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“Do you want to dance?”
Meredith looks up at the sound of his voice, a smile tugging instinctively at her lips as he appears beside her, gaze distant on the same sight she’d been taking in—various pairs scattered under the tent with music drifting over the scene, smiles easily in view. Sunlight flashes off the cresting waves, as warm as the simple joy suffused into their surroundings; in the thick of it all, Maggie’s laugh flutters through the air as she loops her arms around Winston to pull him into another kiss.
“Maybe,” she says after a moment, letting out a breath. “But I’m not sure I’m up for that yet.”
Hayes’ chuckle is quiet—kept between them—and he dips his head in acknowledgement. “Fair enough. Another time, then.”
“Careful what you promise. I might have to take you up on that at some point.”
That prompts a genuine laugh from him—Meredith doesn’t quite turn away from watching the newlyweds sway with each other yet, but the plain, open sound tempts her. “I’m not sure I’d argue if you did.”
She hums, about to respond when she senses his eyes landing on her, skin prickling faintly under his stare—the awareness of brushing close to an electric fence, but with none of the danger she’d come to expect; the sensation almost familiar at this point. Her mouth snaps shut.
“You know, I was only looking for an excuse to talk to you,” he says, “Didn’t catch you before the ceremony. You look nice, by the way.”
“You don’t need an excuse to talk to me,” she replies, finally glancing at him as her grin widens. “And you look nice too.”
His mouth twists upwards wryly, fingers running over the knot of his tie. “I had to look the part to even get off the couch and out of the house. The two in mine can’t stop yelling at each other these days, but nothing builds cooperation like watching a parent lose against them in whatever video game they have their hands on.” He stops at that, lifting his brows in her direction despite the fondness in his voice. “How are yours?”
She nods over to the side, three children sprawled out over a collection of chairs pushed together, all equally knocked out—Amelia sweeps over them in a check just then, reaching down to smooth Bailey’s hair away from his face affectionately. “They couldn’t wait to watch Aunt Maggie walk down the aisle and get married. Fell asleep faster than I expected too—one after the other.”
Picking up on the sudden attention, Amelia looks up—and even Meredith can see the way her sister straightens when she notices them, a grin spreading across her expression as she turns away pointedly to the kids.
“Weddings will do that to you,” Hayes says, his tone a little too light, before adding, “The little one must’ve been excited though; she loves them, yeah?”
She smiles, thinking back to Ellis’ artwork plastered to her fridge—and to a white dress with a sand-dusted hem, imaginary or not. To a different conversation that hadn’t really been a conversation at all, held on a stroll down the dock. (What did you do to make her laugh?) “She does. I’m glad she got to be here for this one.”
“This one?” He raises an eyebrow. “Sounds like a story.”
She inhales quickly, the wind sharp with salt on her tongue. “Yeah. Yeah, actually I, um, wanted to talk to you too.” Meredith casts another look over the reception before settling back on him. “Do you want to get away from here? Just for a while.”
He smirks. “Ah, now who’s the one looking for an excuse?”
“You could always try passing out to avoid saying no instead,” she points out, and he barks out a laugh. “I owe you that much.”
“I’m saying yes, Grey.” Shaking his head slightly, he turns away from the tent to face her properly. “Where to?”
They end up at the edge of a long, winding dock, their path leading them down chipped wooden boards that creak under their feet to a short set of stairs dragging close to the shore. Meredith doesn’t hesitate before she’s taking off her sandals, bare feet pressing into the damp sand as the tide draws in around her toes.
When Hayes laughs from his seat behind her on the steps, she turns around with a grin. “What?”
“Nothing,” he says, the word almost automatic, but then he tilts his head. “Just…it’s been a while since I’ve seen you like this. Happy.” His eyes skip across the horizon before returning to hers, his mouth curving upwards in the corner—for once, there’s nothing teasing in his smile, only unbridled warmth. “Laughing. It’s nice.”
“It’s nice to be able to laugh,” she answers, spreading her fingers to catch the breeze coursing past. In her dreams, the beach hadn’t felt any less real than if she’d really been there—the sunlight on her hair, the heat ingrained in the sand, the sound of the rushing waves—but as clean air fills her lungs, she can’t deny that being here outside of her mind was different nevertheless; everything thrown into crisp definition in a way it hadn’t been before.
There’s a brief lull as both of them sink into that quiet comfort that seemed to follow the pair of them whenever they were together; she waits for the gust to die down before she speaks, turning back to watch the water. Meredith knows the words on the tip of her tongue, but she had yet to voice them to anyone—even as she’d wondered how to bring them up during that conversation at the O.R. board. Had yet the chance to talk like she wanted to with him; apart from the others, as alone as they would be passing an amber bottle between them in his office or anywhere else.
“I could hear people who came to see me, you know,” she ventures eventually, trusting the wind to carry her voice to him as she watches the sun begin to sink properly. “The things they would say to me while I was asleep. I was on this beach, and if somebody was talking, they were there too.” She stops, fingers curling at the air like she could miraculously pluck out the right thing to say from the rest. Derek was there often, and so were you.
“Grey—”
“Thank you,” she says instead, spinning around to look at him head-on. “For talking to me about my kids. For telling me how they were, and what they were doing. I know you didn’t know whether I was listening but I heard it.” She pauses, swallowing. “All of it. Thank you for that.”
“For telling you to fight?” His smile hasn’t changed, soft and sure. “You don’t need anyone to tell you that.”
She can still see it—rose petals strewn across the sand, flowers in her hands, Derek’s grin bright even against the blinding sky. That familiar tug of emotion stirs within her at the thought, the one that never really goes away; an endless ebb and flow of love and loss and longing. (What do you want me to promise?)
“I did,” she says, and it’s a correction. An admission. “When I was there, I did. It wasn’t just people from Grey-Sloan that I saw, Hayes, there were others that I lost—friends. Family. One of my best friends, my sister…”
It doesn’t take long for recognition to set in. “Your husband.”
(To torture yourself less.)
She doesn’t speak immediately, shoulders dropping with a sigh as she nods once. His expression doesn’t shift as much as his eyes do, a form of understanding written into the line of his mouth as he tips his head to the side in silent invitation; the gesture easy to decipher but blank of expectation.
Meredith takes it, walking over to take a seat next to him—the dock isn’t particularly wide and she settles on the warped wood a step below his own, some of that restlessness constantly thrumming under her skin finally releasing its hold.
“He was the one I saw the most,” she starts again, “Kept telling me to watch over the kids, and that people loved me and I was needed and there was still more for me. And I know that it’s all a side effect of being gone for two months, but still, it was so long since—I thought—”
“You wanted to stay,” he says, finishing the thought for her. The idea had seemed so criminal even when it was just in her head, but the minute it’s laid clear and bare and inescapable, his tone without judgement, it doesn’t look quite as unforgiving.
“It was what I kept going back to, over and over again. George, Lexie, Mark—they all said the same thing, that the pain was worth it if you get to live. Maybe it is, I don’t know. Just…when you’re there, nothing hurts. Everything’s easier than it is here—and I know what leaving does to people and I’ve seen what comes after, but I thought about it anyway. Couldn’t stop thinking about it.” Meredith watches him through the corner of her eye, forcing a weak smile. “Does that make me a bad mother?”
“I don’t know, Grey.” The sober hesitation in the words catches her attention, his stare drifting to something she can’t entirely see. “You asked me what I was dreaming about, that day with Frankie’s case when you woke me up. The field of barley—I brought Abigail there once, when we were visiting family. And if you asked me right now whether I’d want the chance to go back there, to that moment with the grain and the ground beneath my feet and see it as it was before I ever thought about any damn bodies piling up—or to hear her shout into the wind again—”
“You’d say yes,” she murmurs, and it’s a different sort of relief that washes over her—one stemming from that shared intuition, discovered across operating tables and between drams of whiskey. The kind that didn’t fully make sense until you were sitting in front of closed lids and empty lungs and halted heart, hand still clasped in yours.
(You gave me everything I needed until my last breath.)
The sliver of a smile that cracks across his mouth is resigned. “Of course I’d say yes. I’m glad you got that, Grey. Another moment—that kind of time. Closure. Even when those last few years with Abby were hell, I wouldn’t…” Hayes’ voice drops, low and quiet and wistful—and a little guilty too. “I wouldn’t have given them up.”
(You want to know a secret?)
He clears his throat, glancing over at her. “You chose to stay, Grey. To come back here, bloody pandemic and all, even if you had a different option. That means something.”
“I didn’t want to leave the kids.”
“And you?” he presses just as softly, still watching her. Even if Meredith wasn’t already looking back at him, she knows she’d notice—that underlying thrill of electricity, a live current that hinted at a risk but not quite a threat. “Did you want this for yourself too—another chance? More than you wanted to stay?”
It takes a second for her to find a response. “I don’t know,” she answers eventually, dropping her gaze—for once, his is too direct, too knowing, as she digs her heels into the shore. “I don’t know. Ask me during the day and I’ll probably say yes; I get to stay and watch my sister get married and see my nephew and hear about Jackson pissing everyone off in Boston. I get to be a doctor. I get more time. But ask me the same thing when I want to pick up my kids to bring them to bed and it feels like I can barely catch my breath, or when I wake up in the middle of the night because I had a nightmare that I ran out of oxygen—or when I hear the numbers every day and have to deal with the fact that out of all of us who were on those vents and in those beds, I made it out. And I wonder whether staying really was the better option.”
(I even miss the pain.)
Hayes doesn’t reply instantly either, but when he does speak, there’s a steadiness laced beneath his tone—for a brief moment, all she wants is a break; to be able to lean on that certainty and know what it was like, being so unshaken. “For what it’s worth, Grey,” he begins, “I meant it when I said I was glad you’re here. I know over half of the guest list at this wedding would fight tooth and nail before anyone even thought about letting you die, but you scared the hell out of me, you know that?”
“I’m sorry. That you had to—It couldn’t have—” She stops, taking in a breath. “It’s not the same thing, but seeing anyone in a hospital bed again always makes you think about…I know what it’s like, and I’m sorry.”
“Well. It’s not like it was your fault,” he observes, smiling faintly, and she huffs out a small laugh. The amusement doesn’t last long though, the blue of his eyes apprehensive as they cut towards her again. “Although I can’t say that I wanted it to be you on the ground either.”
Meredith opens her mouth. Closes it. Ducks her head for a second, before turning back towards him—the first thing she remembers whenever she thinks of that moment is Derek, smiling and waving and shouting her name across the coast, but she can recall the distant timbre of Hayes’ voice if she tries, urgent and quick. (I’m not going anywhere.)
“You were the one who found me.” It isn’t a question, but his heavy exhale is an answer of its own.
“Your people were quite good at delivering threats when I brought you into the E.R. on a gurney. If you didn’t already know.”
His tone is dry—the humour a half-hearted deflection—but her lips lift into a smile even as she sighs, leaning against the banister that guards her side of the dock. “Sorry. I guess you became the scapegoat when they couldn’t yell at the virus itself.”
“They were worried about you, Grey,” he says, shrugging, “Can’t blame them for that.”
“Yeah.” It’s subdued as she traces an uneven slash in the sand, the tangible movement grounding her as she tries to sort out her thoughts. “Thanks, you know?” she adds abruptly, the words late. “I should’ve told you earlier—I didn’t know that you found me, but thank you for coming to see me anyway, after. Even if it was all in my head, it was still good to hear from other people. From you.”
“I would’ve wanted to hear about my kids too.”
She isn’t particularly surprised to hear him wave it off, but she frowns, vaguely certain she’d heard his voice more frequently than he was implying. “You told me about some of your patients, though. The updates with Luna?”
“Ah.” Surprise races across his face, swift but visible. Then he chuckles slightly, scratching at a point behind his ear. “Uh, right, yeah. Sorry. CPS was putting her through a lot and I didn’t think you’d mind—you really heard everything people said?”
Yes. And no. Meredith couldn’t recall the specifics of everything she’d been told, especially when they slipped in between flashes of sun and sea and shore—and that had come before she’d wavered somewhere between the beach and alertness, conscious but not quite ready to wake up.
But some things were harder to forget.
“I remember thinking it was nice to hear you talk about surgery,” is what she settles with; it’s true enough, “I missed that too.” Hayes’ expression flickers—still warm, but something else equally fond etched into the crook of his smile when he looks back at her.
“I missed you, Grey.” There’s a sincerity to the statement that always manages to make her falter—it was the kind that was never really guaranteed, but freely offered when it came to him.
Or, possibly, to her.
There’s a single breath where she pauses, aware of the fence they were nearing—the one that neither of them had exactly decided to put up, but eventually landed as an unspoken agreement; the one that ultimately arrived with the lack of resolution. “Meredith,” she says, only narrowly off-beat as she reaches out to nudge his knee with her own. “We know each other well enough for that. Especially once you’ve found someone passed out in the parking lot.”
His eyes meet hers, and she knows he’s aware of it too. “I missed you, Meredith.” The sound of her name is quiet, held like water cupped between a pair of hands—like it was caught in a moment that was stolen, like it would spill over as soon as the lull was interrupted.
Like it was something to lose.
(So I’m asking you to fight.)
She hadn’t known how to interpret it, that night that seemed like halfway to forever ago. When that sort of bone-deep exhaustion lodged itself underneath the skin and she didn’t want to accept the drive it would take for a semi-comfortable mattress, and Hayes had offered up a ride after their surgery. When it turned out that neither of them had cared to find a break for dinner before, and they ended up finishing their fries in the hotel parking lot at three-forty-six in the morning. When she looked at him a little too long as he laughed under the glow of the streetlights, and knew that she’d regret staying up later than necessary soon—but couldn’t find it in herself to care at the time.
Her name had slipped out then too, careful and slow and unavoidable; they’d paused outside their doors before she went to unlock her own, only for him to shake his head when she heard it and turned around.
And then they’d both been paged back to Grey-Sloan the next afternoon, with the events of the previous evening—or morning, really—dropped. And then she’d collapsed days later, and become absent for months.
(Fight, Grey.)
“I missed you too,” she admits, finally—and even as she speaks, she’s slightly too aware of his hand resting in that scant space between them, fingers curling around the border of the wooden step. “Before, when you said I could’ve just turned you down, I didn’t want to. You know that, right?”
That sparks amusement, of all things, and a chuckle escapes him as he shifts beside her. “The drinks we’ve already had may have given an impression along those lines, yeah. I didn’t want to presume.” It’s teasing, the reply unassuming enough that she can still back out—take another path splitting off from the one she’s facing, in case she doesn’t want to follow it to the end.
Meredith does.
“I still owe you a drink,” she says, “A real one. And if you haven’t been completely scared off yet, just let me know when. As long as you’re still up for it.”
“I am.” It’s swift; no bullshit, no sidestepping this time. The words are followed by a fleeting touch at her shoulder, the passing graze of calluses and surety before it falls away—and yet, without turning to him immediately, she can still sense the ghost of his fingertips against her skin. Hayes clears his throat. “And I’d like that.”
“Take me up on it soon?” she asks, lips curving a little higher.
His thumb brushes her skin again, skimming the edge of her shoulder blade and blazing a trail down her arm before his palm squeezes above her elbow—it feels like an assurance, maybe. A promise. “I will,” he answers, and though his voice is a shade hoarser than before, the conviction running below it hasn’t changed. The ensuing silence feels weighted, but without any true heaviness; the anticipation before a storm but for neither lightning nor thunder—only the wait for fresh rain in the downpour, and the pause before the skies would open up.
“We should get back,” he says quietly, eventually, his voice softer like he’s afraid to disrupt the hush stretching between them. “It’s getting dark—your kids will probably want to go home soon.”
Her mouth twitches. “I can’t say it’s a bad idea.”
Hayes’ laughter is a soft huff as he stands, offering her a hand as he gets to his feet; she takes it, belatedly noticing the faint rise of goosebumps along her arm before glancing up again. His palm is still pressed to hers and just like that—she doesn’t know how it happens or who moves first—their fingers wind up tangled together, deliberate but loose.
But she doesn’t pull away. And neither does he.
“You know,” he murmurs, “If you owe me a drink and a dance, that’s a little unbalanced, don’t you think?”
Meredith’s brow inches upwards, even as her lips tug in the same direction. “What are you thinking?”
(The firsts are tough.)
“I’d like to kiss you, Meredith,” he says, the words plain. Unguarded. His gaze flickers lower—caught in the motion of her smile for just a second before he raises it back to hers. “Would you let me?”
(First anniversary, first birthdays—)
(First kiss.)
The first question that leaps to her tongue is Are you sure, of course it is. But she can see the way something unfurls into realization behind his eyes, the same worry answered in both of them—yes, she’s thought about it too; yes, she’s been unsure too. And yes, she’s been waiting too. So what comes out instead is, “Ask me to kiss you.”
One last way out, like he’d given to her. Like they gave to each other.
One last fence to hop over.
(Haven’t had that one yet.)
“Kiss me.”
She can’t stop the laugh that jumps from her, the sound breathless between them. “Ask me to kiss you,” she repeats, “And I will. Just not at my sister’s wedding.”
A beat passes. Then Hayes lets out an exhalation that lands close to a chuckle, the warmth in his gaze lighting it with simultaneous incredulity and amusement before he shakes his head. “You’re infuriating sometimes, you know that?”
Meredith grins, starting to trudge back towards the rest of the party—she knows that he’s on her tail, their fingers still twined together even as neither of them comment on it. “Comes from years of practice.”
“So I’ve heard,” he replies, and his smile is crooked when she glances over at him—though it softens quickly as he looks at her, into the same one from when he’d watched her stand in the waves. And she stops walking.
She’s fought so much already, through bullets and fractured planes and undialed phone calls with sirens ringing outside her door; all that effort just to stay, to be here. She’d keep fighting too, she knows that—knows she’ll fight for a way to get a scalpel back in her hand while staying on her feet and fight to find a place in the middle of a world that had shifted ever so slightly in the past few months.
But she also knows that even if she’s surrounded by it all, she doesn’t have to fight against him—knows that when she fights, there are people by her side and that he’d be there too. Had been there already.
And she knows she doesn’t want to fight this anymore.
(I don’t want to be in love again. Not until it feels like family.)
Meredith turns around and he stops walking too, eyes darting over her face. “You were asking?” she says, and she knows she doesn’t have to clarify what she means.
He’s still nodding when she closes the space between them and presses her lips to that smile of his.
Hayes kisses her back without hesitating, one hand already curling around her cheek as the other slides up to her wrist to tug her closer. He kisses her back like they have all the time they could ever want; like he’s thinking the same thing she’d realized before—yes and yes and yes, he’d been waiting just as long as her and possibly longer and if this was happening he would take it with both hands—languid and unhurried as her fingers hook over the edge of his lapel.
And the world, hectic and turbulent and exhilarating and a million other distracting things, stalls into precious clarity for one moment; as if even her surroundings were holding a breath that she couldn’t keep herself, only it wasn’t because of any virus at all.
His lips brush the corner of her upturned mouth once, twice, before he draws back. The breeze starts up again at that, the thunder of her pulse in her ears drifting back into the roar of the waves as she opens her eyes to find his.
“You couldn’t let me do it, could you,” he says, though the sharper edge of mirth in his voice is honeyed by his grin—the tilt of his mouth is soft, preserved sunlight even as dusk falls around them.
“Do what?”
The pads of his fingers are rough, but the way his thumb sweeps over her lower lip is achingly tender. “Kiss you first.”
“Oh.” Her throat constricts.
“Meredith,” he says before she can even begin to speak, still with that quiet affection, “I asked you to.”
She looks at him, studies him, the threads of fading light washing across his gaze as it faces hers—still anchored, still certain. She almost wants to laugh at how present he seems, when she’d felt like she’d been spinning on her feet the first time she kissed someone who wasn’t Derek. “You’re okay?”
He swallows, the lines around his eyes creasing as he narrows in on something she can’t see—but then he releases the breath and turns back to her, settled. “Yeah. I’m okay.” Hayes lifts a brow. “You?”
“I am too.” Meredith exhales, a tentative smile in its place and a laugh on its tail. “And whenever you’re ready, whenever you want, we can get that drink.”
His smile slants into something a little more lopsided. “Is that right?”
“And then you can choose to ask me again.”
“I changed my mind,” he says, even as he’s laughing too, even as he leans in to press his forehead against hers. “You are absolutely infuriating.”
But his fingers tighten around her own.
(It surprises me every time.)
Meredith Grey doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know what first brought her to the beach all those months ago for some version of closure, she doesn’t know how to adjust with the changes COVID has hounding her every step—she doesn’t even know whether staying was the right option.
But as she crosses over a sandhill, Hayes at her side, to see her family spread out before her—Maggie pulling Amelia forward to dance, Bailey waving Richard away with a laugh, her children slumped against one another in a row—she decides that in spite of everything else, she has a choice on that last part.
She’s still fighting. And here is exactly where she should be.