It isn’t raining when Mark first kisses her – on the cheek right outside Joe’s, when they realize that the knife will never fall on the side of the dirty mistresses. His warm hands are on her cheek and her shoulder, and his lips just graze the other one, hot and chaste, with no promise of anything more.

“Thanks for keeping me company, Meredith.” Later, Meredith will tell anyone who asks that that is where it ended, that Mark walked slowly to his car without looking back, and drove off. She will say that she stood there for a few seconds, and then went to her car, and went home. She will say this and it will be a lie.

Mark walks away, this part is true, but he does look back. In fact, he turns back, his eyes full of something deeper and sadder than sheer, hopeless longing. She steps towards him, aching to do something to stop that look in his eyes, to fill that gaping hole in his heart. He doesn’t reach out for her, though, like she expected that he would. He stands, simply, his hands in his pockets.

“It rains a lot here.” Meredith nods soundlessly, tilting her head from one side to the other like a confused pigeon. She has no words to say so she does not say them, she watches him and waits.

“The more I get wet, the more I think it’s appropriate for all you people. You – all of you, in the hospital, you’re rainy people. You're cold and numb and you don’t think, you just do what you’re supposed to do and you don’t care what gets in the way.” And now, Meredith knows for sure that his heart was broken far more severely than her own, it was a break that snapped throughout his whole body, through his entire existence.

“What?” she asks, pushing herself back up against the outside brick wall of the bar, her hands flat up against the cool stone. She’s feeling dizzy and warm, but not like she usually does after just two glasses of whisky – usually she’s just fine; it’s the third cup that gets her.

“It just fits.” He licks his lips, just once, and takes his hands out of his pocket. She half-stumbles forward, but not because she’s drunk, because she isn’t, or at least, she shouldn’t be. He holds out his arms slightly and she slides into them. She strains her whole body upwards until their mouths are aligned, and then they kiss, for the second time.

He tastes like scotch, and it sends this breezy feeling right to the pit of her stomach. He tightens his arms around her, just a little, and she feels so cozy, like she could curl up and sleep in his arms. His tongue is wrapped around hers and the tastes of whisky and scotch collide, bitter and wrong, but she doesn’t stop. And then she figures, just for a second, that he’s right, she’s a rainy person, she likes to be sad and she likes to inflict pain on anyone, and she doesn’t care if something is right or wrong.

When the kiss ends, and Mark lets her go, gently, Meredith feels as cold as she ever has been. A quick, shuddering chill makes its way down her spine.

They stare at each other, only inches apart, but so far away, compared to how they once were. Meredith shivers again, and then the soft pitter-patter of rain starts up all around them at once. Every raindrop soaks through her flimsy red sweater and she gets colder, and colder, but she doesn’t reach out for Mark again, she has to say something.

“Don’t blame the rain, Mark. We were all fucked up before we moved to Seattle.” He smiles, just barely, and a little falsely, but he holds her again and it’s like she was never cold. They kiss, for a third time, a crushing of mouth against mouth, tooth against tooth, tongue against tongue. Meredith knows this kind of kiss – it’s the kiss that means, ‘let’s go have sex’.

She leans back, only her head, her body still pressed up against Mark’s.

“I don’t want to be a rainy woman anymore, Mark.” Then, came their fourth, and final kiss, carefully perfect, but only for a second, and then they peel themselves from each other, and walk separately to their cars.

Later that night, Meredith will sleep with George, and the next morning she will look at the rain and think of Mark, already on a plane back to New York City, where it doesn’t rain half as much.