missingthekeep | Christmas Eve [for Meredith]

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Christmas Eve [for Meredith]

Sean's so nervous, he thinks he might pass out. He was expecting to be nervous, of course, he was anxious as sin the last time he tried something as insane as this with the last woman to cross his path, but this... this really goes above and beyond. Fortunately, in the years since his last proposal of marriage, he's gotten a hell of a lot better at hiding how nervous he is, so the only outward show of it he allows is some fidgeting with the ring in his jacket pocket. It doesn't help much.

It's a good ring, he thinks. Fancy and pretty without overdoing it. He'll want something a little more personal than what he could scrounge from the Pond woman's stash for the final things, but as an engagement ring, it does nicely. Would that he were so confident about the rest of this, especially when he has every reason to be. This isn't about how lousy everything else in his life is right now, this is about him and Meredith, nothing else. And they're good. They're better than good, occasional hiccups aside. He wants this, she wants this, and they're great, they're solid. How could this possibly be the wrong thing to do, the wrong time to do it?

It isn't, he tells himself for the thirtieth time. Besides, it's already been weeks since she told him she was ready, that she was finally and fully ready to marry him. How much longer does he really have?

Right.

Right.

"Nice night, innit?" he asks with a smile, trying to keep up the charade that he dragged her out to the snow-covered beach for nothing more than a walk on Christmas Eve as long as he's able.

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The trouble, Meredith realizes as she sips her drink, isn't so much that she hasn't got anything to say. It's that she has a lot of very terrible things to say and she doesn't intend to say any of them (except if she says nothing, things just get worse). He's got enough to deal with without trying to convince her that everything's as it ought to be with them, least of all when she knows she can't be convinced. "No, right," she says, "of course. Well, I'm here now."

Sean should just leave it at that, accept it and try to move on with the rest of his inevitably miserable night. He can't, though. Something's wrong, and try as he might, he can't ignore it, not right now when he feels like he's an inch away from shattering.

"Well, it doesnae feel like ye are."

Meredith just wants to shake sense into him until he understands. If she's not here, it's because she can't be. "I'm sorry," she says, heavy, and just saying it, just letting herself look at him for a moment, makes her throat tight again. That thing's going to sit in her yard every day as she goes out and comes home, a reminder; no matter how much time passes or where she goes, she's still in love with someone else's husband. "I just... can't. I... I can't help you decide what to do with it, I can't... I'm not a part of this."

"Ye're nae..." Sean starts before trailing off with a shake of his head, frustration rising at the way he suddenly feels like some sort of emotional cripple for not understanding any of this. "It obviously concerns ye, I'd say that makes ye a part of it." She's a part of him, after all, and this... well, this is just him. She's always known that.

"How does it concern me?" Meredith asks, gesturing toward him with her glass. "It's yours. It's hers. It's nothing to do with me. Do with it what you want." What the hell is she supposed to do, tell him to get rid of it? She can't, she's not heartless. This would be a lot easier if she were. Besides, she doesn't have the right.

"Ye goin' ta look me in the eye an' tell me ye dinnae care a whit 'bout any o' this?" Sean brusquely asks, and while he knows that's not what she said, he's trying to make a point, here.

"I didn't say that," Meredith snaps, looking at him just to prove she can though it's not what he asked. "Of course I care. I can't —" She cuts herself off before she can break, gritting her teeth then taking a deep breath. "I care. But it isn't up to me. I'm not going to tell you what to do with your wife's belongings."

"I wasnae askin' ye to decide fer me, I was jus' askin' what ye thought," Sean replies lowly, trying for all the world to make it sound like a simple explanation as opposed to a rebuttal.

"And I said it's up to you," Meredith answers. She knows she's not being fair, but nothing about this is just or alright. He seems so far away now, but she can't make herself move closer. "I don't want anything to do with it."

Once again, Sean can't quite pin down why that should hurt so much to hear, but this time, he nips it in the bud and closes himself off before he goes about embarrassing himself some more. "Fine," he grits out, turning back to the fire. If she wants so badly for him to bear his burdens alone, then he will.

"Fine." Meredith doesn't leave, though. She leans back against the doorframe, sipping her drink, an arm folded against her. She doesn't know how to claw her way out of this one. Whatever she does, she'll ruin everything. Try as she might to harden herself against that, it just makes her sick, wearing her down until she's just tired and sad again. "I don't want it here," she chokes out, pushing off the wall and back into the bedroom.

Any attempts he made to steel himself must have been half-hearted ones at best, because the instant he hears that, he's turning in a rush, a hand splayed against the floor to steady himself. "Well, what am I s'posed ta do?" he calls after her, nearly yelling.

Meredith bristles at that, a little relieved to be annoyed, and she'd just slam the door if she weren't already halfway across the room, sinking down to the floor to sit back against her side of the bed. "I don't know," she yells back. "Figure it out."

It's almost a relief when Sean's frustration overwhelms everything else he's feeling, even if a whole lot of anger and nowhere to vent it is really just as much of a problem. At least it's a simpler one. Impulsively, he slams his fist hard into the floor as he throws off the blanket, the sudden blossom of pain providing a nice distraction from the unsteadiness in his legs as he pushes himself to his feet. If only he didn't have to go into the bedroom to find his spare jacket before leaving, his exit would be a perfect one.

Meredith wants to steel herself and keep looking straight ahead, but she turns almost before she knows what she's doing, peering over the bed at him. "Great," she says when she realizes what's happening, because it's get angry or start crying and she's not going to let herself do that now, even if she can't hide how hurt she is. "Fantastic. That's perfect, Sean. Just keep leaving." She should have known he wouldn't pick her.

"Well I'm nae figgerin' much o' anythin' out in here, am I?" Sean shoots back as he struggles to pull on a worn Celtics trainer jacket. It's thin, but it'll do. "Thanks fer all the support, by the way."

Meredith wants to tell him to go, just to prove she can, to show she can make it through a fight without begging him to stay like the fool he's made of her, but it doesn't come out. "What am I supposed to do?" she demands instead, pushing to her feet, unsteady as she is, to look at him. "I want to be here for you, I do, and I should be, I know, I just — I can't do this. I can't listen to you talk about her when..." She stops, closing her eyes, struggling to retain some small measure of dignity, though time was probably up on that years ago.

Somehow, it helps to hear that she's trying, even though Sean knows he never should have doubted that. With as worked up and agitated as he is, it's not a lot, but it helps. "I never talk about her," he says, and while he means to make some point about why that is, whether it's for his sake or Meredith's sake or what and how this is a pretty extraordinary situation, he never gets to it, because the instant the words are out of his mouth, he's stuck on them, fixated. "I never talk about her," and suddenly, all that stuff about waiting for a time and a place of his choosing is no longer an option. "Oh, fuck." Here come the waterworks.

It's brutal, the combination of watching him falling apart and staying still herself, not quite able to make herself go to him yet, knowing how absolutely and utterly selfish she is for it. For one wild moment, Meredith thinks he's never really known her at all. He has this absurd idea she's a good person and she can't see it at all. Her expression contorts with something like horror, because she knows now she has to listen or else run, and for a moment, she honestly considers running. He's always been wrong about her.

Then she's moving across the room to pull him to her, though she can't quite look at him now she's finally managed to stop. Even without looking at him, it feels like he's finally gone and ripped her heart out. He gets to grieve, he gets to miss the woman he loves, she's always known that, but she can barely breathe, being the one to comfort him through it.

Sean clutches at her, desperate, though it's less about neediness and more about physically requiring an anchor just to keep himself upright as he proceeds to lose it, to lose himself to his grief in a way he never really has before. "I miss her so much," he gasps in between sobs, and while he tells himself that Meredith doesn't want to hear it, that he'll only be hurting her, he can't stop. The dam's burst and he's just not strong enough on his own. He can't even tell if he's coherent, anyway. "Sometimes it, it, it jus' hits me that she's gone, nae jus' waitin' somewhere fer me but gone an' I can't... it's jus' wrong. An' it's like if I ignore it, ignore her, I get better, I keep movin' but she was everythin' t'me an' now she's gone, she's nothin', an' I can't... I can't... oh God, Meredith."

She can't say anything to that, holding onto him because she can't just let him fall and because she's not sure she remembers how to move. She wants so much not to listen, but she can't stop, can't hear anything else, his words playing back in her head already. Sucking in a sudden, sharp breath, she closes her eyes and grips him tighter, trying to keep back the tears, though a few spill over regardless. Dead or not, Maeve isn't nothing; she's still part of him, still enough to wreck him, still more than Meredith could be. She's barely been breathing, her hold on him stiff, and for the first time in a long time, she wishes she were dead, too.

"I jus' miss her," Sean continues, quieter, and while the tears don't feel like they're going to be stopping anytime soon, he's a little calmer now. Calm enough for the enormity of getting that off his chest to hit him, calm enough to start praying that the weight of his past hasn't done too much damage to his present. Their future. "I'm sorry."

"No, don't," Meredith says when she can get her throat to cooperate, though she can't mask the way her voice has gone thick. "You're, you're supposed to miss her. Of — of course you do." He shouldn't have to apologize for that. Living with it now, though, knowing so viscerally the things she's always subconsciously feared, seems almost as impossible as surviving without him. The idea that she might have to do either just makes it that much harder to keep from crying in earnest and she buries her face against his shoulder, trying not to give herself away.

Sean just continues to hold her close, one hand sweeping up into her hair as he tries to resist the childlike impulse to dry his eyes on her shirt. "I'll move the bike," he says after a moment, focusing only on continuing to breathe and not worrying about keeping his voice steady. "Take it out t'me old place, maybe, work on it there."

Now it's everything setting her off, apparently, because even that hurts and there's no reason whatsoever why it should except that he shouldn't have to, but she needs it. Meredith just nods, and though she thinks she should tell him to just take everything, she can't. She can't lose him, can't be in the same place and not be with him, though god, her heart hurts, tight and heavy. "Thank you," she manages, lifting her head a little, breath catching. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

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