Author's Notes: Well, this is it! The last part! Thank you all for taking this journey with me. I hope you enjoyed it :) I plan on taking a small break to cool the creative jets, but I already have at least one more story idea in the works :)

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"I can't believe I won't live here anymore in just two more weeks," Meredith said as Derek pushed open the door. The keys jingled in his hand as he shifted them back into his coat pocket.

Getting home hadn't been as much of an ordeal as he'd thought it would be. He'd visited the showers before changing back into his street clothes. Taking a cold dunk under the high-pressure showerhead had helped immensely, and, after letting the icy, gelid water pelt him for several minutes, he'd felt anything but lustful. He'd climbed out, shivery and twitching, teeth chattering as he'd toweled off. Maybe it had been overkill. But at least he'd gotten some coherency back. Enough to remember how to drive, walk, and speak properly. Three important elements necessary for the trip home. Meredith, merciful for once, hadn't even teased him in the car.

He still ached from the long surgery, from the residual sexual tension, from the chill that now slipped deep into the marrow of his bones, and just behind all that was a thin layer of exhaustion, not pounding, not crushing, but it was certainly there, certainly looming. Despite all that, he felt damned good, he decided as he walked into the cozy, dimly lit house after Meredith.

"You're not having second thoughts?" he asked, a spear of doubt slamming into him that he'd somehow managed to pressure her into something she wasn't ready for yet. He quickly swept it away. She'd seemed happy about getting a place with him.

Apartment hunting had, dare he say it, actually been fun. They'd wandered from room to room of every place, discussing what they saw themselves doing there, or how they pictured the furniture would look. She'd been so adorable, posing for him in various locations to give him a mockup of what it might look like to come home and find her there.

They'd finally settled on a really nice two-bedroom apartment about a mile from the hospital. It had a balcony that you could sit and watch the Sound from, hardwood floors, a spacious kitchen, not that either of them really cooked, a full-sized bathtub, and all sorts of other features that had made them fall in love with it in about the space of four seconds. Meredith had glowed at him as she stood in front of the sliding glass doors that opened out onto the balcony and said, "I think I want this one." He'd grinned, and within forty minutes, they had been taking home the lease application to mull over. The mulling had barely lasted the drive home. Now, their move in date was set, and everything was... Well, it was perfect.

He helped her with her coat.

She frowned as she spun around, letting him pull her coat sleeves off without too much trouble. She looked at him with curious suspicion. "No, of course I'm not having second thoughts. Why, are you?"

"Not a single one," he replied. He took her coat and his own and hung them up in the hall closet.

She followed him closely, close enough that when he closed the closet door and turned to face her, she was right there, wrapping her arms around him. He sighed at the warmth.
"It's just..." she muttered into his chest. "I have lots of memories in this house. It's weird, knowing we're moving into a blank slate."

"Would it help if you... said goodbye?" he asked.

"Derek, it's a house."

He shrugged. "So? I've said goodbye to stranger things. Come here." He grasped her hand with a smile.

"What are you doing, Derek?" she asked, a curious grin spreading across her lips.

"Helping you say goodbye, making you pay... Take your pick," he said, giving her what he hoped looked like a nonchalant shrug, though just the mere thought of her paying, and paying, and paying made him start to race with sudden, twitching energy. And he would make her pay. He had long, definitive plans about the payment, and Meredith had just given him a nice theme to work with. He could do themes.

She followed him as he turned and walked into the dark living room, a questioning gaze sprawled across her face, until he walked up to the mantle and posed, working from his memories of that first morning. "Dusty, but nice," he commented.

"This was technically where we met," she whispered, following his train of thought.

"I know," he replied. "Toilet brush on your mantle notwithstanding, I thought you made a great impression..."

Her mouth fell open. "What? I did not have a toilet brush on my mantle!"

He laughed. "You did. And a painting. And some other random stuff. Suffice it to say, you had me intrigued. Just what did you do with all of that, anyway? Did I miss the Grey family yard sale?"

"I refuse to believe I had a toilet brush on my mantle," she said with a sniff. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared petulantly at him.

He smirked at her and strode over to the couch. He sat down and with a relaxed, sprawling motion, he stretched his arms over the back along the upholstery, sighing, watching her as she stared at the mantle with a squinting, perplexed look that said, despite her refusal, she was trying to remember. Her eyes slipped shut, and she sighed as she relived some memory, some distant thought.

"Oh, God," she said after a handful of moments, her distant gaze morphing into one of unadulterated horror as she turned back to face him. "I did have a toilet brush on my mantle. Why didn't you run screaming?"

"I didn't notice it until the morning after. And, like I said, you were intriguing. You remember that first night? When we came here?"

She smiled. "Derek, I hate to bust up your manly ego, but I was kind of drunk," she said as she plopped down onto the couch next to him. "I remember you were cute, and I really wanted some sex like the then-slut I was. That's honestly about it."

"Wow," Derek said with a grin. "Well, at least we finally know who took advantage. I remember all of it. And you're not a slut."

"Hey, you get points for being emotionally distraught! And I said I was a then-slut. I'm not a now-slut. You've ruined me as far as now-sluttery," Meredith said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Now-sluttery?"

"I was improvising," she said with a shrug.

"Remind me not to challenge you at scrabble."

She leaned into him and licked her lips. "Strip scrabble might be fun..."

"As long as you don't count your earrings," he countered. "I'd be tempted to limit words to a medical dictionary, too. We'd be on even footing. None of this now-sluttery stuff."

She laughed, her soft breath ruffling against his skin as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him along the jaw line. "I don't think there was this much banter the first time around," she said into his neck. "I would remember banter like this."

"You told me this couldn't be anything. That this was one night," he said. "And I, being emotionally distraught, apparently, said okay." He pulled her up against him, until her thigh mashed into him, and her torso pressed against his own. She watched him, silent, her gray eyes clouding under a haze of distant thoughts. She blinked, long and slow, and she inhaled a sharp breath.

"I remember, now," she said. Her eyelids slipped open, and she stared at him in the darkness. Her pupils glittered. "Then what?"

For a moment, he simply stared at her. He inhaled her scent. Lavender, cinnamon, warmth. It climbed into the back of his throat and left him panting for her. He wrapped his arms around her neck, plunging at her with a sudden intensity. The buildup of lust that he'd thought the shower had washed away came roaring back, burbling up from a deep, deep well in his brain. He kissed her, pressed his lips against hers and clasped his hands around her arms. She arched against him, responding instantly.

The sound of their breathing formed a slow but relentless rhythm. She dipped back, and he ran his hands up underneath her shirt, sliding his palms along the silky warmth of her skin. He slipped his fingers beneath the underwires of her bra and pushed up, until the entire garment popped up over her curves and settled higher on her chest. He cupped her, began to work her into an aroused mess as he undulated, grinding his groin up against her, until the ache became a steady pounding, and he felt like his pants were going to strangle him to death.

She panted against him, loosing little, warbling moans every time he shifted the weight of his tortured lower body against her. She wrapped her legs back behind him, holding him there as she stared into his eyes. "Is this how we did it before?" she gasped.

"Yes," he said. He kissed her again, down in the warm crook of her neck, just over the bump of her clavicle. She hitched in his grasp and inhaled sharply. He pulled up on her shirt, and she curled into him, lifting her back up off the couch, letting him yank it over her head in one swift motion. When he tossed it away, it caught the air and fluttered to the floor. He unclasped her bra next and tore it from her.

His own shirt was the next thing to go. She brushed against him with her tiny, ineffectual fists, only to splay her palms against his stomach, hesitating for a moment. After a long pause, he leaned into her, took a tent of skin from her shoulder between his teeth, sucked, licked. She started grappling with the buttons of his shirt while he lost himself in the taste of her. A hollow popping noise announced each one of her successes. As the last one freed his neck from the grip of his collar, she swept her hands over his shoulders, taking his shirt with it. He flexed and moved, working off the sleeves as she pulled on them. They caught on his wrists, snagged up against his watch. He growled and ripped and tore at them until the offending clothing was gone.

She lay back against the pillow of the couch and bit her lip, staring up at him, half-naked, trusting. "You're beautiful," he said, leaning down on top of her, plundering her mouth again. She tasted of mint and slick heat. The scent of lavender pulsed back through his flaring nostrils. He brushed his nose against her neck, along the underside of her chin, the fine hairs that ran along her skin tickling against him as he breathed her in. Her flowery scent swirled around him, drowning him in a muzzy haze of warmth.

"You're beautiful," he said again, pulling back. He swept her mussed hair away from her face. Sweat dotted her cheeks. She stared at him with a relaxed, sensual smile.

Desire laid waste to his senses when she started to fumble with the buttons of his jeans. She popped the first one open and slipped her fingers underneath, not even attempting the next one yet. Her nails brushed the front of his boxers in a fleeting, teasing motion. "You're beautiful," he whispered, groaned, moaned, "and you're killing me."

"I thought I was the one who was supposed to be paying?" she chuckled as she started with the second button, slowly, painfully, until he was making embarrassing mewling noises at her, but he couldn't stop himself. He felt her working at it, felt her fingers slipping behind the button, only the thin layer of his boxers between him and rapture. He reached to help her, reached because it hurt, hurt to not be released from the confines, released and free to bury himself inside her, and he nearly couldn't stand it anymore, but she grabbed his wrists and pushed him back with a sultry laugh. She began to undo the third button in the slowest, most torturous, most exquisite bit of foreplay he'd ever had to endure. "We'll pay together," she whispered, letting loose her own frustrated sigh when he slammed into her again.

By button number five, he was nearly nonsensical. "Meredith," he moaned when she peeled his jeans down his hips and pushed his boxers down, down, down. He kicked them violently to the floor when they pooled around his ankles. And then the torture began all over again when he realized they hadn't yet attacked the problem of Meredith's pants. He ground into her, frustrated by momentary oversight, pained by the sharp feeling of her khakis against his bare skin. He clawed blindly at her zipper and found himself yanking her slacks down her legs within moments. He ran his thumb up under the small front piece of her panties, put pressure down into the damp warmth. She rolled into the touch with a moaning sigh, lifting up off the couch. Grabbing the small line of lace that ran up over her hip and back behind her, he yanked them down, and she resettled, all in one quick motion.

Her tiny hands brushed against the juncture of his legs and his abdomen on each side, and the warmth of her palms soaked his skin. He sighed as he pushed up against her, sandwiching her hands between their bodies. Her soft skin greeted him this time as he came down on her. Closing his eyes at the sensation of dripping warmth between her legs, he rocked back and forth, back and forth, relishing the feel of her. She parted for him, and then he slipped inside her.

Instant relief.

One moment there had been agony, agony at not yet being home, and the next moment, the pain gave way to pleasure, like morphine sliding into the veins of someone mortally wounded. She clenched around him, and he held there, poised over her on the edge of... something, savoring the feeling of her wrapped around him, the feeling of her heat seeping into him. He let loose a choking moan. His vision flared, and for a brief moment, he found himself completely overwhelmed.

Home. Home, he was home.

"I remember this, too," she said, breathing, smiling.

"Well, I would hope so," he replied, breathless, barely able to grab onto even that simple thought. Home. The word rang inside his head like the peal of bells. Home, home, home. He twisted a little, moving inside her, sending her into her own, shivery, nonsensical pile of limbs and lust.

He leaned in and kissed her, then shifted until he was crouching on his knees, and she rested interlocked with him, legs wrapped around his waist, still on her back. She sat up with a minor struggle, and he rose into the motion, bucking a little. She laughed as they came back down onto the couch, bouncing as the cushions resettled. She leaned into him, a look of pleasure twisting across her face as she rocked against him. Her thin fingers ran along the skin of his neck, fleeting. They sat that way, hugging, kissing, petting, and he rocked them with little thrusts, just enough to keep them both hanging on the edge of mindless desire, until he couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't stand not moving in full pistoning motions, couldn't stand the feel of her legs squeezing around his waist as she moaned little, frantic moans, couldn't stand the fact that her wet, slick heat wasn't sliding up and down along him more than the barest inch, couldn't stand the inner drive that was telling him to stop trying to prolong things, that was begging him to kick up into a higher gear. He pushed her back onto the couch, flattened her out again, stretched her arms out behind her over the arm of the couch, and began to pound into her, his shallow gasps racking him with quiet, struggling twitches.

"Derek," she pleaded. Her fingers curled against his chest.

She was hot and tight. Hot, tight, all around him, and utterly his. For a torrent of moments, he was a slave to it, to the blinding need to have her, to right then claim her as his and his alone. But then, as the initial panic to move and push subsided, he slowed his frenzy to a crawl, languishing in the feeling of her slip, slip, sliding up and down the length of him. He breathed against her skin, licking up the salty taste of her.

"What do you need?" he asked as he ran his hand, squeezing, up the supple underside of her thigh. She twitched into him, her knee rising up to his armpit, thigh brushing up along his ribcage.

Her hands splayed through his hair, thin fingers running through the sweaty tangles like the searching curl of a breeze. "You," she whispered.

He shook with the need to have her right then. "I want you," he said, pushing up against her and receding like the swell and fall of a wave. He slipped down, almost escaping her, only to thrust up to the hilt again in slow, deliberate motions, the rise and withdrawal of a tide to her crescent moon.

"You have me," she replied, eyes glassy.

Her eyes rolled back slightly, she rose up against him in a spasm, every muscle clenched, and her lips peeled back from her teeth in a grimace that looked almost painful. "Derek," she said. It was a quiet, tiny, pleading whisper, caught in the grip of a whining, pleasured moan. Her nails bit into his back as she raked her arms down his skin.

Her frenzied clenching drove him into his own release, and he let go of himself just as she found herself again. He groaned as the rolling, slow burn swept through his lower torso and he twitched. "Mere," he gasped, briefly losing his balance over her, collapsing on her. He lost track of everything. For just a moment, it was all gone except the supernova behind his eyelids. His lips parted as he struggled for air. And then it faded, leaving him sated. Distant in the background, just behind the thrum of his pleasure, exhaustion crept in and stretched out with him like a lover.

He and Meredith lay there breathing for a moment, subdued and quiet in the darkness. Meredith wrapped her arms over his back, ran her hands up and down along his damp skin. Her breaths hit the side of his neck, and she stopped her roving search of his spine to run her fingers through his hair. He propped himself up again after he recovered and stared at her, his face hovering less than a centimeter over her own. He slipped his palm back against her forehead, running it backward into the long tangles of her hair. He kissed her, slow, breathing her in before pulling back to grin stupidly at her.

"I remember," Meredith whispered in his ear. "We did this again."

"And again, and again, and again. How else do you think I ended up on the floor?" he said with a dry laugh before leaning down to kiss her again. Despite the creep of tiredness, he felt the arousal building again as he lay against her, skin on skin, heat to heat.

She sighed. "We never did it in here again. Why not?"

He shrugged. "We could make up for it now. I actually checked before we left... Izzie has a long shift. She won't be back until after two, assuming she comes back at all tonight."

Meredith frowned. "No. I want to say goodbye to other rooms. Other... furniture."

He chuckled. "Well, where to next?"

"Where else have we done this?"

"Where else haven't we?" he asked, grinning at her. He started to rub and slide against her, groaning at the friction of her thighs against him.

"Good point," she said. "Do you think we can get to them all tonight?"

"I'm perfectly willing to try," he said. He bent down and kissed her again.

She smiled at him, but it bled away after a few seconds. "Derek..."

"Yeah?" he asked. Her face had grown so suddenly serious that he forced himself to still, despite the twitching, pulsing desire in his limbs to start moving again.

She ran her hands down over his lower back and gripped his ass, half-dragging, half-guiding him down into the juncture of her thighs, until he was solidly resting in the tip of the vee. She gripped him between her thighs, flexing around him. He moaned and started to shake when she wouldn't let him move again. She held him firmly against her, and he started to pant with the need to dip into her again and start thrusting.

"I'm looking forward to making new memories with you," she whispered, stroking his back as he quivered.

He kissed her, peeling her hair back from her face and neck as he ran his hands through it. It was so soft. "Me, too," he said.

"I mean I'm really looking forward to it. I mean..."

"I know what you mean, Meredith," he replied, shuddering as she shifted, just enough to torture him out of his precarious equilibrium. His mouth fell open and he breathed like he was gagging. "Mere, I have to..." he whispered, frantic, until his voice left him entirely. He said please, he did, but it came out as a tormented moan.

She took mercy on him, releasing him to pound into her again. Without any further encouragement, he slipped up inside her to the hilt, shaking as the desire tore his mind to shreds. "You have no idea what you do to me," he said, half growling as he drove into her again and again and again.

She laughed, but it fell into a deep, whining, long moan after three stuttering syllables. "I think I do," she said between frantic pants. After that, the conversation degenerated. He slammed into her, again, again, again, until she was screaming, pelting his name at him, "Derek, Derek, Derek," right along in time with him. He kissed her, swallowing the words. They rattled down his throat like the pulse of a heartbeat. Derek. Derek. Derek. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Her hands clawed his back.

The wave struck him not too long after. He groaned and released, shaking as his vision melted into a tunnel, and all he saw was her, her sparkling, glittering eyes in the darkness, her pale, delicate, slightly freckled skin. She was still caught in a moaning frenzy at the pinnacle, so he reached down into the slick heat between them and helped her along with his fingers, until she was shaking and screaming and collapsing, too. They lay against the couch, breathing. The dull exhaustion returned, sinking into him further, below the skin this time instead of clinging to his pores. It took him longer this time to recover. It took her longer, too.

"We didn't make it to the next spot," she whispered finally, her fingers twisting in his hair.

He didn't bring his head up from her neck. "Um, nope," he replied. "Stop teasing me and we might this time around, though."

"I wasn't teasing!"

"You practically held me prisoner!"

"I still wasn't teasing," she replied with a grin.

He heaved a sigh into her neck, still unable to pull himself off her. He just needed a few more minutes. Just a few. "I just hope I can make it through the rest of this. If we do a two-stop tour at every place we've had sex at in this house, I think I might be dead by morning, my awesome virility notwithstanding."

"But what a way to go," she said with a laugh.

"So true," he muttered.

They lay in silence, breathing as she rubbed his skin in slow, soothing motions. He felt his eyelids droop. The warmth of her body was like his own private burner, staving off the chill of the evaporating sweat. He sighed and just let himself soak her in.

"Derek?" Meredith whispered after a long time. She barely broke through the exhausted haze.

"Mmm?" he mumbled.

"I know you've been better lately... but... I just want to make sure you know how much I--"

Her words brought him out of his stupor. He squeezed her arm and kissed her, cutting her off. "I know, Meredith," he whispered, pulling back to stare at her as she recovered with a series of gasping swallows. "I was stupid not to have known it sooner."

"It wasn't stupid, Derek," she said. "I really... Just... You're okay? Really?"

"Mere, really," he replied, pumping as much force into his voice as he could manage despite the warm fuzz of tiredness, despite the fact that he was starting to ache with desire again, just from resting so close to her. "I'm fine. Yes, it still scares the hell out of me, what happened, but it's not the same anymore. It's not... ruling my life. And that's what's important."

She smiled. "So, the now is okay?"

"I don't know, I think the now is in fantastic shape, don't you? The future's looking pretty spiffy, too."

She grinned. "You're such a cheese."

"You like it, though."

"I do."

"Shall we say goodbye to the bathtub now?" he asked. A bath would be really, really nice right about then... He groaned as he forced himself to his feet. Aches and twinges piled into his brain as his nerves registered that no, he was not lying down comfortably on top of Meredith anymore, yes, he was telling his limbs to move, and no, things were not allowed to just collapse on him. The air was chilly, and he finally started to feel it. A shiver racked his frame.

Meredith did much of the same wincing and awkward stretching as she stood. She smiled as she leaned into him, warming him again with her skin. She wrapped her arms around his waist and cupped his ass with her hands. "I was thinking the shower first," she said. "Get the standing stuff done while we still can."

"Oh?" he replied with a smirk. The shower could work. He pictured her, slick with warm water, wet, the spray curling down over her shoulders in a roar, moaning as he took her again and again.

"You can do your bendy thing," she said, snapping him from his daydream.

He blinked. "My bendy thing."

"You know," she prodded, making a weird sort of gyrating motion with her hips. "The thing. With the bending."

"Oh, that thing," Derek replied as he finally remembered. "You really like that, don't you?"

"God, yes," she hissed, her eyes dripping shut as a lascivious smile curled across her face. He liked that just the memory of it made her quiver. He liked it a lot.

They started walking toward the stairs, still interlocked in an embrace. He kissed her as he backed her toward the staircase. He turned her around when they met the first step so that she could see where she was going.

"Wanna know a secret?" he asked as she took the first step, wobbly, rigidly, exactly like he felt. His lower back twinged. His calves and quads complained bitterly. His arms were starting to feel like a gelatin mixture. Steps? Steps sucked, all of his muscle groups thought at once. Steps sucked, and they still had quite a few more rounds to go. The shower, the tub, the bed, the foyer, the washing machine, and the kitchen table at the very least. His whole body moaned at the thought of all the energy that would take. But then he watched as she took the next step, watched her naked body flexing and moving just inches in front of him, and it didn't seem so bad anymore. He felt his groin begin to twitch again, and he sighed against the sudden race of heat as it crawled down his spine.

"What's the secret?" she asked as she took another step.

He blinked, catching his train of thought before it wandered off again into lusty daydreams. He thumped up to the step just behind her and shot is arms out. She gasped in surprise at the sudden movement, but she didn't have much more than a moment to react. He caught her around the waist and ground into her back, pushing himself between her thighs. He felt himself start to stiffen up almost instantly. He bent over her, shaking as he gripped her waist and pulled her against him in a ratcheting, harsh, inching movement that made her moan and twist against him.

"You don't have to be in the shower to do the bendy thing," he said, his voice low and growling and barely sounding like his own.

"Derek!" she gasped, breathless as he curled over her and held her there, his chest flat against her back. He shook and strained, pushing up underneath her with his newfound arousal. She clawed at one of the steps above her to keep her balance, panting, moaning, mewling.

"See?" he whispered.

They said a long, guttural goodbye to the stairs.

FIN