Where You Belong

99

Derek sighed as his brain found consciousness. His eyes were closed, but he could sense it was no longer dark. He had gotten home late the night before – after midnight. He had been exhausted, and it had been all he could do to drive home after his marathon shift. Meredith had been fast asleep when he had quietly crept into their darkened bedroom, stripped down to his boxers and crawled into bed next to her. She hadn't stirred, even when he had leaned over to press a kiss against her cheek.

She was obviously awake now, though, as he could hear movement next to him. He stretched his legs downwards and then rolled onto his back. A series of crinkling noises accompanied his movements. He felt his brow furrow. "What...?" Propping himself up on his elbows, he glanced down, frowning at the newspaper covering the bedspread. He turned his head to the left.

"Morning," Meredith offered. She was sitting upright beside him, her lips pursed and her attention on the newspaper in her hands.

"This is new," he commented.

She giggled, momentarily dropping the newspaper in her hands to her lap, and reached her hand towards him, burying her fingers in his hair. "I've had enough."

"Enough?"

"Enough," she confirmed with a nod.

Derek yawned and ran his hand over his face, wondering briefly if he was still asleep and this was some kind of strange dream. He rolled onto his side, facing his wife. "Enough of what?"

"This." She gestured around her.

He glanced around their bedroom. "Uh..."

She giggled at his lost expression. "The house. The roommates. I've had enough. And we said two weeks ago that we were going to start looking for a new place to live, but we haven't yet. And we finally have a day off together, so I thought we should start looking.

Derek finally actually looked at the newspaper, recognizing pages related to rentals and house sales. He smiled. "You've had enough," he said knowingly. He shifted so he was sitting against the headboard right beside her.

"I had a shower when I woke up this morning and Izzy knocked for like five minutes straight." They had installed the new lock over almost two weeks ago, and it wasn't being accepted as well as Meredith would have liked.

He chuckled. "So, we're looking for a place to live."

She nodded. "I wasn't sure what exactly to look for, so I brought up ads for, well, everything."

Derek reached for the closest page of newspaper ads – the one that had been resting on his chest. "Good thinking." He scanned the page. "Are we looking for a mansion?"

Meredith shrugged. "I haven't looked at those pages yet. I don't really think we need a mansion, but if you want to look at them..." She trailed off, leaving the offer open ended, knowing he wouldn't want such a large home either.

"I think we should live here," Derek said, pointing to a massive stone house on a ten acre estate.

She laughed and leaned close to rest her head on his shoulder. "We'll put it on the list," she joked.

"I guess we need to decide what we're looking for before we start looking..."

"My only criteria right now is no roommates."

"Yesterday you told me you loved your roommates and never wanted to leave," he pointed out. They had dragged themselves out of bed late – a product of being newlyweds – and after rushing through showers and getting dressed, they had discovered exactly two travel mugs worth of hot coffee waiting in the pot in the kitchen and pancakes sitting on the stove. Meredith had, of course, had no qualms about cold pancakes and had gushed about how much she loved their roommates as she somehow put away four pancakes in the time it took them to drive to the hospital. Even after a year together, he hadn't been able to shake her belief that cold leftovers were an acceptable way to start the day.