You're Not Ready For This

Love/Addiction

*Brief mentions of addiction*

Derek couldn't take the nagging feeling of not being good enough for her. That had to be the only explanation as to why she wouldn't fully let him in, why she was so ashamed for people to know about their relationship. As he drove to the hospital at five in the morning after being kicked out of her bed, his brain scrambled in hopes of finding the answer.

He halfway listened to his ex-friend? go on and on about his addiction to Meredith Grey as he squeezed salty drops into his eyes in attempts to clear them enough to operate. It reminded him of the times when they were just getting to know each other, staying up all night having sex and leaving both of them zombily

the next morning. Back when him forgetting to grab her a spoon for a bowl of his muesli was their only issue.

One thing that his adulterous friend? told him made Derek ponder if there was a hidden truth to it.

"Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery."

Derek tried to ignore the fact that he was comparing his sexual activities with Meredith to one of a type of addiction, as erroneous as it was, and searched for the deeper meaning. The more he thought about it, the more he realized what he was doing with her was wrong. He knew what he wanted; a wife. Someone that wanted him. Meredith had made it clear that she wanted nothing other than a warm body to occupy her bed that she could kick out in the morning without feeling guilty.

Meredith's irksome conversation with Mrs. Burke, followed by an even less bearable dispute with the young woman who she was expected to call her a sister, left Meredith with a palate for only one thing; sex. She glanced at her pager as it buzzed in her pocket to see the name of the person she was looking for.

"Your timing could not have been more perfect. Where are we going?" Meredith asked with hopefulness as she peered around the wall and stood in the doorway of the room, not completely inside, but enough for him to know that she was there - sort of like their situation now.

"What do you mean where are we going?" Derek glided across the tight room in his spinning chair and stopped right in front of her eager body.

"You paged me, right?"

"I did..." Derek answered, still not sure what she meant.

"Good. So on-call room?" there it was again. All he wanted was to talk to her about his day, let her know that he spent a vast majority of it thinking about her, but all she wanted to do was get him naked.

He figured testing his luck wouldn't get him killed, and if it did it couldn't hurt him any more than she already was. "You know I was thinking maybe we could uh, go to the cafeteria. I thought you might be hungry."

There he was again, trying to get her to let her guard down and do couply things. How many times did she have to make it clear that there was nothing couply about their situation. She couldn't do couply. Not now, and if he didn't put an end to his charades...not ever.

"Derek, we agreed. "S" and "M" only." She reminded him and Derek repeated her phrase that he was sure she made up on her own and just expected him to know.

"Sex and mockery," she hoped he would get it through his thick skull and stop forcing her to keep repeating it. Meredith didn't want this. She wanted him, and right now this was the only way that she could have him. A relationship only meant room for failure and she couldn't handle the pressure of living up to his expectations.

Their playful banter that somehow managed to stay intact after all this time came to an end and she watched as he disappeared into the crowd of surgeons and nurses. His back being turned towards her made it impossible for Meredith to see his defeated expression, but the slump of his normally upright body language was a clue that something was up with him