All Along The Watchtower - Part 30B
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.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 30B
When Meredith's eyes slid open, she smiled. The tree still towered in the corner of the room, though the lights weren't plugged in at the moment. She and Derek had put the lights and ornaments on it together. Light application to a Christmas tree was apparently a science, and Derek had found a lot of glee in showing her how to do it. Where light application was a science, though, ornament arrangement was like Stephen Hawking's version of physics. She and Derek had ended up using lots of the sparkling, metallic balls from the box from the attic after dusting them off. Derek had claimed that if one used sparkly ornaments, the reflections enhanced the lightning, and had instructed her to skip the ornaments that didn't have a reflective surface. That had resulted in her leaving about half of the old ornaments in the box, and the resulting ornament coverage on the tree had more been like accents rather than a blanket.
Meredith had always assumed garlands and tinsel and other crap were a must, but all they had used were the ornaments and the lights. She wasn't sure what the tree would have looked like if they had used non-sparkly ornaments, but she did have to admit he knew his Christmas trees. The end result of Derek's instruction looked... really freaking pretty.
And the longer she'd stuck around helping him, the more gleeful he'd gotten. By the time they'd finished, other than a few miscellaneous firsts associated with Baby, she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him so happy, but his joy had been an ephemeral feeling, not a permanent alignment shift. He'd gone back to work the next day and gotten stuck in the mental slog again. Stuck in the constant war inside his head where he wanted to be away from people and stress and busywork and blah, but didn't have the luxury because of his job. Because he was trying to get better. He'd come home the next day run down again, and the day after that, even more so, and she'd felt like she was dancing a perpetual jig of two steps forward, two steps back with him as they approached Christmas.
Meredith sat at the kitchen table, rubbing her temples in slow circles as she rested her weight on her elbows. Lexie sat across from her, shoveling spoon after spoon of peppermint ice cream into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged, and she looked, well, miserable. Which made no freaking sense. And Meredith kind of wanted that ice cream. Kind of a lot. She licked her lips in time with the throb of her head.
“I really don't understand what the problem is,” Meredith said.
“I only dumped Alex a couple weeks ago,” Lexie said.
“Yeah,” Meredith said. “And?”
“After he was shot,” Lexie said. Meredith blinked. “And?”
“During the holidays?” Lexie added, a helpless tone dragging her pitch into the upper registers.
“So, what?” Meredith said. “You weren't happy. You got out. You know who you want, now. So, go ask him?”
“Go ask him, she says,” Lexie grumbled. “Go ask him?”
“Yes.” Meredith nodded. “Go. Ask.”
“But it's rude to move on so fast!” Lexie frowned. “Isn't it?”
“I'm really not a good person to be asking about the etiquette for moving on,” Meredith said, looking down at her belly. “In fact,” Meredith said, “I think the only person worse for asking about experience with moving on would be Derek.” Who wasn't home, anyway. Their days off hadn't matched up this week, and Derek hadn't been able to fix it because Richard hadn't been able to cover for Derek today. Something about Adele and warpaths and blah blah blah.
“I've been such a jerk,” Lexie said, tone glum.
“You don't even create a blip on the radar of jerk,” Meredith said.
Lexie fidgeted. “Well, there has to be a reason Mark hasn't asked me out, yet. Right?”
“Maybe, he's waiting for you to go all Sadie Hawkins and save him the trouble,” Meredith said. She sighed. “I really don't know,” she said. “Most of my history involving relationships has been with a man who's selectively deaf about the word no. I have no experience with him not asking me out, even when I told him to stuff it. If he'd been anyone else, and I mean anyone, I would have been filing a sexual harassment complaint with HR.”
“But Mark is the king of sexual harassment. Why won't he harass me?”
Meredith snorted as Lexie turned a shade of red that would have put a beet to shame. Lexie jammed another spoonful of dripping ice cream into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged as she flogged herself with calories, and then she swallowed her misery with an audible gulp.
“I can't believe I just said that,” Lexie said. “I probably just sent the Take Back the Night campaign into the dark ages of feminism when we were still having fights about who does the berry gathering and who kills the sabretooth cats for dinner.” She dropped her spoon into her ice cream bowl. The metal hit the lip of the bowl with a clank, and then she raised her hands to her hair and yanked. “I hate men. I hate them! They're so frustrating!”
Meredith rolled her eyes, giving up on preserving Mark's privacy for the sake of everyone involved. “Lexie, he's interested.”
Lexie perked up. “Interested? How interested? How do you know?”
“Yes. A lot. Because he gave me a bullet point list over Thanksgiving about how he intends to win you back.”
“Bullet points?” Lexie said, eyebrows raising. “Thanksgiving? Really? That was before Alex and I even broke up.”
“He bought a freaking self-help book as reference material for that list,” Meredith said. “If he's not asking, it's probably because he hasn't got a clue he should be asking, yet, not because he doesn't want to.” With a groan, Meredith rose to her feet, walked to the phone, and grabbed it off its cradle. The dial tone filled the air with a vague, distant whine through the receiver. She foisted the phone at Lexie. “Just. Call. Him. Right now.”
“But he's on shift,” Lexie said weakly.
“I don't care,” Meredith said with a huff as she resettled and closed her eyes. “Do it, now.”
She resumed rubbing her temples. Her head was splitting her open, she thought. Too much work. Too much stress. Not enough sleep. She'd go back to bed the second she could muster up the will to stand again. Her ankles hurt. Her back hurt. Everything hurt. And she felt like a freaking walrus.
She heard the chair squeal as Lexie stood. Heard shuffling as Lexie moved around. Heard the phone being set back in its cradle, though Meredith couldn't muster any more strength to protest. Heard a clink in front of her, and then Lexie sat back down.
When Meredith pulled her eyes open, she glanced through her eyelashes blearily at the sight in front of her. Some of the pink peppermint ice cream had been added to a small bowl, which now sat in front of her with a spoon.
“Mark can wait,” Lexie said. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Meredith said.
“Right,” Lexie agreed with a snort.
Meredith sighed. “Growing a whole other person sucks sometimes.”
“Is the baby kicking?” Lexie said.
“No,” Meredith said. “But I was up like three times last night to pee, and I got no sleep, and everything hurts. And I'd kill for some wine or something.”
“You could have a glass,” Lexie said. “One glass won't hurt anything.”
Meredith clenched her fingers briefly. “No,” she said, and then she grabbed the spoon from her ice cream bowl. There was no way in hell she was doing anything that could risk the baby, no matter how slight the chances. Barring two mornings where she had fallen off the wagon and landed roughly on her ass, much to Derek's extremely irritating amusement, she wouldn't even drink coffee.
She broke off a piece of the ice cream, raised the spoon, and tipped it into her mouth. A blast of peppermint hit her senses, and she moaned a little as she closed her eyes. Peppermint ice cream was almost as good as strawberry, and this was a limited flavor only available in stores around Christmas. She loved it.
“This is an okay wine substitute,” Meredith said as she swallowed the treat.
Lexie grinned at her, and for several minutes, they ate their remaining ice cream in silence. When the doorbell rang, Meredith didn't even have a chance to think about answering the door before Lexie was rising to her feet. “You stay,” Lexie commanded. “I'll get it.” “I'm not helpless,” Meredith snapped at Lexie's retreating figure.
“I know,” Lexie said. “But I'm still helping you anyway. Deal with it.”
Meredith huffed another sigh and closed her eyes, letting her awareness of the surroundings blur. She heard the door open, heard Lexie exchange some words with whoever was there. Meredith was too tired to even care who it was, or to speculate.
“You got a package,” Lexie said when she returned. “From New York. Priority overnight?”
Meredith's eyes snapped open. Lexie clutched a large Fed-Ex box. “Wow,” Meredith said. “It came already? I only talked to her yesterday.”
“What is it?” Lexie said, excitement gleaming in her eyes. “Something we should put under the tree?”
Meredith tore the package open with gusto. Three items slid out of the box. The first two items, both knitted and wrapped in tissue paper, looked like what she was expecting, though she had expected only one. She set those aside and looked with curiosity at the third item.
A tupperware container. Filled with.... cookies. Dozens. With white icing slathered across the tops, and a praline stuck in the middle of the icing on each one. They smelled delicious. She grabbed one from the box and offered it to Lexie, and then snagged one for herself. The cookie was chewy and fell apart in her mouth. A blast of almond and sweetness hit her tongue.
“These are amazing!” Lexie mumbled, her voice distorted as she spoke with a full mouth.
Meredith glanced at the note Carolyn had written, which was taped to the top of the tupperware container, and smiled. “These,” Meredith said, “are apparently Derek's favorite. How did I not know this?” A small index card with the recipe was taped next to Carolyn's note. The steps didn't seem too complicated. Maybe, she could try to make it, and then when she set the kitchen on fire, Lexie would take pity on her and help. Or, maybe, she could be smart and just draft Lexie in the first place.
“What are the other things?” Lexie said.
Meredith turned her attention to the yarn items wrapped in tissue paper. She pulled open the paper on the first one, unsticking the tape and letting the folded item unfurl, which revealed a stocking with Derek's name knitted into the pattern at the top. The stocking was large and floppy, almost four feet from top to toe, and it was soft and red, which was almost exactly like she'd imagined Derek's would be. Granted, she'd pictured stripes, and this was solid-colored except at the top where Derek's name broke into the color scheme with white. Carolyn must have made this thing by hand. She was far more skilled at construction than Thatcher had been.
Meredith unfurled the second knit item, also a stocking, though this one had Mark's name at the top, and it was green instead of red. A little sticky note was attached to the top of Mark's, which said, “Thought you might want this one, too! - Carolyn.”
“Derek's stocking from when he was a kid,” Meredith explained to Lexie, who was bubbling over with interest. “I called Carolyn yesterday and asked her if she still had it.”
Lexie licked her lips. “Not that I'm complaining, but you want to hang stockings? You?”
Meredith shrugged. “For Derek, yeah.”
“Really?” Lexie said.
“He's been having some trouble with Christmas this year. I just wanted to do something for him.” Lexie frowned. “Trouble?”
Meredith nodded. “He's just a little down. I think the holiday is emphasizing to him how different he is this year. I almost get the impression that he's... well, he's lonely.”
Lexie's frown deepened. “Derek is lonely?”
Meredith sighed. “I don't think I'm explaining this well,” she said, before Lexie could enter DEFCON 1, operation Find Derek Some Friends. “He's not alone, per se. He's just....”
“Not used to having to budget his people time?” Lexie suggested.
“Yeah,” Meredith said, nodding. “Yeah, that's it exactly.” Meredith could almost see the churn of thoughts tumbling behind Lexie's eyes. “Lexie, don't tell me you're planning something.”
Lexie's lip twitched.
“Lexie, seriously,” Meredith said. “Please, don't throw some big Christmas bash that will put him on the spot. He's already not feeling that great.”
Lexie nodded. “I swear. No spot putting. No big bash. But... it'd be nice to do something.”
“Something... like what?” Meredith said, caution dripping from her tone.
“I don't know,” Lexie said, eyes gleaming as she galloped through possibilities. “I'll tell you when I figure it out. I promise to keep it low key, though.”
After daydreaming for the better part of an hour, Meredith left Derek alone in the living room to sleep, and she watched some streaming television on her laptop in their bedroom. She found she couldn't stand to watch hospital shows, since they were all ridiculously unrealistic, and after the shooting she found she had little taste for cop dramas and other violent stuff, but... she had an unrepentant addiction for Top Chef. She couldn't cook worth a damn, but it was so fun seeing what people who could cook could create under pressure with such wacky rules and time limits. She watched three episodes before she had to turn it off, because it was making her both hungry and jealous. Hungry because dinner was approaching, and jealous because she knew her hunger would no longer be satisfied by that beautiful honey-baked ham she'd bought, which now resided in Samantha's stomach. No, she was likely stuck with takeout tonight. Or something Derek could throw together with what little they had in the pantry, like a casserole.
Her attention was yanked away from her laptop when a thunderous crash exploded through the house, followed by a, “God, damn it!” She didn't think she'd ever moved through the house so quickly. The only thing that stopped her from sliding down the stairs like a bobsledder was the bulge of her womb reminding her she had a lot more to risk than just her own safety if she were to fall on her face. She slowed down to an urgent trot as she descended the steps, but sped up again as soon as she'd hit the landing.
She found him sitting at the dining room table staring into space, which... wasn't what she expected, and it drew her to a skidding halt in the archway. His notepad sat in front of him on the placemat, pen discarded off to the side. There was still only one item on the list. Pray for a miracle. And he was so stuck in his own head he didn't seem to notice her standing there, venting panic with every heaving breath.
Her gaze darted around. He looked... fine, other than the fact that he'd disconnected himself from reality enough to not hear her come into the room. She couldn't identify what had made the crashing sound until she tiptoed forward and saw the thick, skewed book on the floor by the wall. A dim shaft of afternoon light plunged into the room from the window, and she couldn't read the title on the glossy cover until she padded over to it. The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook. It was one of the references Lexie had bought when she'd had her revelation that Derek wasn't necessarily dealing with things very well. She'd tried to keep them discretely in her bedroom, but apparently Derek knew about them, anyway. He had to have gone into Lexie's room and found her stash to get it, or at least asked her for it.
Her heart squeezed. Why would he need that book right now?
She made sure she was in his line of sight before she whispered, “Derek?” in a low, soothing whisper. It took another, “Derek, hey,” along with a little wave before he blinked and seemed to focus on the room again.
He didn't start at her sudden appearance, which was a good sign. His shift in demeanor was more of a slow slide from absent to perceiving. His lip twitched into a soft smile, though preoccupation gripped the other muscles in his face, preventing his mirth from reaching the crows feet hugging his eyes, and his irises didn't sparkle like they did when he really, really meant it.
“Hi,” he said, matching her soft tone.
She glanced pointedly at the book on the floor, eyebrows raised. “What happened?” she said. “You scared the crap out of me.”
He sighed, deflating. “Sorry. I lost my temper for a second.” Concern flecked in his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” she assured him. “I'm more concerned about you. What did that poor book ever do to you?”
He propped his head up on his elbows and tore his fingers through his hair. “Nothing, it....” His eyes drifted to the list he'd made. “Nothing. I was brainstorming, and I thought it might help.”
“But it didn't,” Meredith said.
He slid out of his chair to pick up the book. He smoothed out the cover, tucking the jackets back into place, and put the book back on the table next to his notepad. “Not really.”
She picked up the list he'd left on the placemat, digging her thumb into the metal spirals until she hurt. He didn't take his eyes from her. She didn't see any reproach in his gaze. Nothing to indicate this was a no no subject or that she'd grossly invaded his privacy by reading the list earlier in the day. “What exactly are you brainstorming?” she said.
He ground his molars. His temples bulged as he clenched his jaw and released it, and she bit her lip. Maybe not an invasion of privacy, but she could tell she wasn't in for a happy subject, and he seemed reluctant to explain. She put the notepad gently back on the table and stepped into him, embracing him, but he stood like a stiff, ungiving board, and gave her nothing in return.
“Talking about it could help, you know,” she said.
He stared out the window and shook his head. Not at her, he gathered. Just... whatever was stuck in his head. “I'm trying to....” His words trailed away.
“What?” she prodded.
He considered her for a long moment, like he was debating whether this was a good idea to talk about with her. Whatever this was, anyway. Curiosity was a slow burn underneath her skin.
“If it helps you to talk, I want to hear it,” she said, standing her ground. She hadn't encountered closed-like-a-clamshell Derek in a while, but over months and months of practice, she'd gotten pretty good at getting him to crack open. Persistence and patience in equal measure seemed to help a lot. She pulled him tight against her.
The moment he gave in came like a tide to a beach, slow and creeping, but unstoppable. He wrapped his arms around her. Tension slipped out of his muscles, and he sighed. He pressed his forehead against hers and breathed. In and out.
“I'm trying to figure out how to fix this mess,” he said on an exhale.
She scrunched his soft t-shirt between her fingers. “What mess? Can I help?”
He was silent for the briefest of pauses.
“I'm a big girl, Derek,” she said, one last push. “I'm fine. I can take it. Talk.”
“If things don't turn around soon, Seattle Grace Mercy West is going to bankrupt itself, and this time there's no merger to pull us out of free fall.”
She blinked. Of all the things she expected to hear, that was not one of them. “What?” she said, dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”
“I just got the year-end financial report, Meredith. If the hospital were a patient, Seattle Grace would be in the ICU on a ventilator with a priest on the way.”
Sinking. She was sinking. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“I have told you, Meredith. I told you the hospital was in ruins months ago.”
Her fingers clenched. “I didn't think you meant we were on our way to bankruptcy again!”
“I didn't know we were on our way to bankruptcy again until I got the full analysis report,” he snapped. And then he inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. He shook his head as if to knock loose his temper, and added in a much quieter voice, “I only found out about this yesterday. I'm not an accountant, Meredith; the earlier reports looked bad but not dire to me, and this is the first one where it was spelled out for me in tiny, easy-to-understand words.”
Her eyes pricked. “How long do we have?”
He shrugged. “Months, I'd guess. A year, tops, with some considerable cutbacks.”
“What's it going to look like by April?”
Baby was due in April. His hopeless expression wrecked her. She wiped her eyes as his palms came to rest on her stomach, and he kept breathing. In and out and in and out. “Meredith, I....” He took another deep breath, and looked away. His lower lip quivered. “This is all my fucking fault.”
“It's not your fault, Derek.”
He shook his head. “We almost had things under control with the merger. Then I got shot. Patients don't want to be treated here. Nobody wants to work here. And all the stress leave for the people we managed to keep sucked our rainy day funds dry.” He looked at her. “This is your home. This is where we met.” He blinked. “This is where you saved me.” It's like I was drowning.... His eyes were watery. He didn't look like he was seeing anything.
“Derek, it's not your fault,” she snapped.
He was silent for a long time, staring into space. His face was red and blotchy, and he looked about a millimeter from bursting into tears right along with her. She wiped her eyes again, and then she cupped his chin with her palm and forced his gaze back to her.
“Not. Your. Fault.”
He sighed. “I'm doing it again, aren't I?” he said, the words glum.
She snorted. “You kind of are.”
“It's not my fault,” he enunciated. “It's Gary Clark's fault.”
“Right,” Meredith said.
“And I wouldn't blame you, or Mark, or anybody else in the same situation as myself.”
She nodded.
He took a long, slow breath and let it out. “But I still need to fix this,” he said, his voice cracking. “I need....”
“Closure,” she said.
“Not just that. It's....”
“It's?”
He crumpled like he'd misplaced his thought. “I don't know what to do,” he said. The words crushed her. His lost expression crushed her. “Meredith, I don't know what to do. What the hell should I do?”
He was looking at her like he was flailing around in the Sound, but had spotted his life raft. Her.
And she had no idea how to respond to that.
She didn't know anything about this stuff.
She swallowed. Her legs felt watery. “I think I need a time out,” she said. “Just for a minute.”
“A time out?” he parroted.
“This is... big,” she added, the words hollow. “A big problem. Really, really... big. Supernova grade.”
He sighed. “That's an understatement.” He rested his forehead against hers. “I wish I knew what I should do.”
She searched his expression for a long, aching moment. Her chest hurt. Her eyes hurt. She'd known the hospital had some problems. She'd had no idea they were plodding down a gangplank to a looming grave. She leaned up on her tiptoes, pressing against him, enveloping herself in his warmth. She snaked her fingers through his hair, clutched at him along the nape of his neck.
Silence stretched for six heartbeats. She was in free fall, and she needed a place to land. He was drowning, and he needed something solid to grab. And they both needed to hit the emotional reset button, or they'd never get through this discussion.
“You should kiss me,” she said.
“Meredith--”
She grabbed his shirt. “Kiss. Me.” The cotton scrunched between her fingers. She shifted her weight and pulled him along as she stepped backward. Her back hit the dining room table. She slid into a sitting position on the tabletop, and he filled the space between her knees with his torso.
He hovered close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his skin. He didn't speak. The faint scent of his aftershave filled her every inhalation. She pressed her nose into the space where his jaw met his throat, opened her mouth, let his skin slip between her teeth, and she nipped him. A hint of salt tickled her tongue.
“Kiss me, Derek,” she said against his throat. Stubble rasped against her, but she didn't care. She hugged his hips with her knees. She unclenched her fist and let her palm slide down his shirt, pushing up under it. She glided to his waistband, teasing at the lip of it, and plunged underneath into heat. He made a deep sound in his throat when she touched him, halfway between a groan and a purr.
But then he batted her hand away.
“What--?” she had a chance to say before he captured her mouth with his own and drank down her question. Not a no, then. She waited not-so-patiently to see what he had in mind.
He pulled at her pants while he plundered her. She shifted to let him take them away. They fell with a thud to the carpet when he dropped them next to the table. She arched back as he did the same with her panties. Their breaths thundered in the quiet. Her nails raked him, and he made another deep sound that came from the pit of his chest. A growl, almost. Something primal.
Then he dropped to his knees, palms pressed against her inner thighs. He spread her wide with a sweep of his hands. Her skin twitched, and she moaned as he opened her like a present. Hot breaths blustered against her wet skin. He pushed himself between her thighs, lips to skin, and he kissed her until the world crumbled.
Meredith woke on Christmas morning a bit like a bear crawls out of hibernation. Not that she knew how bears coming out of hibernation acted, but she imagined there'd be growling. And snuffling. And a mountain of denial. It took her almost a minute to slap off the alarm.
8:30 am, the clock said, and the light streaming through the windows seemed to agree with the clock's assessment of the time. While not even that early, given that many of her days started at 4:00 am, it felt like she'd just gotten home and fallen into bed. She'd worked Christmas Eve until about 11:00 pm and had made it into bed around 11:45 pm, collapsing next to an already-passed-out Derek.
“Oh, my god, how is it morning already?” she muttered into her pillow. A wet spot of drool had collected on the pillowcase under her cheek. Yuck. “How am I awake? Why?” She rolled away, but Derek followed her into a sleepy, draping spoon. “Merry Christmas to you, too,” Derek murmured against her neck, soft breaths making her skin tingle. His voice was groggy, but his body was a long line of warmth behind her, and she could hear the vague, dream-filled smile in his words.
“Bah humbug,” she said in return, and he let loose a whuff of air that could have been a laugh, however brief. “Sorry about the alarm,” she said. “I forgot to unset it.”
The lump that was Derek didn't move. “Mmm,” he said, the syllable thick with sleep. “S'fine.” And then he didn't say anything else, despite what had to have been at least nine hours of sleep. Despite Christmas. Despite the fact that he was erect and pressing against her, and that was normally a precursor to a lot of dirty innuendo, if nothing else.
Which made her frown. It was Christmas. She couldn't remember the last few Christmases in an eidetic sense, but she knew he should be more excited than this. She slid out of his arms. He groaned a bit in protest, but didn't speak. She bit her lip as she rolled out of bed and scrunched her bare toes in the plush carpet. She took care of her ready-to-explode bladder in the bathroom quickly before returning to find Derek still snuggled on his side under a mountain of blankets, not moving. Which was really... just not normal.
She padded to his side of the bed and sat down beside him, hip to hip with him. She put her hand on the lump at where she estimated his shoulder should be. “Hey, are you okay?” she said.
The covers rustled. She caught a dull blue eye looking at her through a wiry curtain of his kinked bed hair. “Just tired,” he said.
“Want me to put on some coffee for you?” she said, frowning.
She listened to him breathing. Silence stretched for several seconds until he muttered something multisyllabic but unintelligible. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead.
“Sleep, then,” she said, intending to leave him in peace. “Merry Christmas.”
The blankets rustled as she tried to step away. His warm palm grabbed her wrist. “Don't go,” he said in a clearer tone. “I'm up,” he added, without a hint of leer or entendre in his tone.
She stopped. Turned. When she looked, he was blinking, scrubbing at his stubbly face and bloodshot eyes with his other hand, and then he sat up. The comforter fell away from his chest, and his gaze softened.
“Hey,” she said.
His expression became... almost shy. “It's Christmas,” he said. “I can catch up on sleep ton--” And then his eyes focused on something behind her. “What's that?” he said, interrupting himself mid-sentence.
“What's what?” she said, but when she turned to follow his gaze, she saw the object of his scrutiny. A big envelope embossed with candy canes. It was taped to the inside of their door with surgical tape. It hadn't been there last night. She snorted. “Oh, lord, what cheesy scavenger hunt thing did you plan, now?”
When she turned back to him, she found him looking at her, bewildered. “That's not from me, Mere.”
She snorted again. “Uh huh.”
“Really, it's not,” Derek said. “I didn't plan anything. I thought I was already pushing my luck with the tree and the lights and the 'Christmas vomit',” he said, putting the words in squiggly air quotes with his fingers. He smiled sheepishly. “Believe it or not, I can restrain myself from further vomit. For you.”
She frowned, got up, and snatched the envelope from the door. She ripped open the envelope to find a glittery card, which she pulled out and read. She recognized the handwriting. Not Derek's. “Oh, she so lied,” Meredith said.
“Who lied?” Derek said, padding up behind her.
“Lexie!” Meredith said, glancing at him. Lexie hadn't told her anything about this. Not even a tiny, tiny hint. Meredith shoved the card at him. Specks of glitter flecked onto his black shirt, getting stuck in the weave of the cotton, and more fluttered to the carpet.
“Santa humbly requests your presents in the living room,” Derek said, reading from the card. He laughed and ran a hand through his messy hair, leaving bits and pieces of glitter behind. One curl stuck up like a flag, despite his weak attempts to mow it down with his fingers. “Presents. Cute.”
“Santa seems awfully glitter-happy,” Meredith grumbled.
Derek brushed at his shirt. More glitter drifted into the air. “No need to get snippy with Santa,” he said, eyes pinching at the edges with the vague hint of a grin. “After all, it just adds to my sparkling personality.”
“Hah,” Meredith said, tone flat. “Hah. Hah.”
“You love it,” he replied, pressing closer, and she found she couldn't argue.
He reached in front of Meredith and opened the door, bicep bunching under the sleeve of his t-shirt. The scent of coffee and cinnamon wafted against them in a warm billow of air. Derek's nostrils flared and his eyelids drooped subtly as he leaned into it and inhaled. The soft sound of voices filtered up the stairs. She could identify male cadence and female cadence from this far away, but not the specific owners of said voices, not from such a soft murmur.
Her teeth clenched. She'd told Lexie not to put Derek on the spot, and this was pretty freaking spot-putting, Meredith thought. She grabbed Derek's hand and squeezed.
“You don't have to go downstairs,” she rushed to say. “I can tell them to leave.”
Curiosity painted his face despite the sleepiness still loitering there, and he stepped into the hallway, pulling her with him. “If you did that,” Derek said, “we'd never find out what Santa wants with us, now, would we?” A smile twitched at the corners of his lips. Not a brilliant one, but it was a brilliant one all the same, simply for the fact of its existence, a real curve that made him look years younger, and so much more buoyant. While he didn't seem that excited about this spontaneous development, one that, weeks ago, would have had him refusing to leave the bedroom, he certainly seemed willing to humor it today, and that... that was just.... Tension flowed out of her as though she were a sieve.
“What about you?” he said. “You don't have to go downstairs, either, if this is too much.”
“Too much?”
His lip twitched. “Christmas vomit.”
“Oh,” she said. “No, I'm fine. This is just the right amount of Christmas vomit.” She frowned suspiciously. “So far....”
“Good,” he said, another smile ghosting his features.
She stopped him. Kissed him. Halitosis and all, she didn't really care at the moment. They shared a long minute with each other in the quiet hall, and then they went downstairs.
Lexie and Mark were the only ones sitting in her living room, which, Meredith relented, didn't really constitute a “bash,” so at least Lexie had stuck to the most important part of her word.
Presents that hadn't been there the night before were piled high under the tree. Christmas carols played softly on the stereo. Lights hung on the tree in a brilliant red, blue, green, and yellow sprawl. A fire snapped and popped in the fireplace, making the room smell of wood and heat, mingled with the scent of coffee wafting from the kitchen. Samantha, who'd stretched out beside the warmth of the fire, wore her floppy Santa hat with her own special brand of canine aplomb.
Meredith's and Derek's stockings hung in a close pair from the mantle. On the far right next to Derek's stocking, hung an oversized, misshapen, badly knitted, cream-colored sock on which Meredith had written “SAMANTHA” with a blue fabric pen. Carolyn had coached her over the phone in its construction, but backseat knitting over the phone hadn't been enough to save it from looking like it had been made by Meredith. Oh well. On the left, next to Meredith's, hung a newer, misshapen stocking that looked a lot like Meredith's, only it said Lexie on the lip. Lexie, happily contributing, had hung up hers shortly after Meredith had explained her reasoning for stockings in the first place. On the far end hung Mark's big stocking, which hadn't been there the night before. Meredith had given it to Mark to do with as he pleased. Lexie had probably gotten it back from him.
Lexie gave Meredith and Derek a look of glee as Meredith tiptoed through the archway with Derek behind her. “Merry Christmas, you guys!” Lexie exclaimed, though she kept her volume just above a whisper.
“Hey, man,” Mark added, grinning. “Meredith. Best day of the year!”
“Looking forward to it,” Meredith said, a smile twitching at her lips when she realized she wasn't lying.
Mark was barefoot, and he wore a fuzzy blue bathrobe much like the one Meredith had gotten Derek for Christmas last year. From his dress and his stubble, he seemed to have rolled out of bed and driven straight here. Lexie wore a t-shirt and sweats, and her hair wasn't even combed. With the casualness, and the fact that it was just close family instead of a giant crowd of longtime Christmas celebrators, well, things didn't feel so foreign or scary. In this environment, she wouldn't feel horrible if she mangled some heretofore unknown Christmas ritual. She made a note to thank Lexie later, not just for Derek, but for herself. Derek relaxed beside her, apparently coming to the same conclusion she had. He smiled. A bigger one than the one he'd offered her in their bedroom. He rubbed at his sleepy eyes again. “Merry Christmas,” he replied as he sank onto the couch.
“Want some coffee?” Lexie said, before Meredith could sit next to him. “I made decaf for you, Mere.”
Meredith sighed. Her eyes still felt sticky with sleep, and having decaf sounded about as fun as having a virgin daiquiri. Tasty, but pretty much pointless. Worse, the fact that everybody else would be having the real deal was kind of like visiting a candy store and watching everybody devour delicious Godiva chocolate while she was stuck chewing sugar-free gum or something.
“Oh, have some real coffee, Meredith,” Derek said as if he'd read her mind. He winked. “It's Christmas. Baby won't mind one cup.”
“But--” Meredith began, but she didn't have a chance to finish.
“Maybewecanmixthemtogetherorsomething,” Lexie said in a rush. “Youcanhelpme.” And then Lexie grabbed Meredith's wrist and pulled her into the kitchen without another glance.
Dim light spilled into the kitchen as rain spattered against the window panes. Rain was Seattle's version of a white Christmas, Meredith supposed. The bitter scent of coffee, subtle from the living room, became a cacophony in her nose. Her nostrils flared.
“Lexie,” Meredith snapped as they skidded to a halt in front of the bubbling coffee maker. “What the hell?”
“How's Derek?” Lexie said. “The card took the edge off the surprise, I hope? I tried to keep this thing small. Alex volunteered to clear out, though I think that's more to do with the fact that he'd rather spend Christmas hitting his toes with a hammer than do anything with me in the same room. But anyway. So, Derek seems okay. Is he okay? He's got really big circles under his eyes.”
Meredith blinked. Perhaps Lexie had already had some coffee herself. Possibly a whole jug. Possibly spiked with some speed or something. “He's fine, Lexie; he's just worn out,” Meredith assured her half-sister. “If he wasn't fine, he wouldn't have come downstairs.”
“Okay, good,” Lexie said, nodding resolutely. “I'm glad.” She bit her lip and shifted from foot to foot.
Meredith rolled her eyes. “What did you drag me in here to talk about?”
“So, Mark. He's here.” Meredith nodded. “I noticed that, yes.”
“And it's not a date,” Lexie said. “It's for Derek. As like a brother solidarity support thing.”
“Okay...?” Meredith said, watching Lexie expectantly. Meredith folded her arms across her chest.
Lexie reddened. “But I really, really want it to be a date,” she said in a pleading voice.
“For god's sake,” Meredith said, rolling her eyes again. “Just ask him, Lexie. He'll say yes. I'm telling you. It's not even a little bit iffy. Just do it.”
“Okay,” Lexie said, steeling herself. “Okay. I can do this.” “You can,” Meredith said with a sage nod.
She pulled four mugs out of the cabinet. A double-size “I <3 NYC” mug, two random mugs Derek had picked up as swag from medical conferences in Auckland and Los Angeles, respectively, and some generic blue-colored mug with a horse on it that she couldn't remember buying, but clearly she had, because... well... there it was. She stared longingly at the pot with regular coffee in it for three seconds. Four. Five. She closed her eyes. Inhaled. Let her mind drift in the caffeine, caffeine, caffeine of it all. The scent was an olfactory siren song, splendiferous, tempting, and evil, and for a moment, she wavered. She leaned toward the pot with the real stuff. Caffeine. God, she missed caffeine so much.
Finally, though, with a depressed sigh, she shifted to the decaf, and filled up the horse cup for herself. She filled Derek's mug to the brim with regular. And then she pushed the remaining two mugs across the countertop to Lexie.
“Bring him coffee,” Meredith suggested. “It's a conversation starter or something. I think.” She remembered her first legitimate date with Derek, and there had definitely been coffee involved. Honestly, it was hard not to have coffee when dining out in Seattle.
She hooked the two mugs she'd filled with her thumbs and walked back out into the living room with them, leaving Lexie behind to ponder her course of action. Derek gave her a grateful look as he clasped the giant mug, blew on it, and took a sip. “Thank you,” he said, and Meredith curled up next to him, cradling her own. “Did you pour yourself some actual coffee?”
She sighed. “No.”
He gave her a look that seemed like a strange marriage of exasperation and understanding. She hadn't realized before seeing it that those two emotions could be married. But he didn't comment to commend or condemn her choice. Instead, he wrapped his arm around her, squeezed her shoulder with a warm palm and kissed her temple.
Lexie shuffled back into the room, blush creeping across her face, reddening her ears, and plunging down her throat beyond the neckline of her t-shirt. She approached the big chair where Mark was sitting.
That was Derek's favorite chair. The one they'd had to lug upstairs to the bedroom when he hadn't been able to sleep through the night on his back. They'd lugged it back downstairs months ago.
Mark looked up at Lexie, a curious expression on his face.
“Hey, thanks,” he said to the offered cup of coffee, tone slightly surprised.
Lexie cleared her throat. Shifted from foot to foot. “So, can I sit here?” she said abruptly. “I mean, if that's okay. Is it okay?”
Mark's expression was unreadable. His eyebrow twitched. The chair where he was sitting was definitely only meant for one person, but that didn't mean two people didn't fit as long as they didn't mind being extra cozy with each other. Meredith had sat there curled up in a comforter with Derek any number of times, and Lexie was pretty small as well. They would fit.
“Sure....” Mark said after a pause. He put his cup on a coaster on the coffee table, next to a plate full of the cookies Derek's mother had sent. His fingers squeaked across the leather chair arms as he gripped them for leverage, and his biceps bulged as he made a move to stand up.
“No!” Lexie said. Her sudden twitch made her coffee slosh. Brown liquid dribbled out the sides of her cup, but she didn't seem to notice. “No, I mean. Can I sit here?” She swallowed. “With you?”
Mark blinked. The silence between them stretched, filled with the tinny sound of Deck the Halls playing softly from the speakers.
“Please?” Lexie added.
Without another word, Mark's face shifted glacially into a bright-eyed, toothy, Cheshire Cat grin. He raised his right arm, scooted to his left, and gestured. Lexie slid onto the chair beside him, hugged between his large body and the arm of the chair, and his arm came over her shoulder much like Derek's over Meredith's. Lexie clutched Mark's bathrobe as if her life depended on it. She rested her head on his shoulder and settled, movements hitching and awkward, but who cared about awkward? To Meredith, anything was better than seeing Lexie waffle endlessly for days.
Mark sighed the biggest, happiest sigh Meredith thought she'd ever heard, and his eyes had more glitter to them than the freaking glitter card Lexie had stuck on the inside of Meredith and Derek's bedroom door.
“So,” Mark said in a tone that said life-is-pretty-fucking-fantastic-right-now-MERRY-FUCKING-CHRISTMAS, “who gets to open the next present?”
They lay intertwined in a tangle of naked limbs and sheets and blankets. Somewhere in the hurricane, they'd shifted to the bedroom. She drew circles on his chest with her index fingers. He stared at her through his eyelashes, a rapturous expression painting his face.
The sun had long since set, and the dim, warm bath of light from the lamp reflected off his eyes in its absence. A cold winter quiet gripped the house, wrapping it in a muted blanket. All she could hear was Derek's breathing, and the occasional swish of a passing car on the wet street outside. She pressed her ear to his chest and listened through his breastbone to his heartbeat, adding a slow, percussive rhythm to what was otherwise silence, and she sighed, boneless, relaxed. Safe. The world stopped spinning when she lay like this with him. Wrong things didn't feel so wrong. And a bankrupting hospital felt like puzzle to solve, not a life-altering crisis.
Emotional reset: accomplished.
“I think you should talk to someone,” Meredith said.
“I'm talking to you,” he murmured, and his lips leaked into an easy smile. “I like talking to you. More talking, I say.”
“No,” Meredith said with a chuckle. “I mean a professional. This isn't the kind of thing you can fix by yourself, and I have... no idea. Doesn't the hospital have financial people to help with all of this?”
He sighed, and some of the mirth dripped from his face. His eyes focused, and he thought for a moment while she drew more circles, the nail of her index finger twisting through the light dusting of hair on his chest.
“All they do is tell you how to fix money problems,” he said eventually. “Leaking money is a symptom, not the disease. Budget cuts, tax law loopholes, and funding reallocations will only prolong the inevitable if we don't fix the underlying cause. The tension is so thick at work you couldn't cut it with a steak knife. Everybody is scared, Meredith. Everybody. For months, I thought it was just me, but....” He shook his head. Not just him. Not even close. “An accountant can't fix that.”
“So, we have to figure out how to help everybody not be scared,” she said.
“I can't just send the entire staff and every patient to Dr. Wyatt,” he said. “Paxil can't fix this.” She shook her head, putting an index finger against his lips. He quieted, and he kissed her, tasted her. His tongue pressed against her skin. “I wasn't suggesting that,” she said, the words soft. “Well, what were you suggesting?” he asked as he dropped her hand. She sighed. “I don't know,” she said, and then she gave him an apologetic frown. “Sorry. Unhelpful. Did you try Google?”
He snorted.
“Sorry,” she said, unable to stop a loose chuckle from escaping. “Sorry, now, I'm making light.” And she shouldn't. But she laughed again, anyway. “Sorry!” She shouldn't be making light when the world was crashing down around their ears, but between massacres, secret wives, secret sisters, exploding ferryboats, appendixes bursting, liver transplants, Izzie's cancer, George's death, and now this, the whole world felt so suddenly ridiculous she couldn't breathe, and she could laugh about it, because she was in his arms, and she was safe, and she had nothing left to stifle her morbid sense of humor. “Oh, god,” she added, panting between torrents of giggles. “What's next? A plane crash?”
“With our luck, Mount Rainer will blow, and we'll be stuck in a modern Pompeii,” he said, tone wry.
Which only made her laugh harder. “God, I'm so sorry,” she said, gasping. “I really shouldn't joke, but....”
He gave her a cautious grin, though he didn't laugh with her. “It's okay,” he said. He cupped her cheek. Brushed his fingers through her hair. The warm pad of his thumb traced her cheekbone. He kissed her. “Someone has to.” His eyes were dark blue halos in the dim light. “I love you,” he added in an even softer tone, and she melted.
She rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling, and he followed her, draping himself against her side. His left shoulder pressed into the bed. The sheet that had barely been hanging onto him slipped and crumbled to the mattress between them, leaving her with long line of naked skin from his shoulder to below his hip in her peripheral vision. He rested his left palm on her belly and pressed his lips against her cheek. She put her hand overtop his and squeezed his fingers.
“There's really no one in the hospital who could help you?” She turned her head to gaze at him. Surely, there had to be someone. Somewhere. She wracked her brain.
“There isn't really a position for 'Mass Trauma Recovery Specialist' that I know of,” he said. He smirked at her. “At least, not in the phone book. And, while I did actually Google,” he added, kissing her, “all I got were trauma centers and a bunch of stuff that's not really related to what I wanted.”
She thought for a long moment. “Maybe, Owen can help? Richard?”
He frowned. “I'd planned to talk with Richard next week, since he'll be inheriting this mess eventually, assuming we don't go under. Why Owen?”
“I don't know,” she said, shrugging. “Combat experience? Surely the army gets training on how to cope?”
He nodded slowly. “True...,” he said, and she could see the wheels behind his eyes turning, churning. Then his eyes widened a fraction.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“Adam.”
She squinted at him. For a moment, she couldn't recall the name, but then recollection flooded into her head. “The cop with all the GSWs? Been in ICU for months?” Though she hadn't met Adam, she knew Derek liked to sit with him, knew Derek felt some sort of kinship with him. Perhaps even the beginnings of a friendship. Hell, Adam had even made it to the top of their boys' names list.
“Yeah,” Derek said. “Him. He's talking a lot more, now. I think he'll be working up to walking soon.”
“Why do you think he'd be better than Owen to help with this?” “Remember Detective Wolff?” Derek said. She nodded. “Sure, but what does he have to do with Adam?”
“Wolff sent me that packet,” Derek said. His gaze left her. He picked at his cuticles while he added, “The one about assault victimization that I threw out without reading. The one that helped you... figure out... what was going on with me.”
Now, she could see where he was going with this. She nodded again, encouraging him. “And, maybe, Adam has access to the same resources, and could point you in the right direction?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, looking back at her. “Because I don't even know where to start, which is my big problem at the moment. All I need is a place to start. Something to work with. The police must have contacts.” He sighed. “I don't know. Maybe, its a stupid idea.”
She smiled. “It's worth a try.”
The silence stretched again. He pressed his nose against her hair, breathing her in. A relaxed sigh fell from her lips. She didn't ever want to move from this bed. Ever.
“Thank you, Meredith,” he whispered.
“You're welcome,” she replied, only to have her stomach interrupt their exchanged. Her offending digestive system growled and gurgled, and she remembered she hadn't eaten since... she couldn't remember. She turned red and pressed her face into the pillow, snorting with laughter. In the quiet, it almost sounded like an avalanche or something. Or maybe she was just being silly and exaggerating, but--
“So...,” he said, an amused expression sparkling on his face.
“Yes?” she murmured.
“Given that our New Year's Eve plans currently reside in our naughty dog's stomach....” he said, his voice trailing away.
She snorted. “Order a pizza?”
He blinked. Nodded. “We could do that.”
“With cheese?” she said hopefully. “And stuff that's not green on it?”
“So,” he said. “Onions. Red peppers. Anchovies. That sort of thing.”
She smacked his arm playfully. “Oh, gag me,” she said, and he laughed.
“I think I could force myself to have a pizza with cheese this one time,” he said. He gave her a woeful, burdened sigh. “For you.”
“And then,” she continued, “we could watch a super sappy movie that my hormones compel me suddenly to like and cry over?”
He looked less than thrilled with that idea, but he kept smiling. “We could,” he said, conciliating.
She grinned at him. “And then, we could completely ignore the movie, and have lots and lots more sex on the couch.”
His smile brightened. “I'm liking this plan.”
She pulled him into a deep kiss. “Happy New Year, Derek.”
“I hope it's happy,” he murmured.
“It will be,” she assured him. “It has to be. It can't be anything else.”
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
All Along The Watchtower - Part 30B
When Meredith's eyes slid open, she smiled. The tree still towered in the corner of the room, though the lights weren't plugged in at the moment. She and Derek had put the lights and ornaments on it together. Light application to a Christmas tree was apparently a science, and Derek had found a lot of glee in showing her how to do it. Where light application was a science, though, ornament arrangement was like Stephen Hawking's version of physics. She and Derek had ended up using lots of the sparkling, metallic balls from the box from the attic after dusting them off. Derek had claimed that if one used sparkly ornaments, the reflections enhanced the lightning, and had instructed her to skip the ornaments that didn't have a reflective surface. That had resulted in her leaving about half of the old ornaments in the box, and the resulting ornament coverage on the tree had more been like accents rather than a blanket.
Meredith had always assumed garlands and tinsel and other crap were a must, but all they had used were the ornaments and the lights. She wasn't sure what the tree would have looked like if they had used non-sparkly ornaments, but she did have to admit he knew his Christmas trees. The end result of Derek's instruction looked... really freaking pretty.
And the longer she'd stuck around helping him, the more gleeful he'd gotten. By the time they'd finished, other than a few miscellaneous firsts associated with Baby, she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him so happy, but his joy had been an ephemeral feeling, not a permanent alignment shift. He'd gone back to work the next day and gotten stuck in the mental slog again. Stuck in the constant war inside his head where he wanted to be away from people and stress and busywork and blah, but didn't have the luxury because of his job. Because he was trying to get better. He'd come home the next day run down again, and the day after that, even more so, and she'd felt like she was dancing a perpetual jig of two steps forward, two steps back with him as they approached Christmas.
Meredith sat at the kitchen table, rubbing her temples in slow circles as she rested her weight on her elbows. Lexie sat across from her, shoveling spoon after spoon of peppermint ice cream into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged, and she looked, well, miserable. Which made no freaking sense. And Meredith kind of wanted that ice cream. Kind of a lot. She licked her lips in time with the throb of her head.
“I really don't understand what the problem is,” Meredith said.
“I only dumped Alex a couple weeks ago,” Lexie said.
“Yeah,” Meredith said. “And?”
“After he was shot,” Lexie said. Meredith blinked. “And?”
“During the holidays?” Lexie added, a helpless tone dragging her pitch into the upper registers.
“So, what?” Meredith said. “You weren't happy. You got out. You know who you want, now. So, go ask him?”
“Go ask him, she says,” Lexie grumbled. “Go ask him?”
“Yes.” Meredith nodded. “Go. Ask.”
“But it's rude to move on so fast!” Lexie frowned. “Isn't it?”
“I'm really not a good person to be asking about the etiquette for moving on,” Meredith said, looking down at her belly. “In fact,” Meredith said, “I think the only person worse for asking about experience with moving on would be Derek.” Who wasn't home, anyway. Their days off hadn't matched up this week, and Derek hadn't been able to fix it because Richard hadn't been able to cover for Derek today. Something about Adele and warpaths and blah blah blah.
“I've been such a jerk,” Lexie said, tone glum.
“You don't even create a blip on the radar of jerk,” Meredith said.
Lexie fidgeted. “Well, there has to be a reason Mark hasn't asked me out, yet. Right?”
“Maybe, he's waiting for you to go all Sadie Hawkins and save him the trouble,” Meredith said. She sighed. “I really don't know,” she said. “Most of my history involving relationships has been with a man who's selectively deaf about the word no. I have no experience with him not asking me out, even when I told him to stuff it. If he'd been anyone else, and I mean anyone, I would have been filing a sexual harassment complaint with HR.”
“But Mark is the king of sexual harassment. Why won't he harass me?”
Meredith snorted as Lexie turned a shade of red that would have put a beet to shame. Lexie jammed another spoonful of dripping ice cream into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged as she flogged herself with calories, and then she swallowed her misery with an audible gulp.
“I can't believe I just said that,” Lexie said. “I probably just sent the Take Back the Night campaign into the dark ages of feminism when we were still having fights about who does the berry gathering and who kills the sabretooth cats for dinner.” She dropped her spoon into her ice cream bowl. The metal hit the lip of the bowl with a clank, and then she raised her hands to her hair and yanked. “I hate men. I hate them! They're so frustrating!”
Meredith rolled her eyes, giving up on preserving Mark's privacy for the sake of everyone involved. “Lexie, he's interested.”
Lexie perked up. “Interested? How interested? How do you know?”
“Yes. A lot. Because he gave me a bullet point list over Thanksgiving about how he intends to win you back.”
“Bullet points?” Lexie said, eyebrows raising. “Thanksgiving? Really? That was before Alex and I even broke up.”
“He bought a freaking self-help book as reference material for that list,” Meredith said. “If he's not asking, it's probably because he hasn't got a clue he should be asking, yet, not because he doesn't want to.” With a groan, Meredith rose to her feet, walked to the phone, and grabbed it off its cradle. The dial tone filled the air with a vague, distant whine through the receiver. She foisted the phone at Lexie. “Just. Call. Him. Right now.”
“But he's on shift,” Lexie said weakly.
“I don't care,” Meredith said with a huff as she resettled and closed her eyes. “Do it, now.”
She resumed rubbing her temples. Her head was splitting her open, she thought. Too much work. Too much stress. Not enough sleep. She'd go back to bed the second she could muster up the will to stand again. Her ankles hurt. Her back hurt. Everything hurt. And she felt like a freaking walrus.
She heard the chair squeal as Lexie stood. Heard shuffling as Lexie moved around. Heard the phone being set back in its cradle, though Meredith couldn't muster any more strength to protest. Heard a clink in front of her, and then Lexie sat back down.
When Meredith pulled her eyes open, she glanced through her eyelashes blearily at the sight in front of her. Some of the pink peppermint ice cream had been added to a small bowl, which now sat in front of her with a spoon.
“Mark can wait,” Lexie said. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Meredith said.
“Right,” Lexie agreed with a snort.
Meredith sighed. “Growing a whole other person sucks sometimes.”
“Is the baby kicking?” Lexie said.
“No,” Meredith said. “But I was up like three times last night to pee, and I got no sleep, and everything hurts. And I'd kill for some wine or something.”
“You could have a glass,” Lexie said. “One glass won't hurt anything.”
Meredith clenched her fingers briefly. “No,” she said, and then she grabbed the spoon from her ice cream bowl. There was no way in hell she was doing anything that could risk the baby, no matter how slight the chances. Barring two mornings where she had fallen off the wagon and landed roughly on her ass, much to Derek's extremely irritating amusement, she wouldn't even drink coffee.
She broke off a piece of the ice cream, raised the spoon, and tipped it into her mouth. A blast of peppermint hit her senses, and she moaned a little as she closed her eyes. Peppermint ice cream was almost as good as strawberry, and this was a limited flavor only available in stores around Christmas. She loved it.
“This is an okay wine substitute,” Meredith said as she swallowed the treat.
Lexie grinned at her, and for several minutes, they ate their remaining ice cream in silence. When the doorbell rang, Meredith didn't even have a chance to think about answering the door before Lexie was rising to her feet. “You stay,” Lexie commanded. “I'll get it.” “I'm not helpless,” Meredith snapped at Lexie's retreating figure.
“I know,” Lexie said. “But I'm still helping you anyway. Deal with it.”
Meredith huffed another sigh and closed her eyes, letting her awareness of the surroundings blur. She heard the door open, heard Lexie exchange some words with whoever was there. Meredith was too tired to even care who it was, or to speculate.
“You got a package,” Lexie said when she returned. “From New York. Priority overnight?”
Meredith's eyes snapped open. Lexie clutched a large Fed-Ex box. “Wow,” Meredith said. “It came already? I only talked to her yesterday.”
“What is it?” Lexie said, excitement gleaming in her eyes. “Something we should put under the tree?”
Meredith tore the package open with gusto. Three items slid out of the box. The first two items, both knitted and wrapped in tissue paper, looked like what she was expecting, though she had expected only one. She set those aside and looked with curiosity at the third item.
A tupperware container. Filled with.... cookies. Dozens. With white icing slathered across the tops, and a praline stuck in the middle of the icing on each one. They smelled delicious. She grabbed one from the box and offered it to Lexie, and then snagged one for herself. The cookie was chewy and fell apart in her mouth. A blast of almond and sweetness hit her tongue.
“These are amazing!” Lexie mumbled, her voice distorted as she spoke with a full mouth.
Meredith glanced at the note Carolyn had written, which was taped to the top of the tupperware container, and smiled. “These,” Meredith said, “are apparently Derek's favorite. How did I not know this?” A small index card with the recipe was taped next to Carolyn's note. The steps didn't seem too complicated. Maybe, she could try to make it, and then when she set the kitchen on fire, Lexie would take pity on her and help. Or, maybe, she could be smart and just draft Lexie in the first place.
“What are the other things?” Lexie said.
Meredith turned her attention to the yarn items wrapped in tissue paper. She pulled open the paper on the first one, unsticking the tape and letting the folded item unfurl, which revealed a stocking with Derek's name knitted into the pattern at the top. The stocking was large and floppy, almost four feet from top to toe, and it was soft and red, which was almost exactly like she'd imagined Derek's would be. Granted, she'd pictured stripes, and this was solid-colored except at the top where Derek's name broke into the color scheme with white. Carolyn must have made this thing by hand. She was far more skilled at construction than Thatcher had been.
Meredith unfurled the second knit item, also a stocking, though this one had Mark's name at the top, and it was green instead of red. A little sticky note was attached to the top of Mark's, which said, “Thought you might want this one, too! - Carolyn.”
“Derek's stocking from when he was a kid,” Meredith explained to Lexie, who was bubbling over with interest. “I called Carolyn yesterday and asked her if she still had it.”
Lexie licked her lips. “Not that I'm complaining, but you want to hang stockings? You?”
Meredith shrugged. “For Derek, yeah.”
“Really?” Lexie said.
“He's been having some trouble with Christmas this year. I just wanted to do something for him.” Lexie frowned. “Trouble?”
Meredith nodded. “He's just a little down. I think the holiday is emphasizing to him how different he is this year. I almost get the impression that he's... well, he's lonely.”
Lexie's frown deepened. “Derek is lonely?”
Meredith sighed. “I don't think I'm explaining this well,” she said, before Lexie could enter DEFCON 1, operation Find Derek Some Friends. “He's not alone, per se. He's just....”
“Not used to having to budget his people time?” Lexie suggested.
“Yeah,” Meredith said, nodding. “Yeah, that's it exactly.” Meredith could almost see the churn of thoughts tumbling behind Lexie's eyes. “Lexie, don't tell me you're planning something.”
Lexie's lip twitched.
“Lexie, seriously,” Meredith said. “Please, don't throw some big Christmas bash that will put him on the spot. He's already not feeling that great.”
Lexie nodded. “I swear. No spot putting. No big bash. But... it'd be nice to do something.”
“Something... like what?” Meredith said, caution dripping from her tone.
“I don't know,” Lexie said, eyes gleaming as she galloped through possibilities. “I'll tell you when I figure it out. I promise to keep it low key, though.”
After daydreaming for the better part of an hour, Meredith left Derek alone in the living room to sleep, and she watched some streaming television on her laptop in their bedroom. She found she couldn't stand to watch hospital shows, since they were all ridiculously unrealistic, and after the shooting she found she had little taste for cop dramas and other violent stuff, but... she had an unrepentant addiction for Top Chef. She couldn't cook worth a damn, but it was so fun seeing what people who could cook could create under pressure with such wacky rules and time limits. She watched three episodes before she had to turn it off, because it was making her both hungry and jealous. Hungry because dinner was approaching, and jealous because she knew her hunger would no longer be satisfied by that beautiful honey-baked ham she'd bought, which now resided in Samantha's stomach. No, she was likely stuck with takeout tonight. Or something Derek could throw together with what little they had in the pantry, like a casserole.
Her attention was yanked away from her laptop when a thunderous crash exploded through the house, followed by a, “God, damn it!” She didn't think she'd ever moved through the house so quickly. The only thing that stopped her from sliding down the stairs like a bobsledder was the bulge of her womb reminding her she had a lot more to risk than just her own safety if she were to fall on her face. She slowed down to an urgent trot as she descended the steps, but sped up again as soon as she'd hit the landing.
She found him sitting at the dining room table staring into space, which... wasn't what she expected, and it drew her to a skidding halt in the archway. His notepad sat in front of him on the placemat, pen discarded off to the side. There was still only one item on the list. Pray for a miracle. And he was so stuck in his own head he didn't seem to notice her standing there, venting panic with every heaving breath.
Her gaze darted around. He looked... fine, other than the fact that he'd disconnected himself from reality enough to not hear her come into the room. She couldn't identify what had made the crashing sound until she tiptoed forward and saw the thick, skewed book on the floor by the wall. A dim shaft of afternoon light plunged into the room from the window, and she couldn't read the title on the glossy cover until she padded over to it. The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook. It was one of the references Lexie had bought when she'd had her revelation that Derek wasn't necessarily dealing with things very well. She'd tried to keep them discretely in her bedroom, but apparently Derek knew about them, anyway. He had to have gone into Lexie's room and found her stash to get it, or at least asked her for it.
Her heart squeezed. Why would he need that book right now?
She made sure she was in his line of sight before she whispered, “Derek?” in a low, soothing whisper. It took another, “Derek, hey,” along with a little wave before he blinked and seemed to focus on the room again.
He didn't start at her sudden appearance, which was a good sign. His shift in demeanor was more of a slow slide from absent to perceiving. His lip twitched into a soft smile, though preoccupation gripped the other muscles in his face, preventing his mirth from reaching the crows feet hugging his eyes, and his irises didn't sparkle like they did when he really, really meant it.
“Hi,” he said, matching her soft tone.
She glanced pointedly at the book on the floor, eyebrows raised. “What happened?” she said. “You scared the crap out of me.”
He sighed, deflating. “Sorry. I lost my temper for a second.” Concern flecked in his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” she assured him. “I'm more concerned about you. What did that poor book ever do to you?”
He propped his head up on his elbows and tore his fingers through his hair. “Nothing, it....” His eyes drifted to the list he'd made. “Nothing. I was brainstorming, and I thought it might help.”
“But it didn't,” Meredith said.
He slid out of his chair to pick up the book. He smoothed out the cover, tucking the jackets back into place, and put the book back on the table next to his notepad. “Not really.”
She picked up the list he'd left on the placemat, digging her thumb into the metal spirals until she hurt. He didn't take his eyes from her. She didn't see any reproach in his gaze. Nothing to indicate this was a no no subject or that she'd grossly invaded his privacy by reading the list earlier in the day. “What exactly are you brainstorming?” she said.
He ground his molars. His temples bulged as he clenched his jaw and released it, and she bit her lip. Maybe not an invasion of privacy, but she could tell she wasn't in for a happy subject, and he seemed reluctant to explain. She put the notepad gently back on the table and stepped into him, embracing him, but he stood like a stiff, ungiving board, and gave her nothing in return.
“Talking about it could help, you know,” she said.
He stared out the window and shook his head. Not at her, he gathered. Just... whatever was stuck in his head. “I'm trying to....” His words trailed away.
“What?” she prodded.
He considered her for a long moment, like he was debating whether this was a good idea to talk about with her. Whatever this was, anyway. Curiosity was a slow burn underneath her skin.
“If it helps you to talk, I want to hear it,” she said, standing her ground. She hadn't encountered closed-like-a-clamshell Derek in a while, but over months and months of practice, she'd gotten pretty good at getting him to crack open. Persistence and patience in equal measure seemed to help a lot. She pulled him tight against her.
The moment he gave in came like a tide to a beach, slow and creeping, but unstoppable. He wrapped his arms around her. Tension slipped out of his muscles, and he sighed. He pressed his forehead against hers and breathed. In and out.
“I'm trying to figure out how to fix this mess,” he said on an exhale.
She scrunched his soft t-shirt between her fingers. “What mess? Can I help?”
He was silent for the briefest of pauses.
“I'm a big girl, Derek,” she said, one last push. “I'm fine. I can take it. Talk.”
“If things don't turn around soon, Seattle Grace Mercy West is going to bankrupt itself, and this time there's no merger to pull us out of free fall.”
She blinked. Of all the things she expected to hear, that was not one of them. “What?” she said, dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”
“I just got the year-end financial report, Meredith. If the hospital were a patient, Seattle Grace would be in the ICU on a ventilator with a priest on the way.”
Sinking. She was sinking. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“I have told you, Meredith. I told you the hospital was in ruins months ago.”
Her fingers clenched. “I didn't think you meant we were on our way to bankruptcy again!”
“I didn't know we were on our way to bankruptcy again until I got the full analysis report,” he snapped. And then he inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. He shook his head as if to knock loose his temper, and added in a much quieter voice, “I only found out about this yesterday. I'm not an accountant, Meredith; the earlier reports looked bad but not dire to me, and this is the first one where it was spelled out for me in tiny, easy-to-understand words.”
Her eyes pricked. “How long do we have?”
He shrugged. “Months, I'd guess. A year, tops, with some considerable cutbacks.”
“What's it going to look like by April?”
Baby was due in April. His hopeless expression wrecked her. She wiped her eyes as his palms came to rest on her stomach, and he kept breathing. In and out and in and out. “Meredith, I....” He took another deep breath, and looked away. His lower lip quivered. “This is all my fucking fault.”
“It's not your fault, Derek.”
He shook his head. “We almost had things under control with the merger. Then I got shot. Patients don't want to be treated here. Nobody wants to work here. And all the stress leave for the people we managed to keep sucked our rainy day funds dry.” He looked at her. “This is your home. This is where we met.” He blinked. “This is where you saved me.” It's like I was drowning.... His eyes were watery. He didn't look like he was seeing anything.
“Derek, it's not your fault,” she snapped.
He was silent for a long time, staring into space. His face was red and blotchy, and he looked about a millimeter from bursting into tears right along with her. She wiped her eyes again, and then she cupped his chin with her palm and forced his gaze back to her.
“Not. Your. Fault.”
He sighed. “I'm doing it again, aren't I?” he said, the words glum.
She snorted. “You kind of are.”
“It's not my fault,” he enunciated. “It's Gary Clark's fault.”
“Right,” Meredith said.
“And I wouldn't blame you, or Mark, or anybody else in the same situation as myself.”
She nodded.
He took a long, slow breath and let it out. “But I still need to fix this,” he said, his voice cracking. “I need....”
“Closure,” she said.
“Not just that. It's....”
“It's?”
He crumpled like he'd misplaced his thought. “I don't know what to do,” he said. The words crushed her. His lost expression crushed her. “Meredith, I don't know what to do. What the hell should I do?”
He was looking at her like he was flailing around in the Sound, but had spotted his life raft. Her.
And she had no idea how to respond to that.
She didn't know anything about this stuff.
She swallowed. Her legs felt watery. “I think I need a time out,” she said. “Just for a minute.”
“A time out?” he parroted.
“This is... big,” she added, the words hollow. “A big problem. Really, really... big. Supernova grade.”
He sighed. “That's an understatement.” He rested his forehead against hers. “I wish I knew what I should do.”
She searched his expression for a long, aching moment. Her chest hurt. Her eyes hurt. She'd known the hospital had some problems. She'd had no idea they were plodding down a gangplank to a looming grave. She leaned up on her tiptoes, pressing against him, enveloping herself in his warmth. She snaked her fingers through his hair, clutched at him along the nape of his neck.
Silence stretched for six heartbeats. She was in free fall, and she needed a place to land. He was drowning, and he needed something solid to grab. And they both needed to hit the emotional reset button, or they'd never get through this discussion.
“You should kiss me,” she said.
“Meredith--”
She grabbed his shirt. “Kiss. Me.” The cotton scrunched between her fingers. She shifted her weight and pulled him along as she stepped backward. Her back hit the dining room table. She slid into a sitting position on the tabletop, and he filled the space between her knees with his torso.
He hovered close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his skin. He didn't speak. The faint scent of his aftershave filled her every inhalation. She pressed her nose into the space where his jaw met his throat, opened her mouth, let his skin slip between her teeth, and she nipped him. A hint of salt tickled her tongue.
“Kiss me, Derek,” she said against his throat. Stubble rasped against her, but she didn't care. She hugged his hips with her knees. She unclenched her fist and let her palm slide down his shirt, pushing up under it. She glided to his waistband, teasing at the lip of it, and plunged underneath into heat. He made a deep sound in his throat when she touched him, halfway between a groan and a purr.
But then he batted her hand away.
“What--?” she had a chance to say before he captured her mouth with his own and drank down her question. Not a no, then. She waited not-so-patiently to see what he had in mind.
He pulled at her pants while he plundered her. She shifted to let him take them away. They fell with a thud to the carpet when he dropped them next to the table. She arched back as he did the same with her panties. Their breaths thundered in the quiet. Her nails raked him, and he made another deep sound that came from the pit of his chest. A growl, almost. Something primal.
Then he dropped to his knees, palms pressed against her inner thighs. He spread her wide with a sweep of his hands. Her skin twitched, and she moaned as he opened her like a present. Hot breaths blustered against her wet skin. He pushed himself between her thighs, lips to skin, and he kissed her until the world crumbled.
Meredith woke on Christmas morning a bit like a bear crawls out of hibernation. Not that she knew how bears coming out of hibernation acted, but she imagined there'd be growling. And snuffling. And a mountain of denial. It took her almost a minute to slap off the alarm.
8:30 am, the clock said, and the light streaming through the windows seemed to agree with the clock's assessment of the time. While not even that early, given that many of her days started at 4:00 am, it felt like she'd just gotten home and fallen into bed. She'd worked Christmas Eve until about 11:00 pm and had made it into bed around 11:45 pm, collapsing next to an already-passed-out Derek.
“Oh, my god, how is it morning already?” she muttered into her pillow. A wet spot of drool had collected on the pillowcase under her cheek. Yuck. “How am I awake? Why?” She rolled away, but Derek followed her into a sleepy, draping spoon. “Merry Christmas to you, too,” Derek murmured against her neck, soft breaths making her skin tingle. His voice was groggy, but his body was a long line of warmth behind her, and she could hear the vague, dream-filled smile in his words.
“Bah humbug,” she said in return, and he let loose a whuff of air that could have been a laugh, however brief. “Sorry about the alarm,” she said. “I forgot to unset it.”
The lump that was Derek didn't move. “Mmm,” he said, the syllable thick with sleep. “S'fine.” And then he didn't say anything else, despite what had to have been at least nine hours of sleep. Despite Christmas. Despite the fact that he was erect and pressing against her, and that was normally a precursor to a lot of dirty innuendo, if nothing else.
Which made her frown. It was Christmas. She couldn't remember the last few Christmases in an eidetic sense, but she knew he should be more excited than this. She slid out of his arms. He groaned a bit in protest, but didn't speak. She bit her lip as she rolled out of bed and scrunched her bare toes in the plush carpet. She took care of her ready-to-explode bladder in the bathroom quickly before returning to find Derek still snuggled on his side under a mountain of blankets, not moving. Which was really... just not normal.
She padded to his side of the bed and sat down beside him, hip to hip with him. She put her hand on the lump at where she estimated his shoulder should be. “Hey, are you okay?” she said.
The covers rustled. She caught a dull blue eye looking at her through a wiry curtain of his kinked bed hair. “Just tired,” he said.
“Want me to put on some coffee for you?” she said, frowning.
She listened to him breathing. Silence stretched for several seconds until he muttered something multisyllabic but unintelligible. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead.
“Sleep, then,” she said, intending to leave him in peace. “Merry Christmas.”
The blankets rustled as she tried to step away. His warm palm grabbed her wrist. “Don't go,” he said in a clearer tone. “I'm up,” he added, without a hint of leer or entendre in his tone.
She stopped. Turned. When she looked, he was blinking, scrubbing at his stubbly face and bloodshot eyes with his other hand, and then he sat up. The comforter fell away from his chest, and his gaze softened.
“Hey,” she said.
His expression became... almost shy. “It's Christmas,” he said. “I can catch up on sleep ton--” And then his eyes focused on something behind her. “What's that?” he said, interrupting himself mid-sentence.
“What's what?” she said, but when she turned to follow his gaze, she saw the object of his scrutiny. A big envelope embossed with candy canes. It was taped to the inside of their door with surgical tape. It hadn't been there last night. She snorted. “Oh, lord, what cheesy scavenger hunt thing did you plan, now?”
When she turned back to him, she found him looking at her, bewildered. “That's not from me, Mere.”
She snorted again. “Uh huh.”
“Really, it's not,” Derek said. “I didn't plan anything. I thought I was already pushing my luck with the tree and the lights and the 'Christmas vomit',” he said, putting the words in squiggly air quotes with his fingers. He smiled sheepishly. “Believe it or not, I can restrain myself from further vomit. For you.”
She frowned, got up, and snatched the envelope from the door. She ripped open the envelope to find a glittery card, which she pulled out and read. She recognized the handwriting. Not Derek's. “Oh, she so lied,” Meredith said.
“Who lied?” Derek said, padding up behind her.
“Lexie!” Meredith said, glancing at him. Lexie hadn't told her anything about this. Not even a tiny, tiny hint. Meredith shoved the card at him. Specks of glitter flecked onto his black shirt, getting stuck in the weave of the cotton, and more fluttered to the carpet.
“Santa humbly requests your presents in the living room,” Derek said, reading from the card. He laughed and ran a hand through his messy hair, leaving bits and pieces of glitter behind. One curl stuck up like a flag, despite his weak attempts to mow it down with his fingers. “Presents. Cute.”
“Santa seems awfully glitter-happy,” Meredith grumbled.
Derek brushed at his shirt. More glitter drifted into the air. “No need to get snippy with Santa,” he said, eyes pinching at the edges with the vague hint of a grin. “After all, it just adds to my sparkling personality.”
“Hah,” Meredith said, tone flat. “Hah. Hah.”
“You love it,” he replied, pressing closer, and she found she couldn't argue.
He reached in front of Meredith and opened the door, bicep bunching under the sleeve of his t-shirt. The scent of coffee and cinnamon wafted against them in a warm billow of air. Derek's nostrils flared and his eyelids drooped subtly as he leaned into it and inhaled. The soft sound of voices filtered up the stairs. She could identify male cadence and female cadence from this far away, but not the specific owners of said voices, not from such a soft murmur.
Her teeth clenched. She'd told Lexie not to put Derek on the spot, and this was pretty freaking spot-putting, Meredith thought. She grabbed Derek's hand and squeezed.
“You don't have to go downstairs,” she rushed to say. “I can tell them to leave.”
Curiosity painted his face despite the sleepiness still loitering there, and he stepped into the hallway, pulling her with him. “If you did that,” Derek said, “we'd never find out what Santa wants with us, now, would we?” A smile twitched at the corners of his lips. Not a brilliant one, but it was a brilliant one all the same, simply for the fact of its existence, a real curve that made him look years younger, and so much more buoyant. While he didn't seem that excited about this spontaneous development, one that, weeks ago, would have had him refusing to leave the bedroom, he certainly seemed willing to humor it today, and that... that was just.... Tension flowed out of her as though she were a sieve.
“What about you?” he said. “You don't have to go downstairs, either, if this is too much.”
“Too much?”
His lip twitched. “Christmas vomit.”
“Oh,” she said. “No, I'm fine. This is just the right amount of Christmas vomit.” She frowned suspiciously. “So far....”
“Good,” he said, another smile ghosting his features.
She stopped him. Kissed him. Halitosis and all, she didn't really care at the moment. They shared a long minute with each other in the quiet hall, and then they went downstairs.
Lexie and Mark were the only ones sitting in her living room, which, Meredith relented, didn't really constitute a “bash,” so at least Lexie had stuck to the most important part of her word.
Presents that hadn't been there the night before were piled high under the tree. Christmas carols played softly on the stereo. Lights hung on the tree in a brilliant red, blue, green, and yellow sprawl. A fire snapped and popped in the fireplace, making the room smell of wood and heat, mingled with the scent of coffee wafting from the kitchen. Samantha, who'd stretched out beside the warmth of the fire, wore her floppy Santa hat with her own special brand of canine aplomb.
Meredith's and Derek's stockings hung in a close pair from the mantle. On the far right next to Derek's stocking, hung an oversized, misshapen, badly knitted, cream-colored sock on which Meredith had written “SAMANTHA” with a blue fabric pen. Carolyn had coached her over the phone in its construction, but backseat knitting over the phone hadn't been enough to save it from looking like it had been made by Meredith. Oh well. On the left, next to Meredith's, hung a newer, misshapen stocking that looked a lot like Meredith's, only it said Lexie on the lip. Lexie, happily contributing, had hung up hers shortly after Meredith had explained her reasoning for stockings in the first place. On the far end hung Mark's big stocking, which hadn't been there the night before. Meredith had given it to Mark to do with as he pleased. Lexie had probably gotten it back from him.
Lexie gave Meredith and Derek a look of glee as Meredith tiptoed through the archway with Derek behind her. “Merry Christmas, you guys!” Lexie exclaimed, though she kept her volume just above a whisper.
“Hey, man,” Mark added, grinning. “Meredith. Best day of the year!”
“Looking forward to it,” Meredith said, a smile twitching at her lips when she realized she wasn't lying.
Mark was barefoot, and he wore a fuzzy blue bathrobe much like the one Meredith had gotten Derek for Christmas last year. From his dress and his stubble, he seemed to have rolled out of bed and driven straight here. Lexie wore a t-shirt and sweats, and her hair wasn't even combed. With the casualness, and the fact that it was just close family instead of a giant crowd of longtime Christmas celebrators, well, things didn't feel so foreign or scary. In this environment, she wouldn't feel horrible if she mangled some heretofore unknown Christmas ritual. She made a note to thank Lexie later, not just for Derek, but for herself. Derek relaxed beside her, apparently coming to the same conclusion she had. He smiled. A bigger one than the one he'd offered her in their bedroom. He rubbed at his sleepy eyes again. “Merry Christmas,” he replied as he sank onto the couch.
“Want some coffee?” Lexie said, before Meredith could sit next to him. “I made decaf for you, Mere.”
Meredith sighed. Her eyes still felt sticky with sleep, and having decaf sounded about as fun as having a virgin daiquiri. Tasty, but pretty much pointless. Worse, the fact that everybody else would be having the real deal was kind of like visiting a candy store and watching everybody devour delicious Godiva chocolate while she was stuck chewing sugar-free gum or something.
“Oh, have some real coffee, Meredith,” Derek said as if he'd read her mind. He winked. “It's Christmas. Baby won't mind one cup.”
“But--” Meredith began, but she didn't have a chance to finish.
“Maybewecanmixthemtogetherorsomething,” Lexie said in a rush. “Youcanhelpme.” And then Lexie grabbed Meredith's wrist and pulled her into the kitchen without another glance.
Dim light spilled into the kitchen as rain spattered against the window panes. Rain was Seattle's version of a white Christmas, Meredith supposed. The bitter scent of coffee, subtle from the living room, became a cacophony in her nose. Her nostrils flared.
“Lexie,” Meredith snapped as they skidded to a halt in front of the bubbling coffee maker. “What the hell?”
“How's Derek?” Lexie said. “The card took the edge off the surprise, I hope? I tried to keep this thing small. Alex volunteered to clear out, though I think that's more to do with the fact that he'd rather spend Christmas hitting his toes with a hammer than do anything with me in the same room. But anyway. So, Derek seems okay. Is he okay? He's got really big circles under his eyes.”
Meredith blinked. Perhaps Lexie had already had some coffee herself. Possibly a whole jug. Possibly spiked with some speed or something. “He's fine, Lexie; he's just worn out,” Meredith assured her half-sister. “If he wasn't fine, he wouldn't have come downstairs.”
“Okay, good,” Lexie said, nodding resolutely. “I'm glad.” She bit her lip and shifted from foot to foot.
Meredith rolled her eyes. “What did you drag me in here to talk about?”
“So, Mark. He's here.” Meredith nodded. “I noticed that, yes.”
“And it's not a date,” Lexie said. “It's for Derek. As like a brother solidarity support thing.”
“Okay...?” Meredith said, watching Lexie expectantly. Meredith folded her arms across her chest.
Lexie reddened. “But I really, really want it to be a date,” she said in a pleading voice.
“For god's sake,” Meredith said, rolling her eyes again. “Just ask him, Lexie. He'll say yes. I'm telling you. It's not even a little bit iffy. Just do it.”
“Okay,” Lexie said, steeling herself. “Okay. I can do this.” “You can,” Meredith said with a sage nod.
She pulled four mugs out of the cabinet. A double-size “I <3 NYC” mug, two random mugs Derek had picked up as swag from medical conferences in Auckland and Los Angeles, respectively, and some generic blue-colored mug with a horse on it that she couldn't remember buying, but clearly she had, because... well... there it was. She stared longingly at the pot with regular coffee in it for three seconds. Four. Five. She closed her eyes. Inhaled. Let her mind drift in the caffeine, caffeine, caffeine of it all. The scent was an olfactory siren song, splendiferous, tempting, and evil, and for a moment, she wavered. She leaned toward the pot with the real stuff. Caffeine. God, she missed caffeine so much.
Finally, though, with a depressed sigh, she shifted to the decaf, and filled up the horse cup for herself. She filled Derek's mug to the brim with regular. And then she pushed the remaining two mugs across the countertop to Lexie.
“Bring him coffee,” Meredith suggested. “It's a conversation starter or something. I think.” She remembered her first legitimate date with Derek, and there had definitely been coffee involved. Honestly, it was hard not to have coffee when dining out in Seattle.
She hooked the two mugs she'd filled with her thumbs and walked back out into the living room with them, leaving Lexie behind to ponder her course of action. Derek gave her a grateful look as he clasped the giant mug, blew on it, and took a sip. “Thank you,” he said, and Meredith curled up next to him, cradling her own. “Did you pour yourself some actual coffee?”
She sighed. “No.”
He gave her a look that seemed like a strange marriage of exasperation and understanding. She hadn't realized before seeing it that those two emotions could be married. But he didn't comment to commend or condemn her choice. Instead, he wrapped his arm around her, squeezed her shoulder with a warm palm and kissed her temple.
Lexie shuffled back into the room, blush creeping across her face, reddening her ears, and plunging down her throat beyond the neckline of her t-shirt. She approached the big chair where Mark was sitting.
That was Derek's favorite chair. The one they'd had to lug upstairs to the bedroom when he hadn't been able to sleep through the night on his back. They'd lugged it back downstairs months ago.
Mark looked up at Lexie, a curious expression on his face.
“Hey, thanks,” he said to the offered cup of coffee, tone slightly surprised.
Lexie cleared her throat. Shifted from foot to foot. “So, can I sit here?” she said abruptly. “I mean, if that's okay. Is it okay?”
Mark's expression was unreadable. His eyebrow twitched. The chair where he was sitting was definitely only meant for one person, but that didn't mean two people didn't fit as long as they didn't mind being extra cozy with each other. Meredith had sat there curled up in a comforter with Derek any number of times, and Lexie was pretty small as well. They would fit.
“Sure....” Mark said after a pause. He put his cup on a coaster on the coffee table, next to a plate full of the cookies Derek's mother had sent. His fingers squeaked across the leather chair arms as he gripped them for leverage, and his biceps bulged as he made a move to stand up.
“No!” Lexie said. Her sudden twitch made her coffee slosh. Brown liquid dribbled out the sides of her cup, but she didn't seem to notice. “No, I mean. Can I sit here?” She swallowed. “With you?”
Mark blinked. The silence between them stretched, filled with the tinny sound of Deck the Halls playing softly from the speakers.
“Please?” Lexie added.
Without another word, Mark's face shifted glacially into a bright-eyed, toothy, Cheshire Cat grin. He raised his right arm, scooted to his left, and gestured. Lexie slid onto the chair beside him, hugged between his large body and the arm of the chair, and his arm came over her shoulder much like Derek's over Meredith's. Lexie clutched Mark's bathrobe as if her life depended on it. She rested her head on his shoulder and settled, movements hitching and awkward, but who cared about awkward? To Meredith, anything was better than seeing Lexie waffle endlessly for days.
Mark sighed the biggest, happiest sigh Meredith thought she'd ever heard, and his eyes had more glitter to them than the freaking glitter card Lexie had stuck on the inside of Meredith and Derek's bedroom door.
“So,” Mark said in a tone that said life-is-pretty-fucking-fantastic-right-now-MERRY-FUCKING-CHRISTMAS, “who gets to open the next present?”
They lay intertwined in a tangle of naked limbs and sheets and blankets. Somewhere in the hurricane, they'd shifted to the bedroom. She drew circles on his chest with her index fingers. He stared at her through his eyelashes, a rapturous expression painting his face.
The sun had long since set, and the dim, warm bath of light from the lamp reflected off his eyes in its absence. A cold winter quiet gripped the house, wrapping it in a muted blanket. All she could hear was Derek's breathing, and the occasional swish of a passing car on the wet street outside. She pressed her ear to his chest and listened through his breastbone to his heartbeat, adding a slow, percussive rhythm to what was otherwise silence, and she sighed, boneless, relaxed. Safe. The world stopped spinning when she lay like this with him. Wrong things didn't feel so wrong. And a bankrupting hospital felt like puzzle to solve, not a life-altering crisis.
Emotional reset: accomplished.
“I think you should talk to someone,” Meredith said.
“I'm talking to you,” he murmured, and his lips leaked into an easy smile. “I like talking to you. More talking, I say.”
“No,” Meredith said with a chuckle. “I mean a professional. This isn't the kind of thing you can fix by yourself, and I have... no idea. Doesn't the hospital have financial people to help with all of this?”
He sighed, and some of the mirth dripped from his face. His eyes focused, and he thought for a moment while she drew more circles, the nail of her index finger twisting through the light dusting of hair on his chest.
“All they do is tell you how to fix money problems,” he said eventually. “Leaking money is a symptom, not the disease. Budget cuts, tax law loopholes, and funding reallocations will only prolong the inevitable if we don't fix the underlying cause. The tension is so thick at work you couldn't cut it with a steak knife. Everybody is scared, Meredith. Everybody. For months, I thought it was just me, but....” He shook his head. Not just him. Not even close. “An accountant can't fix that.”
“So, we have to figure out how to help everybody not be scared,” she said.
“I can't just send the entire staff and every patient to Dr. Wyatt,” he said. “Paxil can't fix this.” She shook her head, putting an index finger against his lips. He quieted, and he kissed her, tasted her. His tongue pressed against her skin. “I wasn't suggesting that,” she said, the words soft. “Well, what were you suggesting?” he asked as he dropped her hand. She sighed. “I don't know,” she said, and then she gave him an apologetic frown. “Sorry. Unhelpful. Did you try Google?”
He snorted.
“Sorry,” she said, unable to stop a loose chuckle from escaping. “Sorry, now, I'm making light.” And she shouldn't. But she laughed again, anyway. “Sorry!” She shouldn't be making light when the world was crashing down around their ears, but between massacres, secret wives, secret sisters, exploding ferryboats, appendixes bursting, liver transplants, Izzie's cancer, George's death, and now this, the whole world felt so suddenly ridiculous she couldn't breathe, and she could laugh about it, because she was in his arms, and she was safe, and she had nothing left to stifle her morbid sense of humor. “Oh, god,” she added, panting between torrents of giggles. “What's next? A plane crash?”
“With our luck, Mount Rainer will blow, and we'll be stuck in a modern Pompeii,” he said, tone wry.
Which only made her laugh harder. “God, I'm so sorry,” she said, gasping. “I really shouldn't joke, but....”
He gave her a cautious grin, though he didn't laugh with her. “It's okay,” he said. He cupped her cheek. Brushed his fingers through her hair. The warm pad of his thumb traced her cheekbone. He kissed her. “Someone has to.” His eyes were dark blue halos in the dim light. “I love you,” he added in an even softer tone, and she melted.
She rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling, and he followed her, draping himself against her side. His left shoulder pressed into the bed. The sheet that had barely been hanging onto him slipped and crumbled to the mattress between them, leaving her with long line of naked skin from his shoulder to below his hip in her peripheral vision. He rested his left palm on her belly and pressed his lips against her cheek. She put her hand overtop his and squeezed his fingers.
“There's really no one in the hospital who could help you?” She turned her head to gaze at him. Surely, there had to be someone. Somewhere. She wracked her brain.
“There isn't really a position for 'Mass Trauma Recovery Specialist' that I know of,” he said. He smirked at her. “At least, not in the phone book. And, while I did actually Google,” he added, kissing her, “all I got were trauma centers and a bunch of stuff that's not really related to what I wanted.”
She thought for a long moment. “Maybe, Owen can help? Richard?”
He frowned. “I'd planned to talk with Richard next week, since he'll be inheriting this mess eventually, assuming we don't go under. Why Owen?”
“I don't know,” she said, shrugging. “Combat experience? Surely the army gets training on how to cope?”
He nodded slowly. “True...,” he said, and she could see the wheels behind his eyes turning, churning. Then his eyes widened a fraction.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“Adam.”
She squinted at him. For a moment, she couldn't recall the name, but then recollection flooded into her head. “The cop with all the GSWs? Been in ICU for months?” Though she hadn't met Adam, she knew Derek liked to sit with him, knew Derek felt some sort of kinship with him. Perhaps even the beginnings of a friendship. Hell, Adam had even made it to the top of their boys' names list.
“Yeah,” Derek said. “Him. He's talking a lot more, now. I think he'll be working up to walking soon.”
“Why do you think he'd be better than Owen to help with this?” “Remember Detective Wolff?” Derek said. She nodded. “Sure, but what does he have to do with Adam?”
“Wolff sent me that packet,” Derek said. His gaze left her. He picked at his cuticles while he added, “The one about assault victimization that I threw out without reading. The one that helped you... figure out... what was going on with me.”
Now, she could see where he was going with this. She nodded again, encouraging him. “And, maybe, Adam has access to the same resources, and could point you in the right direction?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, looking back at her. “Because I don't even know where to start, which is my big problem at the moment. All I need is a place to start. Something to work with. The police must have contacts.” He sighed. “I don't know. Maybe, its a stupid idea.”
She smiled. “It's worth a try.”
The silence stretched again. He pressed his nose against her hair, breathing her in. A relaxed sigh fell from her lips. She didn't ever want to move from this bed. Ever.
“Thank you, Meredith,” he whispered.
“You're welcome,” she replied, only to have her stomach interrupt their exchanged. Her offending digestive system growled and gurgled, and she remembered she hadn't eaten since... she couldn't remember. She turned red and pressed her face into the pillow, snorting with laughter. In the quiet, it almost sounded like an avalanche or something. Or maybe she was just being silly and exaggerating, but--
“So...,” he said, an amused expression sparkling on his face.
“Yes?” she murmured.
“Given that our New Year's Eve plans currently reside in our naughty dog's stomach....” he said, his voice trailing away.
She snorted. “Order a pizza?”
He blinked. Nodded. “We could do that.”
“With cheese?” she said hopefully. “And stuff that's not green on it?”
“So,” he said. “Onions. Red peppers. Anchovies. That sort of thing.”
She smacked his arm playfully. “Oh, gag me,” she said, and he laughed.
“I think I could force myself to have a pizza with cheese this one time,” he said. He gave her a woeful, burdened sigh. “For you.”
“And then,” she continued, “we could watch a super sappy movie that my hormones compel me suddenly to like and cry over?”
He looked less than thrilled with that idea, but he kept smiling. “We could,” he said, conciliating.
She grinned at him. “And then, we could completely ignore the movie, and have lots and lots more sex on the couch.”
His smile brightened. “I'm liking this plan.”
She pulled him into a deep kiss. “Happy New Year, Derek.”
“I hope it's happy,” he murmured.
“It will be,” she assured him. “It has to be. It can't be anything else.”