Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 33
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Author: AriaAdagio
Rating: M
Pairing: Mer/Der
Summary: Post Time After Time. Derek takes Meredith to visit his family in Connecticut, but nothing goes as planned.
~~~~~
When they climbed into the car, Meredith was tired. She was tired, and stuffed, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. She had to get up at four for another long shift, and it was already well into the evening. She sighed, trying to ignore the fullness that made the creeping tiredness behind her eyes all that much worse. The chicken marsala had been delicious, the portion had been huge, and she'd... Well, she'd stuffed her face with it. She'd been so full by the time she'd taken her last bite, so full and so exhausted on top of that, she hadn't even bothered to suggest dessert. Derek had looked nauseated by the mere sight of his salmon, and he hadn't said a word when she'd blatantly skipped asking for dessert. Which was weird.
Because they always had dessert. Usually both of them split something, more rarely just one of them had something and the other had a bite or two, but somebody always had dessert. It was one of the only times she could reliably get him off his health kick. Dessert when they went out for dinner. It was their thing. Cheesecake. He loved cheesecake. And brownie sundaes. And those large hulking chocolate cake and fudge things usually named aptly after a natural disaster. Chocolate flood. Chocolate hurricane. Fudge volcano. He loved them. Or maybe she did and he, out of the kindness of his heart, suffered with her. Whatever. The point was they always had one of those. Or something else really, really bad, but really, really good. They usually fought over who had to eat the last piece because they both wanted to sacrifice it, and it was... cute. It was their thing. But Derek hadn't even blinked when it'd been skipped.
Aside from looking vaguely sick over his dinner, though, after the discussion, henceforth known as The Discussion, had ended, he'd sat there, expressionless, almost like... Like he'd been trying too hard, like his expression had been the duck, and the thoughts tumbling through him had been the little duck feet, churning, frantic, trying to keep their duck owner afloat, but invisible under what appeared to be a calm surface.
He hadn't touched his food. At all. She'd been expecting him to start working on it after The Discussion had settled more into relative silence, but no. He'd had the whole thing boxed after she'd finished off the last bite of her chicken. He'd touched it. The salmon. Once. With his fork, she'd seen him tear away a little piece of meat. She had no idea where the piece had gone, but she certainly hadn't seen him eat it. Not once had he actually raised his fork to his lips. He hadn't drunk any water either. For a while, he'd seemed almost afraid to pick up the glass, but the wariness had petered into disinterest as the moments had passed. He hadn't touched the wine, though, that hadn't seemed as odd, since ibuprofen and alcohol didn't mix so well sometimes, and she suspected he might have taken some. Ibuprofen. Not prior closet doses of wine. That would have been more her style of painkilling.
Something had to be wrong. She'd begun to notice he'd been acting oddly in the car on the way to the restaurant. The dozing she'd assumed had been general tiredness wreaking its usual havoc on his energy. He'd been easily tired lately. But when she'd watched him snap awake and clutch at his pocket for what had seemed like the third time in less than ten minutes, like he'd been double-checking to make sure he'd remembered something important. She'd chalked it up to... Well, she'd thought he'd been going to propose. She'd thought he'd been fretting over the ring. Why proposing would make him nervous when he already knew what the answer would be? She'd had no clue. But it'd made sense at the time, and she'd sat there silently, trying not to explode with excitement, afraid that if she'd said anything, it would have been something babbly and stupid and very indicative that she'd known exactly what he'd been planning.
Except now, in true context, his behavior didn't make sense at all. Because he hadn't even remotely considered proposing. So, what did that mean?
Upset. He had to be. Despite the flat look of nothingness on his face. Despite the fact that everything about his demeanor screamed I'm fine. Because when did anyone ever need to scream about being fine, except when he or she was just trying to convince everyone else about it when it wasn't true? She had the whole fine-screaming thing down to an art form, and people still knew she was lying. He didn't. No artistry there. The whole thing was just too manufactured.
She should have stopped The Discussion at the maybe kids thing, when everything had still been mostly happy. He'd... The reaction to the maybe kids thing had been worth the dinner, absent proposal notwithstanding. He'd been almost shell-shocked at first. He'd lost several shades in his pallor while he'd grappled with what she could only assume was disbelief. But, then, there'd been a moment. The moment where he'd finally let himself process what she'd been saying, that she might be willing to try out being a parent. Everything had fallen away, his eyes had glistened, and then he'd started to cry. Happy crying, he'd assured her. She'd had to ask because he'd looked so distraught. And overwhelmed. She'd known he wanted kids, but she'd had no idea the desire was so deep-seated. So visceral.
She'd seen him cry a couple of times by then, all of them while he flailed under a heavy crush of anxiety or regret or something sad. She'd never seen the maybe kids reaction before. And she never wanted to forget it. She didn't think she ever could. It'd made her want to cry right along with him. Because it'd made what he'd said before so much more... More.
If having kids means I can't have you... It's... It's not a deal breaker. That you don't want them. It's not.
She'd made up her mind within about five seconds of seeing his reaction that the parent thing wasn't going to be an idle consideration. It wasn't going to be some flighty idea, hovering in the background while she waited for inspiration to lead her down the path of yes or no. She was really going to think about it. Really. Derek Shepherd wanted kids. He wanted them in an I'd-trade-my-left-arm-for-them sense. He deserved to have her think really hard about it. He'd already given up so much. So, the kid thing was next on her list just a soon as she dealt with wedding dates. Which she was absolutely positive she wasn't quite ready for yet. So, she had a while, but she would definitely make it an active thing, a weigh the pros and cons on the mental scale thing, a serious thing.
She blinked. She should have stopped there. Stopped there on that gift. But, no, she'd pressed into the badness of death and dying and him being older, and that hadn't gone so well. She'd been stupid, and whiny, except...
Every time she came to the conclusion she'd been stupid and whiny, Ellis Grey walked past her in a dark hallway.
You shouldn't be here...
And suddenly she didn't feel so whiny. Meredith had died. Ellis had died. People around her died. All the time, they died. And Derek was going to die. Someday. Inevitably. Most likely before she would. Eight years, even if he lived to be a hundred. Eight years was still a good chunk. And that was...
Too much.
She shoved it away. It was a terrifying thing. A terrifying mountain of not happy, being without him again after all this. All this... everything. She felt complete for the first time in her life. But there was nothing she could do about it except enjoy the forty or fifty years or more before it happened. She was scared, but Derek was right. She couldn't let it own her.
And she wouldn't. That had never been the plan.
But she'd had to say something. She was trying. Trying to do the sharing thing. She wanted to share everything, but that was... That would take some building up to. Some bolstering. She was getting better, though. The kids thing. That had been good sharing. Good.
She sighed. Car. In the car. She had to drive. Do the driving thing. Not ponder about death and sharing and taxes and all that crap. She had to drive a mysteriously reticent, mysteriously expressionless Derek. She bit her lip.
"Did your salmon not taste good?" she asked as she turned the key in the ignition, anything to breach the silence, anything to get him out of that deadness. The car rumbled to a start, and the air conditioner started breathing cool air out of the vents. Seattle was already chilly and wet with the nighttime air, so she flipped the blowers off. The paper bag containing Derek's boxed meal crinkled as he twisted in his seat and put it behind them. It smelled fishy.
As he turned back, he looked at her with a dull, schooled stare that said nothing. Well, everything. Because Derek's face never said nothing. So, that was something. Right?
"I just wasn't that hungry, Mere," he said, his voice just as flat as his expression. And then he turned to stare out the window, resting his head against the glass as he took a shallow, panty breath that made him, in that moment, look miserable, despite the overall reserve in his features.
"It wasn't the talk. Was it? I over-shared, didn't I? I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I'm still trying to... It was. I shared too much. I'm really sorry, Derek. I didn't mean to ruin the night. I really didn't. I just... I want this. I want this so much, sometimes I get really wrapped up in the doubting. Because good things? They don't normally happen to me, well, they didn't used to, anyway, and I... I'm sorry. I shouldn't be fussing about what might happen thirty or forty or fifty years down the road or something. It's... It's stupid to worry about it now. You're right. I'm stupid, being stupid. I didn't mean to-" She halted her babbling and sighed. "Over-sharing again," she said into the quiet space between them as she navigated the car out onto the street. Traffic was light. She flipped the windshield wipers on to stave off the thin, sprinkling sheets of drizzle. Water flicked off the glass as they went to work.
He swallowed, hunched over, staring dully out the window as the rain swept across the glass, blurring everything away. "It wasn't... Stupid. I'm glad. Glad you talked to me about it... I just..." He fell into silence again and rubbed the side of his forehead against the windowpane like it was balm.
"Because you seem just thrilled that I told you," she snapped before she could stop herself. She couldn't help it. She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't. And he was acting so bizarre.
His eyes slid shut, and he sighed, small, hitched, barely vocalized, but a little piece of a moan slipped out on top of it. He cut it off. Quickly. For a moment, his gaze flared, his fingers tightened and curled, and he looked like he was straining. Straining to pull himself back inward. She blinked, and the suffering disappeared behind a mask, leaving her almost wondering if she'd imagined it.
But it was too late. That had been... That was pain. Was he in pain? He seemed... When he'd had headaches in the past, he'd gotten visibly depressed, visibly mopey, but never this weird forced nothingness, albeit, with a few cracked places. A few cracked-open moments when he couldn't quite manage the façade.
"Derek, are you okay? Really?" she asked.
He lifted himself off the window and gave her a bright smile, except it was completely fake. Derek's eyes smiled, too, when he meant it. And right then, he didn't mean it. The skin around his eyes stayed flat and relaxed. His forehead remained still. There was no twinkle in his gaze. He didn't mean it. "I'm fine," he said.
A lump formed in her throat. He was lying. Flat out lying. Why?
"Derek, when I said..." She swallowed. "Earlier, when I said... That I was scared about you dying first... I didn't mean for it to change things. I didn't. I'm just telling you I'm scared. I love you enough to be scared. It's not a bad thing. Is it? I don't know what I'm doing here. I just need... I don't..." she babbled, stumbling on the words. The silence in the cabin loitering in the spaces between her syllables widened into an almost roar. He's not talking, a little voice whined. He's not helping. He's not participating. Something's wrong, wrong, wrong. She stopped the car for a red light and turned to him.
He stared out the window, his gaze blank. "You could jump in anytime with your infinite relationship wisdom stuff, you know," she grumbled, giving the words infinite relationship wisdom the air quotes they deserved. He was lying about being fine, and she knew it, and it hurt. Because he was taking her trust and shoving it.
Why?
She sat there panting, staring at him, watching, and something finally broke through on his face. Something. He swallowed, and the mask morphed from clinical and vacant into dark and brooding and hurt. A depressed Dr. Derek Jekyll or something. Hurt or hurting. She couldn't tell, and it was awful.
"I can't," he said, his voice quiet and twisted.
"Can't what?" she retorted. "Jump in? Give me something, Derek. I know you're... I know something is going on. I don't know what. I know you're lying, though. I just poured my babbly heart out to you. The least you could do is look at me."
He drew a hand up and pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes drooped shut. The coarse fabric of his suit rustled as he shifted. He'd lost it. Lost the hiding thing, mask, whatever. And this was definitely headachey-Derek. She was certain now. She'd grown to know him well over the last few days.
It was like he just didn't realize he was in pain until he was in agony, or until someone made him aware of it. She didn't understand it at all. She was pretty sure it wasn't some sort of macho thing. He usually fessed up as soon as she shoved a pill bottle at him. She guessed it was sort of like when she got hit with allergies in the springtime. Sometimes, she'd go the whole day, miserable, before realizing something was wrong, something fixable. She'd be grouchy and snappy and tired, her nose would run, and it wouldn't even occur to her that it was anything until she slowed herself down long enough to think about it. Allergies. Springtime. Pollen. Duh, Meredith. Maybe it was like that with him. Or, maybe, he was just stuck in the denial of I can, I can, I can, and he didn't like to focus inwardly long enough to admit he might be hurting. Maybe. Regardless, she had a feeling the oops-was-I-in-pain? stuff was going to be an annoying quirk to get used to over the years.
Except this time? This was different. This wasn't an oops. He was already in the know. The suffering sluiced off his skin like pelting rain over the edges of a clogged gutter. This had been intentional. Intentional hiding. But why? Why would he hide?
She reached across the parking brake and touched his thigh. She felt his muscles twitch and tighten through the fabric of his dress pants. He breathed into his hand, short and tight and uncomfortable-looking, almost as if the air itself was barbed. Pain. Definitely pain. She frowned.
"Hey," she said, her voice a low, concerned murmur. "Derek, this has got to stop. You have to take something when you feel bad. You--"
"I've taken enough painkillers today to give myself a stomach ulcer," he snapped, suddenly nasty. Dr. Derek Hyde slammed to the forefront. His stare flared with passionate fire, his face flushed. Teeth, snarling. She flinched back against the seat in surprise at his sudden animation. And then he wilted, Dr. Hyde died a mute, rapid death, and Derek added, "Sorry," in a breathless, quiet whisper, almost as an afterthought. "I'm... Sorry." His hand went back to the bridge of his nose, and he sat hunched, panting, like a fox caught in a claw trap, waiting to snap again, almost ready to gnaw at his own paw if it would just make the hurting stop.
She bit her lip. "The ibuprofen didn't take care of it?"
"No," he said.
The light turned green and she eased the car forward, careful not to jam on the accelerator too suddenly. He was... This looked bad. The light drizzle pattered against the windshield as it kicked up into actual rain. Light rain. But rain.
"Derek," she said, slow, calm, and then the words fell from her in a quick, worried rush, as though someone had hit her personal fast-forward button, "Why didn't you say anything? Is it getting worse? Your headache? How long has this been going on?"
"Just today," he said quietly. "Please, don't..." He breathed. "Yell. Please."
"Okay," she conceded, consciously yanking her voice from its shrill position in the rafters of panic down to the bleachers of calm. "Okay, I'm sorry. Do you think you need to go to the hospital?"
Hospital. Terrifying from a visitor perspective. People died there. The small, whining fear bit at the edges of her conscious thought, but she slapped it away and steeled herself.
"I don't know," he said. "I think it's just... PCS."
"But you don't know."
"No."
She stayed quiet for a minute, trying to think. PCS headaches weren't supposed to get worse like this. Were they? She couldn't remember. But... They were much closer to home than Seattle Grace at this point. Only three more blocks. And he would be more comfortable at home. She would be more comfortable at home.
"Will you let me look at you when we get back to the house?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied softly. He had his face in his hands, covered, and the word came out muffled, but he hadn't paused, hadn't had to think about it, which made her feel better, somehow.
After she pulled the car into the driveway, she watched him with an unwavering, intent gaze as he stepped slowly out of the car and shuffled down the walk, moving at a stilted pace despite the spattering rain. His leftover salmon bag crinkled as it hit his leg, step after step after step. He didn't seem like he was having difficulty with coordination, or having difficulty walking in general. He took his steps with care, almost as if he expected one good jar to break something inside, but, if he was in pain... That didn't really seem farfetched to her that he would be doing that. No. She was fairly certain she could rule out ataxia. He didn't seem disoriented, and he was speaking clearly enough, which ruled out two more of the serious red flags she could think of.
She followed him into the house, her heels click, click, clacking on the front walk as she trotted along, trying to beat the downpour's rate of seep into her clothes and failing. She was cold and soaked by the time she shut the door behind her. Derek made a lumbering detour into the kitchen to put his salmon in the refrigerator, and then they both trudged upstairs. Izzie and Alex were nowhere to be found, but Meredith wasn't really that interested in looking for them, anyway. She imagined Derek didn't want to run into anyone, either.
She closed the bedroom door behind her and locked it, just in case Izzie was around somewhere and in one of her rude let's-barge-in moods. Barging was bad. Right now. Bad.
Derek wrestled out of his suit, slipped into his pajamas, and sat down on his side of the bed while she changed out of her dress. Rain plinked down on the roof and against the window, providing a relaxing filler for the silence loitering between them. He looked up at her, his normally vibrant blue eyes dulled with a brooding layer of unhappiness, and she had a feeling that his intent focus on her was more an act of looking away from the harsh daggers of light from the bedside lamp than it was to let himself lust after her. He didn't smile as she stripped in full view, didn't look at her as anything more than another object in the room. He didn't...
He just didn't.
"This isn't like before, right?" she asked as she yanked on a t-shirt. Naked. She'd been practically naked and he hadn't even blinked. Hadn't made a lecherous comment. Hadn't... She felt almost invisible, and that was worrisome. Derek and his rampant sex drive were partners. Connected at the hip like conjoined twins. It just seemed odd. Odd to have the sex drive part suddenly missing. This missing sexed-up commentary made her nervous. Serious. This was serious. "Before like with your anxiety attacks?" she clarified when he didn't answer right away.
He shook his head slowly, with care, and his eyes shut in a glacial, prolonged blink. When he resettled his gaze on her, he stared, his expression flat. Not flat like before, not flat cold. Flat depressed. "No."
She sighed and sat down on the bed next to him. The mattress shifted with a moan as her weight sank into it. She'd had to ask. She didn't want to do this again. Not another misdiagnosis. She believed him. He wasn't... This wasn't the same as before. He didn't... There was nothing panicky about him right then. Just quiet. Quiet misery. But she'd almost been hoping. Because that would have been an easy solution. Anxiety. Sedatives riding to the rescue once again.
"Rat, dog, mouse. Remember that," she said as she leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He let her, but it was a passive thing, and his whole body wavered like a tree trunk in the wind as she let her weight fall against him. He didn't reciprocate at all. His hands lay limply against his thighs, and his body stayed tight and hunched. Hunched in discomfort. She kissed his neck and eased out of her grip to rub a palm down his back, soothing. His eyelids drooped subtly, and the tightness in his breathing loosened just a little.
"How bad is this headache on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain you've ever experienced, one being nominal?" she asked.
"Seven," he said. He breathed. "Maybe... Eight."
"What did you count as a ten, Derek?"
"My rib," he said. "When I broke it, collapsed my lung, and I couldn't breathe."
"Oh," she said, looking down at her lap. She still hated to think of him lying on the pavement somewhere for thirty minutes, helpless. But... Now wasn't the time for the past. The now was scary enough. "Are you having any other problems?"
"I can't..."
"Can't what?"
"It hurts. To think. It... hurts. I can't... Focus."
He lowered his head into his hands and heaved a sigh that sent his spine curling like a wave. She leaned up against him, rubbing his back, whispering at him. He was... This was bad.
"Is that why you haven't... done any planning?"
"I'm sorry, Mere," he replied, blinking fiercely as he released his face from his hands to look back at her. His eyes watered. And his whole frame just... crumpled, well, looked like an old stilt house ready to sag into oblivion with just one more kick to the foundation, at the very least. "I would... would have... I tried to read a book earlier, and I couldn't... I couldn't follow it."
She swallowed against the lump in her throat, the lump that came with the whole realization that she'd... She'd been pushing him to propose, to come up with something romantic and elaborate and memorable, and he couldn't. Even worse was that, now that she'd essentially spent most of dinner, the parts where she hadn't been howling at him about dying too soon for her tastes, explaining how desperately she wanted it, wanted him to propose, she wouldn't put him past it to try and put something together anyway, despite the discomfort.
"Shhh, it's okay," she said. "I didn't mean that as a needle. It's fine. I'm sorry I've been pushing you. I didn't know it was this bad. I thought you were feeling better."
He shrugged. "I'm sorry, anyway. It's the one thing you wanted."
He seemed so contrite. So contrite. And she'd been pushing him. She was starting to see how their conversation had gone so dreadfully wrong and dismal so quickly. And then her stomach felt like it was sinking into her feet. He couldn't think straight. He couldn't read a book. And she'd... His chorus of repeated I can'ts from dinner bit into her like knives.
I can't...
If I let that happen, I'd never... I'd wilt. You can't... I can't....
I can't tell you I'm not going to die, Meredith.
I'm here now. I can't...
I can't. I can't. I can't. Derek Shepherd had a serious god complex. He didn't say those words lightly. Ever. And he'd practically littered the entire conversation with the papery, junky, trashy bits of them. Why hadn't she noticed sooner he'd been breaking? The Discussion. She'd thought she'd been sharing. She'd thought. And the whole time, she'd just been striking him with blow after blow in a savage confirmation of how helpless he really was, despite what he liked to think. She'd told him she was afraid. She'd told him she was afraid about something neither of them had any hope of fixing. And she'd...
Made it worse.
"Stop it, Derek," she said. "Stop apologizing. Just... What words did I say?"
He blinked. After a moment of pause, just long enough to send up phosphorous flares of fear behind her heart, he said in a quiet voice, "Rat, dog, mouse." No hesitation between the words. He hadn't struggled or wondered or misremembered.
The flares quieted. "Okay," she said. "Okay... I... Do you know what day it is?"
"Monday."
"What show were you watching when I came home today?"
"Jerry Springer, for a minute, anyway."
"Okay," she said. She slid off the bed and sat down in front of him. He looked down at her, his gaze hooded with discomfort. She gripped his knees and squeezed. "Okay, you seem... Derek... I... What should I do?"
He was the neurosurgeon. He was the one who should know. And she suddenly didn't want this to be up to her. He was coherent. He was able. He should have an opinion. He was...
He was the neurosurgeon.
She was just the wannabe.
"I think it's just... a headache, Mere," he replied. "I'll... I'm seeing Dr. Weller in the morning. I think... I'm okay to wait."
"You're sure? I'm serious, Derek," she said, and then she sucked in a breath. "Damn it, I'm sorry. Making a diagnosis on yourself probably qualifies as thinking hard, doesn't it?" she added glumly. She was being such a crappy, crappy talker that night. She just...
He shook his head, ignoring her comment, and with him in such a slowed state, she could almost picture the thoughts as they marched across his face in a stumbling, weary procession. "It just hurts, Mere. I get a little nauseated from time to time, but I'm not vomiting. I can see straight. I know how to spell my name. I'm... having this conversation with you. All of my symptoms are just... they match. With PCS... I think... I'm okay. It's only... Seven more hours. Until we have to leave. I'm okay."
Okay. She wanted to laugh. Okay. Okay in the worst sense of the word. Where okay just meant not imminently dying of anything. She raised her index finger to the space just in front of his eyes.
"Can you follow my finger?" she said. She began to move her hand back and forth. He followed it without trouble or deviation until she forced his gaze into jagged swords of lamplight. He shied away, rapidly blinking. But that wasn't... That was to be expected. His diagnosis seemed sound, despite his difficulties. "Okay," she said as she pulled her hand away. "But, at the very least, you're telling Dr. Weller you need a prescription for your pain. This is... I don't like this. You need something like codeine, or... Something."
"I will," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Derek, will you stop apologizing?"
"I'm... I want to propose. I'm..."
"It's okay," she tried to assure him. "I can wait for you. I didn't know. I didn't know before when I was pushing you that you were hurting. I just thought... I thought you were upset about the conversation."
"I'm sorry."
"Stop it, Derek," she snapped. "You can't help that you're sick. Head trauma sucks."
And then she winced. She had to stop telling him he couldn't do things. Had to stop. It was only going to make it worse, because he would take those as more than just helpful observations. Why was she being so dumb tonight?
"I didn't want..." He sighed. "To scare you..."
"Scare me? Derek..."
"About... The dying... About..."
His words died off into silence, and she bit her lip. The lying. He'd... She'd managed to spur him into lying. Dumb. She'd been dumb. Dumb to share right then. Her timing... Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. At least it explained, though. Explained his stoic refusal to admit something was wrong, at first.
His gaze narrowed, and after flipping the lamp off, he slowly tilted over onto his side and threw his legs up in a slow, fluid, coordinated collapse. Definitely no ataxia there. He curled up on his side, his knees pointed up in a half-fetal position, but not tight, not closed-off. She got up off the floor and crawled into bed next to him, spooning him. She lifted her fingers to run through his hair, soft, soothing in the darkness. A dim haze fell over the bed through the window from the streetlights, but it was barely noticeable.
"I never should have said anything," she said, woeful as she spoke into his skin. She loved his neck. And his back. And everything else about him. Except maybe the stubble, but that didn't count as a body part. Did it? Regardless, he was a good spoon in either direction. "Not then. Not right now. Not when all this other... stuff is going on. I'm okay. Derek... I'm... I'll always be a little scared. But that's life, right? People... die. It's... I love you. I'll deal. I'll make myself deal. I just... Sharing. I thought it would be good. I thought..."
He sighed. "You can tell me anything, Mere," he said, and she couldn't help but relax into the vibrations as the sound wandered through his back and lapped up against her cheek in a low rumble. He was warm. So warm. And she never ever wanted that to go away. Particularly not because of her own idiocy.
"Yeah, but my timing apparently sucks," she conceded. "I didn't mean to slam you with the biggest you-can't-fix-it in the universe. I wasn't thinking. It was... I just... You freaked me out a little with the Kirsten Dunst refusal thing. I'd never really thought about how different we are, sometimes. And suddenly, I was thinking... I'd never really considered the future, because the now is always drowning me." Her brain stuttered to a halt. Derek's breath caught, but he didn't say anything. She gave the silence about four ticks before she managed to continue, "Um. Okay, bad pun. Awful. Bad, punny... Bad. I'll just. Stop. Stopping now. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I can't seem to say anything right tonight. I suck."
He shuffled and flopped over on his other side so that he was facing her. His knees brushed up against her midsection as he semi-curled up again. He chuckled. Lightly. Quietly. Weakly. But it was a chuckle, and it made everything seem so much better. "I'd make a comment," he said, a sly grin pulling his lips into a slant, "But I just don't have the energy to follow through right now."
She grinned back. "What, you think I suck good?"
"Well," he corrected as he moved his hand to run along the curve of her hip. "You suck well."
"Want me to suck now?" she asked. She rubbed her palm against the flat of his stomach, roaming toward his navel, roaming lower. "Porn is proven pain relief, you know."
The cheer bled out of him like oil from the Exxon Valdez, his knees came up a little further, and she wanted to kick herself again. Just... Why. Why could she not talk? Why did she have to keep reminding him he was in such bad shape? Sure. Ask the guy who's crumpled up in pain if he wants to have sex, and, even better, make it all about servicing him, instead of the other way around. Way to make him feel enabled. Yeah. Wonderful.
"It's okay," she said quickly. "It's fine. I was... We don't have to."
He sighed. "I started it. I'm sorry."
She reached up and put her palm against his cheek. "Stop. Apologizing. Okay? Didn't we decide last week that we both guilt things up too much?"
"You're one to talk," he countered.
"Both," she said, grinning. "I said we both."
"Technicality. You were scolding me, not you."
"Fine," she said. "But I'm not the one who's miserable, so I must be right."
He smiled lazily. "Able to leap... amazing heaps of logic in a single bound..."
"My next feat will involve trains."
"In spandex?"
"Do they make spandex for trains?"
He laughed at her deliberate misinterpretation. "I meant for you."
"For you, I'd do it naked," she said.
"Good to know," he replied. He sighed and lay quiet, breathing, breathing for a moment. She curled her fingers through his hair, and his body slackened out of the tense place it'd been wired in. She scooted in closer, worming her way between his knees until he got the message and flattened out against her. What was this? Not spooned. Forked? Whatever. His eyes shut, and his head slowly tilted into the pillow.
For a moment, she thought he'd fallen asleep. For a moment.
Until he shifted and his lips found hers. He kissed her. Gentle. Just a passing touch. His nose brushed hers. His forehead rested against her. "Thank you for maybe kids, Mere," he whispered into her mouth.
You're welcome didn't seem like much of a response to that. She smiled, ran a finger down the side of his face and a palm back through his hair. His eyes slipped shut again. His calm, quiet breathing laved her skin, and in that moment, despite the whorl and wind of turmoil looming, everything felt perfect.
"The sharing thing goes both ways, Derek," she whispered. "You know you can say anything, right? I'm not going to break. And I'm not going to run away anymore. Ever."
He opened his eyes and stared at her. The dim streetlights reflected off his irises and pupils in a soft glow of foreboding. For a brief moment, faster than the flicker of a lightning strike, she saw it in his gaze. I'm frightened. His breaths stayed even, and the fear slipped back behind a solid wall of pain.
She didn't blame him. For not sharing. For not talking. She curled her fingers through his hair, and, instead, she kissed him back.
Author: AriaAdagio
Rating: M
Pairing: Mer/Der
Summary: Post Time After Time. Derek takes Meredith to visit his family in Connecticut, but nothing goes as planned.
~~~~~
When they climbed into the car, Meredith was tired. She was tired, and stuffed, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. She had to get up at four for another long shift, and it was already well into the evening. She sighed, trying to ignore the fullness that made the creeping tiredness behind her eyes all that much worse. The chicken marsala had been delicious, the portion had been huge, and she'd... Well, she'd stuffed her face with it. She'd been so full by the time she'd taken her last bite, so full and so exhausted on top of that, she hadn't even bothered to suggest dessert. Derek had looked nauseated by the mere sight of his salmon, and he hadn't said a word when she'd blatantly skipped asking for dessert. Which was weird.
Because they always had dessert. Usually both of them split something, more rarely just one of them had something and the other had a bite or two, but somebody always had dessert. It was one of the only times she could reliably get him off his health kick. Dessert when they went out for dinner. It was their thing. Cheesecake. He loved cheesecake. And brownie sundaes. And those large hulking chocolate cake and fudge things usually named aptly after a natural disaster. Chocolate flood. Chocolate hurricane. Fudge volcano. He loved them. Or maybe she did and he, out of the kindness of his heart, suffered with her. Whatever. The point was they always had one of those. Or something else really, really bad, but really, really good. They usually fought over who had to eat the last piece because they both wanted to sacrifice it, and it was... cute. It was their thing. But Derek hadn't even blinked when it'd been skipped.
Aside from looking vaguely sick over his dinner, though, after the discussion, henceforth known as The Discussion, had ended, he'd sat there, expressionless, almost like... Like he'd been trying too hard, like his expression had been the duck, and the thoughts tumbling through him had been the little duck feet, churning, frantic, trying to keep their duck owner afloat, but invisible under what appeared to be a calm surface.
He hadn't touched his food. At all. She'd been expecting him to start working on it after The Discussion had settled more into relative silence, but no. He'd had the whole thing boxed after she'd finished off the last bite of her chicken. He'd touched it. The salmon. Once. With his fork, she'd seen him tear away a little piece of meat. She had no idea where the piece had gone, but she certainly hadn't seen him eat it. Not once had he actually raised his fork to his lips. He hadn't drunk any water either. For a while, he'd seemed almost afraid to pick up the glass, but the wariness had petered into disinterest as the moments had passed. He hadn't touched the wine, though, that hadn't seemed as odd, since ibuprofen and alcohol didn't mix so well sometimes, and she suspected he might have taken some. Ibuprofen. Not prior closet doses of wine. That would have been more her style of painkilling.
Something had to be wrong. She'd begun to notice he'd been acting oddly in the car on the way to the restaurant. The dozing she'd assumed had been general tiredness wreaking its usual havoc on his energy. He'd been easily tired lately. But when she'd watched him snap awake and clutch at his pocket for what had seemed like the third time in less than ten minutes, like he'd been double-checking to make sure he'd remembered something important. She'd chalked it up to... Well, she'd thought he'd been going to propose. She'd thought he'd been fretting over the ring. Why proposing would make him nervous when he already knew what the answer would be? She'd had no clue. But it'd made sense at the time, and she'd sat there silently, trying not to explode with excitement, afraid that if she'd said anything, it would have been something babbly and stupid and very indicative that she'd known exactly what he'd been planning.
Except now, in true context, his behavior didn't make sense at all. Because he hadn't even remotely considered proposing. So, what did that mean?
Upset. He had to be. Despite the flat look of nothingness on his face. Despite the fact that everything about his demeanor screamed I'm fine. Because when did anyone ever need to scream about being fine, except when he or she was just trying to convince everyone else about it when it wasn't true? She had the whole fine-screaming thing down to an art form, and people still knew she was lying. He didn't. No artistry there. The whole thing was just too manufactured.
She should have stopped The Discussion at the maybe kids thing, when everything had still been mostly happy. He'd... The reaction to the maybe kids thing had been worth the dinner, absent proposal notwithstanding. He'd been almost shell-shocked at first. He'd lost several shades in his pallor while he'd grappled with what she could only assume was disbelief. But, then, there'd been a moment. The moment where he'd finally let himself process what she'd been saying, that she might be willing to try out being a parent. Everything had fallen away, his eyes had glistened, and then he'd started to cry. Happy crying, he'd assured her. She'd had to ask because he'd looked so distraught. And overwhelmed. She'd known he wanted kids, but she'd had no idea the desire was so deep-seated. So visceral.
She'd seen him cry a couple of times by then, all of them while he flailed under a heavy crush of anxiety or regret or something sad. She'd never seen the maybe kids reaction before. And she never wanted to forget it. She didn't think she ever could. It'd made her want to cry right along with him. Because it'd made what he'd said before so much more... More.
If having kids means I can't have you... It's... It's not a deal breaker. That you don't want them. It's not.
She'd made up her mind within about five seconds of seeing his reaction that the parent thing wasn't going to be an idle consideration. It wasn't going to be some flighty idea, hovering in the background while she waited for inspiration to lead her down the path of yes or no. She was really going to think about it. Really. Derek Shepherd wanted kids. He wanted them in an I'd-trade-my-left-arm-for-them sense. He deserved to have her think really hard about it. He'd already given up so much. So, the kid thing was next on her list just a soon as she dealt with wedding dates. Which she was absolutely positive she wasn't quite ready for yet. So, she had a while, but she would definitely make it an active thing, a weigh the pros and cons on the mental scale thing, a serious thing.
She blinked. She should have stopped there. Stopped there on that gift. But, no, she'd pressed into the badness of death and dying and him being older, and that hadn't gone so well. She'd been stupid, and whiny, except...
Every time she came to the conclusion she'd been stupid and whiny, Ellis Grey walked past her in a dark hallway.
You shouldn't be here...
And suddenly she didn't feel so whiny. Meredith had died. Ellis had died. People around her died. All the time, they died. And Derek was going to die. Someday. Inevitably. Most likely before she would. Eight years, even if he lived to be a hundred. Eight years was still a good chunk. And that was...
Too much.
She shoved it away. It was a terrifying thing. A terrifying mountain of not happy, being without him again after all this. All this... everything. She felt complete for the first time in her life. But there was nothing she could do about it except enjoy the forty or fifty years or more before it happened. She was scared, but Derek was right. She couldn't let it own her.
And she wouldn't. That had never been the plan.
But she'd had to say something. She was trying. Trying to do the sharing thing. She wanted to share everything, but that was... That would take some building up to. Some bolstering. She was getting better, though. The kids thing. That had been good sharing. Good.
She sighed. Car. In the car. She had to drive. Do the driving thing. Not ponder about death and sharing and taxes and all that crap. She had to drive a mysteriously reticent, mysteriously expressionless Derek. She bit her lip.
"Did your salmon not taste good?" she asked as she turned the key in the ignition, anything to breach the silence, anything to get him out of that deadness. The car rumbled to a start, and the air conditioner started breathing cool air out of the vents. Seattle was already chilly and wet with the nighttime air, so she flipped the blowers off. The paper bag containing Derek's boxed meal crinkled as he twisted in his seat and put it behind them. It smelled fishy.
As he turned back, he looked at her with a dull, schooled stare that said nothing. Well, everything. Because Derek's face never said nothing. So, that was something. Right?
"I just wasn't that hungry, Mere," he said, his voice just as flat as his expression. And then he turned to stare out the window, resting his head against the glass as he took a shallow, panty breath that made him, in that moment, look miserable, despite the overall reserve in his features.
"It wasn't the talk. Was it? I over-shared, didn't I? I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I'm still trying to... It was. I shared too much. I'm really sorry, Derek. I didn't mean to ruin the night. I really didn't. I just... I want this. I want this so much, sometimes I get really wrapped up in the doubting. Because good things? They don't normally happen to me, well, they didn't used to, anyway, and I... I'm sorry. I shouldn't be fussing about what might happen thirty or forty or fifty years down the road or something. It's... It's stupid to worry about it now. You're right. I'm stupid, being stupid. I didn't mean to-" She halted her babbling and sighed. "Over-sharing again," she said into the quiet space between them as she navigated the car out onto the street. Traffic was light. She flipped the windshield wipers on to stave off the thin, sprinkling sheets of drizzle. Water flicked off the glass as they went to work.
He swallowed, hunched over, staring dully out the window as the rain swept across the glass, blurring everything away. "It wasn't... Stupid. I'm glad. Glad you talked to me about it... I just..." He fell into silence again and rubbed the side of his forehead against the windowpane like it was balm.
"Because you seem just thrilled that I told you," she snapped before she could stop herself. She couldn't help it. She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't. And he was acting so bizarre.
His eyes slid shut, and he sighed, small, hitched, barely vocalized, but a little piece of a moan slipped out on top of it. He cut it off. Quickly. For a moment, his gaze flared, his fingers tightened and curled, and he looked like he was straining. Straining to pull himself back inward. She blinked, and the suffering disappeared behind a mask, leaving her almost wondering if she'd imagined it.
But it was too late. That had been... That was pain. Was he in pain? He seemed... When he'd had headaches in the past, he'd gotten visibly depressed, visibly mopey, but never this weird forced nothingness, albeit, with a few cracked places. A few cracked-open moments when he couldn't quite manage the façade.
"Derek, are you okay? Really?" she asked.
He lifted himself off the window and gave her a bright smile, except it was completely fake. Derek's eyes smiled, too, when he meant it. And right then, he didn't mean it. The skin around his eyes stayed flat and relaxed. His forehead remained still. There was no twinkle in his gaze. He didn't mean it. "I'm fine," he said.
A lump formed in her throat. He was lying. Flat out lying. Why?
"Derek, when I said..." She swallowed. "Earlier, when I said... That I was scared about you dying first... I didn't mean for it to change things. I didn't. I'm just telling you I'm scared. I love you enough to be scared. It's not a bad thing. Is it? I don't know what I'm doing here. I just need... I don't..." she babbled, stumbling on the words. The silence in the cabin loitering in the spaces between her syllables widened into an almost roar. He's not talking, a little voice whined. He's not helping. He's not participating. Something's wrong, wrong, wrong. She stopped the car for a red light and turned to him.
He stared out the window, his gaze blank. "You could jump in anytime with your infinite relationship wisdom stuff, you know," she grumbled, giving the words infinite relationship wisdom the air quotes they deserved. He was lying about being fine, and she knew it, and it hurt. Because he was taking her trust and shoving it.
Why?
She sat there panting, staring at him, watching, and something finally broke through on his face. Something. He swallowed, and the mask morphed from clinical and vacant into dark and brooding and hurt. A depressed Dr. Derek Jekyll or something. Hurt or hurting. She couldn't tell, and it was awful.
"I can't," he said, his voice quiet and twisted.
"Can't what?" she retorted. "Jump in? Give me something, Derek. I know you're... I know something is going on. I don't know what. I know you're lying, though. I just poured my babbly heart out to you. The least you could do is look at me."
He drew a hand up and pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes drooped shut. The coarse fabric of his suit rustled as he shifted. He'd lost it. Lost the hiding thing, mask, whatever. And this was definitely headachey-Derek. She was certain now. She'd grown to know him well over the last few days.
It was like he just didn't realize he was in pain until he was in agony, or until someone made him aware of it. She didn't understand it at all. She was pretty sure it wasn't some sort of macho thing. He usually fessed up as soon as she shoved a pill bottle at him. She guessed it was sort of like when she got hit with allergies in the springtime. Sometimes, she'd go the whole day, miserable, before realizing something was wrong, something fixable. She'd be grouchy and snappy and tired, her nose would run, and it wouldn't even occur to her that it was anything until she slowed herself down long enough to think about it. Allergies. Springtime. Pollen. Duh, Meredith. Maybe it was like that with him. Or, maybe, he was just stuck in the denial of I can, I can, I can, and he didn't like to focus inwardly long enough to admit he might be hurting. Maybe. Regardless, she had a feeling the oops-was-I-in-pain? stuff was going to be an annoying quirk to get used to over the years.
Except this time? This was different. This wasn't an oops. He was already in the know. The suffering sluiced off his skin like pelting rain over the edges of a clogged gutter. This had been intentional. Intentional hiding. But why? Why would he hide?
She reached across the parking brake and touched his thigh. She felt his muscles twitch and tighten through the fabric of his dress pants. He breathed into his hand, short and tight and uncomfortable-looking, almost as if the air itself was barbed. Pain. Definitely pain. She frowned.
"Hey," she said, her voice a low, concerned murmur. "Derek, this has got to stop. You have to take something when you feel bad. You--"
"I've taken enough painkillers today to give myself a stomach ulcer," he snapped, suddenly nasty. Dr. Derek Hyde slammed to the forefront. His stare flared with passionate fire, his face flushed. Teeth, snarling. She flinched back against the seat in surprise at his sudden animation. And then he wilted, Dr. Hyde died a mute, rapid death, and Derek added, "Sorry," in a breathless, quiet whisper, almost as an afterthought. "I'm... Sorry." His hand went back to the bridge of his nose, and he sat hunched, panting, like a fox caught in a claw trap, waiting to snap again, almost ready to gnaw at his own paw if it would just make the hurting stop.
She bit her lip. "The ibuprofen didn't take care of it?"
"No," he said.
The light turned green and she eased the car forward, careful not to jam on the accelerator too suddenly. He was... This looked bad. The light drizzle pattered against the windshield as it kicked up into actual rain. Light rain. But rain.
"Derek," she said, slow, calm, and then the words fell from her in a quick, worried rush, as though someone had hit her personal fast-forward button, "Why didn't you say anything? Is it getting worse? Your headache? How long has this been going on?"
"Just today," he said quietly. "Please, don't..." He breathed. "Yell. Please."
"Okay," she conceded, consciously yanking her voice from its shrill position in the rafters of panic down to the bleachers of calm. "Okay, I'm sorry. Do you think you need to go to the hospital?"
Hospital. Terrifying from a visitor perspective. People died there. The small, whining fear bit at the edges of her conscious thought, but she slapped it away and steeled herself.
"I don't know," he said. "I think it's just... PCS."
"But you don't know."
"No."
She stayed quiet for a minute, trying to think. PCS headaches weren't supposed to get worse like this. Were they? She couldn't remember. But... They were much closer to home than Seattle Grace at this point. Only three more blocks. And he would be more comfortable at home. She would be more comfortable at home.
"Will you let me look at you when we get back to the house?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied softly. He had his face in his hands, covered, and the word came out muffled, but he hadn't paused, hadn't had to think about it, which made her feel better, somehow.
After she pulled the car into the driveway, she watched him with an unwavering, intent gaze as he stepped slowly out of the car and shuffled down the walk, moving at a stilted pace despite the spattering rain. His leftover salmon bag crinkled as it hit his leg, step after step after step. He didn't seem like he was having difficulty with coordination, or having difficulty walking in general. He took his steps with care, almost as if he expected one good jar to break something inside, but, if he was in pain... That didn't really seem farfetched to her that he would be doing that. No. She was fairly certain she could rule out ataxia. He didn't seem disoriented, and he was speaking clearly enough, which ruled out two more of the serious red flags she could think of.
She followed him into the house, her heels click, click, clacking on the front walk as she trotted along, trying to beat the downpour's rate of seep into her clothes and failing. She was cold and soaked by the time she shut the door behind her. Derek made a lumbering detour into the kitchen to put his salmon in the refrigerator, and then they both trudged upstairs. Izzie and Alex were nowhere to be found, but Meredith wasn't really that interested in looking for them, anyway. She imagined Derek didn't want to run into anyone, either.
She closed the bedroom door behind her and locked it, just in case Izzie was around somewhere and in one of her rude let's-barge-in moods. Barging was bad. Right now. Bad.
Derek wrestled out of his suit, slipped into his pajamas, and sat down on his side of the bed while she changed out of her dress. Rain plinked down on the roof and against the window, providing a relaxing filler for the silence loitering between them. He looked up at her, his normally vibrant blue eyes dulled with a brooding layer of unhappiness, and she had a feeling that his intent focus on her was more an act of looking away from the harsh daggers of light from the bedside lamp than it was to let himself lust after her. He didn't smile as she stripped in full view, didn't look at her as anything more than another object in the room. He didn't...
He just didn't.
"This isn't like before, right?" she asked as she yanked on a t-shirt. Naked. She'd been practically naked and he hadn't even blinked. Hadn't made a lecherous comment. Hadn't... She felt almost invisible, and that was worrisome. Derek and his rampant sex drive were partners. Connected at the hip like conjoined twins. It just seemed odd. Odd to have the sex drive part suddenly missing. This missing sexed-up commentary made her nervous. Serious. This was serious. "Before like with your anxiety attacks?" she clarified when he didn't answer right away.
He shook his head slowly, with care, and his eyes shut in a glacial, prolonged blink. When he resettled his gaze on her, he stared, his expression flat. Not flat like before, not flat cold. Flat depressed. "No."
She sighed and sat down on the bed next to him. The mattress shifted with a moan as her weight sank into it. She'd had to ask. She didn't want to do this again. Not another misdiagnosis. She believed him. He wasn't... This wasn't the same as before. He didn't... There was nothing panicky about him right then. Just quiet. Quiet misery. But she'd almost been hoping. Because that would have been an easy solution. Anxiety. Sedatives riding to the rescue once again.
"Rat, dog, mouse. Remember that," she said as she leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He let her, but it was a passive thing, and his whole body wavered like a tree trunk in the wind as she let her weight fall against him. He didn't reciprocate at all. His hands lay limply against his thighs, and his body stayed tight and hunched. Hunched in discomfort. She kissed his neck and eased out of her grip to rub a palm down his back, soothing. His eyelids drooped subtly, and the tightness in his breathing loosened just a little.
"How bad is this headache on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain you've ever experienced, one being nominal?" she asked.
"Seven," he said. He breathed. "Maybe... Eight."
"What did you count as a ten, Derek?"
"My rib," he said. "When I broke it, collapsed my lung, and I couldn't breathe."
"Oh," she said, looking down at her lap. She still hated to think of him lying on the pavement somewhere for thirty minutes, helpless. But... Now wasn't the time for the past. The now was scary enough. "Are you having any other problems?"
"I can't..."
"Can't what?"
"It hurts. To think. It... hurts. I can't... Focus."
He lowered his head into his hands and heaved a sigh that sent his spine curling like a wave. She leaned up against him, rubbing his back, whispering at him. He was... This was bad.
"Is that why you haven't... done any planning?"
"I'm sorry, Mere," he replied, blinking fiercely as he released his face from his hands to look back at her. His eyes watered. And his whole frame just... crumpled, well, looked like an old stilt house ready to sag into oblivion with just one more kick to the foundation, at the very least. "I would... would have... I tried to read a book earlier, and I couldn't... I couldn't follow it."
She swallowed against the lump in her throat, the lump that came with the whole realization that she'd... She'd been pushing him to propose, to come up with something romantic and elaborate and memorable, and he couldn't. Even worse was that, now that she'd essentially spent most of dinner, the parts where she hadn't been howling at him about dying too soon for her tastes, explaining how desperately she wanted it, wanted him to propose, she wouldn't put him past it to try and put something together anyway, despite the discomfort.
"Shhh, it's okay," she said. "I didn't mean that as a needle. It's fine. I'm sorry I've been pushing you. I didn't know it was this bad. I thought you were feeling better."
He shrugged. "I'm sorry, anyway. It's the one thing you wanted."
He seemed so contrite. So contrite. And she'd been pushing him. She was starting to see how their conversation had gone so dreadfully wrong and dismal so quickly. And then her stomach felt like it was sinking into her feet. He couldn't think straight. He couldn't read a book. And she'd... His chorus of repeated I can'ts from dinner bit into her like knives.
I can't...
If I let that happen, I'd never... I'd wilt. You can't... I can't....
I can't tell you I'm not going to die, Meredith.
I'm here now. I can't...
I can't. I can't. I can't. Derek Shepherd had a serious god complex. He didn't say those words lightly. Ever. And he'd practically littered the entire conversation with the papery, junky, trashy bits of them. Why hadn't she noticed sooner he'd been breaking? The Discussion. She'd thought she'd been sharing. She'd thought. And the whole time, she'd just been striking him with blow after blow in a savage confirmation of how helpless he really was, despite what he liked to think. She'd told him she was afraid. She'd told him she was afraid about something neither of them had any hope of fixing. And she'd...
Made it worse.
"Stop it, Derek," she said. "Stop apologizing. Just... What words did I say?"
He blinked. After a moment of pause, just long enough to send up phosphorous flares of fear behind her heart, he said in a quiet voice, "Rat, dog, mouse." No hesitation between the words. He hadn't struggled or wondered or misremembered.
The flares quieted. "Okay," she said. "Okay... I... Do you know what day it is?"
"Monday."
"What show were you watching when I came home today?"
"Jerry Springer, for a minute, anyway."
"Okay," she said. She slid off the bed and sat down in front of him. He looked down at her, his gaze hooded with discomfort. She gripped his knees and squeezed. "Okay, you seem... Derek... I... What should I do?"
He was the neurosurgeon. He was the one who should know. And she suddenly didn't want this to be up to her. He was coherent. He was able. He should have an opinion. He was...
He was the neurosurgeon.
She was just the wannabe.
"I think it's just... a headache, Mere," he replied. "I'll... I'm seeing Dr. Weller in the morning. I think... I'm okay to wait."
"You're sure? I'm serious, Derek," she said, and then she sucked in a breath. "Damn it, I'm sorry. Making a diagnosis on yourself probably qualifies as thinking hard, doesn't it?" she added glumly. She was being such a crappy, crappy talker that night. She just...
He shook his head, ignoring her comment, and with him in such a slowed state, she could almost picture the thoughts as they marched across his face in a stumbling, weary procession. "It just hurts, Mere. I get a little nauseated from time to time, but I'm not vomiting. I can see straight. I know how to spell my name. I'm... having this conversation with you. All of my symptoms are just... they match. With PCS... I think... I'm okay. It's only... Seven more hours. Until we have to leave. I'm okay."
Okay. She wanted to laugh. Okay. Okay in the worst sense of the word. Where okay just meant not imminently dying of anything. She raised her index finger to the space just in front of his eyes.
"Can you follow my finger?" she said. She began to move her hand back and forth. He followed it without trouble or deviation until she forced his gaze into jagged swords of lamplight. He shied away, rapidly blinking. But that wasn't... That was to be expected. His diagnosis seemed sound, despite his difficulties. "Okay," she said as she pulled her hand away. "But, at the very least, you're telling Dr. Weller you need a prescription for your pain. This is... I don't like this. You need something like codeine, or... Something."
"I will," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Derek, will you stop apologizing?"
"I'm... I want to propose. I'm..."
"It's okay," she tried to assure him. "I can wait for you. I didn't know. I didn't know before when I was pushing you that you were hurting. I just thought... I thought you were upset about the conversation."
"I'm sorry."
"Stop it, Derek," she snapped. "You can't help that you're sick. Head trauma sucks."
And then she winced. She had to stop telling him he couldn't do things. Had to stop. It was only going to make it worse, because he would take those as more than just helpful observations. Why was she being so dumb tonight?
"I didn't want..." He sighed. "To scare you..."
"Scare me? Derek..."
"About... The dying... About..."
His words died off into silence, and she bit her lip. The lying. He'd... She'd managed to spur him into lying. Dumb. She'd been dumb. Dumb to share right then. Her timing... Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. At least it explained, though. Explained his stoic refusal to admit something was wrong, at first.
His gaze narrowed, and after flipping the lamp off, he slowly tilted over onto his side and threw his legs up in a slow, fluid, coordinated collapse. Definitely no ataxia there. He curled up on his side, his knees pointed up in a half-fetal position, but not tight, not closed-off. She got up off the floor and crawled into bed next to him, spooning him. She lifted her fingers to run through his hair, soft, soothing in the darkness. A dim haze fell over the bed through the window from the streetlights, but it was barely noticeable.
"I never should have said anything," she said, woeful as she spoke into his skin. She loved his neck. And his back. And everything else about him. Except maybe the stubble, but that didn't count as a body part. Did it? Regardless, he was a good spoon in either direction. "Not then. Not right now. Not when all this other... stuff is going on. I'm okay. Derek... I'm... I'll always be a little scared. But that's life, right? People... die. It's... I love you. I'll deal. I'll make myself deal. I just... Sharing. I thought it would be good. I thought..."
He sighed. "You can tell me anything, Mere," he said, and she couldn't help but relax into the vibrations as the sound wandered through his back and lapped up against her cheek in a low rumble. He was warm. So warm. And she never ever wanted that to go away. Particularly not because of her own idiocy.
"Yeah, but my timing apparently sucks," she conceded. "I didn't mean to slam you with the biggest you-can't-fix-it in the universe. I wasn't thinking. It was... I just... You freaked me out a little with the Kirsten Dunst refusal thing. I'd never really thought about how different we are, sometimes. And suddenly, I was thinking... I'd never really considered the future, because the now is always drowning me." Her brain stuttered to a halt. Derek's breath caught, but he didn't say anything. She gave the silence about four ticks before she managed to continue, "Um. Okay, bad pun. Awful. Bad, punny... Bad. I'll just. Stop. Stopping now. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I can't seem to say anything right tonight. I suck."
He shuffled and flopped over on his other side so that he was facing her. His knees brushed up against her midsection as he semi-curled up again. He chuckled. Lightly. Quietly. Weakly. But it was a chuckle, and it made everything seem so much better. "I'd make a comment," he said, a sly grin pulling his lips into a slant, "But I just don't have the energy to follow through right now."
She grinned back. "What, you think I suck good?"
"Well," he corrected as he moved his hand to run along the curve of her hip. "You suck well."
"Want me to suck now?" she asked. She rubbed her palm against the flat of his stomach, roaming toward his navel, roaming lower. "Porn is proven pain relief, you know."
The cheer bled out of him like oil from the Exxon Valdez, his knees came up a little further, and she wanted to kick herself again. Just... Why. Why could she not talk? Why did she have to keep reminding him he was in such bad shape? Sure. Ask the guy who's crumpled up in pain if he wants to have sex, and, even better, make it all about servicing him, instead of the other way around. Way to make him feel enabled. Yeah. Wonderful.
"It's okay," she said quickly. "It's fine. I was... We don't have to."
He sighed. "I started it. I'm sorry."
She reached up and put her palm against his cheek. "Stop. Apologizing. Okay? Didn't we decide last week that we both guilt things up too much?"
"You're one to talk," he countered.
"Both," she said, grinning. "I said we both."
"Technicality. You were scolding me, not you."
"Fine," she said. "But I'm not the one who's miserable, so I must be right."
He smiled lazily. "Able to leap... amazing heaps of logic in a single bound..."
"My next feat will involve trains."
"In spandex?"
"Do they make spandex for trains?"
He laughed at her deliberate misinterpretation. "I meant for you."
"For you, I'd do it naked," she said.
"Good to know," he replied. He sighed and lay quiet, breathing, breathing for a moment. She curled her fingers through his hair, and his body slackened out of the tense place it'd been wired in. She scooted in closer, worming her way between his knees until he got the message and flattened out against her. What was this? Not spooned. Forked? Whatever. His eyes shut, and his head slowly tilted into the pillow.
For a moment, she thought he'd fallen asleep. For a moment.
Until he shifted and his lips found hers. He kissed her. Gentle. Just a passing touch. His nose brushed hers. His forehead rested against her. "Thank you for maybe kids, Mere," he whispered into her mouth.
You're welcome didn't seem like much of a response to that. She smiled, ran a finger down the side of his face and a palm back through his hair. His eyes slipped shut again. His calm, quiet breathing laved her skin, and in that moment, despite the whorl and wind of turmoil looming, everything felt perfect.
"The sharing thing goes both ways, Derek," she whispered. "You know you can say anything, right? I'm not going to break. And I'm not going to run away anymore. Ever."
He opened his eyes and stared at her. The dim streetlights reflected off his irises and pupils in a soft glow of foreboding. For a brief moment, faster than the flicker of a lightning strike, she saw it in his gaze. I'm frightened. His breaths stayed even, and the fear slipped back behind a solid wall of pain.
She didn't blame him. For not sharing. For not talking. She curled her fingers through his hair, and, instead, she kissed him back.