Bright and Shiny

Chapter 86

"So, on a scale of one to ten how bad was this mother dearest visit?" Derek asked his wife as she snuggled into his chest while she focused on the images coming from the flat screen TV. She had been fairly quiet the rest of the evening before and after devouring her pizzas and curling up into bed with a carton of ice cream.

Coming home into the trailer, she had started dropping her clothes she was wearing before grabbing his old college sweats and pulling them over her small frame. She looked so adorable in his sweats when he couldn't see her little hands and the pants were hugely baggy. She said they smelled like him, but he doubted it. He can't even remember when last he wore them, it has been years since Meredith confiscated them as her own.

One night when he first started as an intern when he had his first 48 hour shift. He came home to find her in them fast asleep cuddled on his side of their bed. He knew she had put them on so she could feel closer to him with his clothes on her body. Because she was lonely for their first night apart.

They were her comfort clothes and no matter how many times his sisters, Addi, or his mother bought her these normal woman's sweats from Victoria Secrets for countless holidays. Meredith just let them pile up in their closet, unworn, unwashed and tags still on because she only wanted to wear Derek's old ratty oversized NYU sweats.

Derek chuckled remembering a fight Meredith and Addison had when she came over and saw her wearing them one afternoon. Addison didn't get the allure his sweats held to Meredith, she said she'd never be caught dead in Marks stinky sweats. Addison went for the more fashionable approach even in at home wear, she told Meredith that they had woman's NYU sweats and Derek till this day laughs at the scrunched confused look his wife's face made that day when she just replied "why would I go buy that? I have Derek's."

"Hmm may be a 5," Meredith groggily answered. Exhausted but happy to be home in their trailer watching people take lie detector tests for money and eat her junk food.

"Not bad." He told her while leaning down to kiss her on the head inhaling her scented hair before she started giggling. "What" Derek smiled at her happy spirits finally coming through.

"Want to know why it's a 5?" she asked as she tilted her sparkling eyes away from the TV to look up towards him with a smile.

"Why is it a 5?" he asked in amusement and wonder.

"Because we live all the way across the country." She laughed some more while Derek didn't get it.

He looked at her in confusion which just made her start laughing harder. "She won't be coming back anytime soon, she's not a train ride or shuttle away like New York to Boston is." He realized out loud while it dawned on Derek.

"No more ice queen." She mumbled turning in his arms to look back at the TV that had come back from commercial. "No more ice Queen" he repeated as he calmly threaded his fingers through her hair lulling her to sleep.