Where You Belong

68

After leading his still-strange-acting girlfriend to the car and watching her fidget out of the corner of his eye as he drove them across the city to the small Italian restaurant they had discovered months earlier, Derek still had no idea what was going on in her mind.

"Are you sure you're okay?" He asked as he pulled his car into an empty parking space next to the restaurant.

"I'm fine."

"That's good. Although, you don't look fine. And you're acting funny."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are," he countered.

"I'm not," she repeated. "I'm fine. I'm just...whatever."

"Helpful," he muttered under his breath as he stepped out of the car.

She met him in front of the car, her face a myriad of emotions he wasn't used to seeing behind her eyes. Trust and love and that quiet contentment that had slowly been developing were still there, but overshadowed by a pinched expression, her lower lip being squashed by her upper incisors and eyes that didn't seem able to keep trained on the same point for more than a second.

His heart clenched not only at the fact that he didn't know what was wrong, but that he should know what was wrong. She had brought him lunch and calmed him down before his interview, all the while recovering from the night before and preparing for her big surgery, and right now he couldn't even make whatever bad things she was feeling go away.

With a heavy sigh, he stepped into her space, his arms snaking around her waist and his forehead pressing up against hers. She gave into his presence, leaning into him, her small hands clutching to the fabric of his shirt.

"We don't have to go out tonight," he murmured. "We're both tired. We could celebrate tomorrow instead."

She shook her head quickly. "No. You have plans. Tonight is fine."

He swayed them side to side ever so slightly. "I don't have anything planned that can't be done tomorrow. At any restaurant. With any dress code."

A soft laugh escaped her mouth. "I know I overreacted a bit...but this is important. And we're only going to do this once. And I thought that you'd want...something different."

"You mean something a little more special?" He would love to taker her out somewhere special every time she made a noticeable advancement at work, but their hectic shifts just didn't allow for it.

"Yeah."

"Meredith...you're amazing. You're a natural. I worried that Mark asked you to do too much today, but you kicked ass. And I promise that once you've passed your intern exam I'm going to take you somewhere special and we'll celebrate for real. But I wasn't exactly left with much time to plan anything today."

Very slowly, she pulled her head away from him, her eyes no longer darting anxiously around but showing hints of disappointment and defeat. "Tonight was about...my surgery?"

"Of course." He cocked his head, still wondering what was going through her mind. "You were amazing; like you had performed a hundred bone grafts. And even though I would much prefer to see you in neuro than plastics, I still think we should celebrate."

She swallowed and nodded. "Celebrate. Surgery. Right."

Something was wrong. Nothing he was saying seemed to make her eyes light up. Had he missed something? Had there been a problem in her surgery? He had argued with the Chief in the gallery. Maybe he had missed a mistake? "Mer," he murmured. "What's wrong?"

A faint sheen misted across her eyes, but a forced smile appeared on her lips. "Nothing. I guess I'm just tired too."

"But-"