missingthekeep | [for Meredith]

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[for Meredith]

It's not often that Sean comes home in this state anymore, with that old swagger in his step that comes from too much focus spent keeping it steady, but really, that's what makes the times when he does go all out all the more worth it. That's what he tells himself, anyway. The guilt that he feels when he drinks is a rather unwelcome recent addition, however, fading echoes of a fight with Meredith that he barely remembers always ready to creep up on him as soon as he lets his guard down, and there's only so much rationalizing he can do after he's had a few. Which leads to more drinking, which leads to nights like tonight. It doesn't seem fair, somehow, when he's finally getting over the depression that had plagued him for months, to be brought low by something so utterly ridiculous, but at least it tends to fade away pretty reliably somewhere during the short walk home. These are good days he's living in, good times, and these nights are the exception as opposed to the rule now. Which makes them all the more worth it.

He pauses in the yard to ruffle Doc's fur when he gets home and the damn mutt nearly gets him rolling around on the ground with him by the time Sean drags himself through the front door. "Hey you," he drawls fondly when he spots Meredith and heads over to a chair, draping his jacket over the back of it before taking a seat with a heavy sigh. "We should have a couch. Why don't we have a couch?"

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"So I was just supposed to stand there and take you saying I don't love you," Meredith says, hand on her hip. It's a counter-intuitive argument, but where he knew he was out of line, she felt it was the only thing to do. "It wasn't that things were bad, it wasn't that I was upset, it was you said I don't love you."

Biting his lip hard, Sean doesn't answer until he's sitting back down again, anything to feel a little bit more secure, not quite so off-kilter. She has to know he didn't mean it, that he was just hurt and insulted and hungover and ranting, but then again... even if he's in a better position these days to understand why she did what she did, he certainly hadn't felt very loved at the time. Maybe he did mean it. Who can say? It doesn't matter now either way, not when he knows better.

"No, o' course nae," he says with a shake of his head, his gaze not leaving the floor. "There are other ways, though, I really thought that..." He trails off with a noise of disgust right before his voice has the chance to break, leaning over to rest his head on the table, not finishing the thought.

Meredith falters, caught between the urge to go to him and the instinct that keeps her hackles up. "We both made mistakes," she says. That much is abundantly clear. It's hardly news for either of them, and she won't deny the action was a rash one, but she doesn't see how she can be blamed for the impulse. "What do you want me to say, Sean?"

"I don't know," Sean sighs, his voice muffled as he brings his arms up around his head like a schoolboy trying to settle in for a nap in class. Would that life could be so simple. He almost asks her to just drop the matter again, at least for the night, but that's probably overestimating his skill at dealing with these things even when sober, so he doesn't bother. "All I know is that I cannae do this if'n I'm always worryin' 'bout puttin' so much as a toe out o' line, o' makin' one more mistake for fear that ye'll jus' have... had enough."

"I am here," Meredith says, shaking her head at him, dumbfounded. "Sean, we've both made mistakes. A lot of them. And I'm here. I'm not going anywhere." She refuses to accept that as what it sounds like to her, not now, not when they're angry and upset and he's been drinking. If he says he can't do this tomorrow, she'll deal with it then, but right now, she has to get around the hard, painful lump in her chest her heart's become.

"I know that," Sean says before he slowly lifts his head again, looking up at her with wide, shadowed eyes. "I thought I knew that. An' then ye took yer ring off. I spent days, Meredith, jus'... thinkin' I'd finally done it, said the wrong thing one too many times, screwed up so terribly that it could actually end us. An' I was wrong, thank God I was wrong, but now I cannae get it out o' me head that the real thing cannae be much further off'n that an' it terrifies me. My mistakes didnae consist o' breakin' things off, that's the difference."

"But I didn't," Meredith protests. "I didn't. We're still here, we're still together. I never said it was over. I — I took it off, yes. I took the ring off. It was a mistake, I already said that. But I was angry and stupid and you said I couldn't. You as good as said it didn't mean anything. And it does, it means too much to wear when you're talking like that." It was stupid pride, too, wanting to prove him wrong.

"But that's what makes it mean somethin' in the first place, that ye cannae do things like that, that ye dinnae jus' take it off, no matter how I'm talkin'." Why can't she see that? It had seemed like a pretty decisive move at the time, how was he not supposed to take away from it that she didn't want to marry him, no longer wanted to spend the rest of her life with him? It's hardly a requirement for it, but that's still what the stupid ring is supposed to mean. For a moment, it looks as if he's going to push himself back to his feet, but he seems to reconsider at the last moment, staying put for the time being. "At least once we get t' the real thing. Otherwise, what's the point?"

"I'm not going to," Meredith says, then recants, shaking her head. "Except for work, and that's — that's to keep from getting it dirty, that's different. I'm not going to take it off." That it clearly did the trick, no matter how unplanned, isn't something she intends to point out. "What are you trying to say, that you don't want to marry me anymore?"

"O' course nae," Sean says, and this time he does get back up, rising quickly and unsteadily to his feet as he shakes his head. "D'ye think I'd be so torn up o'er this if that were the case? Nae, I jus'... I need to know that ye won't. Nae again, an' ye ken that I'm nae talkin' 'bout when ye're at work or when ye're showerin' an' whatnot. Now, I- I'm nae sayin' that I'll give ye cause like that again, but God only knows I'm a screw-up, Meredith, an' all I've got ta offer ye is me best. I thought I was through wi' worryin' whether it'd be enough a long time ago, 'cause that's no feelin' t'build a marriage on. An' we've obviously got very different ideas 'bout what it meant when ye did it, but I need ye t'understand why it mattered. That's all."

Meredith presses her hands to her face, eyes closing, and takes a deep breath. "You expecting failure isn't anything to build it on either," she points out, hands falling to her sides. "Neither is you not trusting me. I'm not going to leave you. I'm not." She never liked the idea of rings to begin with. That she conceded this much has to be something in its own right, but she doesn't point that out. It's the wrong time, apparently. "I'm not going to do that again, but you can't — you can't say that about us, you can't say this isn't real and expect me to be okay with it."

"I would ne'er," Sean says, reaching out to grasp her arm. Haven't they already been through this? "I told ye, I know I crossed a line, I'm nae blamin' ye f'r bein' upset. I s'pose that's what made it so easy ta think that ye'd... I trust ye, I do, I wouldnae be here if I didnae, but surely ye've got t'understand how it really could have felt like ye were runnin'. An' it's nae about expectin' failure, I jus'... I need the room t'make mistakes. E'en if I never use any of't." Obviously, he isn't off to a very great start on that front.

"Yes," Meredith sighs, pressing her other hand to her head, "I get it. But I didn't leave. You did." She understands why, though, she can't blame him for that when she wanted to do the same thing, if more briefly. She pushes on past that. "And I have given you room for mistakes. But I make this one and it outweighs the last two and a half years?"

"Well it was a big one," Sean says, but the pettiness of the statement mostly stems from being sullen over having the fact that he left thrown in his face like that. Even after all this time, it's still what he's best at. "An' I wasnae runnin'. I needed time, I said as much. Ye were makin' a statement, ye cannae blame me f'r takin' it seriously. That's sorta the point."

Meredith sighs, head turning away, petulant. "I know," she says. "But does it really mean all the rest of it was meaningless?" She's been cruel before and irritable and demanding, but she's been patient, too, and understanding even when it made her feel her heart was ripping in two, waiting out so much trouble. That has to count for something still.

"I didnae say that," Sean emphatically denies, stepping in close to her, eager for whatever connection he can make until they fix this. "This has been everythin' t'me, ye know it has." And he knows that. It's such a small thing, so simple to overlook, the easy assurance that she gets it, gets him, and will love him to the ends of the Earth anyway, that he only realizes how gaping a hole it left now that it's back. It's a wonder that he's been able to smile at all, these past few weeks. He knows that he should feel guilty as all sin that there was room for him to doubt it at all, but mostly, he's just relieved.

"It was jus' a lot t' take in, is all, an' ye gave me a shock, an' I... I wondered f'r a time if the rest of't would always be enough. An' I was wrong to, I know that now." She wouldn't be fighting him so hard on this if there was even a chance of his losing her. "I jus'... needed ta work that out, apparently."

He'd better still remember it in the morning.

Meredith isn't so simply convinced, glancing sideways at him as he moves closer, reluctant to let herself be reassured. "So what, now it's okay?" she asks. "I've been here through everything. I was here when you got back, waiting. Every time. That didn't do it, but a few words do?" She wants to put this right, but last time when she thought it was all okay, it turns out she was mistaken. She's not letting things be easily patched up now, not if it means going through this again in a month.

"It's nae that simple," Sean says, and while he shakes his head, his gaze stays locked unerringly on Meredith with the single-mindedness that only these rare, brief moments of perfect clarity bring. "Sometimes ye jus'... need ta sound things out 'fore they click, no matter how obvious they should be. Ye really hurt me, but I knew I'd done wrong, too, an' I was so eager t'put it behind us an' then so glad when we had that I jus' let it sit, let it make room f'r doubt when I wasnae lookin'." This all comes out in a partially-slurred rush, and he pauses to catch his breath for a second, tries to figure out how to condense this a little. "'M sorry."

Meredith closes her eyes and sighs. "So am I," she says, tired. It doesn't help, the reminder he's still drunk. For all she knows, all her hopes of doing better will wind up meaning very little soon enough and he'll give up on the effort. For all she knows, what seems more resolved now will be undone again come morning. "I'm not going to leave. I'm not going to go anywhere. I just... I get worried. We've had so many problems. I don't want another one that I could have avoided or stopped and I didn't."

"Problems happen," Sean says as ducks his head slightly and reaches up to cup her cheek, switching gears in order to comfort her. Already he feels better, an enormous weight lifting off of him, but that won't last if he's only sacrificed her peace of mind to gain back some of his. "Mistakes happen. Ye cannae beat yerself up o'er what should've been, or what could've if'n ye'd only acted differently. Or rather, ye can, the Lord c'n vow that I've been there enae times t'know, but ye shouldnae. We'll pull through it all either way. E'en if I forgot as much this time around."

"That's not what I meant," Meredith says, glancing over at him, her cheek still against his hand. It feels wrong to take that measure of comfort when she means the same thing which set all this in motion to begin with, when he's lived up to his word to cut back. She can't just bite back the words, though, not when she's already as good as scolded him for doing the same these last weeks. "I just... I'm not asking you to stop. But you get why it threw me off when you got home, right? I don't want the, the occasional exception to turn into slipping back down to where you were."

Another time, another day, a slightly more stable state of mind, and Sean likely wouldn't have any problem holding back his instinctual reaction to that. It's just the same misplaced concern as it was the last time, after all, nothing new. But as it stands, he can't quite help the cloud that passes over his features, however brief, the obvious hurt at what he can still only perceive as an insult. If anything, though, it just makes him draw himself closer to her as he steels himself against it, lets it pass. She's just worried, is all, whether she has any real cause to be or not.

"Can ye trust me in this?" he asks after a moment to collect himself, quiet but serious. That she thinks so much less of him than she used to is one thing, it's warranted, no matter how painful, but he needs her to still have at least some small measure of faith in him. There's little point in trying at all, otherwise, even if he's finally convinced that she won't just walk out on him if things get bad again.

Meredith sighs, hands settling on his arms. "Can you talk to me?" she asks, then shakes her head. That isn't right, that isn't what she really means. They talk all the time, but the more she's thought about it, the more she feels the lack of real communication is what pushed her as much as anything her sister had to say. "Not now, we are — we're talking. I mean... If things are bad, will you tell me? Because I can trust you, but when I don't know what's going on, when you won't tell me things, I — I don't know what to trust. I worry. It's hard not to when I don't get much to go on."

"I'll tell ye," Sean says simply before reluctantly admitting, "I do tell ye, it jus'... takes longer'n it should sometimes. I'll work on't." The problem before, with the drinking, is that there was nothing to tell, she knew exactly what was wrong since she'd been through it all as well. He was the one who'd been in the dark as to just how much it had apparently been affecting her. "That goes both ways, though. No more sittin' on these things f'r either of us. Full disclosure, least where it concerns the other."

"Full disclosure," Meredith echoes, though she's plainly less than certain. It's not so much a matter of being honest with him as it is that she knows herself well enough to know she's not all that good at that. "That's going to take some work for us both."

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