Ambivalence

2

"What's the problem?" Derek rolled up his sleeves and marched into the patient room. The four nurses and surgical interns immediately turned their attention to him and began following his orders, completely disregarding what Meredith had already instructed them to do.

"I have it under control!" her voice must've not been heard by anyone in the room because nobody paid her any attention.

"You!" Derek pointed at the resident standing frozen in the corner. "Take this, measure four fingers downward...yes right there. Now make an incision, not too deep! Perfect." Everyone took a sigh of relief when Mrs. Gillespie's stats went back to normal and her blood pressure was at its previous rate.

"Thank you Dr. Shepherd," the resident who performed the closest thing to her first solo surgery blushed and showed him gratitude.

"Don't thank me, you did all the work. If anything I should be thanking you," Derek held out his hand and when she welcomed it with her own, he leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on the dorsal side. His eyes remained locked on his ex-lover who was fighting the urge to puke at his exchange. She knew that the only reason he was treating the resident with such kindness was to get under her skin.

The taste of spearmint gum was his current favorite. He didn't go anywhere without a pack. Derek cursed when his freshly unwrapped stick knocked out of his hands and hit the unsanitary hospital ground as he was pulled into an on-call room.

"Hey!' he shouted defensively before he realized it wasn't an axe murderer, but the woman he managed to piss off in less than forty-eight hours. "Oh, so you missed me," he pursed his lips and teased while she locked the door and rested her back against it.

"Quite the opposite actually. What is the matter with you? You can't just show up to my job and act like you own the place," she confronted him.

"I wasn't acting like anything. If your residents would rather take orders from someone they don't even know then that says a lot about you as a teacher," he ridiculed.

"Aren't you the one who makes your interns spend their hours finding you the perfect cup of coffee instead of actually teaching them? I wouldn't question my leadership skills " Meredith crossed her arms and spat.

"So you've been keeping tabs on me?" he smirked." Not all of them, the pretty ones get a personal escort to an on-call room. My car if they're lucky."

"Some things never change," Meredith shook her head and scoffed.

"You're right, you should try going brunette."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No not at all. My last girlfriend, or was it my second to last? Anyways, she was a brunette. Very sexy," he coiled a piece of Meredith's blonde lock around his finger.

"I don't want to hear about your past relationships,'' she swatted his finger away which did nothing because he then started playing with another loose strand.

"Jealous?" Derek tempted her.

"Why would I be jealous? If anything I should feel sorry for them and the mess they're getting themselves into."

"Yeah poor them, you should be apologizing to any man that has to put up with your mood swings and control issues," he rolled his eyes.

"It's expectable to have mood swings when one minute your boyfriend is head over heels in love with you and the next he's acting like he doesn't want to be seen with you in public."

"If you're talking about that day at the carnival it was because you were wearing that god awful top, I was saving myself the humiliation,'' Derek exaggerated his disgust when he thought about the day they made a spectacle in front of hundreds of people that started with an argument about him not acting like he wanted to be with her. Meredith didn't understand his reasonings or why he acted the way that he did, but it wasn't for nothing.

Meredith shook her head and her fingernails pressed into the indentations from earlier that were marked on her palm. "You're an ass!"

"That's the best you could come up with? What about the names you called me when you ransacked the apartment on your way to the airport? What were they, egotistical, no no it was egomaniacal. Waste of space was a good one," Derek chuckled.

"Just...stay out of my way. I don't want to see you and I don't want to speak to you unless it's work related."

He swatted the finger that was pointing in his face and rested his hands on either side of her head against the door, getting much closer than she anticipated.

"I plan on it," he stated.

"Good," Meredith's breathing slowed and she made an effort to keep her eyes on his.

"Great," Derek's fixation on her lips and the lustful look in his eyes was becoming unbearable every second she stood there being trapped against her will.

"That would include whatever this is you're doing," she was referring to his face being inches away from hers and his body making it impossible for her to escape. "You can't seduce me in on-call rooms." As much as she meant it, Meredith wasn't exactly disapproving of the situation.

"You're the one that brought me in here," he let the curl that he was playing with dangle and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "Why is it so hard for you to admit that you miss me?"

She fought to keep her gaze on his eyes and not the lips that were suddenly closer to hers than they were a few seconds prior. "Because I don't,'' she lied. Meredith would never make him aware of the countless nights she spent wondering if he was okay. If one phone call, maybe an email would give her the closure she'd be searching for since the night she walked in on him in bed with...it didn't matter who it was. It wasn't her.

"Mmh. I don't think you're telling the truth," he traced the outline of her jaw with the ball of his thumb and stared into her irises lasciviously.

"I...this is inappropriate,'' she gulped.

"That's true, but it doesn't mean it can't happen." He watched as her eyes flickered between desire and clarity and once the lustful side won, he backed away from her. Derek hummed pleasantly to himself as Meredith cleared her throat and looked at the ground embrassadely at the fool she made of herself. The fool he made of her.

AN - I'm still doing edits of the first few chapters if you see that it keeps getting published.