Title: Happily Ever After
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Meredith, Joe, Callie
Word Count: 860 
Summary: "Losing My Religion" Spoilers. Meredith gets drunk, and Joe puts two and two together. 
Author's Note: This is my first GA fanfic, so please don't be too mean? Oh, and I know this is short, but it's kind of like the "teaser" for the story. Other than that, I hope you enjoy - oh, and feedback? I love it. 

           When you’re a kid, it seems like nothing will ever go wrong. Sure, things go wrong all the time, but you never doubt that everything will work out in the end. Of course, when you’re a kid, the things that go wrong? They aren’t all that bad. It’s mostly things like falling off a bike and skinning your knee. So all of the scraped knees and tears don’t matter, because you know that Mom or Dad is going to put a nice Band-Aid on your knee and kiss it better, and, eventually, you will be riding around the block on the brand new bicycle you got for your birthday. 
            When you’re an adult, things aren’t nearly that simple. Adults just don’t have that kind of faith in life. Surgeons, especially, are notoriously cynical, and with good reason. Every day we spend in the OR is one more chance to lose faith. The good people don’t always live, and even if they do, sometimes they aren’t happy, and their lives are almost never perfect. Of course, that’s assuming they are actually “good”. You’d be surprised at the skeletons in people’s closets. Even the nicest person has something to hide.

            So, really, it’s no surprise surgeons don’t believe in “happily ever after”. Why should we?

Meredith stared at the empty glasses lined up in front of her. One, two, three, four, five, seven, nine. No, wait, that’s not right. One, three, nine, seven, five, four…That’s not right either.

            “Joe, I think I’m drunk,” she said seriously.

            The bartender looked up, stifling a grin. If there was one thing to be said for Meredith Grey, at least she was a funny drunk. She certainly looked like one right now. Perched on the edge of her barstool, almost about to fall off, with a glazed look in her eyes and a confused expression on her face, she definitely didn’t look like a surgeon. Well, surgical intern, anyway.

            “Do you want me to call you a cab?” he asked.

            “No-ooo.” How did she manage to turn a two-letter word into one with four syllables? “I want you to tell me what comes after seven.”      

            Joe rolled his eyes and reached for the phone. It was definitely time for her to get home.

            “Eight,” he answered.

            “Eight,” she repeated, sounding mystified. “Eight. Why didn’t I think of that? I’m a surg- surgi- intern, I should know this stuff, right?”

            “Absolutely,” Joe agreed, dialing the number of the local taxi company. With customers like his, it was no wonder he knew the number by heart.

            “So why don’t I know this stuff? I mean, I do know, so why do I keep forgetting? It’s not fair! Every time he looks at me I forget everything. I’m supposed to be smart. I can’t keep forgetting this.”

            Joe stopped dialing. He turned back to Meredith, who was now crying. This was new. In all the times he’d seen her (and with her fondness for tequila, that was pretty often), she’d never once broken down like this. Meredith Grey did not do depression. Not with her alcohol, anyway. If anything, getting drunk pulled her out of depression. Yet here she was, crying into an empty shot glass. What really got him, though, was that he didn’t have a clue about why she was crying. He was sure one of the nurses would have let him in on any new Meredith/McDreamy gossip. Maybe it was the vet, then?

            “Meredith, did you and Finn break up?” he asked gently.

            She looked up, still crying.

            “No.” Then she started crying even harder.

            “Do you want to talk about whatever it is?”

            “You already know.”

            Now he was confused. What did he already know?

            “Did something happen with Derek.”

            Uh oh. If he’d thought she was crying before, now it was like her eyes had turned into Niagara freaking Falls.

            “No! Eight. I can’t remember what comes after eight!”

            “Um, nine,” he told her.

            She dissolved into a new wave of tears, and that was all he got from her until Callie arrived. Callie took one look at Meredith and seemed to know exactly what the problem was. She wrapped a strong arm around the intern’s waist and set her on her feet.

            “I’ll get her home, Joe,” she said.

            “George and Cristina are on call, then?” he asked.

            “Yeah.”

            Neither one of them mentioned the other intern who had been known to pick Meredith up after a rough night. Izzie Stevens had issues of her own to work out after what happened at the prom.

            As he watched Callie practically carry Meredith out the door, he remembered something else that had happened at the prom. Or, more specifically, after the prom.

            “Yeah, and I didn’t even get to the part about finding two people having sex in an exam room.”

            Had he been right? Did Meredith and Derek have sex during the prom? Sure, none of the nurses had mentioned anything, and that was definitely the sort of thing they would mention, but…

            Shaking his head, Joe went back to clearing off the bar. There was never a dull moment at Seattle Grace.