abby went through a phase,” Derek said.  “It used to be the only store where I could find acceptable Christmas gifts for her.”

Meredith frowned.  “Abby...”

“Oldest niece,” he clarified.

“Right,” she said, nodding.  “Right, that Abby.  You take your Christmas shopping pretty seriously.”

“I'm the awesome uncle,” Derek said with a grin.  “I have a reputation to uphold, you know.”

Meredith laughed, returning her attention to the lamb, bear, giraffe concoction in front of her.

“Seriously, I think... yellow,” Meredith said definitively.  “I hate this bedding, but I like this yellow.  How about you?”

“Yellow for the baby's room?” he said.

“Yeah.  Pink is...”  She made a face of disgust.  “It's pink.”

“But it's kind of the traditional color for a girl,” he said.

“But it's pink, Derek.  I don't do pink.  And yellow works, boy or girl.”

“I thought you were sold on it being a girl.”

“It is a girl, just...”  She shrugged.  “Yellow works.”

“No pink, no cute.  Got it,” Derek said, nodding.  He kissed her.  “I like yellow.  It's very cheery.  Like... bananas.”

She stared at him.  “Bananas are cheery?”

He nodded.  “Bananas are a very happy fruit,” he said.  “They're shaped like a smile, aren't they?”

“You're a fruit,” she said, grinning.  “A naughty fruit.  And I thought you liked indigo.”

“Indigo is my favorite color, but yellow is definitely in my top five.”

She laughed.  “Top five, huh?”

He kissed her.  “Yes.”

“What are your other three, then?” she said, eyebrows raised.

“I like gray,” he said.  “Like your eyes when it's rainy.  And I like green.  Spruce to be specific.  And I do like pink.”

“You like pink,” Meredith said with a disbelieving snort.

He nodded.  “Only certain kinds of pink,” he said.  He pressed closer to her, into her space.  Caught her eyes, unblinking.  She backed into the shelf with a thunk, and the fuzzy blanket she'd been looking at lay behind her head, yellow and cheery and forgotten.  She licked her lips.  He nuzzled her hair.  Kissed her temple.  Then her lips.  “Like here,” he murmured against her soft skin.  “Or... other places.”

“Other places,” she murmured.

“Mmm,” he said.  The teddy bear mashed into his right hip as she gripped his waist.  The feeling of her smaller body flush with his made his breaths tighten.  The small swell of her belly pressed against him, and his heart skipped.  The smell of lavender intoxicated him.  He hadn't felt this overwhelmed by sudden sexual desire in a long time.  It hit him like a wave.  Washed over him and didn't recede.  He nuzzled her, stuck in high tide.

“Derek, we're in a store.”

“Talking paint colors, I know.”

“This is inappropriate,” she hissed, but there was a level of desperation in her tone that told him she wasn't really saying no.  “And wrong.”  More, she was trying to convince herself she should say no.  She kissed him back of her own volition.  “And bad.”  Her tongue plunged into his mouth.  French kissing.  All her.  “And...”  She tasted so good.  He let her delve as far as she could go.  “You're so...”

“I love you,” he said.  A moan twisted in his throat.  She felt wonderful against him.  Inside him.  Wonderful and full of life and all for him.

“That's how you make babies!” said a small, cherubic, informative voice.  “You kiss the mommy.  The kiss grows in the mommy's belly, and then the mommy goes to the hopspital.  They keep the babies there, and she gets one when she trades in the kiss.”

Derek winced as his and Meredith's lips snapped apart.  She banged her head on the shelf.  He held onto a curse with a burst of willpower that would have made even Cristina Yang kowtow to him if she'd been there.  He felt his face turning red.

Meredith pressed the back of her hand to her lips as though she wanted to preserve the taste of him.  She stared at him, sexy-eyed and discombobulated, like she didn't know what the hell had hit her.  She swallowed.  Rosy blush had spread across her skin.  Down her throat.  Like her skin did when they had sex.

“Really?” said the deeper, scoffing voice of a woman.  “There are children here!”

“Did they make the baby, yet?” said the kid.  “I don't see it anywhere.”

“Hannah, that's inappropriate!” scolded the woman.

Frustration, sexual and otherwise, licked at Derek's mind like flames.  His muscles were stiff with sexual tension and... other things were just as stiff.  He shifted.  His jeans rustled.  He didn't dare back away from Meredith with an audience, especially not such a short one that would be at waist level.  He felt like he'd been caught with his hand stuck in a big, shiny cookie jar.  Literally stuck, because he couldn't move without causing an even bigger scene.

He dared a glance at their audience.  The little girl, who was perhaps five-years-old, looked at them with a combination of curiosity and hilarity.  The girl's brown hair was tied up with a cute, pink bow.  She looked like a younger version of the older, pregnant woman standing beside her.  The little girl giggled.  The older brunette woman did not.  She glared, holding her daughter's hand.

“Um,” Meredith managed.  “We're sorry.”

The older woman rolled her eyes, and she dragged her little girl away by the arm.

“Are you going to get my brother from the hopspital soon?” said the little girl as they walked away.

The woman sighed.  “Soon,” she said.  “After I kill your father for explaining it that way.”

“You can't kill Daddy!”

“Sorry,” Derek called gruffly when he found his voice somewhere deep under a hearty pile of embarrassment, but the woman only snorted as she and her daughter disappeared around the corner.  Away from scrutiny, he took a step backward, removing himself from Meredith's space.  He shifted miserably.  His pants felt... very small, and his body hummed with unfulfilled desire.

“Where did that come from?” Meredith said.

“Clearly a failed sex talk,” Derek grumbled, frowning.  “I hope we do better.”

Meredith laughed but sobered quickly.  “No, I meant...”  She gestured toward him awkwardly.  “Where did that come from?”

He shrugged.  “It just... did.”

“You haven't done that in...”  She swallowed.  “Since before.  Before you were shot.”

He closed his eyes for a moment.  First, it'd been the injuries.  He'd hurt, and he hadn't been interested in sex at all.  Then, he'd been shackled into inaction by his own self-consciousness.  His need for control.  He'd wanted her, but he'd been too terrified to take her.  Then the Paxil had leeched his sexual appetite over time.  He could be enticed, but he rarely wanted without at least some encouragement.

Except he'd needed no encouragement just now.  He had no idea what had swept over him, but he liked it.  The timing had been awful, but in those few moments, when all he'd been thinking about was kissing her because he'd really wanted to kiss her, he'd felt... normal.

Which only brought his attention to how abnormal things had been lately.

He looked at her.  Sort of.  But he didn't speak.  He didn't know what to say.

“I know why you haven't,” she said, touching his shoulder reassuringly.  Except that just made him want to kiss her again.  His brain had gone topsy-turvy with the conflicting signals of heart versus logic.  “I'm just trying to figure out why you did,” she continued.  “As in just now.  As in...”  Her gaze darted below his waistline.  He didn't miss the way she bit her lip, or the sudden tension in her frame like she'd become a longing, sexual tripwire.  Or the way her gaze slammed upward so fast he thought she might have given herself whiplash.  “As in... um,” she managed.  She cleared her throat.  “Yeah.”

“Do we have to analyze it?” he said uncomfortably, feeling more than a little bad that his unsolicited advances warranted such scrutiny.

She shook her head.  “It?” she said, her tone breathless.  Almost... dreamy.

Which was not helping his resolve to keep off of her.  Not when, despite the no, no, no of the location, her body screamed yes, yes, yes at him from a bullhorn.  Worse, he couldn't stop thinking about her naked.  Right there in the aisle.  Whatever switch the Paxil had flipped off was fucking on tonight.

“Not that,” he grumbled.  He shrugged off his rain spattered windbreaker and held it in a crumpled pile in front of himself to better cover that up.  “I'm calling that a lucky crap shoot.”

His words seemed to shake her from a stupor.  She shook her head.  “I'm sorry,” she said.  She rested her palms over her navel as if the gesture comforted her.  “I really didn't mean to put you on the spot.”

Still not quite willing to meet her eye-to-eye, he stared at the swell highlighted by her hands.  “I think it's the way you look right now,” he said, hazarding a guess.

She frowned.  “What about the way I look?”

“I like that I can see the baby,” he said.  “It's been my replacement thought for so long, and now I don't even have to imagine.  I can just look.  And it's...  I like it.”  He swallowed.  “I really, really like it.  Pregnancy looks good on you.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said with a heavy sigh.  “I didn't mean to make this porny.  We can keep looking around.”

She shifted.  Bumped his hip playfully with hers.  “Hey,” she said.  She looked at him, a sly smile crossing her features.  “I think not here.  But I'm okay with now, now, now.”

He looked up as her meaning sank into him, into all his disappointed, thrumming sinews.  “Home, then?” he said, hope encroaching on his tone.

She nodded.  “Yes, but I hope you know I'm not going to let you live this down anytime soon.”

“Live what down?”

“You made shopping for baby things porny, Derek,” she said.  “That's almost as bad as getting sexy in a grocery store or something.”

“I have never gotten sexy in a grocery store with you,” he said.

“Maybe, not in this universe,” she countered.  “But I'm sure there's a porny Derek somewhere who has.”

He grinned sheepishly as they went to the register to buy her bear.