Twist of Fate

Author: pinkeveningsky
Disclaimer: I own diddly. I own squat. Diddly squat.

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Twist of Fate
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x –

If there's one thing that Meredith knows these days, it's that her life can't possibly get any more strange or out of control.

She passed the point of no return a long time ago, and it's left her feeling like she's living someone else's life. She feels out of place and uncomfortable everywhere – at home, at work, with her mother, even with her friends.

Derek, on the other hand, is utterly at home in her crazy, crowded house, as part of her ridiculous, upside down world.

Therein lies the real problem.

"This is my second favorite part of the day," he says from bed, rearranging the blankets to his liking. He smiles, sleepy and satisfied. "My favorite is what happened about five minutes ago."

Meredith stands in the doorway, watching. She's wearing his favorite blue shirt, and has his teeth marks on her inner thigh. He knows the precise temperature that she likes her showers – not hot enough to scald but enough so it's a bit uncomfortable – and that she prefers spicy mustard on her sandwiches to plain old yellow. He also knows that bad 80s horror movies are one of her guilty pleasures, and that she requires at least three cans of Diet Coke daily in order to function in an even remotely effective manner. Earlier he made her a Western omelet for dinner, and changed the batteries in the smoke detector outside her bedroom. The other day, he picked up her dry cleaning because the cleaners' was on his way home, and last week, when some phone company called during dinner and asked about changing long distance carriers, it was Derek who answered and said they weren't interested.

In the past couple of months, Meredith has become intimately acquainted with the cluster on freckles on his left hip, the one that's shaped like a Hershey's Kiss, and she knows that he makes the most adorable purring sounds if his scalp is massaged just right. She knows about his trailer and green, green landscape, she can count his nieces and nephews, and she is well aware of his feelings for coffee ice cream, single malt scotch, fly fishing, and The Sun Also Rises. His favorite color is indigo – she thinks that might also be the color of his eyes. Yesterday at the market, she bought another box of those twigs that he thinks pass as cereal for her cupboard and a six pack of the imported beer that he likes for her refrigerator. Last week, she drove him around for two days when his car was in the shop getting a tune-up.

Some might even say that they're essentially sharing a life.

But he still doesn't know about her mother, and she still doesn't know his parents' names. She still doesn't know why he decided to up and move clear across the country (to live in a trailer!) when he was doing damn well at a prestigious New York hospital, and he doesn't know that she almost got engaged her second year of medical school, before she realized that, just like her mother had with her father, she loved the idea of being doctor even more than she loved Ryan, and it didn't seem fair to put him through that.

Some might say that they hardly know one another if they can't even talk about the major details of their lives.

It all depends on how you look at it.

Meredith doesn't know what to make of any of this. She doesn't know what to call it, or how she feels about it. It's a puzzle that she can't quite figure out.

Derek rolls onto his side and flips off the lamp on his side of the bed. His back looks golden in the low light, flawless and tempting. He's in her bed, and her sheets and pillows smell like him all the time these days, convincing her to permanently erase the concepts of professional boundaries or ethics from her mind, and still she's so damned confused.

"What are we doing?" Meredith finally asks, surprised by the sound of her own voice.

He looks at her over his shoulder. His hair is a mess, he hasn't shaved in a couple of days, and his eyes are squinty with exhaustion. She feels gravity, or something like it, pulling her to the bed anyway.

"Sleeping. I hope."

Of course, Meredith thinks. It's that simple.

She crawls in beside him, and sets the alarm, knowing without asking what time he needs to be up. He rolls toward her, and his hands are instantly on her hips, pulling her closer.

"You look better in this shirt than I do," he mumbles, and presses a wet kiss against her neck.

He falls asleep a few minutes later, and Meredith knows that he is utterly comfortable with whatever little arrangement they've got going on. She wishes that she felt the same.

All she knows is that they're halfway between something and nothing, and it feels anything but simple.

Still, she falls asleep with her thigh hiked over his, his hand warm against her back. There is nothing uncomfortable about that.

x –

At the hospital, Meredith tries to convince herself that nothing is actually preferable.

Sometimes, when she scrubs in for a surgery or waits on test results from the lab, she finds herself thinking of the way his face looks in the darkness, half-sleep but still hot for something. Other times, it's the way that he looks in the shower when his head is full of suds and he insists on singing Elvis Costello that stops her dead. But if she ever stops to consider the look in his eyes when he watches her undress, like he's thrilled for the opportunity but just wishes he could tear the clothes off himself, she's completely finished, blown to pieces in her pretty white lab coat.

How the hell is she supposed to stand across from him in the OR when thoughts like that could run through her head at any minute? It's insane and unprofessional and distracting to say the least.

The other night, while they barbecued on the tiny deck outside his trailer, he told her that she drove him half out of his mind – "In the best kind of way," he assured her – but she knows the truth is that he has her wrapped around his finger, that she is weak, weak, weak when it comes to anything having to do with him, his body, or his smart-ass grin.

But that's only physical. Not emotional, not mental. It's infatuation, she tells herself. A fling, a diversion, a damn good way to blow off steam at the end of the day. It's nothing more than that.

Certainly not a relationship, whatever Derek might think. And certainly not anything warm and fuzzy, however much Izzie and Christina might want to tease her. He makes her laugh, he makes an excellent omelet and grills a mean steak, and he's downright inspired in bed – why shouldn't she spend every free minute with him?

Sometimes sex and conversation is just sex and conversation.

She ignores the empty, lonely feeling that she gets when she thinks like that. Because in the end, she knows that nothing is what she should hope for. No one ever gets hurt by nothing.

x -

Maybe if she didn't contradict herself all the time, life would be easier. Maybe then she'd be able to get things under control.

Half the time, though, she has no idea what it is that she really wants or what it is that she thinks she should want instead. She is perpetually confused, and hates that feeling more than anything.

She may know that Derek lives in a trailer, but they still spend more nights than not at her place. He likes being there, for some reason that she doesn't quite understand, so she doesn't argue about it. On Wednesday, George and Izzie are stuck at the hospital, so they have the house to themselves. They order Chinese, and Derek forces her to watch some slick-looking movie in which an inordinate amount of things are blown to pieces and all the women seem to have trouble keeping their shirts on.

Later, he manages to coax Meredith out of hers, despite the fact that she hasn't really slept in over twenty-eight hours, and they fool around on her mother's sofa just like they did their first night together.

"I'm so glad I decided to move to Seattle," Derek teases, all breathless and sweaty above her. "You should get a job with the Chamber of Commerce."

"You've lived here longer than I have."

"But you grew up here," he says. "One of Seattle's natural resources…"

She laughs despite herself.

They are still undressed when they hear the car in the driveway, and they scramble for clothing in a way that reminds Meredith of high school, how she always seemed to get caught with her pants down. Of course, like all guys, Derek seems to have an easier time of pulling himself together, and he laughs, comfortably in his pants and t-shirt once again, as she struggles to fish her bra out of the potted plant in the corner before George and Izzie come through the door.

She wants to smack the smug look off his face, but he's just too pretty for that.

"Anyone in the mood for cinnamon rolls?" Izzie asks before she even has her jacket off. It's her idea of a greeting.

"All I want is a hot shower and four solid hours of sleep," George says wearily. "Just four."

He collapses into a chair, looking half-dead.

Meredith glances at Derek, who is smirking in an even more smart-ass way than usual. She follows his eyes, and sees her panties draped across the top of the television like a scarlet letter.

It's all too mortifying, but she finds herself laughing nervously. Derek laughs too, and neither of them can seem to stop.

George perks up in his chair.

"What's so funny?" he asks. He self-consciously rubs a hand over his face, then glances down at his fly, assuming they must be laughing at him.

Izzie eyes them suspiciously, but doesn't seem to catch on.

"It's nothing," Meredith finally says. "We're just delirious. You know, from exhaustion."

George nods, and Izzie nods, and Derek nods, even while laughing.

After George heads for the shower and Izzie disappears to play Betty Crocker, Meredith quickly swipes her underwear from the TV, glaring.

"You're such a jerk. That wasn't funny. Not even a little bit," she whispers as they trudge upstairs.

She's smiling as she speaks, and doesn't do a thing about the fact that he's hooked his finger in one of her belt loops as he follows after her.

"I think they're probably aware that you sometimes take your underwear off in my presence."

"Maybe so," she agrees. "But we don't have to advertise the fact."

"Speak for yourself. I'm looking to get the word out there." He pins her against her bedroom door. "Would sky-writing be too over the top?"

She shakes her head, and ducks under his arm. Inside her bedroom, she watches him start to undress again.

"You know, all you ever want to do is joke around and have sex."

He shakes his head, seeming slightly confused. She can't blame him entirely. One day, she wants there to be nothing between them but the physical and the frivolous, and the next she's somehow dissatisfied with exactly that. She can barely keep up with her changing moods herself, so she hardly expects it from Derek.

But he grins finally, not seeming to mind all that much.

"Well, doesn't that beat the alternative?" he asks, pulling her onto the bed beside him. "Being deadly serious and not having sex?"

Meredith rolls her eyes.

"Fine," he huffs. "I can do serious."

He pretends to think for a moment, and when he lowers his voice and stares deeply into her eyes, she has to force herself not to shiver.

"I am deeply disturbed by the steroid scandal in baseball. What kind of message does it send to the nation's youth?"

Derek smiles, seriously calling his sincerity into question.

"Can we have sex now?" he asks.

She laughs, too amused to do anything else.

The answer is yes, of course. Always yes. This is who they are. Maybe it's a mistake to ever ask for more.

x –

Ever since she was a kid, Meredith has had this thing about the dark.

She isn't afraid exactly – she's far too logical for that kind of thing – but she always feels a little uneasy when lying around, hopelessly awake, in a room painted black. When she was a small, she saw monsters in every strange shadow on the wall, in the lumpy shapes made by piles of discarded clothing and abandoned toys. It wasn't that she necessarily believed the monsters were real, but just the thought that they could be, that anything could be hiding out in all that darkness and she'd have no way of knowing, that really haunted her.

The uneasy feeling is always worse when she's sleeping in an unfamiliar place – a hotel room, a friend's couch, on a gurney in a deserted hallway of the hospital.

Derek's trailer.

At the far end, there is silvery moonlight painting stripes across the walls, but the wind is howling outside, and they may as well be in the middle of nowhere on all this empty land. Of course Meredith cannot fall back asleep.

She thinks she may have had a bad dream, something about her mother, but she can't be sure. Sometimes memories can seem like dreams.

Derek pats her arm clumsily, barely awake.

"What's wrong?"

His voice has the bearish sound of someone who really doesn't want an answer, who probably won't be conscious enough to understand one anyway.

She is mortified. If only they'd slept at her house, she thinks. It doesn't matter that she was the one who pushed for this in the first place.

"It's nothing. I'm fine," she tells him finally. "Go back to sleep."

He yawns right beside her ear.

"Nothing doesn't keep you up half the night, Meredith."

When she rolls over, she is surprised that she can make out his eyes in the dark, wide and alive with that spark that is just him. She frowns, knowing there's no way out.

"It's just that, you know, I'm not a big fan of the dark. Especially the dark in strange, unfamiliar places."

Derek laughs, and she fully expects him to say something like, You've held a freaking human heart in your hands and you can't handle a little darkness?

She braces herself.

"You're afraid of the dark?" he asks, not unkindly. "That surprises me. Why didn't I know about this until now?"

"I'm not afraid," she says testily. "I just don't really like it, that's all."

"And here I thought the fact that you always want to have sex with the lights on was a testament to how sexy I am."

She hears the humor in his voice, and sees the white flash of his teeth in the darkness. There is something about him, something intangible and breathtaking, that always has her smiling when she's around him. Even at times like this, when she's uneasy and embarrassed and more than a little defensive. He can make her forget herself like no one she's ever known.

"I'm sure in your own head, that's true," she tells him. "And it kills me to ruin that for you."

He nods, pulling her closer. His hands are so warm against her back.

"Does this go back to when you were a kid? Did you have nightmares?"

She sighs. Her childhood has never been one of her favorite subjects. But Derek is playing with her hair, making it easy to speak without thinking, and she's pushed along.

"Sort of. I had bad dreams like every kid, but they weren't awful." She seeks out his eyes, wanting that connection. "I used to have this night light. It was blue, shaped like a big star, and I loved it. It just made me feel like I wasn't ever really alone, even in the dark."

He smiles.

"But when I got to be about six or so," Meredith says. "My mother sat me down and told me that she thought I might be getting too old for a night light. She said I should think about giving it up."

Derek lets out a sharp breath.

"That's kind of harsh."

"Yeah, well, it was my mother. Even back then, I knew what people thought of her. How strong and capable she was. And I wanted to be just like her."

He hugs her to him, and she suddenly feels warm and sleepy, like she's in her own bed. She realizes then that she can't remember the last night that she slept without him, not when it was possible anyway. How has that happened?

"You know…" he starts to say. "When I was a kid and couldn't sleep, my mother used to sing to me…"

Meredith smiles, resting her head on his shoulder. His voice is terribly off-key but she's mostly asleep before he even gets to the second chorus of "I Wanna Be Sedated."

The next evening, she opens her hospital locker and finds the shiny plastic packaging of s night light on the top shelf. It isn't a star, but a bright blue crescent moon. She doesn't even try to hide her smile.

x –

Note: This was intended to be a quick little collection of interconnected vignettes, but as I started writing, it kind of took on a life of its own. Since it's pretty long now, I'm chopping it up into a few smaller pieces, though I still think of it as one big story.

More to come, soon.