Because It Never Happened, by TehFuzzyPenguin
Her half-alert eyes roved over the living room, moving intently down the hall where- oh. Derek was asleep on the living room couch.
Izzie stood for a second, pondered the implications of his position, and decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble. She continued on to her cookies. The next morning, Derek emerged from Meredith’s room, bleary-eyed and incoherent.
Izzie just shrugged.
----
She was finishing up a bowl of vanilla ice cream when she heard footsteps descending the stairs. Damn. George had caught her again.
Izzie began preparing a defensive speech, words like “right” and “model” and “blueberry muffin” on the top of her tongue when she realized that the person walking to the kitchen was a little taller, a little thinner, and a little more moppy-haired than George.
Derek shuffled into the circle of stark light, opened a drawer, groped around blindly, closed it, opened another, and came up with a spoon. Dropping onto a stool next to Izzie, he took the carton from beside her bowl and began scraping ice cream from it. “Hello, Izzie,” he mumbled as he worked.
“What did you do?” she asked. “Did Meredith kick you out?”
Derek shook his head. “No,” he said around his mouthful of vanilla. “She shnrrs.”
“She what?”
“Shnnnrrrrrrsss!” he said with more emphasis.
“What?”
He swallowed. “Meredith snores.”
Izzie nodded. “Oh,” she said, and wondered how their love was supposed to work if he couldn’t even live with her snoring.
----
One o’clock in the morning, and she felt like bread. Did Meredith remember to get bread? Izzie checked in the cabinet. No, of course she didn’t. No bread, no cookies, and Meredith had eaten the rest of the ice cream that night. Muffins, then.
George had eaten the last muffin. Izzie huffed and carefully started to take out the mixing bowl, muffin tins, flour, and other things she didn’t tell anyone else she used. No use in waking the whole house just because her roommates were inconsiderate, oblivious asses who believe in a baked goods fairy.
She was measuring out the flour when Derek entered. “Meredith snoring again?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. You woke me.”
“Sorry,” she said, and wasn’t really sorry.
He waited for her to put the muffins into the oven before asking, “Do you always bake in the dead of the night?”
She wondered why he wanted to know. “Why do you want to know?” she asked.
Derek just shrugged.
----
She was in a baking mood tonight. She’d passed Derek on the couch earlier and rolled her eyes, making sure to be extra quiet as she got the ingredients together to make a cheesecake.
Izzie tried to muffle the sound of the microwave softening the cream cheese, but knew it was pointless. She threw her sweatshirt over it, anyway.
A beeping in the living room made her jump, and it was followed by a distant crash and a groan. She guessed that Derek had set the alarm early, so he could go back upstairs to Meredith.
Derek walked in, instead. “You know,” he said. “I always thought cheesecake was more like a pie.”
“A cheesepie would be like a pizza, only no sauce. And a lot more cheese. This is not cheesepie,” Izzie said. She’d heard this argument before.
“You really do bake a lot at night.”
“You’re only allowed to save Meredith,” Izzie said.
Derek turned around and walked upstairs.
----
Muffins again, only not as a break in between long power naps.
She was just awake.
“Denny again?” Derek asked.
“Snoring again?” Izzie returned.
“You’ve never noticed?”
She shrugged. “I grew up next to a freeway.” Izzie looked at the clock. “I like baking.”
“I’m eternally grateful for it, believe me,” Derek said. He smiled. Izzie wondered how he could still pull off charming this early in the morning. Must be some surgeon skill.
“Are you flirting?”
“Would you like me to be?”
She looked at the clock again. “Go to sleep now. I’ll wake you up.”
Derek got up to go to the living room. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
Izzie said, “No.”
----
Cupcakes sat iced in their cooled paper wrappers. Izzie wiped her hands on a dishcloth and smiled.
“Oo, cupcakes,” Derek said from behind her.
“What does it say about you if your girlfriend’s roommate knows more about you than she does?”
“That I don’t want to share cupcakes,” Derek said. He reached out.
Izzie whisked the platter away. “Neither do I,” she said.
“No fair.”
“Does she know that she snores?” Izzie asked. “No, that’s a stupid question. Never mind.”
“I’m surprised you even bothered asking.”
“It’s early.” Izzie unwrapped a cupcake and bit into it without preamble. “Now I’m just gloating.” Derek glared at her. “Gloat gloat gloat,” she said with her mouth full.
“I’m going back up,” he said, and left.
----
He was waiting for her the next time she headed down in the middle of the night.
“Oh god you scared me,” Izzie said. “I thought you were George, but then, he’s not here anymore.” She rummaged through the pantry for peanut butter and oreos. “You make a lot of noise.”
“Sorry,” Derek said. “Did you get that from The Parent Trap?”
Izzie stopped with a half-smothered oreo on her lips. “Didn’t everyone?”
“This could be a torrid affair,” Derek said suddenly.
Izzie tried to remove the peanut butter from the roof of her mouth. “But it’s not.”
“Our loss,” he said.
“Our gain,” Izzie corrected.
----
Izzie was humming. She dug her fork into the chocolate cake and hummed as she passed it to her mouth.
“I thought I heard jazz,” Derek said. Izzie removed the fork.
She said, “One day, Meredith is going to find out.”
“That girl can sleep through anything.” Derek smiled. “I played the sax for a few months, back in the-whenever.”
“Scandalous,” Izzie said drily. “Playing an instrument, the way to a girl’s heart.” Derek found a knife and cut himself a piece of cake.
“Sex me up,” he said. He found a fork and dug in, himself. “Did you ever?”
Izzie twisted her lip. “Sex you up? God, I hope not.”
“Play an instrument,” Derek said. “I’m so glad that during the day, you have to defer to me.”
“I’m so glad that during the day, you can only flirt with Meredith. And, no.”
“Meredith,” Derek repeated.
Izzie swallowed. “Something wrong? Camping trip go bad?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s...being herself, I guess.”
Izzie frowned, and deposited her cake plate in the sink. “There’s not enough alcohol to be having this conversation.” She went upstairs first.
----
Meredith stood at the threshold of George’s room. Izzie watched from hers. Derek woke up.
Izzie said, “He usually sleeps on the couch, sets an alarm, gets back in bed before you wake up.”
They made up, sort of. Izzie walked downstairs to the kitchen and tore her check off the fridge.
Derek came down a few minutes later.
“What,” Izzie said, “no snoring, halitosis nookie?”
“We were going to be late, I’ve shave, and I’ve brushed my teeth, so no.” He paused. “What are you doing with nine million dollars?”
“I’m looking at it.”
He nodded. “Okay.” Derek reached up and snagged his box of Muesli. “By the way, I loved how you ratted me out back there.”
Izzie said, “Just like a torrid affair.”
----
Derek went to Meredith’s room and found earplugs on his pillow.
Izzie lay back in her bed. She fought the urge to go downstairs and eat an entire tub of butter. That seemed gross.
They never talked about it. Not like Derek, Alex, George, Denny, Finn, Derek again, or George again, a little while later.
There wasn’t anything to talk about, Derek and Izzie, Izzie and Derek, Dr. Model and McDreamy.
The reason it was always like a torrid affair was because it wasn’t one.
-end-
X-posted to my FFN account