Fic - The Battle's Almost Won (Mark/Lexie) 2/3

[abvj]

[ t w o ]

When she wakes, it is daylight outside and it takes Lexie a full moment to process the fact that she is not at her apartment and in the comfort of her own bed, but instead in the on call room with a familiar face looming over her.

"You told me to wake you at seven," Becca says. She's chewing on a breakfast burrito that makes Lexie's stomach turn and has two coffees in hand. She shoves one of them towards Lexie who continues to ignore her while she tries to rub the sleep out of her eyes. "It is now seven-fifteen. You yelled at me the first two times I tried to wake you."

Groaning, Lexie sits up, holding her weight on an arm that is still half-asleep as she moves some of the files she fell asleep reading off of her and onto a neat pile on the floor. When she finally takes the coffee Becca is still offering with an outstretched hand, she doesn’t wait before taking a large sip, humming in appreciation when she tastes the skim milk and amaretto. Becca knows her all too well and slides into a chair near the corner, pulling her feet underneath her as Lexie searches for her scattered belongings and slips her shoes back on.

"You are the only person I know that comes here, on their own volition, on their day off."

"Kessler does it all the time," Lexie replies absently, sliding files into her tote bag and clicking her cell phone back on. It beeps a few times, notifying her of a few unread text messages. She scrolls through them as Becca starts talking again, thumbs scrolling over the keys as she replies to the most pertinent ones. She ignores the three from Cute ER Resident.

"While your mentor is, in fact, the most brilliant man in plastics on the east coast, do you really want to compare yourself to him? His life is wreck besides, you know, being in the consideration for the Nobel Prize that one time and everything."

Lexie shrugs. "I had to make sure my residents didn't, you know, kill anyone in my absence."

Laughing, Becca says, "Good call. They're still a little green around the edges, aren't they?"

Cracking a smile, Lexie replies, "Just a little."

"So." Becca draws out the word in a singsong-like tone that tells Lexie this conversation is going nowhere good. She immediately steels herself, searching for her jacket and turning her back to her friend. "Jamie said you brought a boy to the bar last night." Becca takes a long sip of her coffee. "She also said that he was way too cute to be Cute ER Resident that you never bring around."

"That is because Cute ER Resident is good for one thing and one thing only. Also: Jamie has a big mouth."

Jamie and Becca are roommates, have been for years. Becca was Lexie's first real friend in Boston, Jamie her second, and Lexie introduced them when Jamie decided to leave her fiancé and follow the part of her original life plan that included Harvard Law and an eventual partnership at Robins, Rogers, and Williams. Jamie waits tables to help pay the bills and already has a job lined up for when she graduates in just a few months. They are her best friends, Becca and Jamie, but that doesn't mean Lexie is willing to share certain parts of her life that she would rather keep to herself. After Seattle, Lexie became much more private, less willing to allow the personal details of her life become the topic of water cooler gossip. It wasn't that hard of adjustment because the people of Mass Gen were much more interested in saving lives than knowing everything about everyone else's. Except Becca, apparently.

Slinging her bag over her shoulder and glancing at her watch, Lexie makes her way towards the door. Becca is quick to follow and Lexie is devising exit strategies because she has forty-five minutes to shower, change her clothes, and make it back in time for the eight thirty lecture.

"So." Becca draws out the word again and quickly sidesteps around Lexie so she is blocking the door. "Who was it?"

"No one," Lexie huffs with a roll of her eyes.

"Jamie said you two looked pretty cozy for it to be no one."

"Becca," Lexie sighs, annoyed. She reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose with the hand that wasn't holding the coffee she should have known came with strings attached.

"Lexie," Becca mocks.

"I'm seriously going to be late."

"I seriously don't care." Lexie gives her a look that simply says it is way too early for this and I am so not in the mood. Becca reads it, understands it, and waits almost a full minute before she steps to the side to let her through because she knows Lexie, knows her well enough to realize she isn’t going to break any time soon, so there is no point to pressing the issue any farther than necessary.

"Fine," she sighs. Lexie opens the door and strolls out into the hallway, mumbling hellos to all the familiar faces while simultaneously trying to escape before she can get pulled into a case or called for a second opinion. She sees Kessler in the distance, and ducks her head. "But don't think you're getting a free pass. You're not. This is just an advance five spaces type of get out of free jail card."

"I really hate your monopoly references."

"Yes, but you love me."

Lexie laughs softly as she nears the elevator.

By the time Lexie has finished showering, changing her clothes, and is properly caffeinated, the first presentation of the day has progressed well past opening remarks and straight into explaining the intricate details of some innovative procedure that is so complex it will never be translated into mainstream use. Naturally, there are no seats remaining because that is just her luck, really, and she is midway through an internal debate as to whether or not she should stay and stand for the next two hours or leave altogether, when her line of sight catches a figure waving to get her attention. It's Mark, of course, and Lexie's cheeks tint crimson as five different faces turn in her direction. Mark is seated right smack dab in the middle of the audience, and she is weighing her options once again - standing for two hours, leaving, or suffering through abject mortification as she crawls past twenty people just to reach the vacant seat next to him. Mark smiles at her though, and her own mouth tugging to return the gesture. The later wins out because he is looking at her that way, the enthusiasm evident in the curl of his mouth, and despite her best efforts, Lexie has never, ever been able to resist the Mark Sloan charm.

Making her way towards him as quietly as possible, Lexie murmurs so sorry and excuse me and winces when she steps on the toes of an older lady and nearly trips over another's purse. When she is finally seated next to Mark she sighs in relief, tries to ignore the death glare she's receiving from the man four seats down whose head got in the way of her purse.

"Here," Mark says, just low enough for her to hear as he reaches down under his chair, and presses a coffee cup into her hands. "Thought you might need this."

His fingers linger against hers briefly and their eyes lock, her mouth spreading into a slow smile that matches his. Lexie is the first to look away, mumbling her thanks as she busies herself with taking a long swallow. It's still warm and she's thankful, the immediately jolt of caffeine dong much to soothe her nerves, but it is the perfect mixture of skim milk and amaretto that catches her completely off guard.

The familiarity of it all makes her heart hurt something fierce. Lexie's fingers tighten around the coffee cup in an effort to anchor herself, to pull herself back into the present and away from the onslaught of memories that always seem to hit her like a storm at the most inconvenient times. Mark shifts in his seat, closer to her, and it is too easy having him here, sitting next to her, saving her a seat in a crowded room and remembering exactly how she takes her coffee. It is too easy, and she Lexie allows herself to get lost in the facade for just a moment. She shifts closer to him too, crosses her legs so they are angled towards his. Lexie tilts her head just a fraction of in inch so she can breathe in the scent of him - shampoo, cologne, the soft scent of his aftershave that is so simply masculine - and wishes for five years ago, the requiem of the uncomplicated. She wishes for the time they shared together when they were just two strangers fumbling towards something with no real idea yet that it could never last.

Mark, always an exert at saying the right thing at the wrong time, chooses that exact moment to lean in again, his voice soft in her ear as he says, "Dinner later?"

Lexie's soft okay escapes her mouth before she has a chance to stop herself.

(There are things she remembered more vividly than others: random moments filled with kisses and skin sliding against skin. The way his touch never failed to ignite something deep within her, setting her aflame from head to toe and all the places in-between. With time, the edges of the memories had started to fade, the picture turning hazy. The distance caused Lexie to forget the facts surrounding the circumstances because memories are faulty in nature, constantly being reinvented and remodeled, molded into what somebody wants to remember.

Despite time and distance between now and then, there was a single memory that stands out above the rest, the facts not having yet been distorted by time and the heavy weight of hindsight.

It was Seattle, early in the morning. It is Mark's hotel, not her tiny room in Meredith's attic because things were still new, the tow of them were still fumbling towards figuring out who they wanted to be to one another. It was after Addison's arrival and subsequent departure, around the time Derek starting to doubt himself and his abilities, suffering under the enormous weight of expectations. Addison’s arrival had caused a subtle shift between Lexie and Mark. Lexie had known the story, of course, had compartmentalized all the sordid details. But knowing and seeing were two different things and as she watched almost helplessly as the two of them dealt with the ghosts of their pasts, Lexie realized just how deep Mark's feelings for Addison ran, just how badly the other woman had broken him.

Mark distanced himself from Lexie for the duration of Addison's stay. The rational side of her brain understood that it was because of the case, because of the job, but the irrational side overanalyzed endlessly, mistaking distraction for indifference, looks and touches as romance instead of the friendly overtures they were. The whole situation left Lexie wanting for things they had both decided had no place in whatever this was - intimacy, security, titles. The jealously burned bitter on the tip of her tongue and Lexie wasn't quite sure what to do with it, how to digest and file away the overwhelming feeling of wanting more.

After Addison returned to California there was a pile-up on the interstate that leaves everyone elbow deep in carnage for the entire shift and then some because some guy decided to have too many during his lunch hour and slammed his pick-up into a school bus. It set of a chain reaction and the staff ended up losing more than they saved. Too many of them were children, and Lexie went home with Mark despite her better judgment. Despite the promise she made to herself about not indugling in such things before she had clear definitions for herself as to what she wanted and didn’t want from Mark.

Despite everything within her telling her not to, Lexie went home with Mark, allowed him to calm the mess inside her head with his hands and mouth. After there is pizza and beer - something that was quickly becoming a habit of theirs.

"You were very much in love with her, weren't you?" she asked and regretted it almost immediately, knew the question said too much about how she felt about him.

Mark paused, fingers tightening around the beer bottle between them. "Yeah," he breathed. "I did."

She picked at the crust of her pizza, avoided eye contact, and rubbed her fingers against the hem of his fading t-shirt, the one with the letters of Columbia worn and fading. They left grease stains in their wake.

"Are you sad that you aren't with her?"

Her question was met with silence, the stretch of time that he took to answer wearing her down, the sound pulsating in her ears. His lack of response provided her with answers she wasn't prepared for and her head had started to spin with visions of an ending she only then realized she absolutely did not want.

"No. Not really. Not anymore. I think... I realize now that it was all just to get me here, to now." He looked at her then, his smile unmistakable as he sipped his beer. "I like here."

Smiling back, she sighed quietly in relief. "I like here, too," she said quietly and Mark reached for her, his fingers encircling her wrist, tips of them smoothing over the soft skin where the bones collide.

There was something in the way he looked at her then - open, honest, raw - that moved her, caused something to flutter deep in her belly affectionately.

Over the years memories faded, but she still remembers that night, that very moment with acute clarity.

Some nights, when sleep evades her, she curls into herself and draws the pads of her fingertips over that very same spot, back and forth and imagines him there, with her, and allows it to provide a sort of comfort, a sort of security that helps her finally find sleep.)

When the waitress refers to Lexie as Mark's wife and both of them pause for the same stretch of time and regard each other carefully before rushing to explain, Lexie becomes acutely aware that this whole thing was probably the worst idea in the entire world. Which, okay, Lexie should have figured when she changed her outfit three times before realizing she was over thinking his meaning behind dinner. Because, obviously, what Lexie figured - hoped, maybe even wanted him to mean - couldn't possibly be what he actually meant. She talks to Meredith at least once a week. She has heard the tales. Mark definitely hasn't spent the past five years pining for her.

Like the night before, conversation is slow to start. They spend most of the appetizer awkwardly searching for common ground, feeling out which subjects were neutral territory and which ones were better left alone. They talk about Derek and Meredith for a little bit, about the baby they adopted, and how parenthood has seemed to change the both of them for the better. When he asks about her research and the presentation she should probably be preparing for instead of ordering her second glass of wine, Lexie admits that she is prepared, yes, but terrified of stuttering or sounding stupid or not living up to her mentor's expectations.

Mark smiles at her then, soft and small, like he understands and she supposes he just may. Or, at least he remembers: Lexie fears many things, but failure is the only thing in life she is terrified of.

"You are going through talking points in your head right now, aren't you?" he laughs.

Lexie nods, smiles sheepishly because it is better than admitting the truth: being here with him reminds her of the one thing, above all else, she has never been able to forget. Even before he had a right, Mark knew her. Mark has always understood her in a way she thinks sometimes no one else ever will. It's why he said goodbye, why he let her go without a fight. It took her a while to understand that, to lick her wounds and realize he wasn't the monster it would be so easy to make him out to be, but she does now, and the realization still hits her like a storm years later.

"You're going to be great," Mark tells her. This, she muses, is one of the few differences she notes between the Mark of now and the Mark of then - this Mark is gentler, kinder. "I never doubted that you'd be great," he says softly, the smile spreading across his mouth turning wistful almost, full of possibility.

He reaches for her then, his fingers grazing the back of her hand and in this moment everything feels so right, more so than it ever did before, and it clouds her judgment, makes her weak. For just a moment, she allows herself to believe in the possibility of maybe and turns her hand so her palm flattens against his for the briefest stretch of time before she pulls away.

After dinner and more than a few drinks, they take a long stroll around the city. As they walk Lexie takes the time to point out a few of her favorite parts of Boston. She shows him where she buys her coffee, the little diner where she orders greasy eggs and home fries after a long shift, the hand-me-down store that offers gently used Jimmy Choo shoes at discounted prices. Mark nods and makes jokes and leans in a little too closely. Lexie buries her hands deep in the pockets of her coat, pulls it closer around herself as the wind picks up. It is nice being here with him, having him close after all this time, but it also threatens to unhinge her completely.

They talk like they are old friends, and maybe if things had been different, maybe if they were different people it would be the truth. But it’s not and the both of them fumble through the awkwardness for common ground, for a fresh start, and shouldn’t be surprised when it isn’t easy to find. It’s been five years of actively not wanting him, of actively not thinking about him, and having him here, right next to her, causes tiny little fault lines to appear in her carefully constructed exterior.

The vital truth Lexie has always known, the truth the two of them have always inherently understood is that they will never be friends. There is too much between them, too much history, too much innate knowledge was amassed in the past concerning how the other operates. It isn’t possible for them to be friends - now or ever - because they will always know what it is like to be more, to have more, and that knowledge taints everything.

The further they walk, the closer they near to the proverbial fork in the road they came to the night before. When they arrive at the midpoint between their destinations - where she needs to go left and he right - they pause, stop walking altogether as their arms swing at their sides. Mark reaches up to rub the heel of his hand against his chin, the hard line of his jaw before curling his hands into fists and shoving them deep down in the pockets of his jeans. Lexie does the same, rocks back and forth on her heels, thinks of all the things she wants to say, all the things on the tip of her tongue, and presses her mouth into a thin line to keep from saying them.

“It’s been really great, Lex, seeing you here. Being with you like this. I just…” Mark trails off, and looks at her, really looks at her the way he used to: with half a smile and his eyes wide, cheek between his teeth. It’s a look she’s seen a million times before, a look she has memorized and filed away, that does things to her knees and heart and has her will starting to fade.

“Yeah,” she says. “Me, too.”

Mark reaches for her then, blindly, his warm fingers grazing her cheek, the skin of his palm flattening against her face. Lexie hates herself for leaning in, but she does and it is a nice moment with him smiling at her and her eyes falling closed as she breathes the moment it.

It only lasts for a few seconds before Lexie pulls away, shaking her head and taking a step backwards, putting some needed distance between them.

“Look, Mark,” she says, searching for the right words, but none find her. She laughs to fill the silence and Mark does too, nodding a little as he shifts his weight from left to right.

“Yeah,” he says and his smile shifts to something more somber, to something bittersweet. “Me, too.”

(This was how it ended:

“Are you in this?”

She was slipping her heels off her feet, kicking them into a pile somewhere near his shoes, when he asked her. He stood near the bathroom, shoulder against the door jam, arms crossed over his chest. Mark was quiet, observant, tired in the way he regarded her. She understood. They had all been picking up more shifts, all trying to lighten the loads for the others in the aftermath of George’s death. It was more than that though. It was less than that. Lexie was tired of the thing between them too, the constant game of progression and regression, the tip-toeing they had been doing around each other.

It was exhausting.

What she really wanted to say was I need time. I need space. I’m not ready. All those truths that in a perfect world he would understand, but still sounded so utterly wrong inside of her head. She loved him, she did, and he loved her. It was an innate knowledge imbedded into his every action, every word spoken, but Lexie did not fool herself into believing the knowledge made everything easier. Life had taught her that was not the case.

They needed to talk about this. For days, they had been pretending his offer did not exist, that the rift - so palpable, so prevalent she could taste it - was non-existent. Even then, in the confines of his small hotel room they had so much between them - age, distance, time - and she wanted nothing more to lessen it. To put things back to the way they used to be. She just didn’t know how and it was one of the few times in her life she was at a complete and utter loss as to how to just keep moving.

Lexie had these plans. They were pre-designed, a lifetime’s worth of steps on how to get from A to B in perfect, sequential order, and she wanted too much for herself. She wanted stability and structure, a path paved on her own terms. Lexie had never been very good at compromising and it occurred to her that she had never really asked him for his patience, to wait until she was ready to give him the things he was asking for.

Deep down, Lexie was aware they were way past that point. But she wasn’t willing to sacrifice any more of herself than she already had.

“I can’t,” she said, lips curling just slightly. “Not now. Not in the way you need me to be.”

Mark didn’t fight or argue. He didn’t beg her to change her mind. He accepted her decision, respected it, and Lexie had never seen him possess more grace than he did in that moment.

The Mass Gen offer came shortly thereafter from a friend of a friend she still kept in contact with via emails and holiday cards she always sent a week after the fact. There was an opening, a spot that would have been hers all along if her mother hadn’t died from the hiccups and her father hadn’t fallen completely apart thereafter.

Lexie took it.

Seattle would never have been big enough for two Greys and she longed for something more, something to be hers and hers alone so she could pave her own path and not live in the enormous shadow of somebody else.)

She isn’t exactly sure how it happens. One moment Lexie is watching him walk away in the direction of his hotel, her heart pounding in her throat, and the next minute she’s saying his name, watching as he stops, turns, and glances in her direction. They stand there for a minute, just looking at each other. It is entirely way too surreal having Mark here, with her, in her city, in this place where she has worked so hard to build her own life separate from him and the person she was when she knew him. Lexie can’t even begin to work out all the feelings that have reemerged because of his presence; she can’t even begin to figure out what it means to have her heart constrict when he’s near her, to have his closeness, his mere presence humming pleasantly under her skin.

Some things, it turns out, never change and Mark’s effect on her, their connection is one of them.

It is what forces her to put one foot in front of the other and cross the short distance to him. It is what drives her fingers to reach for him, fisting into the fabric of his shirt as she rises on the tip of her toes and pulls his mouth down until her lips can fuse with his. It’s like something right out of the movies, this moment, with her running to him, the people on the street serving as both observers and background music. It is both romantic and messy when their mouths connect and Mark stills almost completely, his sharp inhale popping in her ears. She thinks, for just a moment, that she’s made a mistake, misread the cues, his closeness, his smiles as something different altogether.

But then his mouth starts to move slowly, cautiously at first like he is testing the water, like he’s trying to get to know her in this way all over again. He murmurs her name and the kiss is lovely and warm, makes her heart stutter and start inside her chest and she finds herself holding her breath, waiting for the moment to pass whilst memorizing it, filing it away so she can remember it after he’s gone. Something shifts, though, around the same time her arms reach to wrap around his neck, her body pressing against his in all the right places, and his mouth turns hungry, desperate, wanton as it fuses to hers over and over again.

Lexie isn’t sure how it happens, what it means, or even what she is doing, but she doesn’t want to stop to figure it out, doesn’t want to ruin the moment by pulling away so she can gather her thoughts, try to wrap her head around it all.

All she does know is that she loves the way he holds on to her, his fingers bruising at her hip and nape of her neck like he’s afraid that if he let go, if he loosened his grip she would disappear. She loves the way he kisses her like he is drinking her in, ready to swallow her whole. Mostly, though, Lexie loves the way he kisses her like he knows her, knows what she wants and needs, knows all her deepest secrets and it doesn’t make sense, the two of them now. She knows that. Knows that it has disaster imprinted boldly all over it, but as his tongue flicks against her teeth, and his fingers smooth against the curve of her jaw, she finds she doesn’t care.

It’s why she pulls away, her lips trailing to the corner of his mouth as she whispers, take me home with you.

There were reasons that she left Seattle. Good, solid reasons that she recited to herself day in and day out, a mantra of sorts, during those first few weeks in Boston when the adjustment was slow to take. But as Mark’s mouth molds against hers possessively it is solid, warm, and inviting and those reasons are hard to remember. As he whispers her name - just once, the two syllables becoming lost to the weighted sound of his single sigh - it is hard to remember why leaving Seattle was such a good idea. It is hard to wrap her head around all the reasons why she had been trying to make her way in the world with other men by her side, men with all the right intentions, but had no idea to kiss her quite like this. No idea how to make her feel like this.

Once they’re inside his hotel room, her back hits the door with a sound thud, her smile widening across her mouth as he presses every inch of himself against her, his hands moving everywhere at once. They graze her face, tangle in her hair, skim over the soft skin of her shoulders, her hips, the warmth between her legs. Lexie’s own hands reach up to smooth against his face. The pulse point where neck meets the hard line of his jaw quickens under the tips of her fingertips and she kisses him harder, rougher, the way her tongue flicks against his relaying every intention, every ounce of want she possesses now and always.
There is a moan, his, and the sound is guttural, and rips right through her. Lexie allows herself to get lost as she swallows it whole, as she revels in the feel of him against her, in the reality of just how much she has missed him and this and them.

Five years since the last time he had kissed her goodbye at the airport, his voice catching on his good luck and I’ll miss you and all the ways he said I love you without actually murmuring the words. Five years since then and he still tastes the same, still kisses the same, still feels the same.

Mark still knows all the right buttons to push, all the ways to string her along until she’s begging him for more, until she’s keyed up and right there toeing the edge with just the encouragement of his mouth and hands to push her over. Her body responds in kind. Her right leg wraps itself around his, her lips leaving his mouth to trail down the smooth skin of his neck, teeth grazing that spot she knows he loves, her fingers struggling with the buttons of his shirt furiously just to seek out the warm flesh underneath. His sigh is weighted with content as she finally makes contact.

They still for a moment, her hands flattening against the smooth skin of his belly, his forehead resting against hers as his fingers fumble with the button on her jeans. The slick sound of a zipper coming undone echoes throughout the quiet room, mixing with the heaviness of their breathing and Lexie watches as Mark presses his eyes shut tightly, continues to rest his forehead against hers and just simply breathes. He chews the inside of his cheek, fights for control.

“I missed you every single day,” he murmurs. “Thought of you every single day.”

Her breath catches, her sharp inhale sounding something similar to a hiss. The spark, the arousal coils dangerously in the pit of her belly, spreads and hums like a livewire under her skin. She makes a sound that is both needy and desperate, something that constitutes a cross between and whimper and a moan, and slants her mouth towards his, taking it as her own, angling her hips towards his. She says nothing, doesn’t echo his sentiments even though the words are right there, right on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she merely covers his hand with hers and guides it between her legs, inside her jeans and under the damp cotton because she’s older, wiser, and she wants him, all of him. She always has.

She can feel his grin spread broadly against her mouth, gasps a little as he touches her gently and carefully, teasing. All it does is propel her into action, her hands grasping and clinging, her mouth working tirelessly against his until she has what she wants just within her grasp. Until he’s between her legs, his mouth hot and warm against her neck as her back arches against the cool wood of the door, as fingers dig into the soft skin at her thighs.

It’s too much all at once, his touch achingly familiar, and it’s over before it even gets a chance to start as she comes with a sigh and his name caught in the back of her throat.

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