Love Don't Cost A Thing

39.

Meredith yawned and stretched, groaning. The hangovers were more bearable. Although they still hurt. Meredith held her pounding head and looked around. No Derek. It was still dark, though. Meredith looked at the clock and saw that it was 6 in the morning.

Meredith needed to drink. Derek wasn't here. Derek wasn't here to calm her fears, to blur the images. The images were clear in her mind, even through the pounding headache. She needed to feel numb. She needed her tequila. Now.

Meredith got up, out of her room and walked down the hallway. It was quiet. That wasn't a surprise. She was alone. She was always alone these days. She didn't have Derek and that made her hopeless, useless...

But she knew he was still out there and she couldn't do that to him. She couldn't leave him alone. She wouldn't leave this world if Derek was in it. She couldn't.

Meredith opened the linen closed, walked in, went to the spot where they were hidden. She pushed some towels away and reached forward in the darkness for a bottle. Meredith reached forward and only felt the wall.

Meredith furrowed her eyebrows as she felt the cold wall. Meredith started to panic. Where was it? Meredith pushed all the other towels on that counter away, feeling around wildly for any tequila bottle. "What the fuck?" Meredith hissed as she banged on the cabinet, feeling. "There were 20 bottles, where the fuck are they?!" Meredith screamed as she looked around.

Derek sat up in his chair. He barely fit his coffee cup on the table along with the twenty other now empty tequila bottles. It hadn't taken him that to get all the bottles and empty them in the sink. But he hadn't been able to get to sleep the rest of the night. He couldn't get to sleep. So he had spent the rest of the hours of the night, sitting in the semi-dark. He had only just sat down from making his coffee. The lights were dim in the kitchen when he heard her scream.

Here we go.

Derek sighed and put his mug of coffee down. She had discovered that all the alcohol had disappeared.

Derek waited for her to come down. This wasn't going to be pretty.

He heard her loud footsteps and braced himself. Soon, Meredith was rushing into the kitchen. She froze when she saw Derek sitting in the dim light with twenty empty bottles sitting in front of him.

Meredith needed her alcohol. She was to far in to be happy that Derek was there, that he was sitting right in front of her. She needed it. She was in to much pain.

"What the fuck is this?" Meredith yelled as she looked at all the empty bottles.

"It's empty bottles." Derek shrugged.

"Empty...empty tequila bottles." Meredith said through her teeth. Fucking Derek.

"Yes." Derek nodded.

"How did you find them?" Meredith said, already angry.

"I was looking around for them all down here." Derek said as he slowly stood up. "And i couldn't find them. It was getting frustrating. I decided to give up and just go back to bed with you, when i walked passed a door. The linen closet. I looked in there and guess what i found?" Derek said as he walked around the table.

Meredith stood there with her hands clenched into first at her sides. She was beyond pissed. She was ready to hit Derek, to throw things. Her nostrils flared as she let out a growl.

"Yes, your precious Tequila." Derek scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest as he stood in front of her.

"So i emptied all of them down the sink and i've been sitting here for hours." Derek said as he looked into her green eyes, that were dark, dark with rage and grief. Dark with pain. It was a look Derek would never forget.