Keep The Faith

8.

Two Days Later

Meredith was back. To work. She was still feeling slightly sick, but she couldn't stand not doing anything. The flashbacks were too much for her. The time to sit and think, and try to figure out what all this meant, it was just too much.

She slipped into an on call room, and leaned her head against the door.

"I would give anything not to be looking at you." He had said desperately. She made the mistake of turning to face him. His eyes were blazing at her, and the time they stared, just held each others gaze felt like an eternity.

But only mere seconds later, he was crossing the room, closing the gap between them and kissing her. She had sat on the exam room table, and let the feeling between them just take over. He consumed her.

"Meredith, what does this mean?"

She banged her head lightly against the door, seeing in her minds eye Taylor and that boat.

"How sweet, Meredith. You love Derek Shepherd. It's not just dirty sex, is it?" She hadn't said anything to him. The last time she tried to defend Derek had knocked her unconscious. "Too bad your lover is a murder." Taylor had told her, a maniacal gleam in his eyes.

"A murderer I'm going to expose."

She felt her breathing shallow, and she forced herself to move her mind from the boat to her clean room two days ago.

She heard the door open and when se managed to shift her eyes to the figure next to her bed, it was Derek, and he was already sitting down.

"Tell me you're okay."

She coughed. "Thank you." She had said weakly.

He shook his head. "You have to be okay."

"I'll be okay."

And then he had laid down, and wrapped his arms around her tightly, and held her more tightly than she had ever been held before. He held her as she shook, as if he could absorb her chills and her fever and fix her.

Only he hadn't. Because she didn't know what was happening to her, to them. She was terrified, no longer for her safety, or his safety, but now for what was coming. They had sex, and he, he had risked his life for her.

And he hadn't talked to her for two days. Two days he didn't meet her eyes, say her name, or give any attention what so ever. She felt hopeless, helpless and alone. Her friends meant well. They hovered around her.

Cristina was doing supportive, listening to her, and stroking her hair while she cried. Izzie was making her soup and cupcakes, and George was practically tucking her into bed at night, but it wasn't enough.

She had a huge, gaping need inside of her, a need that only Derek could satisfy.

The door to the on call room opened and she jumped as the activity pierced the silence of her own personal hell.

Derek stepped into the room, and shut the heavy oak door behind him. He twisted the lock, feeling the cold metal against his fingertips and looked at her. She looked as horrible as he felt.

Her eyes were sunk down, and she looked thinner than she usually did. The skin that pulled across her face was taut and pale. She looked down as he stared at her. When she finally raised her eyes to meet his, she was surprised to see that his reflection matched her own.

"Derek." She whispered. It wasn't a question or an answer, only his name, a faint whisper that couldn't be heard over any type of noise, but that hung there in that small room, between them like a heavy fog. "Derek what's wrong?"

He wanted to tell her. I killed someone, Mer. For you. But he couldn't say it. He sank down onto the bottom bunk of the nearest bed. She sat down on the same bunk, next to him. He could feel the heat radiating from her.

"You're okay now." He said, referring not to her mental state, but to her physical health and proximity to him. She scooted a little closer to him.

"Yeah. I'm okay now."

"Thank you." She said softly, her voice sounding warm and velvety. "For not leaving me alone in there the other day. I was..." she trailed off, looking down.

"I know." He whispered. His voice didn't sound like him. His voice was ragged and low, laden with fear and desire. "Meredith, I was so scared. I thought I would never...." He trailed off and swallowed the lump in his throat. He moved himself closer to her and kissed her softly, his lips gently coming in contact with hers.

"I love you." He whispered against her lips. She pulled away from him quickly, and stared, eyes wide and shining, letting his words tumble over her.

Until that second, this was just an on-call room. Mundane, devoid of anything to set it apart from all the others. Now it was the place where her hope had been sparked.

"What?"

"I love you." He repeated, kissing her again. She slipped her tongue into his mouth and erased all thoughts that told her the last tongue to wrestle with his was probably his wife's. He moved his lips to the spot at the nape of her neck, just above her collarbone. He pressed his weight against hers, gently pushing her back onto the bed.

His hand ran down her side and began to untie her scrubs. "Derek." She whispered. "Please, if you're staying with her, please don't do this."

He looked her in the eye, and what she saw in him sent chills down her spine. All the fear, and pain he had been harboring reflected back at her, coupled with a fire she had been afraid had left him.

He didn't answer her plea for safety, numbness and a place she couldn't feel him, until he had slid off her scrub pants, her lacy underwear, and was positioned above her.

"Please." She whispered again.

"Meredith, I need to feel you." He said, with a sincerity that broke her, right down to her core. It was a statement, but it carried a loaded gun of a question. He was asking her permission, and if she said no, they would both fall apart. She kissed him in reply, and slowly, with a painstaking amount of feeling, he slid inside of her.

When it was over, and she had released her grip on the bed post behind her, and he had rolled over, and simply gathered her in his arms, neither one of them moved. She trembled a little bit, and he brushed some hair out of her face, and realized it wasn't fever, she was crying.

"Meredith...."

She rolled over to face him. "Derek, what are we doing?"

He placed his lips to her forehead, and twisted a lock of her hair around two of his fingers. His chest was rising and falling a little quickly and covered in her smell. Her body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat that glinted as they fluorescent lights caught her movements. It was there, twisted and tangled together on the bottom bunk of an on-call room that he had the most intimate conversation he ever had with anyone.

"I'm not in love with Addison." He whispered to her. "I haven't been since the day I woke up on your floor."

Meredith snuggled closer to him, and he tightened his grip around her. Their noses were touching and she had tears in her eyes. One slipped down her cheek and he wiped it away. "I killed someone, Mer. Taylor. I killed Taylor."

"He died in surgery Derek." She didn't know why they were whispering, but she couldn't bear to raise her voice a single decibel.

"A surgery I could have successfully done. Only I refused to. What kind of doctor does that? I pushed him into that wall and I refused to do the surgery. I didn't know who I was on that boat Meredith."

She was crying now, silent tears that just slipped down her face. "My hero." She whispered to him. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, they were filled too.

"I love you so much it hurts." He said, placing her hand over his heart. "I just need time."

"Oh Derek..." she breathed. He wrapped his arms around her, and moved himself on top of her again. "I'll wait for you." She whispered. She pulled his head close to her. "I love you too." She whispered in his ear.